Text — Isaiah 11:1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

A major theme through much of the Hebrew Bible is the people’s desire for a king, for an anointed leader.  The Hebrew word for anointed one is Messiah, and the Greek word for Messiah is Christ.  Both Messiah and Christ are related to the word for “oil” — the substance used in anointing. 

Way back in 1 Samuel, the people of Israel said to Samuel, “Give us a king so that we may be like other nations.”  Samuel warned them that a king would tax them and conscript their children into the army and that having a king “like other nations” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  After Samuel’s warning, of course, came about 300 years of mostly bad kings.

Then Isaiah comes — in today’s passage — and expresses again, in spite of all that bad experience, this desire for a king, only this time the desire is more specific.  What people want now is a good king, a righteous king, a perfect king — a king with wisdom and the fear of the Lord.  This king won’t judge by what his eyes see — that is, not according to mere appearances — but with righteousness he shall judge on behalf of the poor and for the meek of the earth.  Imagine a President like that! 

But then as the passage goes on, notice that the qualities of this ideal king become more and more spectacular and even miraculous.   “He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth.”  Even the whole animal kingdom will hear the king’s voice and be changed.  “The wolf shall live with the lamb.”  I always wonder if the lamb was consulted about that arrangement.   “The lion shall eat straw like the ox”.  This new king will turn the fierce lions into vegetarians. 

It’s a rather dreamy passage.  But at its root is a deep human longing.  Something is wrong with the world.  We need a leader from God; we need a leader who can make it right.  This is the psychological material that fuels political campaigns.  We want a President who is truly righteous and has something like miraculous powers. 

This is why politicians get away with overblown promises.  George Bush said he would “stay the course” and plant democracy in Iraq and transform the Middle East.  “Democracy is a gift from God to the Iraqi people.”  This war is presented as a divinely sanctioned mission, and people want to believe it — they want to believe it even more as the death toll rises.  John Kerry made his own overblown promises.  Social security is in trouble, because there used to be 20 workers to support every retiree.  Now there are something like 11.  The day is in sight when there will be only 7.  Kerry said he would save social security without raising taxes, without raising the retirement age, and without cutting benefits.  The only way out of that statement is that he was going to talk his wife into paying the whole bill, but even she doesn’t have that much money.

Politicians make these ridiculous statements for one reason.  The people — not we, of course, but other people — like to hear them.  Give us a king who will make everything right.  This is a childish fantasy, but a very real desire.

Getting back to our passage, I want to make just two brief comments.  There are two levels of truth in a passage like this, as overblown as it is.

First, this messianic hope, this longing for a leader sent from God, does spring from a conviction at the heart of Christianity — and one that isn’t so foolish.  That conviction is this: we humans can’t save ourselves.  In some sense, not just ancient Israel, but every people of every age get it wrong somehow.  We turn out to be our own worst enemies. There’s something built into us that keeps us from getting it right. 

As St. Paul put it: The thing we want to do, we don’t do.  The thing we don’t want to do, that’s what we do.  We’re anxious; we’re selfish creatures; we’re greedy; we’re envious.  We resort to violence easily.  We’re inclined to self-righteousness.  The church calls this “original sin.”  It’s part of our nature.  We have many good qualities, even divine-like qualities too, but these flaws keep rearing their heads. 

This is why we pray.  We pray because we know we can’t — without help — make life all we want it to be.  We need God to do something — something new.  We want divine intervention because we really need divine intervention.  So that’s one way in which this prayer for the Messiah, the anointed one, is an honest confession.

But if that were the only truth here, it would be a naïve, immature, irresponsible hope.  When the prophet Isaiah first spoke these words, he was referring to an actual, political king.  From a Christian perspective, centuries later, we hear this passage as a prophecy of Jesus Christ who will not be a political king, but a self-sacrificing king, a crucified king, and a resurrected king, who doesn’t rule in the world the way other kings rule.  Christ the king rules in the human heart and in human history in the long run.  This is an inner Christ and a cosmic Christ — a potential in all of us.

So the second truth of this passage is that this Christ, the anointed leader, is something that needs to be come out of us.  God isn’t going to swoop down from heaven, wave a magic wand and then the world will be a perfect place.  The king we need is a king hidden in us and in the world, and present in the church.  Our job is to let this hidden, inner king, come out.  The first step in that is to believe that it’s in us.

Last week in the joys and concerns, I was really moved when Catie Olinski spoke up about what it meant to her to go up and have Thanksgiving dinner with the boys at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School.  It was clear from her words and voice that that was a powerful and wonderful experience.  And, she said, it wouldn’t have happened without the church setting up that relationship and that opportunity.  That’s the Christ coming alive in us.

Our church has a relationship with Covenant to Care that gives us the opportunity to buy Christmas presents for children living in foster homes.

On Christmas Day, we’ll have a free Christmas dinner in our Parish Hall where people from all walks of life will having Christmas dinner together.  That will be a real messianic banquet of the kind Jesus talked about — where all sort of people come off the streets to feast together in the kingdom with him.

So, we’ve met the enemy, and the enemy is in us.  And we’ve met the savior, and the savior, too, is within us.