December 9, 2007 - Justice and Peace - Frank Alton

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Isaiah 11:1-10

A friend and colleague of mine told me a story a few months ago that has really stuck with me. The church he pastors is going to engage in a building project that will displace a childcare center that has served families in the area for many years. The church obviously had concerns about how to break the news to the preschool without alienating those involved. Some time after notification had been given, one of the Board members of the childcare center asked permission to come to a meeting of the church’s governing body to present their case. To people’s surprise he gave a slide presentation that showed imaginative plans for the growth and renewal of the childcare center. There was no anger or resentment in the person’s voice; only creative imagination and relational power. It was so striking and attractive that someone asked how he could take the loss of the space so casually. He basically replied that the nature of leadership involves precisely that kind of response. What he actually said was, “when people say ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ the leader responds, “I believe it because I see it.” The leadership of the childcare center saw a future vision beyond and through the loss.

The 11th chapter of Isaiah describes a future leader who will see in the way that board member described leaders. And the picture Isaiah sees that future leader bringing into focus is one of justice and of peace – two pieces of Immanuel’s core vision, and two consistent themes of the Advent season year after year. The church has understood that future leader as the promised Messiah, whom Christians see as Jesus. That’s why we always read these texts during Advent. But we must acknowledge that Isaiah was contemplating a leader closer at hand – a king at the horizon of the eighth century BCE. The two visions come together when we realize that the text is not to serve as a prediction but as a way of linking Jewish expectation and the compelling reality of Jesus. The point of the vision at both horizons is to introduce a new way of seeing rather than a particular seer.

The final verse we read paints a picture of people everywhere inquiring of that leader. The 12th chapter goes on to show the people bearing grateful witness to that new way of seeing. What, then, is the new way of seeing? How is it that we come to see things before they are visible to the eye? Isaiah describes it as seeing “with” rather than seeing “what.” In the first half of the passage it is about seeing with justice. In the second half it is about seeing peace with imagination – a vision that comes from inside rather than a perception of what is outside as viewed through the senses.

What does it mean to judge “with” rather than “what?” Isaiah describes justice more as a lens than an object. “The root of Jesse shall not judge by what the eye sees, or what the ear hears; but will judge the poor with righteousness, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” Isaiah writes in Hebrew poetry and uses the words righteousness and equity as two words for the same value – the value of justice. There was a deep and primal conviction throughout the ancient Near East generally and in Israel particularly, that the royal government is the equalizer, to intervene on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable (widows and orphans) who are unable to supply their own social leverage. And insofar as this text illuminates Jesus’ ministry, it is a reminder that Jesus was received, celebrated, & eventually crucified precisely for his embodiment and practice of this vision of social possibility.

Walter Breuggemann connects this vision to our own reality: “It is impossible to overstate the cruciality of this vision of justice for the coming ideal king, the importance of which is evident in a society like ours, wherein governmental power is largely in the hands of the wealthy & powerful and is operated almost exclusively to their own advantage and benefit. Such an arrangement of public power is a complete contradiction of the biblical vision of government.” Breuggemann, Isaiah 1-39 Westminster Bible Commentary p 101

But for Isaiah, while justice is acted out in the here and now, it is not rooted in what is out there – what can be seen and heard & perceived with the senses. Justice is rooted inside, at the spiritual center of our lives. That means that justice doesn’t depend as much on a careful review of the merits of individual cases as on seeing the world through God’s eyes. It is not a question of, “Does this particular poor person deserve compensation? Does this particular powerless person warrant a favorable ruling?” Justice comes from a right judging; and right judging is judging “with” the eyes of God rather than “what” the physical eye might perceive.

In the second half of the text Isaiah switches to imagining peace, though it appears as a switch to the animal kingdom. There will be conciliation and peaceableness among these species that have been at war with each other since the beginning of time. All things will be new in creation when God fully authorizes the right human agents. The distortion of human relationships is at the root of all distortions in creation. Peace is rooted in justice, and justice must issue in a reign of peace. Isaiah reveals that peace requires seeing with imagination, which once again involves a vision coming from inside rather than a perception of what is outside as viewed through the senses.

The image of the peaceable kingdom is a familiar one to many – the wolf living with the lamb, a little child leading them. The reign of peace initiated by the Heir will transform the entire created order; not only will nations cease from warfare, but even natural enemies, predators and prey, will not hurt or destroy. Cows and bears, lions and oxen, snakes and human children will coexist without injury or harm. It is the fullness of Peace—the Harmony of harmonies, reconciling intensities in mutual richness of life; shalom, wholeness, completeness, shared well-being. All this will happen because the earth—not just the human population, but the entire world-fabric itself—“will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” The vision proposes that real human societies can strive to embody in the greatest degree possible to them the coordinated aims of God for creation. While no actual earthly society—no human community and no ecosystem—may be able to achieve the fullness of Peace under the conditions of this world, the vision serves as an ideal against which any society – say ours – can be measured. It invites the question, “What signs of this fullness of Peace can we see emerging in our own difficult time?” And, “What concrete actions might we take to further embody the divine ideals Isaiah reveals to us here?”

Yet, in the same way that the practice of justice is rooted in our spiritual center, so the vision of peace starts on the inside. In both cases the question that really matters to us during Advent as a season of spiritual practice is, “What is the path to seeing? How do we come to see like that?” Here we have to go back to the previous chapter in Isaiah. The reason there was only a stump of Jesse at the beginning of chapter 11 is that all the tallest trees had been cut down, and the thickets of the forest had been hacked down with an ax. (10:33-34) Chapter 11 opens with a picture of a dry tree stump lying alone in what used to be a forest. But out of the dry stump a shoot had begun to emerge. Since to the Hebrew mind the Spirit is the one whose presence or absence signaled life or death, it is natural for Isaiah to immediately begin talking about the Spirit: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on that one, the spirit of wisdom & understanding, counsel & might, knowledge and the fear of God” (11:2). That is the precursor to judging with rather than what.

What is happening here? Isaiah is pointing out that in order to follow in God’s way of seeing and judging, a person must develop the openness to experience loss as both good and bad, rather than as merely bad. Do you recognize this? It is precisely the quality that the member of the childcare center’s board demonstrated. The loss had not devastated him. Instead, it became the vehicle for a new vision.

This perspective is rooted in a rereading of the creation story. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Were they being punished, or were they being taught? Did our archetypes of the human race, succeed or fail? Joan Chittester shares the story of her own movement from the view she was taught by the nuns as a child, that when Adam and Eve were expelled it was a punishment for the mess they had made of things. She discovered a different answer when she realized that Adam and Eve were not quasi-divine beings who utterly failed in their vocation, such that God has had to clean up their mess ever since. They were human; “the eating of the fruit was the most humanizing thing they did. What if the real message in the Garden story is that it is of the essence of humanity to stumble from apple tree to apple tree, trying to get it right, searching for ‘the difference between good and evil’ but able to learn it only the hard way? Then the lesson was not that God was angry that Adam and Eve were not gods, but that God knew it was necessary for them to learn that they were human, that life would not be easy, that there would be pitfalls aplenty, and that they could survive them one after the other after the other.” (Chittester, There is a Season, p. 25-26)

Under that view, the text from Isaiah invites us to a cycle of life that involves being open to loss, such that loss leads to wisdom. The wisdom creates space to welcome the poor and the meek into a realm of justice. Some who are so welcomed will become open themselves, such that rights are transformed into gifts and failures into necessary and redemptive mistakes. That transformation creates the space in them to carry forward the work for justice with others.
How do we cultivate life on that path? The spiritual guides of many generations answer in the same way: we cultivate that through the practice of contemplation. Contemplation is a long, loving look at the real. We open ourselves to the silence and solitude of being dry stumps in what others falsely perceive to be a living forest. “The contemplative is the one among us in whom prayer, deep reflection on the presence and activity of God in the self and the world, has come little by little to extinguish the illusions of autonomy and the enthronement of the self that make little kingdoms of us all. The contemplative goes beyond the self, and all its delusions, to the boundlessness of life and the consuming presence of God here and now.” (Chittester)

This is challenging in our world. Our worlds have become so filled with noise and stimulation from the outside that we can no longer even know how to cultivate the rich life of the soul. Ipods and muzak make sure we never know silence. Cellular telephones guarantee that we are never be alone. Wireless internet on our computers allows us to bring the world into every nook and cranny of our lives.

How is this related to peace and justice? “It is what we lack in ourselves that agitates us. What we do not have in our own hearts we will always look for someplace else. What we do not cultivate within ourselves we will always demand from others. If we have not learned how to live a rich inner life, we will want the tinsel and glitter of the world around us and someone else’s money to get it. If we have not set ourselves to the task of self-development, we will want without end someone else’s skills, someone else’s gifts, someone else’s advantages. If we are insecure, we will demand the control of others. If we have not come to peace with our own life, we will make combat with the people around us. If we have not learned to listen to our own struggles, we will never have compassion on the struggles of others.” (Chittester, Time, p. 108).