What to Expect When You're Expecting
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
Isaiah 11:1-10
So, a few weeks ago, we spent time with the prophet, Jeremiah, and his vision of a new covenant, a new relationship between God and the people. The Old Covenant was a set of rules that were written in stone. The Old Covenant was conditional. It hinged on people keeping the rules. The Old Covenant was simple, at first, and then became incredibly complicated, with the religious authorities “clarifying” the rules until the 10 commandments became the 10,000 laws.
The Old Covenant sent most people down the rabbit hole of perfectionism. The only way that I’m going to be considered righteous is if I follow all the rules. However, every day that I try, I fall short because the rules are so complicated. I would need a priest to walk through life next to me interpreting the rules. Of course, to be honest, some days I just forget about the rules altogether. Some days, I’m so fed up with them that I just throw up my hands and quit trying.
People were stuck. The Old Covenant wasn’t working. I’m pretty sure that God and every human being could agree on that. Something had to change. In Jeremiah’s vision, that “something” was the very nature of the covenant, itself. No more external rules. No more need for religious authorities. Most importantly, no more conditions. God’s going to love us. God is going to forgive us. This is going to change everything.
The nature of that change started to be articulated even before Jeremiah. In our text for this morning, Isaiah begins with a vision of an ideal king. What will make him ideal is not his physical strength or his dashing good looks. What will make him ideal will not be his prowess as a warrior. No…what will make him ideal is that, “The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him.” This king will be wise—because the Spirit will make him that way. This king will be fair—because the Spirit will help him to see beyond personal gain and into the heart of justice. This king will inspire everyone with his words because those words will be inspired by the Spirit.
Now, Isaiah goes to a really interesting place next. He starts to throw images at us: the wolf and the lamb will play together; the leopard and the baby goat will sleep together; the lion and the calf will eat side-by-side. Most shockingly, he takes a child and has that child crawl over a rattlesnake den and stick his hand down the snake hole and the snake does not strike. Everything we expect to happen—all the violence and all the carnage—does not happen. Why? Because the whole earth and all the creatures in it will be transformed by the Spirit of God. Things are going to change! All things are going to be made new!
Of course, we have to complete the circle and move back to the ideal ruler and connect the dots. A wolf is supposed to eat the lamb. A leopard is supposed to eat the baby goat. The snake is supposed to strike the child. That’s the way things go. That’s the instinct built into these creatures. That’s the way life is. We see images that counter these instincts and think to ourselves, “Isaiah has lost his mind!” The only thing is that what we heard just before this is even crazier. What ruler, given nearly unlimited power, cares about the Spirit of God or wisdom or justice? Leopards and wolves want one thing: to eat. Kings want one thing: to use and preserve their power. The only thing crazier than Isaiah’s images of a cuddly, happy animal world is his vision of how an ideal king would rule.
Think of it this way. No one blames the lion for eating, right? No one blames the snake for striking the foot that would have stepped on it, right? That’s just a lion being a lion or a snake being a snake. No one blames those who wield power for their own self-interest either, right? At least that’s true for the world-weary, cynical folks among us. What do you expect? That’s just the instinctive response of those with power. They hold onto that power and they make calculating choices that preserve that power. Lions eat. Snakes protect themselves. People with power are cunning. Your a fool to expect anything else…
Or, perhaps, you are a prophet. What if what you expect is something better than instinct? What if you expect more from people with power? What if it was really possible for someone who had the power to rule the world to choose to submit to God’s will rather than impose his own? What if a king chose to do what was faithful and right and wise because the guiding force for his reign was that following God’s lead was more important than gratifying his own desires?
Maybe the proper, worldly response is to hear Isaiah’s words and quietly shake our heads. Maybe we should just speak in that slow, loud voice that we use when we’re pretty sure the person in front of us is losing it: “No, Isaiah…lions are lions and snakes are snakes and kings are kings.” Maybe we should just think in our own heads, “Good luck with that, Isaiah!” and quietly walk away. Maybe the way things are is all that we should expect. Or, maybe we should expect more. Though the world may not change in an instant, if we are really honest, if we really search our experiences in this life, most of us have caught glimpses of a world which, every now and then, functions differently.
Do you remember the story a few years ago about the cop who ran into the homeless guy in winter who had bags on his feet instead of shoes? The cop didn’t tell him to move along. He said, “Come with me!” He took the man out and bought him shoes.
Have you heard the story about the two ex military guys who climb mountains together now? Here’s the thing…one of those men lost both legs to a roadside bomb. Now, he climbs onto the other man’s back and they climb the mountain, piggy back. The guy who wasn’t hurt didn’t look at the other man and say, “I’m so sorry” and move on. He looked that injured man in the eye and said, “We are in this together…end of story.”
Think of everyone you’ve ever known who did the math on how to have the most lucrative career imaginable and then chose a different path. It’s the teacher who chooses to teach in a tough place or chooses to care about the kid that everyone else overlooks or reaches into her own pocket to get the supplies that the kid in her class needs. It’s the lawyer who chooses to be a public defender or chooses to help the person who may not ever be able to pay but deserves help. It’s the person who was a victim as a child of one of the many things that can happen to a child who decides to dedicate themselves to making sure that such things never happen to another child.
People of every color and background and identity make choices on a regular basis to set aside their own best interests and make decisions that are in the service of trying to create a better world. As we saw in London, someone—recognizing that what’s happening is wrong—may well grab whatever is close at hand (in this case, a narwhal tusk)—and put their life on the line because they might not be able to live with themselves if they don’t. However, because that’s not what we expect, we forget such moments quickly and go back to feeding our worst fears and expecting the worst. After all, isn’t this what wise people do? Isn’t this how we keep from getting disappointed or hurt? Instead of allowing ourselves to hope that people will rise to the occasion, we expect the worst. As a rule, we tend to find evidence to support our expectations. If I expect the worst, then I’ll never be disappointed.
As we move through Advent, part of our job is to adjust our expectations. Christ is coming. What he’s going to show us is how to live a Spirit and faith filled life, how to be guided by something other than what’s in it for me, how to look to another and not expect the worst but be open to how God’s Spirit just might be present in them. He is going to show us how to catch glimpses of the Kingdom of God in this lifetime. He is going to show us how to make the Word flesh, how to take words like justice and peace and love and compassion and bring them to life. He is going to show us what real power looks like and he’s going to show us the limits of worldly power.
Here’s the thing though: he can show us those things all day long but if we don’t have eyes that are ready to see, we will remain blind. If our hearts have grown cold, we will not be moved. If we’ve already decided that we live in a dog-eat-dog world and nothing matters but taking care of my own, then we won’t be able to hear a thing about the vision of a very different world that Christ sets before us. The Spirit that could fill us, that could make us new, will not bully us into submission. Instead, it will just keep popping up occasionally and will keep whispering to us, “Are you finally ready to try something new? Are you finally ready to be made new, yourself?”
It’s time to adjust our expectations. In the words of the New Testament, “I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Of course, we will see human beings at their worst. Of course, we will see things that are unfair. The question is how will we make the unfair more fair? How will we be a source of healing in the midst of human brokenness? How will we bring light into the darkness? How will we adjust our expectations?