The book of Isaiah is a composite work, the writings of two or more people. It covers two distinct time periods. The part of Isaiah that we read today probably comes from the 8th century B.C.E. It is a dark and fearful time. The Assyrian Empire is threatening to, or already has, conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel. Most of the tribes are lost or scattered. The future looks scary. Isaiah is writing from Jerusalem and the remaining tribe of Judah. It seems only a matter of time before the Assyrians stretch their reach a little bit farther south and take over Judah as well. There is no way Judah can muster the military might necessary to defend itself. Egypt might be talked into giving them some defense, but that can’t be counted upon.
Where is God in the midst of all this loss and destruction? What will God do? Will God protect them?
In the midst of those questions about the very existence of the nation Isaiah speaks a quiet word of defiant hope. The verses that we read from Isaiah 11 are among the best known verses in the Bible. They speak of a deep and persistent human hope for justice and peace. This is a Jewish text originally but Christians have used it to point to Jesus. Jesus, the new and ultimate king of Israel who would establish peace on earth.
Indeed a look towards the ministry of Jesus and we see someone in the line of David who spoke peace and brought wholeness.
I doubt, however, that Isaiah actually had Jesus in mind when he spoke these words of hope. He meant them fully for the people of his own time. They were to continue to trust God and to live faithfully. Their identity was not defined by the threat of an invading empire. Their identity was as the people whom God had chosen to be examples to the world. They needed to stay true to that. God indeed did see them. God would stay true to the promises. And God would bring them peace.
The peace that God would bring would not be just an absence of warfare with a more powerful adversary who nevertheless remained threatening. This was to be a deep and lasting peace even with the forces of nature. A child could play over the hole of a viper’s nest and be safe. Livestock would not be threatened by wolves or lions. Good honest farming and ranching would be predictable and secure. And God would raise a righteous ruler who would reign according to God’s promises of true justice.
It is an idyllic image. The front cover of the bulletin has the painting The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks. It’s based on Isaiah 11. In the foreground is a bunch of wild and domestic animals all together in tranquility. Young children are among them. In the background is William Penn Jr., a Quaker and founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, peacefully making a land agreement with the Lenni Lenape Indians.
Would that the world would work that way! It is a dream to be sure. And Isaiah creates this vision defiantly in the midst of fear and uncertainty.
This Bible passage was on my mind last Thursday when I was asked to pick up someone from the Rochester airport. I was to pick up Jamil Zoughbi, who was flying in from the Wartburg Lutheran Seminary in Iowa. Jamil is studying to be a pastor at Wartburg but his approval process is being overseen by the Upstate New York Synod. I was to take him from the airport to the Notre Dame Retreat Center in Canandaigua. I was looking forward to meeting Jamil because I knew he is a Palestinian Lutheran who owns a house in Jerusalem. He came to the United States just a few weeks before the Hamas attacks on Israel. I wanted to get his feelings on what was going on over there.
I was not at all surprise when the first thing he said was, “Believe nothing that you hear on the news.” He said that all of the American news sources were wrong, with one exception. He’d heard some things on the program Democracy Now that were reasonably correct. I asked him to elaborate and he said that while it was certainly true that Hamas attacked Israel (and that he condemned that), and that Israel was launching a major attack on the Gaza Strip to destroy Hamas, they were completely overlooking the real truths of what happens regularly and behind the scenes.
He said that they are overlooking the way that his family, as Lutherans living in Jerusalem are constantly needled and threatened by the Israeli government. He said that aid shipments come from time to time, even to his neighborhood. But the Israeli government gives it only to the Jewish families. And that when there are treats of missile or air attacks there are bomb shelters in the area. But they are only for Jewish people. Everyone else, including Lutheran families like his, are not welcome.
None of this surprised me. It shouldn’t surprise you. I’ve heard this stuff for decades and shared it with you. But of course we hear it as church insiders. For any number of reasons our news services ignore this stuff.
But Jamil did say stuff that surprised me. He said that his family, and the other non-Jewish families in his area, for the most part peaceably get along with their Jewish neighbors. The conflicts and taunting exist at the national level. At the level of individuals and neighborhoods the situation may be quite different.
Now don’t get me wrong. I did not say that at a personal level all Jews and Palestinians get along. That’s not at all the case! But in Jamil’s case, and probably many others, that is the case.
There is a defiance in that. His family and his neighbors are examples of people who are not letting their personal interactions be defined by what the nation says they are to be. They will live together. They will work together. They will look out for each other. They will build a constructive community for themselves together.
Jamil gave me this, a container made of olive wood with olive oil in it that was dedicated at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.
Once again, something that does not seem to be being reported in mainstream media is that Christmas Lutheran Church and most all churches in Bethlehem have cancelled Christmas this year. It isn’t the first time they’ve done it.
Israel has built a wall that separates Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian community with many of them being Christians, from other areas. It has been joked that if Jesus was born in Bethlehem today the shepherds would not have been able to get to see him. There is now a big wall in the way!
But a bit of anointing oil makes the journey and conveys the truth in defiance of walls and policies and hostage taking and warfare.
It sometimes seems that there is forever fighting in the Holy Land. Not true. There has been recently, but if you are more than a couple decades old you remember times of peace, and permanent peace deals coming ever so close.
Jamil’s neighborhood lives in a quiet defiant hope for that peace.
The prophet Isaiah’s words were words of hope to people over 2700 years ago. He calls for patience, truth, and trust in the midst of darkness. God sees. God knows. God cares. God is acting.
Today Jamil’s neighborhood is also acting in patience, truth, and trust.
Our own land enjoys much more peace and stability. That is a blessing! Yet there is plenty of strife and violence too. Perhaps it seems like the tides and trends of the world are as big and powerful as the Assyrian Empire seemed to Isaiah and the people of his time. We, like them, know that God sees, and knows, and cares, and is acting. And so we live in defiance of all that tears down and breaks. Perhaps we do not do so in protests or rallies or anything that draws attention. But we do so in simplicity and quietness; witnessing to the hope of God that is always at work.
We pray for peace in the Holy Land. We lament that Christians in Bethlehem feel it is too dangerous to celebrate Christmas and so they are closing their churches. And we live in confidence and hope of God’s actions. We do not listen to the divisions and distinctions that powerful people try to create among us. We see in each other God’s good work, and honor it with lives of love.
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