December 4, 2022

Isaiah 11:1-10

The Peaceable Kingdom

 

Chapter 11: King James Version

1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

2 And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;

3 And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:

4 But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

5 And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.

9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

(See Note 1.)

(See Note 2 regarding American artist Edward Hicks’s paintings of the Peaceable Kingdom.)

“Remembering speechlessly, we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?”—Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

The past several years have been tough. I suspect I’m not alone in having continuing periods of cynicism and despair over the behavior of those around us, our country and the world in general. Not to mention my own behavior at times! Cynicism and despair seem to be in the atmosphere. The bustling and jolly commercial season of Christmas offers some distraction, but it’s a mixed bag with its surface of joy and its undertow of discontent. This passage from Isaiah gives us an invitation to stop and contemplate. To breathe fresh air as we wait. To create space to rest and dream of what the Kingdom of God might be or become. To put aside cynicism and despair. To fully experience the blessing of Advent.

The prophet speaks to us from a period of exile for Israel, more than seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus. The scripture (particularly verses 6-9) brings us haunting images of a healed world, often referred to as The Peaceable Kingdom. The wolf dwells with the lamb, the leopard lies down with the kid and the cow and the bear feed together. Children and wild animals dwell together in peaceful companionship without danger or harm. And we are told of a place, our healed world, that is God’s holy mountain where there is neither hurt nor destruction. The prophet tells us that one day this Peaceable Kingdom will actually come to pass. Can we hold this vision? What would this look like in our city? In our country?

How will this healed and whole world come about? In the mysterious way of prophets, the writer of Isaiah foretells the agent of this healing. It is not a movement, or an evolution or a renaissance. It is a person. A person of wisdom and understanding. A person righteous and strong and faithful. A person on whom the spirit of the Lord rests. A person who can save us. And then a surprise. We are told that “… a little child shall lead them.” Who is this child? The prophet does not explain. He leaves us to discern the truth as we will.

So God sends us the truth in the Child of Bethlehem, who said, “…Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3. Again we are confronted with this theme of the child, the Child Jesus, and the child we must become to enter his kingdom. So perhaps this is our fresh air. Our “lost lane-end into heaven” (to borrow Wolfe’s words). Our healing from cynicism and despair. We must, in some sense, become as children to open the door to the Peaceable Kingdom. In our own hearts and in the world. And we know how children are: open-hearted, curious, wondering, loving, guileless, quick to forgive, delighting in the moment.

Think on these things as we anticipate and remember the birth of that one special child who fulfills our dreams and hopes, often in ways greater than we could ever expect.

 

Note 1. Isaiah’s images of peace, harmony and joy have continued to inspire humanity through the ages, especially in times of trouble. Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister (1780-1849) painted sixty-two known paintings with varying interpretations of the “peaceable kingdom.” The Peaceable Kingdom paintings expressed his yearning for unity and peace. An interesting side note is that Hicks in a number of the paintings represented in some fashion William Penn’s signing of a treaty of perpetual friendship with the Lenape Indians in 1681 on the banks of the Delaware River. He felt that this is what it looks like to put into practice the values of brotherly love and peace that Christ came to teach us. Penn did honor this treaty but his successors did not — a fact of which Hicks was painfully aware. artandtheology.org. These paintings are a progressive colonial minister’s musings on what the Peaceable Kingdom might look like. Are there parts of the images shown here that are jarring to you? How have our sensibilities of what the Peaceable Kingdom might look like evolved in the last 200 years?

Note 2. One of most beloved rituals in the world is the annual Christmas Eve Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Kings College, Cambridge, in England. The theme of the liturgy is the development of the loving purposes of God and it consists of nine scripture readings chosen to represent the entire arc of God’s relationship with humankind, beginning with the Genesis story of creation and ending with the magnificent beginning of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word….” interspersed with carols of breath stopping beauty. The Isaiah passage for today is, in part, the Fourth Lesson, entitled “The peace that Christ will bring is foreshown.” The service was first held on Christmas Eve 1918 and was planned by Eric Milner-White, Dean of Kings. Milner-White had just returned to Cambridge from serving as an Army Chaplain in World War I. Wherever I am on Christmas Eve, I sneak off to a room with a radio and listen for the first a cappella notes of Once in Royal David’s City from a single boy soprano who has gotten the nod from his conductor just a second before.

Here is a link to hear “Once in Royal David’s City” from the 2016 Service of Lessons and  Carols at Kings College, Cambridge. 

Beth Robrecht