Church of the Holy City

A Banner for the Peoples

A Banner for the Peoples
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 5, 2010

Isaiah 11:1-10 Matthew 3:1-12 Psalm 72

Once again this Sunday we find extremely optimistic readings from the Old Testament and rather frightening readings from the New Testament. Our responsive reading this morning from Psalm 72 was about a renewed and glorious earth. The righteous Messiah was to endure forever–as long and the sun and moon. In his days the righteous will flourish and prosperity will abound. Crops will abound and all the nations outside Israel will be blessed through him. Clearly, this is no ordinary ruler, no human king. This prophesy is about a cosmic Messiah, a king who is a divine being with power beyond any mortal. We can see in the reading from Psalm 72 that over time, the hopes for a Messiah grew far beyond the role that an ordinary human could fulfill.
We find a similar grand prophesy in Isaiah. Isaiah talks about a shoot from the stump of Jesse sprouting. Jesse was King David’s father, so the shoot from Jesse would be a descendant of King David. This is the Messianic promise that God makes with David. God promises David that there will be one of his children on the throne in Jerusalem forever. In 2 Samuel 7, God tells David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (16). After the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, there was no Israelite king on the throne–let alone a king from David’s lineage. So prophesies began to come out promising that some glorious day in the future, the king from David’s lineage would come to Jerusalem and take the throne there. It is such a king that Isaiah refers to when he talks about the shoot from the stump of Jesse.
But in Isaiah, too, we see that the Messiah hoped for is superhuman. The kinds of things this Messiah would do no ordinary human could. When this Messiah comes, the whole world will be transformed. The whole cosmos will be reconciled to God. In the days of this Messiah, “The whole earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (11:9). Peace will abide throughout the earth.
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat
the calf and the lion and the yearling together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox (11:6-7).
This Messiah will be filled with the Spirit of God:
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him–
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD–
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD (11:2).
These expectations are called apocalyptic expectations. They refer to a reconciliation between God and the entire cosmos. In some apocalyptic writings, God Himself will rule over a restored universe. In the readings we have heard this morning, the final apocalyptic age will be ruled over by the Messiah, from David’s lineage. These apocalyptic hopes were very prevalent in the time of Jesus. And exactly what the Messiah would be was mixed up according to several versions, as is typical of any doctrine.
We encounter these apocalyptic expectations again in our New Testament reading from Matthew. The big difference between the Matthew account of the apocalyptic age and that of Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 is where we are on the timeline of events. Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 talk about the time after the great cosmic battle between light and darkness that precedes the end times. John the Baptist talks about the battle itself. His words are somewhat frightening as he speaks about the coming Day of Yahweh. John says, “The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). This statement is about the nearness of the great battle between light and darkness. Jesus Himself made a similar remark in the Sermon on the Mount. There He says, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 7:19). John then talks about the coming Messiah with similarly frightening words, “His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (3:12).
In some ways Jesus fulfilled the Messianic hopes of the Israelites and in some ways He didn’t. Both Matthew and Luke are careful to trace Jesus’ lineage through King David. This genealogy establishes the claim that Jesus can be the Messiah. However, He didn’t drive out the Romans and establish a throne in Jerusalem as many Israelites had hoped He would. In this, Jesus did not fulfill the Messianic hopes of many. On the other hand, Jesus did become that “banner for the nations” that Isaiah had talked about. Jesus was a superhuman being who healed, was filled with the “Spirit of the LORD,” as Isaiah claimed He would be–or as Matthew puts it, the “Spirit of wisdom and righteousness.” Jesus did reclaim the lost sheep of God, and brought Godliness to a fallen world. Considered from the cosmic power of His ministry, Jesus did fulfill some aspects of the hopes for the Messiah. Jesus was truly a God-Man, that Isaiah had prophesied about.
Then when we consider the effects of Jesus’ life and ministry, we see just how much He established a new cosmic age in the world. Recall that in the world in which Jesus lived, the Classical gods were the popular world religion. It was an age of Jupiter, Apollo, Demeter, Vulcan, Persephone, Diana, and the whole pantheon of Roman and Greek deities. Not only was Christianity a new religion, it was forbidden by the state on pain of death–horrible death, as Romans were so good at. Yet Christianity thrived and grew as an underground movement for three-hundred years. The good news of Jesus and love was unstoppable. In 313 AD the Emperor Constantine passed the Edict of Milan which made Christianity legal, and the great Roman Empire became a Christian Empire with Constantine as its first Emperor. The face of the whole western world was transformed.
Jesus had truly become a “banner to the peoples” with His ministry of peace, love, and healing. His message replaced the religion of an entire empire. The impact of Jesus was truly that Divine Human that the Messiah had become in the prophesies. But sadly, it seems that the world wasn’t transformed to the extent the apocalyptic writers had hoped for. The lion, leopard, and the wolf are still the same fierce predators they had always been. And humanity is still the fierce savage that he was in the past. Wars are still waged, blood is still spilled. The earth is not filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters of the sea. It seems that spirituality has not only not filled the world, but may be fading in strength from our society.
In the Bible there is a term that occurs in places. There is always a “faithful remnant” that remains after conquests. So after Babylon conquered Judah, a faithful remnant remained that still worshipped Yahweh. I see this in our world today. While it may look like Christianity is fading. While it may look like spirituality is on the decline. There is still a faithful remnant of Christians in the world who practice Christ’s gentle teachings. Those who come to church, come here because they want to worship, not out of bare custom. We don’t see the workings of God above. Nor do we know what plans He has for our world. It was the pagan Romans and Greeks that embraced Christianity when it first dawned on the world’s consciousness. Christianity was not embraced by the Jews to whom Jesus came. Perhaps it is those we see in the world that are unchurched who will be the first to embrace the New Jerusalem in whatever form it descends from heaven in.
Meanwhile, our task is clear. We call ourselves Christians, and for us, following in the way of the Christ is our task. While we may remain open to wisdom traditions from all ages, we will form our foundations on the teachings that Christ gave us 2,000 years ago. The words He spoke are timeless and fathomless. They are just as alive to us today as they were to his followers 2,000 years ago. As we seek to let Jesus into our hearts and lives; and as we seek to let His Spirit flow through us, we are being baptised daily with the Holy Spirit and with fire, as John the Baptist said Christ would do for us. Ours is not to bemoan or worry about the future of Christianity in the world. Ours is but to do our best to practice Christianity in our individual lives and to act in society to transform our social policies into more humane and just institutions. For such is what Christ would have us do, even as we await that better world where:
the wolf will live with the lamb.
the leopard will lie down with the goat
the calf and the lion and the yearling together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox (11:6-7).