Time For The New King
Barbara Hall was one of our New Testament teachers in Seminary, and she often urged us to ask one simple, but important, question of the texts we are looking at: What time is it? Our Advent lessons in general all point us in one direction: It is time for something new, and God is already at work bringing God’s newness into being. More specifically, the lessons for this Second Sunday of Advent are all saying, one way or another: It is time for the new King. Or, as the prophet Jeremiah recently framed it: We have suffered under a series of bad shepherds. It is time for a new shepherd aligned with God’s purpose and intentions for us and for all of creation – creation which has also suffered under the policies of the bad shepherds.
Isaiah 11:1-10, for instance, describes the political reality of the dynasty of David, and thus Israel, as having been reduced to a stump – the stump of Jesse. Jesse, of course is the father of the shepherd boy with the ruddy hair and complexion: David. His ancestral tree has been felled, Humiliated by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE, and by the Exile to Babylon in the sixth century BCE. The poetry of Isaiah envisions a new shoot sprouting from the stump. Seemingly insignificant, easily missed or overlooked, and later perhaps, represented in this poem by the “nursing child” playing over the potentially dangerous “hole of the poisonous adder.” This child represents the new king, a new “good shepherd.” It is easy to imagine how it is the followers of Jesus some six hundred years later might latch onto this text and associate it with the man from Galilee. Jesus, a most unlikely king, who “shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.”
That is, the new king of God’s reign cannot be bought by bribes, nor manipulated by propaganda, and does not rule from a place apart from the people, but rather walks among the poor and the weak, those who are socially powerless, administering justice, healing, and feeding those who have been overlooked for so long by the powerful elites in Jerusalem. Righteousness and faithfulness to God’s purposes are the hallmarks of the new Good Shepherd.
This image of the social and political responsibilities of national leadership is further supported by Psalm 72, in which the psalmist asks God to give the new king/good shepherd God’s own righteousness and justice, so that “he may rule your people righteously and the poor with justice…He shall defend the needy among the people; he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor. He shall live as long as the sun and moon endure, from one generation to another. He shall come down like rain upon the mown field, like showers that water the earth.” The office of the king is to equalize by a powerful intervention a social situation of enormous inequity: Caesar’s Rome is bleeding the people of crops, fish, and endless taxes, while offering business deals to the affluent despots who also are stealing family farms and vineyards to monopolize tremendous wealth. The new king makes a new world possible. Early Christians believe Jesus, humble unto death on a Roman Cross, is that new king Isaiah and Psalm 72 imagine!
That is, the emerging early church repurposes the ancient scriptures to fit the current circumstances in the first century. Indeed, Paul writes to the believers in Rome, the church in the very heart of darkness, and who are already just a few decades after the resurrection divided and polarized among themselves: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Paul is encouraging a new practice in the church of the ways that the strong and the weak, the haves and have-nots, relate to each other in new faithfulness. For this has been God’s intention from the very beginning of time. Paul writes that it is time that we follow in the footsteps of the man from Galilee who worked outside the halls of power to unite all divisions within society, division that only allow the powerful elites to profit from the sufferings of a divided people. [Romans 15:4-13]
Enter John the baptizer. [Matthew 3:1-12] Matthew also repurposes the poetry of Isaiah: ‘A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ Applying Isaiah’s text to the mission of John who says, in effect, “People, we are in the wilderness once again. It is time to repent of how we ignore the ways of the Lord. It is time to begin again as we did after the Exile!” Some Pharisees and Sadducees come down to the river to see what John and the people are up to. This is indeed and odd pairing, as these two political groups rarely come together at all. Yet, both are secure in believing that their respective approaches to life is the right way because they are faithful descendants of Abraham. John is inscrutable, and is on to them, and doubts that they are truly committed to a new way since they work tirelessly to preserve the old ways, hoping against hope that to do so will somehow free them from the iron rod of the Empire. They represent the gospel of what some have called Episcopal Whine: “We’ve always done it this way!” or, “We’ve never done it that way before!” John will have none of it. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Then John lays it out in no uncertain terms: There is a new king, a good shepherd, coming who is mightier than I am. I baptize with water; he will baptize with water and fire! Either you are on the bus or off the bus! As those who know the rest of the story, Jesus the Good Shepherd embodied the visions of Isaiah and Psalm 72, standing in the breach between the haves and have nots, seeking justice for the poor, the weak, and all whose existence was irrelevant to those who walked in the halls of the powerful. Jesus even tried to reason with those who wanted to return to the past, uneasy to move forward into the new future God intends for all people. The powerful guardians of the past, the monopolists of wealth, and the leaders of both the Empire and the Temple tried to put the Good Shepherd out of the picture for good.
But it did not work. There were those who saw him again after the crucifixion. Those who embodied his example. Some in every generation succeeded, while others were martyred for their efforts to unite rather than divide. Advent beckons us to look forward, not back. Advent means to be that season in which we try, once again like John and Jesus, to get our daily lives in sync with God’s rule, and invite others to do the same. It is the energy and power of God that may authorize and enable us to receive the new king and rejoice in a new obedience which attends to the neighbor. When we are so energized, we become dazzled by the fact that the whole of creation can begin again, healed, restored, forgiven.
The news of God’s newness is indeed very good news. We can embrace it, receive it, and act upon it! But, can we? Are we tenured to the old ways? Comfortable with the lack of justice and the ever-widening gap of inequalities? The gates of God’s forgiveness and mercy are opened to one and all. Are we ready to enter those gates and embody the life of the Good Shepherd? And if not now, when? For Advent is more than four weeks once a year. The season of Advent is always here, now, every moment of every day, calling us to walk in The Way of the Lord. We are meant to ask ourselves, “What time is it?” What time is it? It’s time for the new king. Amen.
