On Sunday, December 3, 2023, I gave a mini-sermon at Shalom Community Church. This is an adaptation of the mini-sermon. The audio is available here:

Advent 1

Scripture

Isaiah 11:1-10 (New Revised Standard Version)

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of these roots.

The spirit of the YHWH shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the fear of YHWH.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor and decide with equity for the oppressed 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.

The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid;

the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of YHWH as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples;

the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Mini-Sermon

“On that day,” writes Isaiah… “the wolf will dwell with the lamb,” or more colloquially, if not strictly faithful to the text itself, “the lion will lie down with the lamb.”

“There will be no harm, no destruction, anywhere on my holy mountain.”

But of course today THERE IS harm, there is destruction on that holy mountain, which, in the text, is emblematic of the entire country. There were glimmers of hope this past week… a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas, the exchange of captives, and the release of hostages. But that is on a horrifying backdrop: 1,332 Israelis killed since October 7 and 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,150 children in Gaza and 243 in the West Bank.1

In Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, the city of the birthplace of Jesus, the main churches have agreed to cancel all Christmas celebrations this year in protest of the war in Gaza.2 Here at home, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hate crimes are on the rise. This week, three college students of Palestinian descent were shot in Burlington, Vermont (of all places), just for wearing keffiyehs. I have been a student at and worked on college campuses for a long time; a lot of college students wear keffiyehs…

And yeah, it feels like it could get worse. This is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to say about the truce: “In recent days, I have heard a question: After completing this stage of the return of our hostages, will Israel go back to the fighting? My answer is an unequivocal yes.”3 And, of course, I couldn’t find what Hamas said because it’s not the kind of thing that the left-leaning news outlets I consume report about.

And, of course, fighting resumed yesterday.

It’s hard to talk about this. Empire is bad. Occupation is bad. Hamas attacking civilians on a scale greater than 9/11 is bad, it’s evil. Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of all parts of Gaza is evil. It is bad, and it is bad ALL the way down. It’s the kind of darkness–problematic, I know, and thank you for that, Susan–that Isaiah found himself and his people in when he wrote the words that we read today, the kind of situation that DEMANDS the advent, the coming, the breaking in… intervention by God (even if we’re not the kind of people who necessarily believe in an interventionist God).

We are a people of peace and today we are reflecting on the Advent theme of PEACE. But we have to do it while acknowledging the complex feelings we’re all having entering the Advent season with so much strife in the geographical areas where our sacred story takes place. We have the privilege of having our own personal peace–at least in terms of us literally not worrying about dying or literally not worrying about starving–all but guaranteed this season. And yet, peace feels very, very far away and actually–even though it’s Advent and I love Advent and even though what I’m about to say isn’t very Christian–it feels like a caution against OVERCONFIDENCE in peace, even in the possibility of peace–and maybe even HOPE, JOY, and LOVE–because that would be DENYING reality. The truth is, we can’t get to peace or hope or any of those other Advent themes before we face reality, acknowledge the loss, and GRIEVE for it.4

If one reads Isaiah’s vision of the peaceful animals in the context of his own times, it is not hard to understand what he meant. Maybe Jesus–I’d like to think he meant Jesus!–but it’s more likely that everyone in Judah would have known that the “lamb,” the “small goat,” or the “baby” represented the Kingdom of Judah itself, scattered in the rugged Judean hills and endlessly subjected to foreign domination by wolves, leopards, and lions AKA the great powers to its south, east, and north.5

But things are different now. I think we all know who the “great powers” are. Who the wolves, leopards, and lions are. Who the empires are. But, we deny this: It is demoralizing to see how readily many of us can talk about the structural and institutional context of Black Lives Matter and the assault on women’s rights, but don’t recognize the structural and institutional context of Gaza, of Palestine, of Occupation.6 Or how we are complicit: Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and so whether or not you believe in trying to bring the second coming quicker,7 if you pay your taxes… you’ve already picked a side.

In any case–and thanks, Jo, for this–we are in NO position to judge Israel as a nation, as a state. The fact of the matter is that we in the US have a lot more land and, yeah, we have had a lot more time to remove Native Americans from it, many of whom still(!) live in land that we polluted, without access to reliable water sources, clean drinking water, or even basic sanitation.8 In many instances without even the basic recognition that there’s even a problem in the first place, and that White people created it, and that they are responsible for trying to make it right.

And it’s confusing, because God–and we can try to deny this too–did make very REAL, very particular promises to a very particular people in the scripture we read today, and many others like it. Many of us have very personal, very strong connections to both Israel the Nation State and the people who live there. But still, it’s bad all the way down, it’s uneven, we’re complicit, and we’re in no place to judge anyway. And we have to grapple with this as we head into this Advent season.

And I guess that’s where I want to conclude, with something that’s true both in the personal and the political/social realms. With the recognition that we all inherit a past–something we can’t change, sometimes something we’ve actively contributed to and sometimes not, but something nevertheless that we are responsible for it–and still we all spend A LOT of time AVOIDING HONESTY ABOUT REALITY. And sometimes we have to SIT in the present darkness that we’re in, attending to how we’ve contributed to what’s happened, and asking–asking God, asking each other, asking ourselves–to participate more intentionally and deliberately in what is to come.9

Amen.

Categories: talks

  1. Casualties of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. (2023, December 2). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war ↩

  2. Bush, A. (2023, November 2). Report from the ground in Bethlehem, in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Anabaptist World. https://anabaptistworld.org/report-from-the-ground-in-bethlehem-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territories/ ↩

  3. Neuman, S., Estrin, D., & Sullivan, B. (2023, November 30). Israel and Hamas extend temporary truce for another day. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/29/1215762834/hostages-israel-hamas-ceasefire-truce-gaza-war ↩

  4. Breuggemann, W. (2014). Reality, grief, hope: Three urgent prophetic tasks. Eerdmans. ↩

  5. Kugel, J. L. (2008). How to read the Bible: A guide to scripture, then and now. Free Press. ↩

  6. Safi, O. [@ostadjaan]. (2023, October 14). It is demoralizing to see how readily so many institutions talked about “structural and institutional” context of Black Lives Matter… [Tweet]. X. https://twitter.com/ostadjaan/status/1713211081458405689 ↩

  7. Fiasco, L. (2006). American Terrorist [Song]. On Food and Liquor. Atlantic Recording Company. ↩

  8. Kimmerer, R. W. (2015). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous widsom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions. ↩

  9. Fuller, T., Clayton, P., & Oord, T. J. (Hosts). (2023, November 28). Christ, christmas, & the incarnation [Audio podcase episode]. In Homebrewed Christianity. https://trippfuller.com/2023/11/28/philip-clayton-thomas-jay-oord-christ-christmas-the-incarnation/ ↩