Advent 2 – December 5, 2010

Isaiah 11:1-10

            The OT lesson this week looks forward to a new age under a new king from David’s line.  God’s people experienced their glory days under David and his son Solomon, when Israel was a unified kingdom and the Temple was first built in Jerusalem.  The prophet portrays David’s family tree as now just a stump, but promises a surprising new shoot from that royal stump.  (Good image for wintertime, when the trees appear lifeless, but in actuality the buds are already there waiting for spring.)  Just as God’s spirit was on David (see 1 Sam. 16:13), that spirit will also be with this new king.  And like Solomon (see 1 Kings 3), this king will also be a wise judge.  Notice, he’ll restore the balance in the scales of justice, tipping them back toward the poor and the meek, and prosecuting oppressors to the fullest extent of the law.  Incidentally, it seems to me that that image of “striking the earth with the rod of his mouth” is an allusion to Moses and his displays of power before the oppressive Pharaoh. 

The next verses follow appropriately as the prophet says there won’t any longer be predators and preyed-upon (verses 6-7), nor will there be any need for the fear and suspicion that we so take for granted (verse 8).  The images of babies and children in this text, I think, spur us to imagine what it would mean for our children to grow up in a peaceful world.

Romans 15:4-13

The Epistle text also deals with peace, but Paul is talking here particularly about peace between Jews and Gentiles in the Christian community.  Why?  Not just because there was tension between these groups with their different approaches to the faith (and there was), but because Paul saw it as proof that God’s kingdom had indeed dawned that Jews and Gentiles were worshiping and serving God together in the church.  That’s why it’s important that we “welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed us”: when we do, we embody God’s reign in Christ, and we also embody the HOPE that we’ll eventually see the completion of that reign.  Notice that Paul is appealing to both Jews and Gentiles (verse 8 is especially deft), referencing the Jewish scriptures and pointing out that Jesus both fulfilled God’s promises to Israel and at the same time opened God’s household to the Gentiles.

Matthew 3:1-12

I can’t ever read this text without recalling a certain episode of the TV show “In Search Of” dedicated to John the Baptist.  At one time, I was a big devotee of that Sunday evening show which gave equal time to Amelia Earhart, Atlantis, Nostradamus and the Loch Ness Monster.  John the Baptist was the topic one week, and I still remember the characteristic cheap, grainy dramatization of him living in the desert, dressed in animal skins and eating locusts, and of his death by beheading—all narrated in voiceover by Leonard Nimoy.  I remember, too, that it wasn’t until JB made “In Search Of” that it ever occurred to me that he was anybody weird!

And in the scheme of biblical figures, I don’t think he’s particularly weird – he’s basically a prophet in the classic OT tradition.  He is an interesting figure, though.  It’s interesting that all the gospel-writers include him in the story, and go to some lengths to explain the relationship between him and Jesus.  This is probably oversimplifying things, but it suggests that he was an important figure in first-century-AD Palestine and that Jesus was connected in some way, at some point, with his movement.  He shows up in first-century Jewish historian Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews.  Josephus was writing about sixty years later in Rome, under the sponsorship of the emperors, so his work has its own slant.  He discusses John the Baptist in one section, describing his movement and that he was put to death by Herod Antipas because Herod was scared he might incite a rebellion.  Josephus doesn’t connect John with Jesus (though he also discusses Jesus elsewhere).  Josephus says John “was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order of the putting away of some sins, but for the purification of the body; supposing that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.”  (Antiquities bk. 18, ch. 5.)  Then he says that, because John drew a crowd, Herod feared he might start a rebellion.  Matthew commentator Daniel Harrington makes two observations which I think are particularly relevant here.  First, he notes that Josephus talks about John’s preaching in somewhat abstract terms – “virtue,” “righteousness,” “piety” – and that these terms would have meant different things to (gentile) Romans and to Jews.  Romans would have understood the terms philosophically, while Jews would have understood them biblically as having social and eschatological implications.  Harrington also says, and I’ll take his word for it, that Josephus tends to downplay Jewish eschatological claims; certainly in this case, it doesn’t necessarily follow from John’s just being a wise and popular preacher that he’d be likely to foment a rebellion!

And that brings us back to Matthew.  Who is JB for Matthew?  1)  He connects Jesus to the OT prophetic expectations: he’s the voice crying in the wilderness, he looks and acts like Elijah.  2)  He clears the way for the kingdom, calling God’s people to repentance and promising bigger things to come.  And 3) He says it’s not enough to rest on whatever laurels we might have lying around (Abraham as our ancestor, having given at the office, etc.) – to participate in God’s kingdom we need to bear good fruit (an image that links up nicely with the Isaiah text about the shoot out of the stump?). 

Works Consulted:

Daniel Harrington’s Matthew commentary in the Sacra Pagina series

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, an old version I picked up somewhere for free