Dec. 9, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

Isaiah 11: 1-10

About 700 years before the New Testament era, a public intellectual named Isaiah was engaged in what we know today as “punditry,” that is the enterprise of interpreting current events in light of the past and the present. Isaiah also did what many pundits do: he attempted to predict what would transpire out of the flow of past and present.

The portion of Isaiah’s commentary we hear or read today is a narrative in two parts: what will happen first and what will ensue as a result of what happened.

In Part One, it is said that a descendant in the line of the legendary King David will arise to settle hash in favor of the poor and humble and against those who have oppressed them. What’s more, the oppressors will pay dearly for their oppression in a spate of violence and death.

Isaiah’s prognostications turn out to have been considerably overblown, because insofar as anyone can tell, the poor we have still always with us, and their oppressors prosper.

Such a patent injustice seems to motivate good people to action, as it does this congregation whose members at this season fill up the Advent Giving Tree and, each week, the grocery basket with food for the hungry in our otherwise prosperous-looking streets.

We are no doubt driven in that effort in part by Isaiah’s optimistic vision and, as well, by its unrealized potential.

Part Two of Isaiah’s prediction was to be the consequence of the deliverance of the poor and humble: a Novus Ordo Seclorum, as the Great Seal of the United States has it – a new order of the ages in which the trust level would be so high among Earth’s creatures that the wolf and lamb would share living quarters, the leopard and the baby goat would curl up together in sleep, the cow and the bear would happily graze in the same pasture and the lion, having foresworn his carnivorous nature, would eat grass instead of the kid, the cow, the lamb or another lion.

Neither Part One nor Part Two of Isaiah’s vision has materialized. The lion is still a carnivore, and, if you don’t watch out, he may at any moment make a meal of that lamb you hoped to slaughter yourself for tonight’s lamb chops.

So what did, what could Isaiah have had in mind? He had in mind, perhaps, what dreamers dream and visionaries long for – the cessation of hostilities and therefore of hostility itself, a general armistice and amnesty, peace on earth good will among men. So appealing is that vision that artists have rendered it in oil, stained glass, mosaic and music.

But it could never come to pass as a result of violence because violence sows its own seed of malignity. It would not come to pass in any event because the lion is hard-wired not to lie down with the lamb but to hunt him down. So with the leopard and the kid, the bear and the cow.

The venue of Isaiah’s compelling vision is Utopia, which word disappointingly, means “No Place.” – So what do we do with Isaiah and his dream? Do we pronounce it unreal and hopelessly naïve, and then seek another more workable and pragmatic vision to pursue?

That question may, in fact, be the primary agenda of religion in general and of the church in particular. Churches and like places set apart are often are often known as sanctuaries, as safe places in which one is more likely to find security and cordiality than in most other public venues.

Maybe a way to get at some realization of Isaiah’s vision is to try to model it in whatever limited ways we can as, say, the Friends or Quakers, do. The lion is not about to lie down with the lamb, but human beings can intentionally covenant to live together in peace, even amid diversity and disagreement.

In that regard, the whole issue of immigration has taken center-stage in what passes for political discourse in this country. One hears about barbed-wire fences along international borders and other draconian policies to keep outsiders outside. Yet it has been demonstrated that societies, which are open, tolerant and inclusive tend to succeed, prosper and endure as opposed to those that are closed, intolerant and exclusive

Part of the growing success of this congregation known as St. Andrew’s in the Detroit, Michigan suburb of Clawson is its widely known and advertised openness and inclusion. The wider our door are opened, the wider our embrace, the more comprehensive our inclusion, the happier place and people we have become. And we’ve realized this happiness neither by accident nor dumb luck, but by deliberate intent.

Thus do we offer to a fractured society a place of evolving wholeness and a sanctuary guaranteeing safety and inclusion. I dare to suppose Isaiah, were he to know about us, might feel himself a bit vindicated in his optimism.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.