Hints and Anticipations
Commentary
There is a powerful scene in Herman Melville’s great epic, Moby Dick, where Captain Ahab stands peg-legged on the deck of the Pequod during a violent storm (chapter 119). His obsession with the White Whale has carried the craft and crew to exotic and frightening locales, and now it seems as if divine providence might be unleashing furious anger against this ill-fated quest. But Ahab is a fighter, and with clenched fists, amid the lightning bolts and against the raging thunder he yells a taunt at the Creator who chastens his cause: “I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance.”
Yet even Captain Ahab, torn by his demons and captured as much by the Whale as he seeks to capture it, knows that there is a need greater than victory and a power more tenacious than brutal force. He falls to the deck in a tormented confession: “But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee…” He almost pleads with God to stop the awful battering of antagonistic powers and descend in kind humility so that the passions of love might be reborn and rekindled again.
This, of course, is a marvelous bridge between the bellicose prophecies of the Old Testament and the juxtaposed incarnation of Jesus that emerged out of them. God did indeed come down, like God had done in the times of Moses and the Pharaoh. But this time God chose the suckling child rather than the plague blasts as the means of arrival and encounter. We who marshal our forces for good or for evil are suddenly caught up short—the one who could “rend the heavens” and “set twigs ablaze” and “cause water to boil” and “cause the nations to quake” and make “the mountains tremble” slipped in as a helpless child, and the world knelt to kiss him on a starry night in Bethlehem.
This is the language of Advent, the renewed language of confidence in God, the crisis of these times, and the anticipated next act of divine intervention in human affairs. But it all begins with the faithfulness of God upon which our own faith and faithfulness can be pinned.
Advent is, for the church, a solid hook in the vast, uncharted chaotic voids of space, allowing us to tether and take our bearings from at least one point which is neither shifting with the currents nor dependent on our own powers to establish it. Advent is the place where Archimedes can set the fulcrum of his lever and move earth and the planets in a meaningful way because there is a critical unmoved position from which everything else is to be measured. Advent is that date on our calendars which was penned in by God, not us, indicating a promised encounter that we might often doubt, but which cannot be erased from the pages of time.
Isaiah 11:1-10
While the Hebrew prophets address many social issues, they cannot be understood if isolated from the political turmoil of their times. The prophets are social and political critics, constantly analyzing the actions of their own people, along with the affairs of the nations surrounding Israel, and making judgments about leaders and policies.
Isaiah stands at the head of the collection of Old Testament prophets, for good reason. While he is not the earliest among them (Samuel was already considered a prophet three centuries before, and many of the first prophets noted in the Bible—e.g., Nathan, Ahijah—were evidently not “writing prophets”; they have bequeathed to us no documents to peruse), Isaiah is chief over them. He gave the prophetic message lyrical power, and addressed every theme that others would pursue only in part. Isaiah is the grand master of covenant prophecy.
According to the list of kings that Isaiah identifies, during whose reigns he received and declared messages from Yahweh, this prophet’s work spanned about fifty years (740–690 B.C.). For all of that time, Assyria was the constant superpower threat in his contemporary world. “Israel” (the northern portion of David and Solomon’s kingdom) had been split off from “Judah” for nearly three hundred years (since 922 B.C.). Because of the tenacious advance of the Assyrian war machine, Israel was desperately seeking ways in which to form alliances that might hold it back for a time. Syria and Israel became partners throughout most of the eighth century, often as much by the sheer dominance of Syria’s military might coercing Israel into defensive pacts as by the choice of the Samaria-based government. This temperamental twosome made many overtures, both friendly and threatening, toward Judah, seeking to draw the smaller kingdom into their anti-Assyria alliances either by compliance or force. Throughout a succession of kings, Judah tried to retain its own identity in several ways:
Isaiah sees both the future destruction of Judah (symbolized by the “stump of Jesse,” and indication that the current descendants of King David will lose their power), and its restoration (the “shoot” that grows out of Jesse’s stump). In other words, bad days are on the horizon, but the redeemer will come, and usher in the peaceable kingdom which will incorporate all nations and peoples into the rebirth of creation itself.
Romans 15:4-13
Because Paul had not yet made a visit to Rome, this letter was less personal and more rationally organized than was often otherwise true. Paul intended this missive to be a working document; the congregation, already established in the capital city of the empire, would be able to read and discuss it together, in anticipation of Paul’s arrival, which was planned for some months ahead (Romans 1:6–15). Paul summarized his working theme and emphasis up front: a new expression of the “righteousness of God” had been recently revealed, with great power, through the coming of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:17).
Paul moves directly from his brief declaration about the righteousness of God into an extended discourse on the wrath of God as revealed against wickedness (Romans 1:18). Because of this, many have interpreted Paul’s understanding of God’s righteousness as an unattainable standard, against which the whole human race is measured and fails miserably. Only then, in the context of this desperate human situation, would the grand salvation of Christ be appreciated and enjoyed.
But more scholars believe that Paul’s assertions about the righteousness of God actually have a positive and missional thrust. In their understanding of what Paul says, it is precisely because of the obvious corruption and sinfulness in our world, which are demeaning and destroying humanity, that God needed again, as God did through Israel, to assert the divine will. In so doing, the focus of God’s righteousness is not to heap judgment upon humankind; instead God’s brilliant display of grace and power in Jesus ought to draw people back to the creational goodness God had originally intended for them. In other words, the Creator has never changed purpose or plan. The divine mission through Israel was to display the righteousness of God so that all nations might return to the goodness of Yahweh. Now again, in Jesus, the righteousness of God is revealed as a beacon of hope in a world ravaged by evil bullies. The power of God is our only sure bodyguard against the killing effects of sin and society and self.
This more positive perspective on the righteousness of God fits well with the flow of Paul’s message. In chapters 1:18–3:20, Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. We are all alienated from God (1:18-25). But we are also alienated from each other (1:26-32), so that we begin to treat one another with contempt and painful arrogance, and destroy those around us in the malice which blinds us. We are even, says Paul, alienated from our own selves (2:1-11), not realizing how tarnished our sense and perspectives have become.
We make excuses about our condition (2:12-3:20), claiming that we are actually pretty good people (2:12-16), or accusing society and religion of raising moral standards to levels that are simply unrealistic (2:17-3:4), or even blaming God for all the nastiness around us and within us (3:5-20). Yet the result is merely self-deception, and continued rottenness in a world that seems to have no outs.
Once the stage has been set for Paul’s readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Rather, Jesus come, the fullness of God’s healing righteousness revealed.
The story of God’s righteousness as grace and goodness begins with Abraham. God has always desired an ever-renewing relationship with the people of this world, creatures made in God’s own image. Paul describes God’s heart of love in 3:21-31, using illustrations from the courtroom (we are “justified”—3:24), the marketplace (we receive “redemption”—3:24), and the temple (“a sacrifice of atonement”—3:25). Moreover, while this ongoing expression of God’s gracious goodness finds its initial point of contact through the Jews (Abraham and “the law” and Jesus), it is clearly intended for all of humankind (3:27-31).
This is nothing new, according to Paul. In fact, if we return to the story of Abraham, we find some very interesting notes that we may have glossed over. “Blessedness” was “credited” to Abraham before he had a chance to be “justified by works” (4:1-11) In other words, whenever the “righteousness of God” shows up, it is a good thing, a healing hope, an enriching experience that no one is able to buy or manipulate. God alone initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us (4:1-23). In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5). It feels like being reborn (5:1-11). It plays out like the world itself is being remade (5:12-21). This is the great righteousness of God at work!
Now Paul gets very practical. Although we might think that we would jump at the opportunity to find such grace and divine favor, Paul reminds us that our inner conflicts tear at us until we are paralyzed with frustration and failure (Romans 6–7). Sometimes we deny these struggles (6:1-14). Sometimes we ignore these tensions (6:15-7:6). Sometimes we grow bitter in the quagmire of it all (7:7-12). And sometimes we even throw up our hands in despair (7:13-24).
Precisely then, says Paul, the power of the righteousness of God as our bodyguard is most clearly revealed. Thankfully, God’s righteousness grabs us and holds us, so that through Jesus and the Holy Spirit we are never separated from divine love (Romans 7:25-8:39). Hope floods through us because we know Jesus and what he has done for us (8:1-11). Hope whispers inside of us as the Holy Spirit reminds us who we truly are and whose we will always be (8:12-27). Hope thunders around us as God’s faithfulness is shouted from the heavens right through the pages of history (8:28-39.
This powerful testimony seems to cause Paul to reflect ruefully, however, on a truly knotty theological problem. If Paul can be so certain about God’s strident grace toward us in this new age of the Messiah, why did God’s declarations of favor toward Israel in the previous age of revelation seem to fail? Why did Israel lose its privileged place in the divine plan, while the spreading church of Jesus Christ is suddenly God’s favored child?
These questions become the research matters for Paul’s internal intellectual debating team in Romans 9–11. First up, comes the standard reflection that God is sovereign. This means, for Paul, that God’s special relationship with Israel was God’s choice to make and is not undone now that God wishes also to use a new tactic in the divine attempt at recovering the whole of humanity back into a meaningful relationship with God.
Nevertheless, according to Paul, there has been something amiss about Israel’s side of this relationship with God. Rather than understanding its favored position as enlisting it into the divine global mission, the nation tended to become myopic and self-centered. Instead of believing that she, too, needed to repent and find God’s care through grace, Israel supposed that she had an inherent right to divine favor.
In the end, Paul believes that partly through Israel’s false presumptions, and partly because of God’s temporary change of strategies in order to better fulfill the original divine redemptive mission, Gentiles have come to the center of God’s attention, while Israel, though not forgotten, is partially sidelined for a time. But even this alteration in the temperature of God’s relationship with Israel is a lover’s game: Israel needs to feel the good jealousy for a partner that she has too long taken for granted, so that she will recover her passions of great love. In the meantime, however, all win. God wins in the divine missional enterprise. The Gentiles win because they have a renewed opportunity to get to know God. And Israel wins because she is never forgotten and is coming round to a renewed love affair with her beau.
Paul may well have had to wrestle his way through that problem of divine election at least in part because of the mixed Jewish-Gentile makeup of the Roman congregation. This possible tension seems to reassert itself again in Paul’s applications of Christian behavior in the chapters that follow. First, Paul urges a lifestyle of service rooted in sacrifice to Jesus (12:1-2), shaped by spiritual giftedness (12:3-8), and energized by love (12:9-21). Then Paul makes this servant behavior even more specific, by nodding to its public expressions (Romans 13): obey the government as a tool of God’s care in the restraint of evil (13:1-6) and live as good neighbors who glow with the righteousness of God in some pretty dark neighborhoods (13:8-14). Finally, Paul revisits the issues surrounding the matter of the purchase and consumption of meat offered to idols (Romans 14:1–15:13), just has he had probed it in 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1. Here, though, the overt tensions between legalistic and licentious extremes of Christian behavior seem less consuming than they did when Paul wrote to the Galatians and the Corinthians. Instead, his instructions flow more gently out of his social ethic of love and service.
Paul’s letter to the Roman congregation has become the sourcebook for much of Christian theology. It describes the mission of God in a grand sweep, addresses certain difficult problems associated with anthropology and culture, and focuses strongly on appropriate ethical and moral behavior. But most importantly, it speaks with passionate assurance about the love of God, and the grand divine desire to have intimacy with us.
Matthew 3:1-12
John the Baptist appeared like the last of Israel’s great prophets, haranguing from the wilderness with divine authority, and announcing the imminence of the “Day of the Lord.” It was clear for all who came to John, intrigued by his demeanor and morally charged preaching, that John believed Jesus’ arrival to be the in-breaking of the “day of the Lord,” complete with its judgment, chastised remnant, and messianic age of blessing. When John’s message to local Jews drove them to repentance and action, John baptized them as part of what he thought would be the remnant community which would survive the “day of the Lord” conflagration. Jesus’ arrival, one day, signaled to John that the “day of the Lord” had itself arrived. In fact, after wrestling with Jesus about who should baptize whom, Jesus prevailed upon John to do the honors, and then, apparently with John’s blessing, created his own nucleus of disciples from among John’s close followers!
John then drops from the records of the gospels for at least several months, probably because he was arrested by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great and his last wife Malthace. John had been the target of Herod Antipas’ ire because John regularly preached that Herod had committed murder and was living in sin. Herod Antipas had killed his brother Herod II (son of Herod the Great and his second wife Miriamne II) in order to wed Herod II’s wife and their common niece, Herodias. Herod Antipas was already married at the time, but divorced his wife, the daughter of Nabitean King Aretas IV, in order to make the new union seem more palatable. In response, John gave voice to Jewish consternation about these immoral habits of their imposed and despised ruler. So, Herod Antipas incarcerated John to curtail his unwelcomed public diatribes and accusations.
While in prison, however, John’s deeply held assumptions about Jesus began to collapse. John heard reports of Jesus’ ministry, and it did not sound like a divine thunderbolt of cataclysmic judgment. John became confused, sensing that Jesus was failing to follow through on the critical elements of the classic “day of the Lord” theology. John sent two of his own followers to check things out. They were to demand of Jesus whether he was, in fact, the vehicle of heaven intended to fulfill prophetic judgment day warnings.
Jesus did not debate with John’s disciples. Instead, he took them along on a day of blessing, where “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” He then sent the duo back to John to report. While we are not made aware of John’s response, it is clear that Jesus, and eventually the gospel writers and early church with him, understood what was going on. Instead of bringing the full impact of the prophetic “day of the Lord” as a single act of global divine judgment which would immediately transition into the eternal messianic age of blessing, Jesus had split the “day of the Lord” in two. He would absorb the full weight of heaven’s retributive justice into his own person on the cross of torment, sparing the rest of the world that trauma for the short term. But he would also pull together a remnant community of witness, beginning with his twelve closest disciples and their followers, and, most importantly, Jesus initiated the blessings of the eternal messianic kingdom through his healings, death-raisings, demon-exorcisms, and general kindnesses. Jesus confirms this interpretation of what is taking place, in fact, by identifying John as the “Elijah” messenger foretold through Malachi to be the forerunner of the “day of the Lord,” and also by connecting his own miracles to Isaiah’s grand testimony about what Messiah would bring on the “day of the Lord.”
John the Baptist personalizes the great struggle of the Jews to believe that Jesus might be their promised Messiah, foretold by the prophets. If the “day of the Lord” is understood as a single, massively interruptive, world-changing event, Jesus did not bring it, and cannot be considered the great Messiah. But if God chose to unfold the “day of the Lord” in a manner that no one had ever considered, splitting it in two, so that the judgments would be contained within the person of Jesus at the start, the remnant community would serve as a witnessing mission for an unresolved and compromised world, and the blessings of the future age would be inaugurated through miracles and healings and renewed lives over time, Jesus was precisely the harbinger of a new world order. The “day of the Lord” had indeed arrived in Jesus. It did not, however, culminate in his initial coming. The “day of the Lord” was, instead, split, and we live now in a world awaiting the second half of its interruption.
Application
Even though we like laughter and enjoy praise and celebration, especially at this time of year, it doesn’t always come easily. One fellow tells of his work as a hospital volunteer. He couldn’t believe the pain and suffering he saw there. Burn victims. Deformities. Terminal cancer. He watched the little ones cry. Some were so lonely: their parents couldn’t take the trauma, so they never came to see their own children. How horrible!
He decided to get a clown’s nose, and a pair of oversized shoes. Then he painted his face and pulled on a wig. When he went to work dressed like that the next day, some of the children were scared, some were captivated, and some even showed hints of a smile for the first time in ages.
But others couldn’t stop wailing. They were consumed by agony. What could he do for them? The next day the clown brought along some popcorn. When he came to the side of a crying child, he took a kernel of popcorn, placed it against the child’s cheek, and soaked up the cascading tears with its fluff. Then he popped that kernel into his mouth and ate it.
It was a stroke of genius. The only time some of those children stopped crying was the moment they knew that somebody else cared enough to swallow their tears.
Advent brings us to a place like that. It takes us, at the end of our journey, to the “sanctuary” of God for a time of praise. “Sanctuary” is refuge, fortress, safe house, security, arms of love, a place where someone cares enough to swallow our tears and protect us from the worst that could harm us. This, certainly, is what the scenes of our Isaiah reading are all about.
Madeleine L’Engle paints a picture of such a sanctuary in one of her children’s books. She tells of a young couple on a desert journey through wilderness in a rough caravan. They’re on their way to Egypt. Someone is after them; someone wants to kill their little boy.
The journey is a rugged one. The desert is alive with ferocious beasts. All eyes cast about uneasily as darkness settles. There’ll be little sleep in the camp tonight. They build a great fire to drive back the shadows and keep away the world that belongs to monsters with glowing eyes. Suddenly they start in terror; a great lion appears at the bonfire. The mother reaches for her child, desperately trying to draw him to safety.
But the child stands and laughs. He opens his arms wide to the lion. The lion lifts his front paws and hops around on his hind legs. He’s dancing! And then, from the desert, come running several little mice and two donkeys and a snake and a couple of clumsy ostriches. Three great eagles swoop in from the purple skies. From the other side of the camp a unicorn emerges, and a pelican, and even two dragons.
They all bow before the child and then dance together, round and round him. He stands at the center of their great circle, laughing in delight. It’s a dance in the desert, as L’Engle calls it. In essence, it’s the sum and substance of our worship here on earth, pilgrims passing through the wilderness of ghastly beasties and mournful hurts.
This is the second Sunday in Advent. Christmas seems close, but we are not there yet. We still spend time in the dark alongside those who wrestle with demons and shadows and beasts. But because of Advent confidence, we see the light, and clap our hands in celebration of the child who comes to dance around our fires.
Alternative Application (Isaiah 11:1-10)
Jesus raises the banner of heaven’s royal claims over both Gentile and Jewish territory, and thus is the source of political allegiances that supersede temporal boundaries. This is very good news during Advent, when the nations of the earth conspire against one another, and only the Christian Church can affect a trans-national celebration of the politics of grace. The peaceable kingdom.
Robert Coles is a child psychiatrist and professor at Harvard University who likes to try to figure out why we do the things we do. In his book The Call of Service he wonders about people who try to make a difference in life. People who seek to reform themselves, even with the tenacity of sin that clings down deep. People who attempt to better society, in spite of the fact that it stubbornly refuses the challenge.
Why do they do it, Coles asks? The stories are all so different that it is hard to figure out a way to summarize them neatly in some framework. In fact, the people themselves often have a hard time defining what it is that makes them tick. One young teacher in an urban school gets challenged all the time. Street-smart students, weary of self-righteous “do-gooders,” put the question to him. “What’s in it for you?!” they demand. And he really can’t say.
But this he and all the rest of them can say: sometime earlier in their lives, each of them ran into a crisis situation, a situation that tested their identity and their willingness to do something about it, and in that crisis situation, each of them encountered someone who put his life on the line. Someone who taught them the meaning of service. Someone who gave of herself in a way that bucks the trend of selfishness and of self-preservation. And the influence of that someone else made it possible to be greater than each of them had previously considered. Enter the peaceable kingdom, where things change because we have brushed against the holiness of God, and Jesus becomes our Savior and mentor.
Yet even Captain Ahab, torn by his demons and captured as much by the Whale as he seeks to capture it, knows that there is a need greater than victory and a power more tenacious than brutal force. He falls to the deck in a tormented confession: “But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee…” He almost pleads with God to stop the awful battering of antagonistic powers and descend in kind humility so that the passions of love might be reborn and rekindled again.
This, of course, is a marvelous bridge between the bellicose prophecies of the Old Testament and the juxtaposed incarnation of Jesus that emerged out of them. God did indeed come down, like God had done in the times of Moses and the Pharaoh. But this time God chose the suckling child rather than the plague blasts as the means of arrival and encounter. We who marshal our forces for good or for evil are suddenly caught up short—the one who could “rend the heavens” and “set twigs ablaze” and “cause water to boil” and “cause the nations to quake” and make “the mountains tremble” slipped in as a helpless child, and the world knelt to kiss him on a starry night in Bethlehem.
This is the language of Advent, the renewed language of confidence in God, the crisis of these times, and the anticipated next act of divine intervention in human affairs. But it all begins with the faithfulness of God upon which our own faith and faithfulness can be pinned.
Advent is, for the church, a solid hook in the vast, uncharted chaotic voids of space, allowing us to tether and take our bearings from at least one point which is neither shifting with the currents nor dependent on our own powers to establish it. Advent is the place where Archimedes can set the fulcrum of his lever and move earth and the planets in a meaningful way because there is a critical unmoved position from which everything else is to be measured. Advent is that date on our calendars which was penned in by God, not us, indicating a promised encounter that we might often doubt, but which cannot be erased from the pages of time.
Isaiah 11:1-10
While the Hebrew prophets address many social issues, they cannot be understood if isolated from the political turmoil of their times. The prophets are social and political critics, constantly analyzing the actions of their own people, along with the affairs of the nations surrounding Israel, and making judgments about leaders and policies.
Isaiah stands at the head of the collection of Old Testament prophets, for good reason. While he is not the earliest among them (Samuel was already considered a prophet three centuries before, and many of the first prophets noted in the Bible—e.g., Nathan, Ahijah—were evidently not “writing prophets”; they have bequeathed to us no documents to peruse), Isaiah is chief over them. He gave the prophetic message lyrical power, and addressed every theme that others would pursue only in part. Isaiah is the grand master of covenant prophecy.
According to the list of kings that Isaiah identifies, during whose reigns he received and declared messages from Yahweh, this prophet’s work spanned about fifty years (740–690 B.C.). For all of that time, Assyria was the constant superpower threat in his contemporary world. “Israel” (the northern portion of David and Solomon’s kingdom) had been split off from “Judah” for nearly three hundred years (since 922 B.C.). Because of the tenacious advance of the Assyrian war machine, Israel was desperately seeking ways in which to form alliances that might hold it back for a time. Syria and Israel became partners throughout most of the eighth century, often as much by the sheer dominance of Syria’s military might coercing Israel into defensive pacts as by the choice of the Samaria-based government. This temperamental twosome made many overtures, both friendly and threatening, toward Judah, seeking to draw the smaller kingdom into their anti-Assyria alliances either by compliance or force. Throughout a succession of kings, Judah tried to retain its own identity in several ways:
- Uzziah chose to come under the protectorate of Israel, and thus allowed Judah to become a vassal province of the Israel-Syria alliance.
- Ahaz made an end run around his northern neighbors and appealed directly to Tiglath-pileser of Assyria for protection against Israel and Syria, hoping that in their destruction Judah would regain some of the old territory as its administrative district.
- Hezekiah first formed a tentative alliance with ambassadors from Babylon, as that eastern province of Assyria was beginning to stir in rebellion. Later he joined Egypt in a stop-payment of tribute to Assyria, which roused their ire against him until he was forced into reasserting submissive ties to Nineveh. Later, after a miraculous escape from what seemed an imminent crushing defeat by Assyrian forces, Hezekiah renewed his subversive contacts with Babylon.
- Join Egypt, the only nearby strong nation, in opposing Assyria.
- Join the Israel-Syria confederation in opposing Assyria
- Declare allegiance to Assyria, and become a vassal province of that empire, in hopes of reaping enlarged borders when the fighting was finished, and northern neighbors Israel and Syria were destroyed.
- Ally with Babylon, the restless eastern province of Assyria, in hopes of an overthrow of Assyria, which would net independence in their remote mountainous locale.
- Stay neutral from all international alliances, relying solely on Yahweh for protection and deliverance.
Isaiah sees both the future destruction of Judah (symbolized by the “stump of Jesse,” and indication that the current descendants of King David will lose their power), and its restoration (the “shoot” that grows out of Jesse’s stump). In other words, bad days are on the horizon, but the redeemer will come, and usher in the peaceable kingdom which will incorporate all nations and peoples into the rebirth of creation itself.
Romans 15:4-13
Because Paul had not yet made a visit to Rome, this letter was less personal and more rationally organized than was often otherwise true. Paul intended this missive to be a working document; the congregation, already established in the capital city of the empire, would be able to read and discuss it together, in anticipation of Paul’s arrival, which was planned for some months ahead (Romans 1:6–15). Paul summarized his working theme and emphasis up front: a new expression of the “righteousness of God” had been recently revealed, with great power, through the coming of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:17).
Paul moves directly from his brief declaration about the righteousness of God into an extended discourse on the wrath of God as revealed against wickedness (Romans 1:18). Because of this, many have interpreted Paul’s understanding of God’s righteousness as an unattainable standard, against which the whole human race is measured and fails miserably. Only then, in the context of this desperate human situation, would the grand salvation of Christ be appreciated and enjoyed.
But more scholars believe that Paul’s assertions about the righteousness of God actually have a positive and missional thrust. In their understanding of what Paul says, it is precisely because of the obvious corruption and sinfulness in our world, which are demeaning and destroying humanity, that God needed again, as God did through Israel, to assert the divine will. In so doing, the focus of God’s righteousness is not to heap judgment upon humankind; instead God’s brilliant display of grace and power in Jesus ought to draw people back to the creational goodness God had originally intended for them. In other words, the Creator has never changed purpose or plan. The divine mission through Israel was to display the righteousness of God so that all nations might return to the goodness of Yahweh. Now again, in Jesus, the righteousness of God is revealed as a beacon of hope in a world ravaged by evil bullies. The power of God is our only sure bodyguard against the killing effects of sin and society and self.
This more positive perspective on the righteousness of God fits well with the flow of Paul’s message. In chapters 1:18–3:20, Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. We are all alienated from God (1:18-25). But we are also alienated from each other (1:26-32), so that we begin to treat one another with contempt and painful arrogance, and destroy those around us in the malice which blinds us. We are even, says Paul, alienated from our own selves (2:1-11), not realizing how tarnished our sense and perspectives have become.
We make excuses about our condition (2:12-3:20), claiming that we are actually pretty good people (2:12-16), or accusing society and religion of raising moral standards to levels that are simply unrealistic (2:17-3:4), or even blaming God for all the nastiness around us and within us (3:5-20). Yet the result is merely self-deception, and continued rottenness in a world that seems to have no outs.
Once the stage has been set for Paul’s readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Rather, Jesus come, the fullness of God’s healing righteousness revealed.
The story of God’s righteousness as grace and goodness begins with Abraham. God has always desired an ever-renewing relationship with the people of this world, creatures made in God’s own image. Paul describes God’s heart of love in 3:21-31, using illustrations from the courtroom (we are “justified”—3:24), the marketplace (we receive “redemption”—3:24), and the temple (“a sacrifice of atonement”—3:25). Moreover, while this ongoing expression of God’s gracious goodness finds its initial point of contact through the Jews (Abraham and “the law” and Jesus), it is clearly intended for all of humankind (3:27-31).
This is nothing new, according to Paul. In fact, if we return to the story of Abraham, we find some very interesting notes that we may have glossed over. “Blessedness” was “credited” to Abraham before he had a chance to be “justified by works” (4:1-11) In other words, whenever the “righteousness of God” shows up, it is a good thing, a healing hope, an enriching experience that no one is able to buy or manipulate. God alone initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us (4:1-23). In fact, according to Paul, this purpose of God is no less spectacular than the divine quest to re-create the world, undoing the effects that the cancer of sin has blighted upon us (Romans 5). It feels like being reborn (5:1-11). It plays out like the world itself is being remade (5:12-21). This is the great righteousness of God at work!
Now Paul gets very practical. Although we might think that we would jump at the opportunity to find such grace and divine favor, Paul reminds us that our inner conflicts tear at us until we are paralyzed with frustration and failure (Romans 6–7). Sometimes we deny these struggles (6:1-14). Sometimes we ignore these tensions (6:15-7:6). Sometimes we grow bitter in the quagmire of it all (7:7-12). And sometimes we even throw up our hands in despair (7:13-24).
Precisely then, says Paul, the power of the righteousness of God as our bodyguard is most clearly revealed. Thankfully, God’s righteousness grabs us and holds us, so that through Jesus and the Holy Spirit we are never separated from divine love (Romans 7:25-8:39). Hope floods through us because we know Jesus and what he has done for us (8:1-11). Hope whispers inside of us as the Holy Spirit reminds us who we truly are and whose we will always be (8:12-27). Hope thunders around us as God’s faithfulness is shouted from the heavens right through the pages of history (8:28-39.
This powerful testimony seems to cause Paul to reflect ruefully, however, on a truly knotty theological problem. If Paul can be so certain about God’s strident grace toward us in this new age of the Messiah, why did God’s declarations of favor toward Israel in the previous age of revelation seem to fail? Why did Israel lose its privileged place in the divine plan, while the spreading church of Jesus Christ is suddenly God’s favored child?
These questions become the research matters for Paul’s internal intellectual debating team in Romans 9–11. First up, comes the standard reflection that God is sovereign. This means, for Paul, that God’s special relationship with Israel was God’s choice to make and is not undone now that God wishes also to use a new tactic in the divine attempt at recovering the whole of humanity back into a meaningful relationship with God.
Nevertheless, according to Paul, there has been something amiss about Israel’s side of this relationship with God. Rather than understanding its favored position as enlisting it into the divine global mission, the nation tended to become myopic and self-centered. Instead of believing that she, too, needed to repent and find God’s care through grace, Israel supposed that she had an inherent right to divine favor.
In the end, Paul believes that partly through Israel’s false presumptions, and partly because of God’s temporary change of strategies in order to better fulfill the original divine redemptive mission, Gentiles have come to the center of God’s attention, while Israel, though not forgotten, is partially sidelined for a time. But even this alteration in the temperature of God’s relationship with Israel is a lover’s game: Israel needs to feel the good jealousy for a partner that she has too long taken for granted, so that she will recover her passions of great love. In the meantime, however, all win. God wins in the divine missional enterprise. The Gentiles win because they have a renewed opportunity to get to know God. And Israel wins because she is never forgotten and is coming round to a renewed love affair with her beau.
Paul may well have had to wrestle his way through that problem of divine election at least in part because of the mixed Jewish-Gentile makeup of the Roman congregation. This possible tension seems to reassert itself again in Paul’s applications of Christian behavior in the chapters that follow. First, Paul urges a lifestyle of service rooted in sacrifice to Jesus (12:1-2), shaped by spiritual giftedness (12:3-8), and energized by love (12:9-21). Then Paul makes this servant behavior even more specific, by nodding to its public expressions (Romans 13): obey the government as a tool of God’s care in the restraint of evil (13:1-6) and live as good neighbors who glow with the righteousness of God in some pretty dark neighborhoods (13:8-14). Finally, Paul revisits the issues surrounding the matter of the purchase and consumption of meat offered to idols (Romans 14:1–15:13), just has he had probed it in 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1. Here, though, the overt tensions between legalistic and licentious extremes of Christian behavior seem less consuming than they did when Paul wrote to the Galatians and the Corinthians. Instead, his instructions flow more gently out of his social ethic of love and service.
Paul’s letter to the Roman congregation has become the sourcebook for much of Christian theology. It describes the mission of God in a grand sweep, addresses certain difficult problems associated with anthropology and culture, and focuses strongly on appropriate ethical and moral behavior. But most importantly, it speaks with passionate assurance about the love of God, and the grand divine desire to have intimacy with us.
Matthew 3:1-12
John the Baptist appeared like the last of Israel’s great prophets, haranguing from the wilderness with divine authority, and announcing the imminence of the “Day of the Lord.” It was clear for all who came to John, intrigued by his demeanor and morally charged preaching, that John believed Jesus’ arrival to be the in-breaking of the “day of the Lord,” complete with its judgment, chastised remnant, and messianic age of blessing. When John’s message to local Jews drove them to repentance and action, John baptized them as part of what he thought would be the remnant community which would survive the “day of the Lord” conflagration. Jesus’ arrival, one day, signaled to John that the “day of the Lord” had itself arrived. In fact, after wrestling with Jesus about who should baptize whom, Jesus prevailed upon John to do the honors, and then, apparently with John’s blessing, created his own nucleus of disciples from among John’s close followers!
John then drops from the records of the gospels for at least several months, probably because he was arrested by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great and his last wife Malthace. John had been the target of Herod Antipas’ ire because John regularly preached that Herod had committed murder and was living in sin. Herod Antipas had killed his brother Herod II (son of Herod the Great and his second wife Miriamne II) in order to wed Herod II’s wife and their common niece, Herodias. Herod Antipas was already married at the time, but divorced his wife, the daughter of Nabitean King Aretas IV, in order to make the new union seem more palatable. In response, John gave voice to Jewish consternation about these immoral habits of their imposed and despised ruler. So, Herod Antipas incarcerated John to curtail his unwelcomed public diatribes and accusations.
While in prison, however, John’s deeply held assumptions about Jesus began to collapse. John heard reports of Jesus’ ministry, and it did not sound like a divine thunderbolt of cataclysmic judgment. John became confused, sensing that Jesus was failing to follow through on the critical elements of the classic “day of the Lord” theology. John sent two of his own followers to check things out. They were to demand of Jesus whether he was, in fact, the vehicle of heaven intended to fulfill prophetic judgment day warnings.
Jesus did not debate with John’s disciples. Instead, he took them along on a day of blessing, where “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” He then sent the duo back to John to report. While we are not made aware of John’s response, it is clear that Jesus, and eventually the gospel writers and early church with him, understood what was going on. Instead of bringing the full impact of the prophetic “day of the Lord” as a single act of global divine judgment which would immediately transition into the eternal messianic age of blessing, Jesus had split the “day of the Lord” in two. He would absorb the full weight of heaven’s retributive justice into his own person on the cross of torment, sparing the rest of the world that trauma for the short term. But he would also pull together a remnant community of witness, beginning with his twelve closest disciples and their followers, and, most importantly, Jesus initiated the blessings of the eternal messianic kingdom through his healings, death-raisings, demon-exorcisms, and general kindnesses. Jesus confirms this interpretation of what is taking place, in fact, by identifying John as the “Elijah” messenger foretold through Malachi to be the forerunner of the “day of the Lord,” and also by connecting his own miracles to Isaiah’s grand testimony about what Messiah would bring on the “day of the Lord.”
John the Baptist personalizes the great struggle of the Jews to believe that Jesus might be their promised Messiah, foretold by the prophets. If the “day of the Lord” is understood as a single, massively interruptive, world-changing event, Jesus did not bring it, and cannot be considered the great Messiah. But if God chose to unfold the “day of the Lord” in a manner that no one had ever considered, splitting it in two, so that the judgments would be contained within the person of Jesus at the start, the remnant community would serve as a witnessing mission for an unresolved and compromised world, and the blessings of the future age would be inaugurated through miracles and healings and renewed lives over time, Jesus was precisely the harbinger of a new world order. The “day of the Lord” had indeed arrived in Jesus. It did not, however, culminate in his initial coming. The “day of the Lord” was, instead, split, and we live now in a world awaiting the second half of its interruption.
Application
Even though we like laughter and enjoy praise and celebration, especially at this time of year, it doesn’t always come easily. One fellow tells of his work as a hospital volunteer. He couldn’t believe the pain and suffering he saw there. Burn victims. Deformities. Terminal cancer. He watched the little ones cry. Some were so lonely: their parents couldn’t take the trauma, so they never came to see their own children. How horrible!
He decided to get a clown’s nose, and a pair of oversized shoes. Then he painted his face and pulled on a wig. When he went to work dressed like that the next day, some of the children were scared, some were captivated, and some even showed hints of a smile for the first time in ages.
But others couldn’t stop wailing. They were consumed by agony. What could he do for them? The next day the clown brought along some popcorn. When he came to the side of a crying child, he took a kernel of popcorn, placed it against the child’s cheek, and soaked up the cascading tears with its fluff. Then he popped that kernel into his mouth and ate it.
It was a stroke of genius. The only time some of those children stopped crying was the moment they knew that somebody else cared enough to swallow their tears.
Advent brings us to a place like that. It takes us, at the end of our journey, to the “sanctuary” of God for a time of praise. “Sanctuary” is refuge, fortress, safe house, security, arms of love, a place where someone cares enough to swallow our tears and protect us from the worst that could harm us. This, certainly, is what the scenes of our Isaiah reading are all about.
Madeleine L’Engle paints a picture of such a sanctuary in one of her children’s books. She tells of a young couple on a desert journey through wilderness in a rough caravan. They’re on their way to Egypt. Someone is after them; someone wants to kill their little boy.
The journey is a rugged one. The desert is alive with ferocious beasts. All eyes cast about uneasily as darkness settles. There’ll be little sleep in the camp tonight. They build a great fire to drive back the shadows and keep away the world that belongs to monsters with glowing eyes. Suddenly they start in terror; a great lion appears at the bonfire. The mother reaches for her child, desperately trying to draw him to safety.
But the child stands and laughs. He opens his arms wide to the lion. The lion lifts his front paws and hops around on his hind legs. He’s dancing! And then, from the desert, come running several little mice and two donkeys and a snake and a couple of clumsy ostriches. Three great eagles swoop in from the purple skies. From the other side of the camp a unicorn emerges, and a pelican, and even two dragons.
They all bow before the child and then dance together, round and round him. He stands at the center of their great circle, laughing in delight. It’s a dance in the desert, as L’Engle calls it. In essence, it’s the sum and substance of our worship here on earth, pilgrims passing through the wilderness of ghastly beasties and mournful hurts.
This is the second Sunday in Advent. Christmas seems close, but we are not there yet. We still spend time in the dark alongside those who wrestle with demons and shadows and beasts. But because of Advent confidence, we see the light, and clap our hands in celebration of the child who comes to dance around our fires.
Alternative Application (Isaiah 11:1-10)
Jesus raises the banner of heaven’s royal claims over both Gentile and Jewish territory, and thus is the source of political allegiances that supersede temporal boundaries. This is very good news during Advent, when the nations of the earth conspire against one another, and only the Christian Church can affect a trans-national celebration of the politics of grace. The peaceable kingdom.
Robert Coles is a child psychiatrist and professor at Harvard University who likes to try to figure out why we do the things we do. In his book The Call of Service he wonders about people who try to make a difference in life. People who seek to reform themselves, even with the tenacity of sin that clings down deep. People who attempt to better society, in spite of the fact that it stubbornly refuses the challenge.
Why do they do it, Coles asks? The stories are all so different that it is hard to figure out a way to summarize them neatly in some framework. In fact, the people themselves often have a hard time defining what it is that makes them tick. One young teacher in an urban school gets challenged all the time. Street-smart students, weary of self-righteous “do-gooders,” put the question to him. “What’s in it for you?!” they demand. And he really can’t say.
But this he and all the rest of them can say: sometime earlier in their lives, each of them ran into a crisis situation, a situation that tested their identity and their willingness to do something about it, and in that crisis situation, each of them encountered someone who put his life on the line. Someone who taught them the meaning of service. Someone who gave of herself in a way that bucks the trend of selfishness and of self-preservation. And the influence of that someone else made it possible to be greater than each of them had previously considered. Enter the peaceable kingdom, where things change because we have brushed against the holiness of God, and Jesus becomes our Savior and mentor.
