Dreams of the Fragile and Vulnerable
Anyone who has dreamed before will know that there’s often something askew in a dream, something not quite aligned with the real world. Maybe your pets can talk. Maybe you’re living in someone else’s house. Maybe you’re just going about your normal day—missing a key article of clothing!
Like any good prophet, Isaiah is a dreamer. His dreams depict a strange, surreal world. Last week, he dreamed of spears and swords being beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks. This week, his dream begins with a modest vision: he sees a small stalk growing from the stump of a great tree (cf. 11:1). For a prophet who proclaims nothing less than the salvation of all creation, how frail and feeble this dream. Just a stalk? This is how the world will be put right? While most prophets in Isaiah’s day would have been making grandiose announcements of military victory and the conquest of kings, Isaiah is dreaming of a single delicate shoot.
Typical Isaiah. His dreams are so humble. His other famous image? It’s one that we recite often in this Advent season: a child, a baby boy, born from a young woman (cf. 7:14; 9:6).
Anyone who has dreamed before will know that there’s often something askew in a dream. In the case of Isaiah, he dreams of the fragile and vulnerable, and calls it our savior.
How the World Will Be Saved?
Of course, we could give Isaiah the benefit of the doubt, and say that his frail dreams have a card up their sleeve, that actually this tender stalk will grow into an imposing tree, that this helpless baby will grow into a mighty ruler. Maybe Isaiah was just dreaming of a humble beginning to what would ultimately be a mighty triumph of power.
Or maybe not. Jesus, remember, gave pride of place to the little children. And according to Paul, Jesus himself is weakness and foolishness to the world (cf. 1 Corinthians 1). Far from growing into something mighty and powerful, he did the opposite: he emptied himself, becoming powerless in his love for us (cf. Philippians 2).
So when Isaiah dreams of a fragile shoot and a vulnerable baby, maybe he’s actually onto something. Maybe these are images of how the world will be saved, however askew that seems.
God with a Green Card?
Tender stalks and defenseless babies are not the only things askew in Isaiah’s dream. What comes next in today’s scripture really does seem like a dream, the kind of bizarre scene that makes us do a double-take when we awake. Did we really see that?
A wolf and a lamb living side by side. A little child leading a host of wild beasts around, leopards and livestock both. A bear and a lion grazing as cool as you like with the rest of the cattle.
If that weren’t enough, this scene becomes even more bizarre the closer we look at it. A literal translation of Isaiah’s vision zooms in on this strangeness: “The wolf,” Isaiah says, “shall sojourn with the lamb” (11:6). This word “sojourn” is the word used for strangers dwelling in a foreign land, outsiders “whose survival is dependent on the goodwill of the natives.”[1] In other words, this isn’t just a wolf resisting the temptation to chow down. This is a wolf immigrant, a wolf resident alien, a wolf carrying a green card, a wolf who has given up his former way of living and made his life dependent on the ways of the lamb, who has embraced the lifestyle of the lamb. And apparently it’s not only the wolf who is sojourning. If we continue to examine this bizarre scene of Isaiah’s dream, we’ll notice that the bear is grazing with the cow, and the lion is eating straw like an ox (cf. 11:7). Like humble immigrants among the cattle, the bears and the lions have adopted their bovine ways as their own. The mighty predators are making themselves dependent on their prey.
I don’t know how much Isaiah understood his own prophecies, if he could really foresee what kind of savior Jesus would be. But this image of the mighty ones making themselves dependent on the weak—as bizarre as it is, is it not what we see in Christ? Is it not in fact a scene of how God enters into relationship with us? Isn’t that what God does: make Godself dependent on us, being born into our world as helpless as any child of our own, living within the limits of a body just like yours or mine? Who is Christ but God with a green card, subject even to human judgment and corporal punishment?
“People Can Change…”
I can’t help but wonder, then, if this is how peace is made: by the powerful not only giving up their claim to power, but making themselves dependent on the weak? If so, this peace would look different than what passes for peace in our world. In our world, what we call peace is more often a truce, a treaty, or a ceasefire. It is more often a mutual separation, a live-and-let-live policy. Peace in our world tries to preserve the way things are, and usually the people who broker peace are the people in power, which means that the peace privileges the powerful.
So it was in times of segregation. Ultimately that “peace” was exposed for what it was: an unjust suppression of life. Only when the folks on the underside of this separation agreement spoke out, and only when the folks in power relinquished their unspoken privilege, could peace become an authentic possibility. It’s one that we’re still working toward today.
John Lewis, a black Georgia congressman, lived through the so-called peace of segregation. Several years ago, while he was riding a bus and reflecting on his life, he told a moving story that Quaker educator and activist Parker Palmer overheard.
In 1961—John Lewis said—while he waiting for a bus, he was attacked by several young white men. Bloodied by their bats, Lewis did not fight back. Nor did he press charges. One day, nearly 50 years after the incident, an old white man and his middle-aged son entered Lewis’ congressional office on Capitol Hill. The man introduced himself: “Mr. Lewis, my name is Elwin Wilson. I’m one of the men who beat you in that bus station back in 1961. I want to atone for the terrible thing I did, so I’ve come to seek your forgiveness. Will you forgive me?” Lewis forgave him, embraced him on the spot, and then the three of them cried.
As Lewis finished telling this story on the bus, he gazed out the window in a pensive silence. “Then, in a very soft voice—as if speaking to himself about the story he had just told and all of the memories that must have been moving in him—Lewis [whispered], ‘People can change… People can change.’”[2]
A Peace Born of Repentance and Dependence
Peace, according to Isaiah and John Lewis, is not simply a truce or a ceasefire. Peace is not private; it is not people living separate and self-content; and it is certainly not the preservation of power and privilege. Peace, instead, is public. It is people coming together. Peace is power emptying itself and putting others first. It is downwardly mobile. Peace is people changing.
In today’s other scripture, John the Baptist preaches a very short sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom…is near!” (Matt 3:2). That word “repent” means very literally, “to change your mind, your heart.” I wonder if we might not color this image in with the help of Isaiah’s wolf sojourning with lamb. I wonder if we might not say that to repent is to immigrate, to adopt a different way of life, to make oneself dependent on people with less power and privilege?
Only a Heart That Has Been Broken
But even if that’s the case, the question remains: How? How do people change? How do people choose to repent, to make themselves dependent on others? How does the wolf decide to sojourn with the lamb, the bear and the lion with the cattle? What made Elwin Wilson go to John Lewis after 50 years to seek forgiveness?
I don’t know about you, but in my own experience, genuine change only happens when I have been broken. Only when I am confronted with my own brokenness—my own wrongdoing, my own limits—do I change. Only a heart that has been broken asks for forgiveness. Only a heart that has been broken looks for healing and reconciliation. Only a heart that’s been broken acknowledges its dependability on others.
Isaiah says that our savior will “kill what is wicked”[3]—not with a sword or an army, but with “his mouth,” with “the breath of his lips.” John the Baptist says that the savior will baptize with the Spirit and fire. These images suggest to me that true change—true repentance—happens not by might and muscle that act on bodies but by conversation of the lips that breaks hearts and refines them like fire. Maybe the wolf finally hears the bleating of the lamb, listens more closely than it ever had before, and the sound burns within. Maybe the bear and the lion finally pay attention to the moos of the cow. Elwin Wilson, it seems, was convicted in his heart after 50 years. I imagine that his repentance was a slow, painful process, one that involved listened to a difficult voice in his heart, to a voice that burned like a refining fire.
The peace that Isaiah paints is a peace in community, a peace where the predator communes with the prey, where enemies dwell together. Perhaps this peace will only come from the fragile and the vulnerable, from people who become like tender stalks and helpless babies. Perhaps this peace will only come when hearts have been broken enough that they become dependent on others, the way the wolf became dependent on the lamb—the way that God becomes dependent on us.
Prayer
Tender stalk,
Helpless child,
God with a green card—
Dependent on us:
May your words,
And the many lips that speak them,
Break our hearts
And make them like yours:
Helpless and peaceable.
Amen.
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[1] John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 1-39 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament Series; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 283.
[2] This story, and the quoted portions within it, were taken from Maria Popova, “Healing the Heart of Democracy: Parker Palmer on Holding the Tension of Our Differences in a Creative Way,” accessed on https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/11/23/healing-the-heart-of-democracy-parker-palmer/, November 30, 2016.
[3] Isa 11:4. The NRSV simply says “kill the wicked,” implying the wicked persons. But the Hebrew here uses the adjective “wicked” substantivally, which may also be translated “kill what is wicked.” This translation allows for the possibility that wickedness is not identified with certain persons among us all, but with certain tendencies among all persons.
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