Dec 24. 2006: Isaiah 11:1-10
MESSAGE SUMMARY FROM ISAIAH 11:1-10 Dec. 24, 2006
Stuart Briscoe is a pastor originally from England.
He recounts a story told to him by an elderly German man, who fought with the German army in World War One. In those days warfare, of course, was not high tech but hand-to-hand trench warfare.
Soldiers lived, fought, and died in trenches full of mud and blood. In those trenches, dug in the fields of France, enemies could actually hear each other talking. They didn't need satellites to locate the enemy. The enemy was just over there.
This elderly German man described how on one cold, moonlit Christmas Eve, he huddled in the bottom of the trench. Because of the annual Christmas truce, the fighting had stopped. Suddenly, from the British trenches a loud, sweet tenor voice began to sing "The Lord Is My Shepherd," and the sound floated up into the clear, moonlit air.
Then from the German trenches, a rich baritone voice tuned in, singing "Der Herr Ist Mein Heiter" For a few moments, everybody in both trenches concentrated on the sound of these two invisible singers and the beautiful music and the harmony. The British soldier and the German soldier sang praise to the Lord who was their shepherd. The singing stopped, and the sound slowly died away.
"We huddled in the bottom of our trenches and tried to keep warm until Christmas Day dawned," he said. "Early on Christmas morning, some of the British soldiers climbed out of their trenches into the “no man's land” carrying a soccer ball."
One soldier carried a round soccer ball. These English soldiers started kicking around a football, in a pickup game in no man's land, between the trenches.
Then the old man said, "Some of the German soldiers climbed out, and England played Germany at football in no man's land on Christmas Day in the middle of the battlefield in France in the first World War."
Then he said, "The next morning, the carnage began again, with machine guns and bayonet fighting. Everything was back to normal."
The Christmas spirit (small “s” as in sentiment) doesn’t always, but the Christmas Spirit (large “S”) can…
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Isaiah 11 vs. 1.
At a time when Isaiah and his people are discouraged with the state of the Kings of Israel and Judah in the 8th century B.C. and yearning for a great King messianic like David…
Isaiah prophecies the coming of a new King….
The Branch From Jesse
1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 Infants will play near the hole of the cobra;
young children will put their hands into the viper's nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
With few exceptions, the Kings of Israel and Judah had not trusted God. These leaders had followed their dark side, and God had allowed the Assyrians to invade their land…
Their “forest” (so to speak) had been burned to the ground.
At time when the Israelites felt no hope…
When people thought the line of David was dead in so far as being able to produce good leaders were concerned, Isaiah brings words of hope.
He says in vs. 1.
1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
Jesse was the father of King David… who’s was arguably the greatest King Israel had ever had, at least in the category that mattered most—devotion to God…
People thought that Jesse’s line had been cut down… that Jesse was just a dead old stump…
But Isaiah says in vs. 1 a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse…
From his roots a Branch will bear fruit…
At a time of great darkness, Isaiah prophecies the coming a new King from Jesse…. a David-like King…
Scholars of the Hebrew Scriptures, point out that this prophecy has a kind partial fulfillment in the work the reigns of King Hezekiah who was a reasonably good king and Josiah who was a great King (whose devotion to God was comparable to David’s), but the prophecy has complete fulfillment in Jesus Christ…
The text tells us that the Spirit would be upon this leader…
In the Hebrew Scriptures, we read of how the Spirit would come upon people for special purposes: sometimes the Spirit would bring wisdom and insight, at others times the Spirit would bring creativity and artistry, and at other times Spirit would bring physical health and strength.
We read in Gospels of how Spirit of God came to rest powerfully upon Jesus…
In John 1:32-33 we read John the Baptist testify:
"I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit
What kind of Spirit would be rest upon this King? What kind of Spirit would rest upon Jesus?
Listen to Isaiah:
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
A spirit of wisdom was upon Jesus: he wasn’t trained in the elite, prestigious “schools” of his day. He was a carpenter’s son, yet people marveled at his wisdom…
As the Spirit of God came upon Jesus, if the Spirit falls on us… we will also be people of wisdom…
We need wisdom of God…
The wisdom of God seems so upside down in our culture…
On a CBC radio show that featured the challenges of talking about your faith at work, one person who was a mainline liberal Christian was asked by someone, why are you spending time with that conservative, Evangelical Christian? The person said, “oh actually we have something in common. We both want to live a life centered on God. The guy said, he looked at me as if I had just said, “I had a habit of snacking on infants.”
Biblically speaking wisdom doesn’t begin a Harvard Ph.D (as significant of an achievement as that is), true wisdom comes from fearing God. The Proverbs tells that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Our passage says that the Spirit of God is a spirit of wisdom, knowledge and fear of God… they are linked. When we reverence God enough to submit to his word, we live in a way consistent with the way God designed us and we flourish… When we live a life centered on God, we fulfill the purpose for our being born…
The wisdom of God will seem so upside down compared to values of this world.
Do you what the number most Googled subject 2006 was?
Paris Hilton…
More people googled (show the paper) Paris Hitlon than people did a search on cancer or Hurricane Katrina or the war between Lebanon and Israel.
I don’t understand the fascination in our culture with Paris Hilton.
Is the ideal life, one where you get to spend some else’s fortune?
Is the ideal life, one where you can command $100,000 to show up at party or a club?
If Google searches are a cultural indicator (and they are), more people than are interested in what Paris Hilton is wearing these days or who she’s partying with now (is still hanging out Brittney?) who she’s dating than whether people are dying in Bagdad.
In stark contrast to the values of our world, the wisdom that comes when the Spirit of God comes upon a person is manifest through generosity, compassion, and self-giving service…
The wisdom of God seems so upside down compared to the value of this world.
It’s not because God’s wisdom is upside down, it just seems upside down in contrast to the world’s value system that is upside down.
We need wisdom and if the Spirit that came upon Jesus comes upon us we’ll have a spirit of wisdom.
If the Spirit that came upon Jesus, comes us what else will be true of us?
According to the text, we will become people of justice.
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
(meaning superficial appearances, meaning Jesus’ judging will be impartial and completely just.)
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
We will become people of justice.
When the Spirit came and anointed him to serve the poor… In his famous manifesto,
Luke 4:18-19, citing Isaiah 61:1-2
18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
One of the clearest evidences that there is a God at work in the world… is that human beings can have this sense of justice, which is much more difficult to explain if you believe we are simply the result of time of a chance and that we are motivated by a Darwinian survival of the fittest instinct.
I don’t know if you’ve saw the Nov. 13 issue of TIME with the story God vs. Science.
In that issue of TIME there is a debate featured between scientist Dr. Richard Dawkins, author of the God Delusion and Dr. Francis Collins, who led the successful effort to complete Human Genome Project which mapped all of the human DNA.
Richard Dawkins in his book the God Delusion has argued that altruism is part of survival of the fittest, if you help someone else, it might help in you survive in the long run. At the McKinsey consulting firm, they encourage you to be nice to someone you fire because they might be your boss one day.
But Francis Collins argues that there many acts of altruism that are not based on the fact that the other person we are being kind to is part of your family or people who can pay you back. He cites Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chamber would be the opposite of this. He’s risking his own life to help others who don’t belong to his clan.
Canadian journalist Bronwyn Drainie describes the surprising behavior of a haredi woman i.e.—an ultra-orthodox Jew—at a Jerusalem street market. Drainie says:
The most heroic single act I heard of during my two years in Jerusalem involved a haredi woman. One day, the Jewish street market just around the corner from my boys' school, an Arab terrorist drew a knife among the throng of shoppers and managed to stab two young men before fleeing for his life. The crowd of Israelis, incensed, began running after him, a number of them drawing pistols as they ran. The Arab darted across the street, running straight towards a haredi woman of 40 who was standing at a bus-stop. Her name was Bella Freund.
She sized up what was happening. She stepped directly into the Arab's path and tripped him so that he fell to the ground, and she threw herself on top of him to protect him. The crowd kicked her, spat on her, threatened her with their guns, but they could not loosen her hold on the Arab, and she lay there until the police arrived to take him into custody.
“Her hatred of Arabs, her lifelong conditioning never to touch a man who wasn't her husband, all of it was set aside in a split-second of truth. "I could not see a helpless man killed by a mob, whatever he had done."
Where does that instinct from? The Darwinian instinct to out survive everyone else? Or is a better explanation, that there is a God at work in human beings?
When the Spirit of God comes upon us we become people justice and compassion loving those who do not advantage us…
What else will happen when the Spirit of God comes upon us?
What happen to our relationships?
Then the text goes on to say…
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
It would be interesting to mark out how different commentators explain this text and when and where and how this is fulfilled in the Kingdom, but that’s different sermon…
But commentators agree on one thing that was Spirit falls upon people and as God’s Kingdom is established… those who were naturally enemies will live in harmony…
We see this quality powerfully in Jesus, we see him loving people were his “enemies.”
Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at the well, the kind of person no respectable Jewish man would engage in conversation with because she was a woman and because she was from a race despised by the Jewish people.… Jesus broke the rules and loved people who were despised, cultural outsiders.
Jesus loved his enemies. As was so moving portrayed in the movie the Passion of the Christ… He asked God to forgive those who were nailing his wrists and feet to the cross…
A South African woman stood in an emotionally charged courtroom, listening to white police officers acknowledge the atrocities they had perpetrated in the name of apartheid.
Officer van de Broek acknowledged his responsibility in the death of her son. Along with others, he had shot her 18-year-old son at point-blank range. He and the others partied while they burned his body, turning it over and over on the fire until it was reduced to ashes.
Eight years later, van de Broek and others arrived to seize her husband. A few [hours] later, shortly after midnight, van de Broek came to fetch the woman. He took her to a woodpile where her husband lay bound. She was forced to watch as they poured gasoline over his body and ignited the flames that consumed his body. The last words she heard her husband say were "Forgive them."
Now, van de Broek stood before her awaiting judgment. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked her what she wanted.
"I want three things," she said calmly. "I want Mr. van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband's body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial.
"Second, Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him.
"Third, I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him, too. I would like someone to lead me to where he is seated, so I can embrace him and he can know my forgiveness is real."
As the elderly woman was led across the courtroom, van de Broek fainted, overwhelmed. Someone began singing "Amazing Grace." Gradually everyone joined in.
This woman understood that to be reconciled with God and was also to be called to reconcile with our neighbors.
The Spirit of God gave her the capacity to do this.
Galatians 5:22-23 tells us that fruit of the Spirit is love.
The Spirit of Christmas (not Christmas sentiment) but the Spirit of Christmas, makes us wise, just, and loving.
My wife and I recently had dinner with a doctor and his wife. This doctor is on faculty of UBC medical school/BC Leadership Chair in Child Development is doing some very important research on infant development…
He was telling us that research with rats has been shown that early life experiences set the gene patterns in their brain.
As he and his team do research on infants they are discovering early experience of stress in a child can set the gene patterns in their brains at in the early years of their lives, calibrating their vulnerability to stressors and perhaps creating pathways for the rest of their lives.
For example, exposure to many stressful events early in life, in a child who has a genetic based vulnerability to depression, can lead to greater vulnerability to depression in adult life.
(BTW, if this research is validated it really makes one question the wisdom of fathers who say, “I’ll work like a dog when my kids are really young, because they won’t remember if I was around or gone, and once I’m a little older, like adolescents, I’ll spend time with them, then I’ll really influence them then…”).
How does connect to the sermon?
If our brain pathways are set early in life, we may wonder whether we can really change or not…
If the Spirit of God comes upon you can be made new… you can become a person of wisdom, justice, love….
If the Spirit comes upon us, we can become people who bear the fruit of the Spirit…
If you think this can’t happen for you remember… Isaiah prophecies that from an old stump… a shoot will grow… from a dry root, comes a branch will bring forth fruit…
And remember this shoot… was born into the most humble of circumstances…
The Spirit of God came upon Mary who was perceived as a scandalous woman: people thought she had been impregnated through some kind of adulterous liaison… and as Bible scholar Doug Greenwald convincingly argues it because of this perception of scandal, not because they was no vacancy sign at the local Ramada Inn, they weren’t welcomed into any guest rooms among their relatives in Bethlehem… and that she was relegated to a cellar cave…
The “Good News” of the birth of Jesus being first announced to shepherds “out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Though a shepherd was portrayed with honor in Psalm 23 by the time Jesus’ day rolled around shepherding was viewed as a despised profession – one scorned by observant Jews as unclean.
There were also rabbis during this time who held that shepherds, because of the wandering trespass nature of their profession, could never be forgiven because they could never make retribution for the grasses their flocks ate (stole) from someone else’s land. In this religious system, that means shepherds were technically known as “sinners” – people who could never get right with God – which means they also have no hope.
The angel’s announcement concerning the birth of the hope of the world comes to them… first…
The invitations comes to Magi, aka “wise men” who though successful and wealthy, from the perspective of the Hebrews would a have been seen as spiritual, ethnically, and culturally outsiders.
The Spirit comes to Elizabeth and later Simeon, who are both older people… in our culture that glamorizes youth, older people often feel invisible…
The Spirit can come to the elderly.
Jesus according to John the baptizer is not only the one on whom the Spirit descends, but who baptizes with fire.
So, this Christmas invite the Christ to become to you and baptize you with fire…. Become new not just a for a season, but for a lifetime and beyond.
Pray…
Benediction:
This Christmas and beyond through the Spirit of Christ become a person of wisdom, justice of love… Through the power of the Spirit become the change you long to see in the world…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Stuart Briscoe is a pastor originally from England.
He recounts a story told to him by an elderly German man, who fought with the German army in World War One. In those days warfare, of course, was not high tech but hand-to-hand trench warfare.
Soldiers lived, fought, and died in trenches full of mud and blood. In those trenches, dug in the fields of France, enemies could actually hear each other talking. They didn't need satellites to locate the enemy. The enemy was just over there.
This elderly German man described how on one cold, moonlit Christmas Eve, he huddled in the bottom of the trench. Because of the annual Christmas truce, the fighting had stopped. Suddenly, from the British trenches a loud, sweet tenor voice began to sing "The Lord Is My Shepherd," and the sound floated up into the clear, moonlit air.
Then from the German trenches, a rich baritone voice tuned in, singing "Der Herr Ist Mein Heiter" For a few moments, everybody in both trenches concentrated on the sound of these two invisible singers and the beautiful music and the harmony. The British soldier and the German soldier sang praise to the Lord who was their shepherd. The singing stopped, and the sound slowly died away.
"We huddled in the bottom of our trenches and tried to keep warm until Christmas Day dawned," he said. "Early on Christmas morning, some of the British soldiers climbed out of their trenches into the “no man's land” carrying a soccer ball."
One soldier carried a round soccer ball. These English soldiers started kicking around a football, in a pickup game in no man's land, between the trenches.
Then the old man said, "Some of the German soldiers climbed out, and England played Germany at football in no man's land on Christmas Day in the middle of the battlefield in France in the first World War."
Then he said, "The next morning, the carnage began again, with machine guns and bayonet fighting. Everything was back to normal."
The Christmas spirit (small “s” as in sentiment) doesn’t always, but the Christmas Spirit (large “S”) can…
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Isaiah 11 vs. 1.
At a time when Isaiah and his people are discouraged with the state of the Kings of Israel and Judah in the 8th century B.C. and yearning for a great King messianic like David…
Isaiah prophecies the coming of a new King….
The Branch From Jesse
1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 Infants will play near the hole of the cobra;
young children will put their hands into the viper's nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
With few exceptions, the Kings of Israel and Judah had not trusted God. These leaders had followed their dark side, and God had allowed the Assyrians to invade their land…
Their “forest” (so to speak) had been burned to the ground.
At time when the Israelites felt no hope…
When people thought the line of David was dead in so far as being able to produce good leaders were concerned, Isaiah brings words of hope.
He says in vs. 1.
1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
Jesse was the father of King David… who’s was arguably the greatest King Israel had ever had, at least in the category that mattered most—devotion to God…
People thought that Jesse’s line had been cut down… that Jesse was just a dead old stump…
But Isaiah says in vs. 1 a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse…
From his roots a Branch will bear fruit…
At a time of great darkness, Isaiah prophecies the coming a new King from Jesse…. a David-like King…
Scholars of the Hebrew Scriptures, point out that this prophecy has a kind partial fulfillment in the work the reigns of King Hezekiah who was a reasonably good king and Josiah who was a great King (whose devotion to God was comparable to David’s), but the prophecy has complete fulfillment in Jesus Christ…
The text tells us that the Spirit would be upon this leader…
In the Hebrew Scriptures, we read of how the Spirit would come upon people for special purposes: sometimes the Spirit would bring wisdom and insight, at others times the Spirit would bring creativity and artistry, and at other times Spirit would bring physical health and strength.
We read in Gospels of how Spirit of God came to rest powerfully upon Jesus…
In John 1:32-33 we read John the Baptist testify:
"I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit
What kind of Spirit would be rest upon this King? What kind of Spirit would rest upon Jesus?
Listen to Isaiah:
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
A spirit of wisdom was upon Jesus: he wasn’t trained in the elite, prestigious “schools” of his day. He was a carpenter’s son, yet people marveled at his wisdom…
As the Spirit of God came upon Jesus, if the Spirit falls on us… we will also be people of wisdom…
We need wisdom of God…
The wisdom of God seems so upside down in our culture…
On a CBC radio show that featured the challenges of talking about your faith at work, one person who was a mainline liberal Christian was asked by someone, why are you spending time with that conservative, Evangelical Christian? The person said, “oh actually we have something in common. We both want to live a life centered on God. The guy said, he looked at me as if I had just said, “I had a habit of snacking on infants.”
Biblically speaking wisdom doesn’t begin a Harvard Ph.D (as significant of an achievement as that is), true wisdom comes from fearing God. The Proverbs tells that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Our passage says that the Spirit of God is a spirit of wisdom, knowledge and fear of God… they are linked. When we reverence God enough to submit to his word, we live in a way consistent with the way God designed us and we flourish… When we live a life centered on God, we fulfill the purpose for our being born…
The wisdom of God will seem so upside down compared to values of this world.
Do you what the number most Googled subject 2006 was?
Paris Hilton…
More people googled (show the paper) Paris Hitlon than people did a search on cancer or Hurricane Katrina or the war between Lebanon and Israel.
I don’t understand the fascination in our culture with Paris Hilton.
Is the ideal life, one where you get to spend some else’s fortune?
Is the ideal life, one where you can command $100,000 to show up at party or a club?
If Google searches are a cultural indicator (and they are), more people than are interested in what Paris Hilton is wearing these days or who she’s partying with now (is still hanging out Brittney?) who she’s dating than whether people are dying in Bagdad.
In stark contrast to the values of our world, the wisdom that comes when the Spirit of God comes upon a person is manifest through generosity, compassion, and self-giving service…
The wisdom of God seems so upside down compared to the value of this world.
It’s not because God’s wisdom is upside down, it just seems upside down in contrast to the world’s value system that is upside down.
We need wisdom and if the Spirit that came upon Jesus comes upon us we’ll have a spirit of wisdom.
If the Spirit that came upon Jesus, comes us what else will be true of us?
According to the text, we will become people of justice.
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
(meaning superficial appearances, meaning Jesus’ judging will be impartial and completely just.)
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
We will become people of justice.
When the Spirit came and anointed him to serve the poor… In his famous manifesto,
Luke 4:18-19, citing Isaiah 61:1-2
18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
One of the clearest evidences that there is a God at work in the world… is that human beings can have this sense of justice, which is much more difficult to explain if you believe we are simply the result of time of a chance and that we are motivated by a Darwinian survival of the fittest instinct.
I don’t know if you’ve saw the Nov. 13 issue of TIME with the story God vs. Science.
In that issue of TIME there is a debate featured between scientist Dr. Richard Dawkins, author of the God Delusion and Dr. Francis Collins, who led the successful effort to complete Human Genome Project which mapped all of the human DNA.
Richard Dawkins in his book the God Delusion has argued that altruism is part of survival of the fittest, if you help someone else, it might help in you survive in the long run. At the McKinsey consulting firm, they encourage you to be nice to someone you fire because they might be your boss one day.
But Francis Collins argues that there many acts of altruism that are not based on the fact that the other person we are being kind to is part of your family or people who can pay you back. He cites Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chamber would be the opposite of this. He’s risking his own life to help others who don’t belong to his clan.
Canadian journalist Bronwyn Drainie describes the surprising behavior of a haredi woman i.e.—an ultra-orthodox Jew—at a Jerusalem street market. Drainie says:
The most heroic single act I heard of during my two years in Jerusalem involved a haredi woman. One day, the Jewish street market just around the corner from my boys' school, an Arab terrorist drew a knife among the throng of shoppers and managed to stab two young men before fleeing for his life. The crowd of Israelis, incensed, began running after him, a number of them drawing pistols as they ran. The Arab darted across the street, running straight towards a haredi woman of 40 who was standing at a bus-stop. Her name was Bella Freund.
She sized up what was happening. She stepped directly into the Arab's path and tripped him so that he fell to the ground, and she threw herself on top of him to protect him. The crowd kicked her, spat on her, threatened her with their guns, but they could not loosen her hold on the Arab, and she lay there until the police arrived to take him into custody.
“Her hatred of Arabs, her lifelong conditioning never to touch a man who wasn't her husband, all of it was set aside in a split-second of truth. "I could not see a helpless man killed by a mob, whatever he had done."
Where does that instinct from? The Darwinian instinct to out survive everyone else? Or is a better explanation, that there is a God at work in human beings?
When the Spirit of God comes upon us we become people justice and compassion loving those who do not advantage us…
What else will happen when the Spirit of God comes upon us?
What happen to our relationships?
Then the text goes on to say…
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
It would be interesting to mark out how different commentators explain this text and when and where and how this is fulfilled in the Kingdom, but that’s different sermon…
But commentators agree on one thing that was Spirit falls upon people and as God’s Kingdom is established… those who were naturally enemies will live in harmony…
We see this quality powerfully in Jesus, we see him loving people were his “enemies.”
Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at the well, the kind of person no respectable Jewish man would engage in conversation with because she was a woman and because she was from a race despised by the Jewish people.… Jesus broke the rules and loved people who were despised, cultural outsiders.
Jesus loved his enemies. As was so moving portrayed in the movie the Passion of the Christ… He asked God to forgive those who were nailing his wrists and feet to the cross…
A South African woman stood in an emotionally charged courtroom, listening to white police officers acknowledge the atrocities they had perpetrated in the name of apartheid.
Officer van de Broek acknowledged his responsibility in the death of her son. Along with others, he had shot her 18-year-old son at point-blank range. He and the others partied while they burned his body, turning it over and over on the fire until it was reduced to ashes.
Eight years later, van de Broek and others arrived to seize her husband. A few [hours] later, shortly after midnight, van de Broek came to fetch the woman. He took her to a woodpile where her husband lay bound. She was forced to watch as they poured gasoline over his body and ignited the flames that consumed his body. The last words she heard her husband say were "Forgive them."
Now, van de Broek stood before her awaiting judgment. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked her what she wanted.
"I want three things," she said calmly. "I want Mr. van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband's body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial.
"Second, Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him.
"Third, I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him, too. I would like someone to lead me to where he is seated, so I can embrace him and he can know my forgiveness is real."
As the elderly woman was led across the courtroom, van de Broek fainted, overwhelmed. Someone began singing "Amazing Grace." Gradually everyone joined in.
This woman understood that to be reconciled with God and was also to be called to reconcile with our neighbors.
The Spirit of God gave her the capacity to do this.
Galatians 5:22-23 tells us that fruit of the Spirit is love.
The Spirit of Christmas (not Christmas sentiment) but the Spirit of Christmas, makes us wise, just, and loving.
My wife and I recently had dinner with a doctor and his wife. This doctor is on faculty of UBC medical school/BC Leadership Chair in Child Development is doing some very important research on infant development…
He was telling us that research with rats has been shown that early life experiences set the gene patterns in their brain.
As he and his team do research on infants they are discovering early experience of stress in a child can set the gene patterns in their brains at in the early years of their lives, calibrating their vulnerability to stressors and perhaps creating pathways for the rest of their lives.
For example, exposure to many stressful events early in life, in a child who has a genetic based vulnerability to depression, can lead to greater vulnerability to depression in adult life.
(BTW, if this research is validated it really makes one question the wisdom of fathers who say, “I’ll work like a dog when my kids are really young, because they won’t remember if I was around or gone, and once I’m a little older, like adolescents, I’ll spend time with them, then I’ll really influence them then…”).
How does connect to the sermon?
If our brain pathways are set early in life, we may wonder whether we can really change or not…
If the Spirit of God comes upon you can be made new… you can become a person of wisdom, justice, love….
If the Spirit comes upon us, we can become people who bear the fruit of the Spirit…
If you think this can’t happen for you remember… Isaiah prophecies that from an old stump… a shoot will grow… from a dry root, comes a branch will bring forth fruit…
And remember this shoot… was born into the most humble of circumstances…
The Spirit of God came upon Mary who was perceived as a scandalous woman: people thought she had been impregnated through some kind of adulterous liaison… and as Bible scholar Doug Greenwald convincingly argues it because of this perception of scandal, not because they was no vacancy sign at the local Ramada Inn, they weren’t welcomed into any guest rooms among their relatives in Bethlehem… and that she was relegated to a cellar cave…
The “Good News” of the birth of Jesus being first announced to shepherds “out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Though a shepherd was portrayed with honor in Psalm 23 by the time Jesus’ day rolled around shepherding was viewed as a despised profession – one scorned by observant Jews as unclean.
There were also rabbis during this time who held that shepherds, because of the wandering trespass nature of their profession, could never be forgiven because they could never make retribution for the grasses their flocks ate (stole) from someone else’s land. In this religious system, that means shepherds were technically known as “sinners” – people who could never get right with God – which means they also have no hope.
The angel’s announcement concerning the birth of the hope of the world comes to them… first…
The invitations comes to Magi, aka “wise men” who though successful and wealthy, from the perspective of the Hebrews would a have been seen as spiritual, ethnically, and culturally outsiders.
The Spirit comes to Elizabeth and later Simeon, who are both older people… in our culture that glamorizes youth, older people often feel invisible…
The Spirit can come to the elderly.
Jesus according to John the baptizer is not only the one on whom the Spirit descends, but who baptizes with fire.
So, this Christmas invite the Christ to become to you and baptize you with fire…. Become new not just a for a season, but for a lifetime and beyond.
Pray…
Benediction:
This Christmas and beyond through the Spirit of Christ become a person of wisdom, justice of love… Through the power of the Spirit become the change you long to see in the world…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
posted by Shigematsu at 12:20 PM
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