A Wolf As a Guest of a Lamb?

One of the things I love about Advent is that the first Mass reading each day comes from the Book of Isaiah. Today’s first Mass reading is the lovely vision of Isaiah that

Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.

Huh? A wolf the guest of a lamb? A calf browsing with a lion? A baby playing in a cobra’s den? Crazy stuff! That can’t happen, our rational mind says.

As I sat with that passage this morning, one of the lines that came to mind was the that used by Senator Robert F. Kennedy as a theme of his 1968 campaign for the U.S. presidential nomination: “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

The first step toward a better future is imagining that it can exist. To believe that that the unthinkable is possible. If our starting point is that it is impossible, it will be impossible. Who knows what would be possible if we were able to imagine a future where Isaiah’s prophesy was true!

Perhaps we should be more willing to sit with Isaiah’s vision without dismissing it as impossible. Or to frame it as Pope Francis did in his recent Apostolic Exhortation, “Our faith is challenged to discern how wine can come from water and how wheat can grow in the midst of weeds.” (Neither of which seems a whole lot less outlandish than a lion hanging out with a lamb.) As the Pope said, “that we are more realistic must not mean that we are any less trusting in the Spirit…Nobody can go off to battle unless he is fully convinced of victory beforehand. If we start without confidence, we have already lost half the battle and we bury our talents.”

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Isaiah 1:18

The Book of Isaiah opens with what is called the Book of Judgment – a scathing indictment of the people of Israel, who have turned their backs on God. God calls the people of Israel a “sinful nation, people laden with wickedness,” an “evil race” who “have forsaken the Lord.” He calls them Sons who have disowned him and tells them: “Your incense is loathsome to me….I close my eyes to you.” God seems to condemn completely the entirety of his people, accusing that “From the sole of the foot to the head there is no sound spot.”

But as harsh as the indictments are, God cannot sustain them consistently. Even in the first chapter, God also invites with words that always touch me to the core: “Come now, let us set things right…Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; Though they may be crimson red, they may become white as wool. If you are willing.” (Isaiah 1:18)

Those words have such power, conveying to us the incredible reality that God constantly invites us back; is constantly there with arms out saying, I’m here and we can be together….We can be reconciled. You have the choice to come back to me.

When I talked about his line from Isaiah in my talk at the first session of the UST Advent Retreat on Monday, my friend Tom pointed out that the King James Bible translates the first line of Isaiah 1:18 as “Come now, and let us reason together.” The “let us set things right” language I quoted in my talk comes from the New American Bible. Tom wrote to me later that evening saying he had checked out some other Bibles and the line is variously translated as “let us set things right,” “let us reason together,” “let us settle the matter” and “let us settle this dispute.” I then contacted Rabbi Norman Cohen, who I’ve referenced before in posts, who told me that the Jewish Publication Society translation is closer to “let us reach an understanding.”

The different translations evoke very different feelings in me. As I said when the issue arose during the session, “Come, let us set things right” is language that soothes my soul. It brings me back to my early days of returning to Christianity, during which I had great insecurity of where things were between me and God…and the joy when I finally felt that things were “right” between us. So, to me, “let us set things right,” expresses God’s desire for exactly that joyful state with His people.

“Let us reason together” and “let us reach an understanding” are compelling in a different way. They feel less like God scolding us like misbehaving children than inviting us into dialogue, into a collaborative process of healing the relationship, and not letting disagreements stand between us.

“Settle the dispute,” as Tom pointed out to me in our discussion puts one in mind of God’s “legal” case against Israel for breaking the covenant between God and His people.

I am no Biblical scholar and have no ability to judge which of those is the “right” translation. (Indeed, Rabbi Cohen suggested when we spoke that the differences go to prove that whenever we are engaged in translation, by definition there is interpretation involved.) But we don’t really have to come to a firm view on that. I think there is value in praying with the different translations side-by-side to come to a fuller sense of what God is conveying to us. God’s fidelity. God’s desire to see the covenant restored. God’s amazing love for us. And, on our side, our need to accept what God offers, to open our hearts to reconciliation with God.

Behold Our God, To Whom We Looked To Save Us

Every year during Advent, we read from the prophet Isaiah in the first Mass reading each day. Isaiah is one of the great prophets of Advent, a man invited by God to speak His word, to tell the people what it is that God wants from them. To challenge the people to be more than they have been.

Todays’ first reading is a passage that holds a special place in my heart. It is the passage I read at the Mass of Transferral for my dear friend Fr. Don Shane, who died in 1993, and was also one of the readings that we picked to for my father’s funeral mass later that same year. It is a passage that fills me with hope and confidence. It is the promise that, notwithstanding all the suffering and all the tears, God ultimately will make all things well.

I memorized the passage at the time I was preparing to read it at Don’s Mass of Transferral and I love the words too much to paraphrase them or add anything to them. So let me just share them:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples A feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, The web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces; The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.

On that day it will be said: “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!”

Why Spend your Money for What is Not Bread

I keep coming back to a line in Isaiah that was proclaimed as the first reading at Mass yesterday.  It is line I’ve heard before, but somehow it struck me in a deeper way when I heard it last evening than when I’ve heard it before.  Isaiah quotes the Lord invitation,

All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!

I’ve sat with these words before, and they always evoke a response of gratitude and awe at God’s loving embrace. But it is the question in the next line that was so striking and has been sitting with me:

Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?

I sat up as the line was proclaimed. Put that way, of course, it seems so absurd – why would one spend money on that which cannot satisfy? Why waste our wages on things that don’t nourish? Yet we do it all the time, don’t we? To paraphrase the old song, we look for satisfaction in all the wrong places, putting time, effort and money into things that can, at best, bring only temporary satisfaction of our wants and desires. And while we do, there is God – constantly extending His invitation: Come to me. Take what I offer freely. Come to me, says God, “that you may have life.” Sounds like a pretty good deal.

In the words a Dominican friend of mine once used to end a sermon: The deal’s on the table. What are you going to do with it?

The Promise of God in Isaiah

I’ve said already how much I love hearing the Book of Isaiah proclaimed at Mass during Advent. In the midst of the cold of winter (and, believe me, it is already plenty cold here in Minneapolis)…in the midst of the continuing economic problems facing the United States…in the midst of seemingly daily news reports of one scandal or another…in the midst of personal grief over the loss of loved ones…in the midst of all of our ordinary daily woes, is the promise of God. In today’s first Mass reading, we hear:

Fear not, I will help you…

You shall rejoice in the Lord, and glory in the Holy One of Israel…

I, the Lord will answer [the afflicted and the needy]; I, the God of Israel will not forsake them…

I wll turn the desert into a marshland, and the dry ground into springs of water.

Don’t just read the words. Close your eyes and hear God speak them. Hear God speak them to you. Hear God’s promise and feel God’s love.

The Book of Isaiah

Among the things I love about Advent is that we get to read each day at Mass from the Book of Isaiah, one of the major prophets of the Old Testament.

The Book of Isaiah opens with what is called the Book of Judgment – a scathing indictment of the people of Israel. It is a long and bitter attack on the arrogance and hypocrisy of Jerusalem’s leaders. In the second verse, God says, “Sons have I raised and reared, but they have disowned me!” And immediately thereafter, God laments: “Ah! sinful nation, people laden with wickedness, evil race, corrupt children! They have forsaken the Lord.” And God tells his people, “Your incense is loathsome to me….I close my eyes to you.”

But as harsh as the indictments are, God cannot sustain them consistently. Even in the first chapter of Isaiah, which contains all of the lines I just shared, God also invites: “Come now, let us set things right…Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow.”

And how will God set things right? By sending His Son to live among us, the Son who “shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the land’s afflicted.” We learn in today’s reading from Isaiah that the child will sprout like a shoot “from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” Isaiah promises this coming and promises that the rule of Immanuel will be splendid. We hear today that

the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair. There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea.

What a vision! O come, Emmanuel!

God’s Ways

In Isaiah, God says, “my thought are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” a statement well illustrated by today’s Gospel from Matthew. Jesus tells the parable about a landowner who hires workers for his vineyard. He hires some at dawn, hires some more at 9:00 in the morning, hires others at 3:00 in the afternoon and even finds a few more to hire at 5:00. When evening comes and it it sime to settle up, the landowner pays the same “usual daily wage” to each of the workers, even though they worked for wildly different amounts of time.

I’m guessing a lot of people hearing this story have exactly the same reaction as that of the workers hired at dawn: “We worked all day and those guys worked only a couple of hours. It’s not fair to give them the same wages we get. We should get more.” Very human way to look at it – those that work more should get paid more. We analyze things in terms of earnings and desert, and justice, in human terms, means giving people what they deserve.

But God always gives us everything we need, and more, without regard to what we “earned.” God doesn’t apportion his love based on what we deserve. We, each and every one of us, get it all. If we listen to God all the time and constantly try to do God’s will, we get unlimited love. If we listen sometimes and try to follow God sometimes, we get the same unlimited love. If we listen and follow once in a while, we get unlimited love. And if we ignore God completely, we still get the same unlimited love.

It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense in human terms. But God’s ways are not our ways. Not by a long shot.