Searching for Christmas
It Is What It Is, Unless…
Isaiah 11:1-10 (LB)
I was talking with someone recently and we got to discussing a situation in that person’s family. It involves a family member who continues to live in a pattern of unhealthy behaviors but doesn’t welcome anyone’s help, and after discussing for a while, the person said, “but what can you do?” And almost on cue, we said at the same time, “It is what it is.”
That’s become somewhat of a mantra of our modern era. It is what it is. That’s a way of saying you feel little power to change something, but you accept it for what it is and own your limitation to change it. It is what it is. It can be a helpful refrain.
You have a co-worker who drives you crazy. That person does little things that annoy you. And you find yourself not even wanting to come to work, until you say, “You know what? I can’t change that person. It is what it is.”
You are hosting Christmas this year for your family, which means your brother-in-law will be there, the one who loves bringing up politics because he knows it gets under your skin. And you feel yourself beginning to dread Christmas, until you decide to accept things as they are and remind yourself, “It is what it is.”
You blow out a tire because you hit a pothole, and it’s going to make you late for an important appointment. You start to get really irritated and angry at the city of Indianapolis for not fixing the roads, and you feel anxiety over what it will mean to be so late, until finally you say, “I can’t do anything about it. It is what it is.”
You get home and your spouse says, “Did you pick up the dry cleaning like I asked this morning, and texted to remind you an hour ago? Because I’m going to need that jacket first thing in the morning?” And, you know if you admit that you forgot it’s not going to be pretty. And you feel anxiety rise until you simply say, “Hey babe, it…is not going to take me long to go back and pick it up. I just had to come home and see your beautiful face first.”
It is what it is. If you’re talking about healthy acceptance and acknowledgment of boundaries and limitations, it’s a good thing to say. It is what it is, but what if it isn’t? It is what it is, unless it isn’t.
Some years ago the State Department declassified some papers from the National Security Council. They included minutes from a meeting dated Sept. 12, 1954. It read, “Security Dulles met with Japanese Premier Yoshido and told him that frankly Japan should not expect to find a market in the US because Japan doesn’t make anything Americans want.” (M. Trotter, )
It is what it is, but what if it isn’t? What if in stating the reality of a present moment we totally miss the future potential of a thing or a person? What happens when we say things like, “This situation is never going to get better? That person is never going to change?” Or worse, when we say of ourselves, “My life is never going to get better? I’m never going to change?”
Before long, what can be a helpful statement starts to become a resignation of defeat. “I’m just someone who gets angry and loses my temper. It is what it is.” “There are some neighborhoods that are going to get better services than others. It is what it is.” We live in a world where some children won’t have what others do, it is what it is.”
But what if it isn’t? What if present realities can change? What if the world can change? Here’s an important question of faith, a question every person who has even the tiniest belief in God is challenged to ask, Do I leave room for what isn’t? Do I live open to possibilities that have yet to be seen? Do I accept that my discouragement over what is does not determine what can be?
Frequently we step into moments that present the crossroads of two realities. One reality sees a future that is more of the same. A future filled with the current conditions that created the reality we see. Or we look with eyes of faith and see another reality, an unseen reality, a reality of what could be, a reality that pictures life the way God intends for it to look, one that invites us to ask: “Do I leave room for what isn’t?”
If you are serious about searching for Christmas, then get ready, because your search will take you in the direction of that question. Your search for Christmas will lead you not to Bethlehem, not to the Shepherds Fields, not to Nazareth. Your search will take you to…the mountains of North Carolina!
One of my personal places of heaven on earth is an area along the Blue Ridge Parkway called “Graveyard Fields.” (pic) It got its name because back in the 1920’s a fire reduced all the trees to burned-out stumps. All across this mountaintop field stumps resembled tombstones. So it got the name “graveyard fields.”
Today, people stop there, read the sign, look out and say, “I don’t get it. Why do they call this graveyard fields. I don’t see the stumps.” And you can’t, because the trees have grown back. The name no longer fits. It should probably be called something like “Resurrection Fields,” because stumps don’t stay stumps forever.
Isaiah’s Dream
This is the kind of place Isaiah would take us to describe God’s vision for the future. This vision is what life will look like when the Messiah comes. Isaiah begins that vision saying it will look like a stump. “A shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” (Isaiah 11:1) Who was Jesse? That was King David’s father. It was believed that a future Messiah, an anointed one, who would fulfill all God’s promises for his people would come through the lineage of King David. We find this in 2 Samuel:“Now tell my servant David, This is what the Lord God Almighty says…I will raise up your offspring to succeed you…and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” (1 Samuel: 7:8-13) This become known as the Davidic Covenant. Remember earlier this fall when we did the Bingeworthy series and started in Genesis. We talked about the Abrahamic Covenant—that God would give him land and people and make them a blessing to the world. That covenant is foundational to the Bible. But there were several other important covenants. The Mosaic Covenant in which the Ten Commandments are given. Then, the Davidic Covenant, the promise that a Messiah would come from David.
This is why the Gospels are careful to point out that Jesus was a descendant of David. Look at the very first sentence of the New Testament: “This is the lineage of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David…” (Matthew 1:1) In other words Matthew makes clear right off the bat, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant.
But why the stump? Why does Isaiah refer to David’s father, Jesse, as a stump? Because the nation was surrounded by an enemy, Assyria. The towns and cities around Jerusalem had been destroyed. Now the armies are standing at the gate ready to destroy the holy city. This scene, described in the 2 Kings, is where we will start the monologue next week. Isaiah recognizes that God’s promise feels like a distant reality. The people can’t see it. All they can see if the reality in front of them. In other words, they feel like a stump.
Have you ever felt like a stump? Have you ever felt cut down like your future has been taken away from you and you have nothing to look forward to or to hope in? That is how the people felt. But Isaiah says a “shoot will come from the stump of Jesse. It will become a branch…” Interestingly, Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up in Hebrew means “branch,” probably named that because people hoped that one day the Messiah might come from their little town.
That hope started centuries before. But along the way, people gave up on that hope. And Isaiah came along to say, stumps don’t stay stumps forever. Just like a mountain top where trees grow back, it is what it is, until it isn’t! God will do a new thing.
And listen to Isaiah’s description of the kind of person this Messiah will be. This is a description of the Messianic Age: (one at a time)
• The Spirit of wisdom, understanding counsel and might.
• The Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord
• His delight will be the obedience of the Lord
• He will not judge by appearance, false evidence or hearsay
• He will defend the poor and exploited
• He will rule against the wicked
• He will be clothed with fairness and truth
And then what Isaiah does next is paint one of the most vivid pictures in the Bible. It is a picture what life will look like when the Messiah reigns. Read together verse 6 from back of outline.
It is a picture of perfect harmony. Nothing will cause harm any more. There will be perfect peace and no fear. So what happened? Jesus came. That Messiah is no longer a future dream. Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead. But there is still war, and killing, and division in our world. Toward the end of his life Billy Graham was asked, after all the crusades, all the millions of people who helped lead to Christ, if the world was better off or not? He lamented, “I have to say, I think the conditions of the world are worse than when I started my ministry.”
What happened? Either Isaiah’s dream is inaccurate or God is!
The ‘Peaceable Kingdom’
Edward Hicks was a Quaker pastor in the 1700’s who started out as an amateur painter. He painted signs and…then he came to faith in the Quaker church. He became a pastor. He was criticized for painting because that was considered a worldly pursuit, but he wanted to connect his art to his faith.
His most memorable set of paintings were known as The Peaceable Kingdom. It was his picture of Isaiah 11, a world of perfect peace. He painted 62 versions of the same scene across his life. (pic) This is an early version. It is very light and hopeful. The animals are all together in harmony. A little child leads them. And notice in the far left corner is a picture of William Penn signing a treaty with the Lahote tribe. But as years went on his versions changed slightly.
(pic) You’ll notice in this one…Some say it reflects the changes of the world. The US did not honor William Penn’s treaty. We didn’t keep our end of the bargain…and his church experienced division. The Quakers had their first major schism.
(pic) By the end of his career his paintings were taking on a very different image. Now you see the cheetah bearing its teeth in the front.
Perhaps Edward Hicks became cynical and his faith waned. But according to Victoria Jones, who has studied Edwards life and art, she says that while Edwards got discouraged by the actions of people he kept painting as an act of faith. He clung to the hope that Christ would fulfill his promise. His paintings were a recognition that we live between Two Advents. The first Advent was the anticipation of a coming Messiah. It represents the time between Isaiah and Jesus. But Jesus’ work is not finished. He has left it to us. We are to continue his work. He will return. We live today I the second Advent. The time between Christ’s ascension and his return. The question for us is: Which Advent am I keeping?
Am I just keeping the first advent? Am I honoring what took place in history? Am I just worshipping a sentimental idea of a baby born in a manger, or am I keeping the second advent? Am I worshipping a Savior who turned over the work of his kingdom to me? Am I choosing to look for that unseen reality of what God has yet to do?
The movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, is about Fred Rogers, better known as Mr. Rogers. He was a Presbyterian pastor who was saddened by what he saw on television in its early years and wondered how TV could be leveraged to impact children. He started a show “Mr Roger’s Neighborhood.” The movie is based on a series of interviews by a reporter who admitted that at first he was out to discredit Rogers. He thought there has to be something untrue about him. But the longer he was around Rogers, the more his opinion was changed. He found Fred Rogers to be someone who saw things others didn’t see. One example is the day he watched Fred Rogers approach a boy who was swinging a play sword as if pretending he was king of the world. The only trouble is his wild swinging was dangerous for those around him. Rogers just walked over to the boy, whispered in his ear, and the boy smiled back and put his sword away.
The interviewer asked him what he said. Rogers said, “I just told him he didn’t need a sword to be strong. He’s strong on the inside.”
Go back to Isaiah’s vision. Wolf and lamb together. Leopards and goats at peace. Cows grazing among bears. Babies playing around poisonous snakes. Nothing shall hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain says the Lord. Notice that this picture is contrary to the nature of creatures. It is a wolf’s nature to attack the lamb and the leopard the goat. In other words, this passage says that God Can Change the Nature of a Creature!
This what people of faith are called to believe. Yes, living in a world where people hurt each other, and do cruel things, we are called to believe that God can still change his creatures. If you want to find Christmas, you have to be willing to look for that truth, that people can be different. Yes, you accept reality. It’s okay to say, “It is what it is,” as long as that doesn’t mean “and it’s always going to be like that.” Only God can say that. And that’s not an easy place to live—accepting what is while not quitting to believe what can be.
But that is exactly what we are called to do as a church everyday, help people step into those intersections, where they are challenged to accept the realities they face, but believe that with God’s help realities can change.
**Close with story of Ruby Bridges Rockwell painting “The Probl