From the Stump of Jesse, From the Line of King David

Sometimes I think we live in a world of broken promises, a world of good beginnings and either bad or incomplete endings… It is a world where so often the people who lead us, disappoint us. They let us down.

Martin Buber says when you look at the Scriptures, “the history of the kings of Israel is the history of the failure of the one who is anointed to realise the promise of his calling. The rise of [the idea of a messiah] – is the hope of the coming of an anointed king who realizes the promise of his anointing”.

You know the prophet Isaiah lived during the reigns of 4 kings of Judah… King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz and King Hezekiah. They were all descendents from the stump of Jesse, from the line of David.

Now Scripture records problems with 3 of the 4 kings. While 3 of them did what was “right in the sight of the Lord”, they still mostly behaved and pursued the trappings of the kings of the lands all around them. Instead of placing their faith in the help of the Living God of Israel, more often they relied on their own success. They put their faith in political intrigue and timely alliances and their own ability to make war.

Take King Uzziah for instance… Under Uzziah, the Kingdom of Judah reaches the height of its power. Uzziah develops the economic resources of the country as well as its military might. He conquers the Philistines and the Arabians and he receives tribute from the Ammonites. Scripture says he was strong and prosperous because “… he did what was right in the sight of the Lord”.

Yet Uzziah’s success & strength became his weakness. Scripture says, “he grew proud… to his destruction”. Uzziah attempts to enter the Temple to burn incense on the Alter, a privilege reserved for the priesthood only. Azariah, the chief priest pleads with him, “It is not for you Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out from this place, for you have done wrong… it will bring you no honour from the Lord God”. 

Uzziah becomes angry and as his anger grows leprosy breaks out on his forehead. And Scripture says, “King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord”. 

And when things got really tough, when the Kingdom of Judah began paying tribute to the Kingdom of Assyria, King Ahaz from the stump of Jesse, from the royal line of David – even turned his back on the Lord. He desecrated the Temple & called on the help of other gods.

All of these events occurred during the lifetime of Isaiah. And as a prophet it was his duty to call people back to God. It was his calling to describe the visions he was given of God’s alternative reality. And while these visions filled Isaiah with hope, they also made him unpopular with the kings he served.

Isaiah 11:1-10 is a messianic vision of a peaceful kingdom. It is an alternate vision of a king of the stump of Jesse overwhelmed by the Spirit of God, who is both human and holy. This king is so singled minded in his zeal for God, that he realizes the promise of his anointing… he establishes the Kingdom of God… a kingdom of righteousness and justice and mercy. 

Consuming Fire

Openness… I usually have a sense of openness as being an attitude of quietness. The idea is that if I am still and attentive for long enough in my spirit, I can begin perceiving God’s reality more as it is. But what about openness as ‘the enflaming’, the quickening, in the sense of the physical & spiritual person being overwhelmed by God’s holiness… like in Acts 1 ?

It says the disciples were gathered together in ‘the room upstairs’. They were ‘constantly devoting themselves to prayer together’… “And suddenly from heaven there came… the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house… divided tongues of fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

This sounds like an experience of spiritual ecstasy, of one’s whole being quivering with the awareness of the presence of God.

Martin Buber says, “to the man in ecstasy the habitual is eternally new.” He illustrates with the example of the zaddik – a holy man -  who stands at the window in the early hours of the sun dawning. Weeping, he says, “A few hours ago it was night and now it is day – God brings up the day !” And he is full of fear & trembling. The zaddik also says, “Every person should be ashamed before the Creator: were they perfect as they were destined to be, then they would be astonished & awakened & enflamed because of their renewal… at each time and in each moment”. 

This kind of openness reminds me of Jeremiah when he says, “I will not mention Him or speak anymore in His name, then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.” (Jer20:9)

There is nothing passive or particularly reflective about this kind of openness. It is demanding like the Sermon on the Mount where the receiving is in the asking and the finding is in the searching and the opening is in the knocking. The only thing that is certain is an experience of living with the volume turned right up… moment by moment !

Name Calling

Martin Buber says, “In the Torah, God makes no philosophical statements about himself & speaks no formulas.” The God of Israel – the LORD, Yahweh – is a name and not a notion. The difference between the two is perhaps the difference between Jerusalem & Athens. A notion like ‘god’ applies to all objects of similar properties. That’s where we get the idea of  ’the gods’ from.

A proper name, however,  applies to a unique individual. A notion describes, a name evokes. The name Yahweh applies to the one and only God of all people. A notion is attained through generalization – a name is learned through interaction. From a Hebrew perspective to know a name is to know the character of the bearer of the name. A notion is conceived, a name is called. Abraham Heschel says, “the notion of a god and The God of Israel – the Lord Yahweh, are profoundly incompatible”. The God of Israel is a comsuming fire (Dt. 4:24)… not an abstraction and definitely not a generalization. 

Living Middle…

Martin Buber says when people associate their lives together, when they gather around a living middle then community can arise mong them.

If we stubbornly chose to live our lives in close proximity to other people that means there will be times when they see us weak and vulnerable, times when they experience flashes, even prolonged periods of our darker shadow side, the side we like to hide.  As night follows day, there will be times when we mess up and make mistakes.

Life lived in the presence of others, if it is to be life that is lived truly will be glorious sometimes, yet often it will be inglorious even tedious. Sometimes it will be energising & synergistic, often it will be painful – even self-defeating. Sometimes there will be intense joy yet at other times there will be boredom- even sadness.

Yet here’s the thing. When a group of people make Jesus their rabbi, when Jesus becomes the living middle, then all that chaotic mix and clash of egos and different hard-edges opinions begins to become plastic and malleable and refined in the fires of love. What makes community possible is that they fail and they fail and they fail… The value of that failure is that they are failing forwards and they are doing it together.

And when people who associate their lives together don’t fail, they are magnificent in the quality of community that arises among them.  Together what they can achieve is just so much more ! They participate in the Great Reversal and they change the world. They are truly God’s alternative community who are establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth.