A Season for Dreamers
December 6th, 2005
The Second Sunday of Advent
John Shuck
First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee
Texts: Isaiah 40:1-11
“I Dream’d in a Dream” by Walt Whitman
I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks
Of the whole of the rest of the earth.
I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love,
It led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.
--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Advent is a powerfully emotional season. It can be an opportunity for spiritual renewal and growth. It is a time to bring to consciousness our longing, a time to voice our hopes for a renewed creation, a time to dream of a just and peaceful future, and a time to open our senses to the presence of God.
Yet the traditional texts for Advent and the theology associated with these texts can be problematic for many of us. Last week we dealt with the apocalyptic Mark 13 passage that anticipates the divine savior and judge, who Mark calls the Son of Man, who will come to save the world in the nick of time. For many Christians, this makes no sense literally, and I doubt for many of us that it makes sense or is healthy for us even as a metaphor. I do not think that our growth is enhanced by continuing to put our hopes in a divine superman to come and save the day.
The lectionary text for this second Sunday of Advent comes from the book of Isaiah. Like Mark 13, this is also a provocative, powerful, and problematic text. The subtitle of today’s sermon might be called: “Debunking Unhealthy Images of God, Part 2”. I wonder if it isn’t time for progressive Christians to deal with these issues straightaway, not for the purpose of debunking, but for the purpose of renewal. According to Episcopal Bishop, Mark Dwyer, “every 500 years the church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale.” For many of us, it is time to clean out the garage of leftover doctrines, beliefs and practices and to make some decisions about what to keep and what to let go.
http://www.jesusseminar.com/Events/Spring2006/spring2006.html
I do not insist. I do not pretend to have the answers. I am not sure we are ready to make final decisions. I am not sure we have something to put in place of that which we need to discard. But I think it is time to critically examine what we have inherited as to whether it speaks to us any longer and will empower us and enhance our lives.
This passage from Isaiah is a good illustration of at least one aspect of God, a major one in my view, that needs our critical eye. I am going to offer a quick overview of this passage. I will then offer some thoughts about its theological assumptions and the reasons for those assumptions. Finally, some speculation on my part of how we might formulate our struggles in a more helpful way.
Scholars have determined that the book of Isaiah covers two time periods, possibly three. The first 39 chapters speak to events that were taking place in the eighth century BCE. Chapters 40 through the end speaks to events in the sixth century and later. The major event in Israel’s history is known as the Exile. In the year 587 BCE, Babylon conquered Jerusalem and took the elite class to Babylon. The Persians conquered the Babylonians in 539 and Cyrus the Persian offered the edict that all captured peoples could return to their homeland. The section beginning with chapter 40, the section of text for this morning, reflects this event.
This period of Exile from 587 to 539 was a time of theological creativity for Israel. A crisis makes a person think about God and about life. The question that these folks had was this: “Why did Yahweh allow this to happen?” This is a pretty common question. In the midst of suffering, where is God? Yahweh cut a covenant with us. What happened? Did Yahweh break the covenant? Did we break the covenant? Was Yahweh not up to the task? Were Yahweh’s competitors stronger?
Isaiah Chapter 40 and the chapters following provide an explanation for the Exile and an explanation for the joyous Return.
Isaiah 40 begins: “Comfort, O Comfort my people says your God.”
The verb “comfort” is in the second person plural. “Ya’ll, Comfort my people.” Or “All Ya’ll, Comfort my people!” The scene is the heavenly court where the Holy One of Israel, Yahweh, is on his throne and all of the heavenly creatures—angels, seraphim and cherubim—are around the throne. It is as if Yahweh is speaking to his staff members. Here is the new plan. Our job now is to comfort Israel. The suffering is over. The Exile is over. Their penalty has been paid. Israel has done its time.
Then a herald in the heavenly council announces the good news. The good news is that the people will come home. The metaphor for that is a highway through the desert upon which the exiles will travel. The highway is like the “train bound for glory.”
Then the herald has another announcement. This is the announcement that all flesh is as grass, no more lasting than a flower. But the Word of Yahweh stands forever. We are mortal, Yahweh is immortal—so is Yahweh’s Word of promise.
Finally, the herald announces that Jerusalem will be the herald of good tidings, the city on the hill. Yahweh returns to Zion and will lead the people as a shepherd leads the sheep.
The passage is powerful, hopeful and joyful. I personally resonate with much of the poetry: “All flesh is as grass and its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of Yahweh will stand forever.” I use that text at funerals. I love the poetry. It tells me the truth. My ego, my consciousness, my flesh in the end faces the same fate as a blade of grass. Yet there is something that I can glimpse, that I can sense, of which I am a part, that is lasting—that endures beyond the “wrecks of time.”
I also love the image of the pathway in the wilderness. Yahweh is making a path and I am coming home. The Gospel writers liked that image as well. They put a twist on it and applied it to John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus.
And as a minister, I take seriously the command to comfort—comfort the people, speak tenderly—they have done their time and paid their dues. Many people have paid double. They have had more than their share of trouble in this world. Tell them that the time for sorrow has ended. It is time for joy.
Much of this poetry, and it is rich, finds me.
However, some of it is lost on me.
The only way the prophets could make sense of their suffering was to understand their suffering as divine punishment. The Babylonians didn’t destroy Jerusalem, rape, pillage and murder the people. Yahweh did it. The Babylonians did it on Yahweh’s command in order to punish Israel. That is harsh. But what other explanation is there?
What price do we pay for a God who is all powerful but absent in our suffering, or is the cause of our suffering? For me, the price is too high. It is too high as well for literary critic and Jew by birth, Harold Bloom. In his latest book, Jesus and Yahweh, Harold Bloom writes:
“The prophetic litany throughout the Tanakh is that the Jewish people have betrayed their Covenant with Yahweh. Not once are we told the other and more awful truth: God’s destruction of his covenanted people.”
--Harold Bloom, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine. (London: Penguin, 2005), p. 222.
People often tell me that the God of the “Old Testament” is violent but not the God of the “New Testament”. My answer to that is: Go see Mel Gibson’s The Passion. There you will find popular Christianity. According to Mel Gibson and Christianity as commonly understood, we are so wicked that God has to beat, whip, bludgeon, nail, and crucify his own son even though he would really rather do it to us. We deserve it after all. We are bad, bad children. What price do we pay for that type of God?
John Shelby Spong pulls no punches in his criticism. He says that this God is a Divine Child Abuser. In Spong’s latest book, The Sins of Scripture, he writes:
“The angry deity who judges human life from some heavenly throne might make us feel safe, but this deity always shrinks life, for that is what guilt, fear and righteousness do. This is a god-image that must be broken; but when it is, the traditional way we have told the Jesus story will surely die with it. I believe it must. When it does, I think it will be good riddance, for with the death of that understanding of Christianity this faith may yet have a chance to be born again.”
--John Shelby Spong, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love. (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), p. 174
The price we pay for an all-powerful God who either ignores or actively causes our suffering is the same price abused children pay for living in a violent home. It isn’t worth it. The illusion of safety of having an all-powerful deity in control is not worth the psychological and spiritual damage this deity causes through neglect or abuse of his children. This deity, like an abusive father, is something to survive not to embrace. This deity is something from whom for our own health we need to escape.
Harold Kushner, a rabbi and author, many years ago wrote a book entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He wrote that if he had to make a choice (and we do have to make a choice) between a god who is all-powerful and a god who is all-good, he would choose goodness over power. I agree with him.
--Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. (New York: Schocken, 1981)
Regardless of all the mental gymnastics of theologians trying to claim that we can have both all-power and all-goodness in our Deity, I don’t find them convincing or helpful. The psychological and spiritual damage is not worth the price. In the face of suffering and evil, an all powerful deity, who could do something but chooses not to, is at best, a neglectful parent.
Who or what is God for me? God for me is the impulse to be fully human. God does not believe we are bad and deserving of punishment. Adam and Eve did not sin in the garden. I believe that that myth is a story about growing up and discovering consciousness, of becoming human. Jesus did not come to die for our sins to satisfy divine wrath that is directed at us. Jesus came to open us to the divine realm—to the possibility of goodness—to the presence of love and hope and peace in our lives.
What about suffering? Suffering is not the result of sin. Suffering, violence, and evil are the byproducts of life. Suffering is not fair. It is not evenly distributed. It is not caused by God. God is that presence that helps us to cope. God is the courage that enables us to seek comfort and to treasure moments of joy in the midst of our suffering and that of others. God is the compassion that enables us to touch those who suffer. God is the dream that inspires us to work toward the end of hatred that causes needless suffering.
The God I trust in today is not nearly powerful as Yahweh of old who can thrust harpoons into Leviathon’s nostrils, or of John Calvin’s severe Trinity who knows all, sees all, and is in control of all. My deity on that scale is much smaller, but much better, I think. My deity does not reside in celestial kingdoms but rather in places like Walt Whitman’s city of friends:
I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks
Of the whole of the rest of the earth.
I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love,
It led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.
That is a city that will be built by humans, slowly and painfully through the long process of evolution. My deity is the deity of humanity: a deity alive in Jesus of Nazareth in his wisdom and in his acts of love and compassion.
When it comes time for our Christian rummage sale, I will keep much of Isaiah’s poetry. But I will leave behind God’s judgment for our sin as the cause of human suffering.
I will leave behind the divine superman who could help us but has better things to do at the moment. I will keep the compassion of Jesus who weeps with those who suffer and in the shared weeping, loves. That love is divine and human at once.
I will leave behind bloody theories of atonement. I will keep Jesus’ courageous integrity to speak truth to power even when the consequences of integrity are grave.
And during Advent,
I will dream and dream and I will dare to dream and I will keep dreaming.
Amen.