Here are some extracts from a friend’s Facebook post:
3 WISEMEN KILLED ATTEMPTING TO ENTER U.S.
(Bethlehem) The 3 Wisemen were killed attempting to enter the U.S. early this morning. They were still hundreds of miles away from the actual border, but the White House determined there wasn’t time to actually investigate their suspicions.
A White House spokesperson said, “We could tell from the satellite photos that these were bad people. They had gold (probably stolen), myrrh and something that was possibly fentanyl. It was hard to tell from the picture, but the President knew just enough to kill them without an actual investigation.”
…
Also arrested were two immigrants named Joseph and Mary, an unnamed child, and an angel. The White House elaborated, “We can tell you that the two suspects were trying to check into a hotel. When asked if they were married, they responded that they were “betrothed.” We can’t have people flaunting Christian moral conventions at this sacred time of the year.
“The undocumented mother was also secretly recorded as saying “(God) has brought down rulers from their thrones, and has lifted up the humble. God has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” That sounds like communism, pure and simple. These were probably Antifa terrorists.”
I could read you much more, but I don’t have time!
In amidst all our cosy preparations, with Christmas adverts that tug at the heart-strings like this year’s Waitrose ad, we miss the fact that the coming of the Messiah is much more messy and radical. And I don’t mean the mess in the manger.
It’s about regime change.
Sometimes, we get so fed up with our leaders we want change. Maybe we don’t do it like some powerful nations do, where they act nefariously in another country to change the leadership. But look at last year’s General Election here. Broadly speaking, the country was so fed up with the Conservatives that people voted for anyone who wasn’t Conservative. It wasn’t so much a vote for, as a vote against. No wonder the Labour majority was called a ‘loveless landslide.’
In the ancient world, of course the general population didn’t have a say, but kings were replaced and sometimes entire dynasties were removed. It was their version of regime change.
Isaiah 11 proposes the most radical regime change of all. A regime change that brings in the Messiah. Verse 1:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
Not even a shoot from the stump of David, for he was far from perfect. An adulterer, it not actually a rapist, and a murderer. The greatest king of all had his faults. Instead, Isaiah prepares us to sing
Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,
Great David’s greater Son![1]
So what will characterise the much-needed Messiah, who alone can bring true regime change?
Three qualities:
Firstly, wisdom:
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.
Do you recognise these words? We have adapted them for the laying-on of hands at Confirmation and Reception into Membership of the Methodist Church. The minister prays this for the candidates:
By your power and grace, Lord,
strengthen these your servants,
that they may live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
Increase in them your gifts of grace,
and fill them with your Holy Spirit:
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding;
the Spirit of discernment and inner strength;
the Spirit of knowledge, holiness, and awe.[2]
And doubtless we expect the Holy Spirit to impart these qualities: wisdom, understanding, discernment, inner strength, knowledge, holiness, and awe. I’m sure it’s right to expect that.
But there is a specific context to these qualities of wisdom in Isaiah 11. All of the qualities he lists – wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, the knowledge and fear of the Lord – are lacking in the people of Judah and also of their enemies, such as Assyria. There are various quotes in the preceding two or three chapters that illustrate this.[3]
The Messiah is the One who brings true godly wisdom without lack – we might say it’s wisdom, the whole wisdom, and nothing but the wisdom of God.
When Jesus comes and begins his ministry in the power of the Spirit, we see this without a shadow of a doubt. In Matthew’s Gospel, there are five blocks of Jesus’ teaching, reinforcing the fact that here is the ‘One greater than Moses’ who was prophesied, given that there are five books colloquially known as ‘The Five Books of Moses’ in the Old Testament.
We can gain wisdom from other sources, but nothing is like the wisdom of Jesus. It’s why our high church friends stand for the Gospel reading in worship. They are saying, here is the centre of divine wisdom and revelation in the life and teaching of Jesus.
If we believe we are living under the regime change of the Messiah (which Christians are as citizens of God’s kingdom) then there is a clear application of this truth to us. To honour Jesus as the coming Messiah, our calling is to immerse ourselves in the wisdom of his teaching and commit ourselves to following it more fully.
For that, we too will need the Spirit – just as even Jesus himself, the Son of God, did, at his baptism.
If we are citizens of the coming kingdom, then this is what we do.
Secondly, justice:
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 round his waist.
Justice. We all want that, don’t we? Our governments should deliver justice. Just so long as we are the ones who are in the right, and those we don’t like are condemned. And we’d like just to leave us feeling comfortable.
If those are our hopes, then the justice of the Messiah’s regime change will not be what we want. He will bless the poor and the needy (verse 4) – well, that won’t be so great for those of who are used to living with comfort and privilege. For to elevate them, to give them what they need and what is rightfully theirs will means less for us.
And as for all that uncouth talk about striking the earth with the rod of his mouth and slaying the wicked with the breath of his mouth – oh, we don’t like all that violent stuff, do we? Isn’t this one of those parts of the Bible we’d rather strike out? Where’s gentle Jesus, meek and mild? Where’s inclusive Jesus in that?
Or let’s be honest: where’s nice, cosy, liberal, middle-class Jesus?
I’m sorry: he doesn’t exist.
But show passages like these and the similar ones in Revelation that we like to dismiss as altogether too gory to those who are suffering for their faith, and they will rejoice in them. Through the Messiah, God will put things right! If we believe in a God of justice, we must not deny that he will deal with the impenitent.
However, it will be delayed. When Jesus comes and gives his manifesto as Messiah to the synagogue at Nazareth in Luke 4, he reads from Isaiah 61, but he stops before it goes on to talk about ‘the day of vengeance of our God.’ That is coming, but not yet.
Why? Because in his mercy, the Messiah offers the opportunity for even the most reprehensible to repent and amend their ways.
But Jesus is indeed coming to bring good news for the poor. He is coming, as his mother prophesied in the Magnificat, to bring down rulers from their thrones, lift up the humble, fill the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. This is what regime change under the Messiah looks like.
And so again, our duty as citizens of that coming kingdom can be stated very simply, even if it is challenging to implement. It is to advocate for the poor and challenge the powerful.
Thirdly and finally, peace:
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 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand 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.
The thought of peace between different animals is appealing. As you know, we are dog lovers, and our cocker spaniel can be a bit of a grumpy old man with other animals, especially other dogs, and most notably on his night-time walk. There’s something about the dark. We have taken to referring to one other dog on our estate as ‘Enemy Dog’, because ours has taken a particular dislike to the red flashing light he wears on his collar at night. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf, the lion, and the yearling together? I’d vote for that.
Sadly, we’re dealing with prophetic imagery here rather than a literal prediction. As John Goldingay, the scholar I cited last week, says here:
Context suggests that the talk of harmony in the animal world is a metaphor for harmony in the human world. … A literal interpretation of verses 6-8 would also have difficulty in explaining how wolves and leopards can remain themselves if they lie down with lambs and goats.[4]
So what is the metaphor saying? Goldingay again:
The strong and powerful live together with the weak and powerless because the latter can believe that the former are no longer seeking to devour them.[5]
The Messiah brings together and reconciles the strong and the weak, the powerful and the powerless. They are not divided, they are family. No-one takes advantage of anyone else. What matters in relationships is everybody’s well-being. The ‘goodwill to all on whom God’s favour rests’ that the angels spoke about to the shepherds becomes ‘goodwill among all’.
What does this sound like? Well, to me it sounds like what Jesus always intended his church to be. The redeemed community, the colony of God’s kingdom, is to be the place where the rich and the poor, the highly educated and the barely literate, Europeans, Africans and Asians, the neurotypical and the neurodivergent, old and young, male and female, all care for one another and promote each other’s welfare. Because that’s what Jesus does. That’s the sort of society the Messiah builds.
And imagine not only enjoying a fellowship like that (even though it entails hard and painful work at times). Imagine also inviting someone in to experience it, and being able to say, this is what life is like when Jesus is in charge.
Indeed, this is what regime change under Messiah Jesus brings.
[1] James Montgomery (1771-1854)
[2] Methodist Worship Book, p100.
[3] John Goldingay, Isaiah (New International Biblical Commentary), p84.
[4] Op. cit., pp 85, 88.
[5] p85.
Big Circumstance 