University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

LEANING INTO OUR DREAMS

Isaiah 11:1-10

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Second Sunday of Advent          December 9, 2007

The well-rehearsed words Kim just read are the setting of what is known as Isaiah’s vision of the “peaceable kingdom.” Aside from their importance for Isaiah’s vision of the restoration of Israel rooted in God’s justice and peace, these verses have also become central to the Christian community as it has looked to the promise of God’s eternal reign on earth under the influence of the Spirit of the Lord. The promises of Isaiah’s vision have inspired great human dreams that have found their way to the composer’s score and the artist’s canvas alike, most notably, perhaps, in dozens of paintings by the nineteenth-century American Quaker artist Edward Hicks.

It is a magnificent vision that Isaiah sees: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” (11:6) But throughout the ages, his oracle has also been dismissed as naïve and hopelessly romantic. The so-called “realists,” in fact, have had a field day with their counter-visions.  One such contemporary alternative actually begins with the assumption that the peace Isaiah foresaw has been established:

It came to pass that all the animals of the forest met together in a great council and decided that they would together commit themselves to creating the Peaceable Kingdom at last, so that henceforth not one of them would hunt or hurt a fellow creature ever again. A while later, a lamb strolling along came upon a lion snoozing in the shade. The lion’s soft mane seemed to the lamb an exquisite pillow for a nap, and he lay down and fell into the sleep of the Peaceable Kingdom. After a while the lion awoke, saw the lamb leaning against him – and ate it. Moral: there’s always someone who didn’t hear the announcements.[1]

            I know that’s an awful story, but then, it is the way of the world to take delight in quashing the dreams that people dream… grand dreams, like Isaiah’s, and the more personal kind. I have been struck in recent years by the phenomenon associated with the television show, “American Idol.” It has drawn millions of viewers; indeed, more people voted in the last “American Idol” competition than in the last presidential election in this country… a disturbing statistic of American culture in our time, to say the least.

            I don’t watch “American Idol.” It’s not that there aren’t some remarkably talented people out there who deserve their moment in the spotlight. What I don’t like is the way the aspirations of hundreds of contestants get regularly crushed for every Clay Aiken or Carrie Underwood or Jennifer Hudson who make it to the finals. The chief “dream crusher,” I am told, is Simon Cowell, the show’s producer and one of its judges, who specializes in reducing aspiring stars to tears. He is notorious for his blunt criticisms, insults, and wisecracks about contestants and their singing abilities, or lack thereof.

Occasionally, though, the dream prevails. Occasionally, the power of the dream is stronger than the ardent nay-saying of the realists. Last summer, on the British version of the show, known as “Britain’s Got Talent,” a young Welshman named Paul Potts brought his dreams to an audition in Cardiff, and there, before an audience of 2,000, gave convincing testimony to the power of dreams. His day job was as a manager of a car phone warehouse, but Paul’s dream was to sing opera. He seemed an unlikely protagonist for his vision – an ordinary-looking, somewhat overweight young man with teeth badly in need of an orthodontist. But when he stepped to the microphone and one of the judges asked him what he wanted to do, Paul said he wanted to sing opera. The other judges, Simon Cowell, included, looked incredulous. But what happened next silenced the skeptics.

To canned orchestral accompaniment, Paul began to sing. He chose for his audition a truncated version of Puccini’s “Nessum Dorma,” and in just a few moments he won the hearts and minds not only of the judges, but of the audience members, who leapt to their feet in a thunderous ovation. Even Simon Cowell was stunned. “So,” he said, “you work at Carphone Warehouse and you did that! I wasn’t expecting that, Paul.”[2]

            Sometimes the dream triumphs over the limits of human expectations. It’s true for human dreams, to be sure, and even more persistently and dramatically for God’s dreams.  In the Gospel of John, we hear the promise in John’s testimony, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Though the forces of darkness have always sought to turn human dreams into nightmares, the doggedness of Isaiah’s vision is with us still… still beckoning us to embrace his dream as our own.

            Simply to embrace it… that would be enough. Simply to embrace the dream and to lean into it… that would be a faithful response to the prophet. I know… we are activists in a community of activists. We prefer doing to being. But Isaiah’s vision is not ours to enact. Biblical scholar Gene Tucker says, “it would distort the import of [Isaiah’s vision] to turn it into instruction, admonition, or law. It does not set out what people ought to do within society or in relation to the environment. To read it as such could distort both the content and the mood of these wonderful lines. The passage is not a call for action or even a criticism of injustice. These lines simply present unqualified good news.”[3] This is the way God wants the world to be. This is the way God intends the world to be. This is the way God’s reign will be. Unqualified good news!

We don’t have to do anything.  The vision of Isaiah is performative. It does what it says.  All we have to do is embrace it, lean into this dream and live as though it were so.  It is so simple… and so hard. But consider this: the starting point of Isaiah’s confident vision is nothing more than a stump… or better, a root-stock, which bears in itself the seed of new life and new hope.[4]  The fruit of that root-stock is still growing, still spreading the seeds of peace and new life. It is the way God works so often… taking what is lowly and cut-down, and magnifying its potential. It is true of God’s way in the world… and true of God’s way in our own lives.

Sometimes, I know, you and I stare at the stumps of our lives and the world we inhabit, hoping that they might turn into root-stock, too, but worrying nonetheless. My friend Rick Spalding says, “Maybe one of the most real things about us is what a sawed-off stump this is [whatever our “this” is]…

a job that once promised such fruitfulness maybe, or a marriage that was once evergreen, or a society that stood tall and proud as a redwood, or a body as flexible and ambitious as a sapling, or a family that blazed with joy like an autumn hillside, or a planet that was a home as stable and capacious and beautiful as a Dutch Elm. Whatever is left of it now, it may be as much as we can ask anyone to believe that it is also a holy seed. Maybe what we’re waiting for is someone to tell us that – to tell us that, as cut short and picked over and leafless and petrified as it may seem, it has folded up deep inside it the genome for a rebirth of wonder.

Maybe if the spirit of the Lord were to come and rest on the stump – if someone in whose words and deeds the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of knowledge and reverence rested were to come, bearing such a spirit, and should touch the dried wood with righteousness and faithfulness, and should replant in our imaginations the vision of a world without blood enemies – maybe then it would even be possible to imagine that the stump might bloom again – even amid the cold of winter, when half-spent was the night.[5]

What would it be like to live into such a dream?  What would it be like to embrace not only Isaiah’s Peaceable Kingdom, but also the reign of Christ, who is the bearer of light that the darkness has never overcome?  What would it be like to look at the stumps of our lives and see there the root-stock of hope?  Occasionally, you know, someone does so. Occasionally, we notice someone who lives and leans into his or her dreams… a Paul Potts, perhaps… or a Cory Booker… or a Virginia Jones.

            Don’t remember Cory or Virginia?  Cory Booker is the 38-year-old mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He lives in Brick Towers, one of Newark’s public housing projects. He is also a Rhodes Scholar and a graduate of Yale Law School. But living where he does – often without heat or hot water, surrounded by gangs and poverty – gives him some insights into the reality of the urban landscape that few public officials can draw on as they govern.[6]

            Cory Booker also seems to be a person who leans into his dreams. He says, “Newark is a city of limitless strength and unbounded potential. It is a city of hope and promise. Newark is a city of accomplishment…. Newark's people, like the bricks from our Brick City nickname, are strong, resilient, enduring, and when we come together there is nothing we cannot create or achieve.”[7]  That may not be your image of Newark, but it is Cory Booker’s.

            What is so intriguing about Cory Booker, at least to this dreamer, is not so much his political platform as the source of his inspiration. He says that he owes his commitment to the city to one of his neighbors in Brick Towers… and that’s where Virginia Jones comes in.  When Booker was still working as a tenants’ rights lawyer, he stopped one day at Mrs. Jones’ apartment. When she opened the door, he introduced himself and said he wanted to help. Without a moment’s hesitation, she asked him to follow her. And so he did.

            Together they went outside to the street, and there Mrs. Jones demanded to know what the young lawyer saw around him.  “What do you see?” she asked. Booker responded that he saw drug dealers, a crack house, and rundown housing projects. “Well,” she said, “you can’t help me.” She started to walk away. Booker ran after her and asked for an explanation.

            “Boy,” she said, “you need to learn something. The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. If you’re one of those people who see problems, darkness, and despair, that’s all there’s ever going to be. But, if you’re one of those people who see hope, opportunity, love, and even the face of God, then you can help me.”

            Cory Booker describes Mrs. Jones as his finest instructor. “She sees our nation for what it is, an imperfect country founded in perfect ideals that is still fighting to achieve itself. And in our neighborhood, she and others are fighting on the front lines of that American Dream…. Mrs. Jones had a son who served in our nation’s military. On a stay with his mother in our neighborhood, he was shot to death, just another victim of random handgun violence. He survived military duty, but not a visit to his mother. He was killed in the lobby of her building. When Mrs. Jones told me this story,” said Booker, “I asked her why she still lived in the building. With her income she could live in hundreds of other locations without having to walk, on a daily basis, though the lobby where her son was killed. ‘Why do I live here, Cory? Why do I stay?  Because I’m in charge of homeland security.’”[8]

            “The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you,” she said.  I believe she was right. What do you see when you look at your world?  What are the dreams inside of you? Paul Potts dreamed of singing opera. Cory Booker dreamed of a better city than the one he saw. Virginia Jones dreamed of hope, opportunity, love, and even of seeing the face of God. And Isaiah?  Well, maybe Isaiah had the grandest dream of all.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth…. And they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.

            Yes, I believe I could lean into that dream. Indeed, I pray for that day. I pray for the day when that dream comes true.