Powered By The Spirit

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord—
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
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.
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

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.

The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put a hand into the viper's nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
— Isaiah 11:1-9

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The following article was prepared before the outbreak of hostilities in the Gulf. Thus my comments were not directed to or informed by the Gulf crisis.

But this is a comment on a text—Isaiah 11:1-9—that has an enduring, persistent relevance. It takes no great imagination to see that Isaiah's poem impinges immediately upon our recent contemporary situation of aggression in which truth, well-being, and a viable "nature" are first-order casualties.

The prophet Isaiah and the book of Isaiah offer us literature that is marked in two important ways. On the one hand, it is literature that emerges in the midst of internal crisis and that is preoccupied with geopolitical upheavals. It is speech in a community (Jerusalem) that is under threat and is deeply bewildered. On the other hand, this literature in Isaiah revolves around a specific promise made in Jerusalem, made to the Davidic dynasty as an instrument for alternative policy and alternative possibility in the ancient Near East.

In the horizon in the book of Isaiah, geopolitical threat and promissory possibility are in deep tension. The key question is whether the promissory possibilities of God have a chance in the face of entrenched geopolitical realities. The book of Isaiah believes profoundly that God's promises will prevail in, with, and through geopolitical reality.

Note what an "unreal" long shot such a conviction is. I submit that only such a conviction can energize and authorize peacemaking.

For without such a passion and certitude, we will soon or late succumb to real politik. Thus the root of peacemaking is a theological possibility and not a socioeconomic possibility. That is, the chance for peace rests in the trustworthiness of God and the issue of God keeping faith with God's promises.

The text that authorizes this odd, subversive conviction has two features that are worth our noting. First, the text is poetry. It is not an argument about policy, but daring, inventive impressionistic rhetoric. Second, the text is poetry on the lips of God as a promise from God. That is, the speech of God is a beginning point for newness. The text, and every use of the text, is a political act as daring and as outrageous as was Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, "I have a dream."

Peace is a dream that is uttered first on the lips of God, a dream that speaks against all settled political reality, an act of imagination from the throne of heaven in which we are invited to participate. This text invites us to dream along after God in a certitude that the world judges to be outrageous.

THE POEM BEGINS ABRUPTLY, concerning a shoot from a stump. The only specificity is that the stump is linked to Jesse, the father of David, so that we are invited into the world of royal reality. The king is endlessly a source of hope and new possibility in the ancient world of Israel.

The church of course has moved the poem away from the Jesse connection toward Jesus. Jesus is the real shoot from the stump; it is possible to see the shoot as the resurrection to new power from the closed stump of crucifixion—new life given unexpectedly in Easter.

The stump-shoot business, however, can move into larger circles beyond David and beyond Jesus. Take the poem as a vision of a new humanity in which God raises up new life where we least expect it. The stump is any closed-off historical possibility, any place in life that has failed and collapsed and ended in despair. It is like an old potted plant, dead and thrown into the compost pile, forgotten and abandoned.

And then you look later: Out of that deadness has come a new shoot, a plant, perhaps blooming with new possibility and promise. The poem imagines that God can and does raise up new life where none seemed possible. The vision may be of a king, but it is in fact a deep claim all over the Bible that God raises up new human actors, new human characters, new historical possibilities.

Every such raising up of a "shoot" from a "stump" is a miracle. And it is this miracle that makes peacemaking possible. The poem affirms that God authorizes human agents who take on the work of reordering the world for peace.

If we make a list of peacemakers, we see that they have arisen from unlikely sources, not the official, visible power people, but struggling people who refused to sit still any longer while death works its way in the world. There are the obvious ones—Gandhi, King, Tutu, Mandela, Havel—the ones who have stood so boldly for an alternative. There are also mothers in Argentina from whom we expected nothing, and Christians—Catholics and Protestants—in Northern Ireland who have said "Enough!" We also see agents of reconciliation in family and in community, who act against business-as-usual, who put their bodies on the line and say "Stop!"

They begin in another way, a way we would not have thought of until they make a move, and we notice an alternative out beyond our horizon. Peacemaking will be done by new shoots from old stumps that seemed to offer no new chance.

Think of a place where you are "stumped" and imagine a new "shoot" of life, energy, and possibility, where none is expected. The newness lives on the lips of the faithful God. Peacemakers are not the "old reliables," but are new folks that appear uncredentialed and make a difference. Peacemaking, in the horizon of this poem, is not God's work. It is human work, done by human agents, who are the inexplicable new shoots.

HOW COULD IT HAPPEN THAT a new shoot comes from an old stump? How could it happen that unnamed, unnoticed folk are raised up to roles of power, energy, and daring that begin to turn the world back to health? What is it that causes shoots to come from stumps? It is not in the first instant resolve or will power. Who among us wants to be the one who runs risks, dares newness, and acts on God's dream? Who indeed!

For almost all of us, the present war-making injustice that marks our world is comfortably predictable and normal. We have always known that the way to get along is to go along. So how could ordinary people like us, like Mandela, like Havel, genuinely ordinary people, run risks for newness?

The Isaiah poet knows. Peacemakers are powered and driven and authorized by God's Spirit (verses 2-3). That sounds like a large and peculiar notion. Indeed, we have such misinformed notions of "God's Spirit." We may think of Pentecost and speaking in tongues, or people thinking they were drunk, or fanatical religion, or sappy spiritual experience.

That, however, is hardly what is happening here. The Spirit, the wind of God, is the inscrutable, inexplicable, irresistible force of God's purpose and power that blows, uninvited, into our lives. What it does is destabilize, decenter, and disorient, and cause us to break with all our normalcies. We are indeed blown away when the wind of God blows—strangely filled with power, resolve, daring, imagination—and we take a move outside our long established routines.

The coming of the Spirit leads us to a staggering awareness: In order for things to be different, something has to change. Nothing will ever be different if everything is kept unchanged. That of course is true among the nations. Peacemaking, however, applies not just to the nations, but to communities, churches, families, and individual lives.

The community of faith, and this poet, have noticed from time to time that people get blown outside themselves to commit uncharacteristic acts of generosity, daring, and freedom. Thus a neighbor, at the risk of losing face, forgives a neighbor and peace breaks out. A hurting member of an estranged family commits an act of honesty or generosity and permits the family to begin at a new place. A teacher breaks out of the old, tired curriculum that bores everyone by asking the students to reimagine the world and peace is kindled.

A businessperson, believing deeply that "profit is not a dirty word," finds allies and makes an investment in the health of the community that some stockholders would regard as a waste of resources. A political operative moves beyond the conventional and carries hard-nosed people into new possibilities where "no one has gone before." A church gets its mind off itself, its survival, and its budget and moves against normalcy to let the newness of God's peace permeate its life.

When asked about the strange departure from the old predictabilities, the explanation is often not very clear or illuminating. "It seemed the right thing to do." "I didn't plan it; I just took a step and then another, and found myself in a new pattern." Or, "I couldn't help myself; suddenly it all seemed clear to me, and I knew what I had to do." "I decided that I wanted to make a stand and run one risk that would leave a healing mark on the world." Or this: "I don't know what got into me."

The poet knows what gets into people. The poet knows what got into "stump" that caused new "shoot." It is the wind. It is the Spirit. It is the Spirit of God. It is the force, energy, authority, and permit of God to push us outside of ourselves, to give ourselves over to the purposes of God that are larger than our tired, controlled selves. We cannot program or summon that wind. But we know that when risks are run, energy is strangely given, as are power and joy—none of which we can have until we move.

It is a peculiar wind that is given to shoot, a wind of wisdom and understanding in which we notice for the first time what is going on. It had all been so mystifying and immobilizing, but now the wind makes clear. It is a spirit of counsel and of power, of good discernment and a strange energy for courage—old selves blown away, old fears overcome, old patterns broken open.

Peacemakers are people who have the energy and freedom to act against normalcy to let God's healing operate. The poet concludes: The peacemaker delights in the fear of the Lord. It seems so right, and it is so satisfying; for once in our lives, we had a match between our real selves and our actions.

We found a place in our lives with a true and proper work, for the first time. We are astonished at what we did, we know it was right, and we have a sense of new innocence and sureness that we never imagined. We made things uncomplicated, we acted, and we know God smiled with us in the newness. We find we are no longer tired or fearful, because the new gifts around us are gifts from God.

AND WHAT DOES this windblown shoot do? Peacemakers, like this son of Jesse and the son of Mary, are not business-as-usual people. They dress differently and they act differently.

Peacemakers are people who boldly choose a "more excellent way," a way that breaks with convention and explores alternatives: "He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes" (not impressed by appearances); "or decide by what he hears with his ears" (not swayed by rumor and gossip and pressure); "but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth—Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist."

Isn't it strange that in this poetic vision of peace, issues of justice are immediately put on the table? This odd, unexpected agent of newness intervenes in situations of inequity, intervenes with power, advocacy, and courage, to redress injustice. The poet knows that the issues of peace are essentially issues of justice: Some have too much, more than their share; others have not enough, less than their proper amount.

People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress—in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness—dressed for the work that is to be done.

The poet knows that if there is to be peace, economic domination must be reversed, economic disadvantage must be corrected, and that requires sharing goods, redeploying resources, reassigning land, and reimagining the norms of adequacy, worth, and qualification. It is telling that in the great overthrows of recent time (from the Philippines to Romania), when the offices and homes and pantries of the powerful are invaded, we see that they had more than their share, embarrassingly hoarding and usurping, building "bigger barns" and more security in order to keep all the surplus.

And now comes the shoot to intervene with justice on behalf of the poor. Peacemaking, so the poet imagines, is not just good intentions and friendly feelings; it is policy review and the hard work of breaking the patterns of distribution that are so destructive.

The shoot powered by the wind dresses in very different garb. Peacemakers do not wear the usual costumes of greed, fear, anxiety, and despair. They change clothes and are dressed, everyday, in the caring clothes of righteousness, faithfulness, and justice.

The language of the poem of Isaiah anticipates the baptismal formulations of the early church: "You have stripped off your old behavior with your old self which will progress toward the true knowledge the more it is renewed in the image of its creator" (Colossians 3:9-10). And "You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:22-24).

To be sure, changing self is more complicated than changing clothes. Peacemakers are those who make a change of identity and orientation and then are able to do very different work in the world. Thus far in the poem then, there is a shoot miraculously raised up from a stump; a wind blowing utterly new possibility among us; and a new vocation on behalf of the poor and meek, marked by righteousness, justice, and faithfulness.

The poem bespeaks a newness that God's doing sets down right in the middle of war-conditioned, war-shaped Jerusalem. The poet does not believe that Jerusalem needs to continue living its terrified, self-destructive life. It could be otherwise.

God has ordained human agents for the profound transformation of the armed city. Notice that that transformation depends on openness to the wind and focus on the poor and meek. The city is addressed by human agents who know of another way in the world.

WHEN THE POEM, WHICH IS A DREAM on God's lips, moves to verse 6, the subject changes. It's a big leap from verse 5 to verse 6. It's as though the poet (or God) was stopped in the middle of the poem for a group discussion of what was thus far written. We do not know how to get from verse 5 to verse 6, but that is characteristic of the Bible. The rhetorical device is called "parataxis," whereby two things are set alongside each other, but without a clue about how they related to each other.

As the poem resumes, we are into wolves and lambs, leopards and goats. We are into large themes of creation. The World Council of Churches moved from "peace and justice" to a "sustainable creation." To ask what "peace and justice" have to do with a "sustainable creation" is to ask how verses 6-9 relate to verses 1-5. They are connected by the poet, but we are not told how.

We have been considering how a human peacemaking agent, powered by God, can intervene decisively into human affairs—specifically into situations of injustice that produce more and more poor people. But now we make a move into the non-human world. The poem dares to suggest that transformed human relations which break the vicious cycles of exploitation and oppression really do impinge upon the health of the created order. Thus we propose that the relation of verses 1-5 to verses 6-9 is as "cause and effect." The work of new human relationships has the effect of new creation.

The poet takes the most obvious and long-standing hostilities from the non-human world: wolf-lamb, leopard-goat, calf-lion, cow-bear, lion-ox. All of these are endless hostilities in which a strong one will devour a weak one, a big one will eat a little one, the wild one threatens the domesticated one. Annie Dillard has chronicled in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that the world really works that way—that Darwinism is alive and well, even at Tinker Creek.

Perhaps such hostilities are "natural" and long-standing, but that does not make them normal or normative. The poet pushes to the far reaches of rhetoric as the poem pushes to the far reaches of imagination, out beyond any experienced reality. It belongs to the "natural order," but it is not God's promised will for creation. God's promised will for creation (in this poem) is for "living with," "lying down with," "feeding together." All of creation is a joyous, secure communion. It is over such a scene that the Creator has said with delight, "Very good!"

I find it astonishing that the biblical poets could write this way long before any scientific data, long before the "greenhouse effect," long before we understood that greed here depletes rain forests there, that our need for affluent living leads to the endless exploitation of the land, the crushing and elimination of non-human species, and the pollution of rivers and oceans. Distorted, greedy human actions, in violation of the commandments, do deep damage to the non-human orbit of life.

The prophet Hosea saw it and said it clearly. The violation with which we struggle is a human violation of God's commandments: "Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed" (Hosea 4:1-2).

But the payout for such violation is not simply human suffering. The payout is the damage done to creation: "Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing" (Hosea 4:3). The poet pictures the ending of the created order, the nullification of Genesis 1.

The poet in Isaiah 11 knows about Hosea 4, knows about violated creation that suffers for the human violation of God's commandments. The world can continue its sorry way to self-destruction rooted in fear and hate and greed. The vicious cycles grind relentlessly, taking in more and more scope, until we die—we and the wild animals, the birds, and the fish. The death-makers know the relentless way to death.

THEN, ABRUPTLY, THIS POEM COMES with its statement of inversion and transformation—new human action transforms creation. The creation at enmity can come to community. What we thought was "natural" hostility turns out to be long-practiced and unnecessary distortion.

The Bible refuses to think of peace simply as coping, or to think of disarmament simply as a grudging bargain. Peace and disarmament consist in ending the vicious cycles that prey upon badgers, eels, azaleas, and kudzu. A people schooled in the Exodus and knowing the resurrection does not believe the cards need forever stay stacked this deathly way. God wills otherwise and the wind-blown shoots imagine and act otherwise.

Imagine a human agent having to go into the cage between the lion and the lamb, armed with a chair, a gun, and a whip. It is dangerous work, and the equipment of intimidation only escalates the danger for all parties. It keeps all the animals edgy and defensive and vigilant. The human intrusion helps to keep the hostility alive and the pot boiling. And then...

The poet says it need not be so. Do not send a jaded, armed adult in to stir up the hostilities of creation. There is a more excellent way. Send a little child, a peacemaker, a vulnerable, innocent child who generates no fear, who enacts no hate, who smells of no intimidation.

In picturing this jungle on its way to transformation, the poet mentions a little child, an infant, a young child. A little heir of David's house, the Christ child, any child endowed with innocence and vulnerability, any little one, any peace-maker, any human agent who has the capacity to authorize creation away from hostility, conflict, competition, and over-pressed productivity back to communion, Sabbath, doxology, well-being, shalom.

It is no great mystery how creation has become unsustainable. Creation is a very fragile system that depends on human care and nurture. Human greed and fear have a ripple effect on creation. Skewed neighbor relations contribute to an unhealthy, deathly creation. Our greed guarantees hostility and our selfishness creates fear. Our lust for surplus ruins forests, which evokes droughts. Our chemicals upset the thermal patterns of the world.

Of course, the poet is pre-scientific, but he is not stupid. He knows that one act of hate contributes to a hate-filled creation, and one bite of fear builds large reservoirs of resentment.

The poet also knows, however, that the converse is true. Human acts of peace and justice have a powerful ripple effect as well. One act toward a poor neighbor has cosmic import and will impinge upon creation in healing ways. One less gesture of greed will let one tree live. One act of mercy may save us from one load of pollution. One act of discipline may prevent one swath of poisonous chemicals. Human choice matters for the wholeness of creation.

We have let the wrong people define the issue of peace. The peace issue depends not primarily on great budgets, secret policies, large weapons systems, treaties, and deterrence. Those are mostly second-level matters and bureaucratic mystifications. Peace issues are people-to-people matters reflected, to be sure, in policy, because acts and policies of injustice sow acres and acres of violence in the world.

This Isaiah poem proposes that we think about peace in very different terms. Some of us have neglected peacemaking because we have grown accustomed to old fears and hates. We have become sated in our weary despair. Nonetheless, the wind blows newness, shoots come out of stumps, and interventions are made until the conclusion: "They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

It is promised and it will come, through concrete acts of newness and inversion. "Knowledge of the Lord" is the awareness that the power for new life is available and given to those who act. There comes in this process the discovery that God is good, a good friend, who invites us to friendship. The earth is not yet covered with that knowledge, but there are patches of newness performed by odd people like us, powered by the wind. And as there are patches of peace and justice, there is less hurting and less destroying ... all over the earth.

Our vocation does not lie in being safe, being big, or being secure and in control, but in the newness of God. People like us—odd, unexpected, empowered—can and do make a difference.

In the Bible, peacemakers have a long history. The name of the first peacemaker was Adam, male and female, ordained to foster peace in creation, but who reneged. The family of David, with the first son named Shalomon, was ordained to bring peace, but grew greedy and reneged.

Then came this Jesus, who wept over the war culture of the city and summoned peacemakers whom he called blessed. And then there is us, still in the office of Adam, still claiming the promises of David, and still in the band of Jesus, authorized to break the vicious cycles of death.

The authority is given to us in birth and in baptism. Peace is our proper human work. And not only peace but justice and sustainable creation are indeed human work. That work will not be done in our business-as-usual ways, but only when we get clear our vocation, our burden, our power, our freedom. We are here for nothing other than that.

This article is adapted from a speech given to a Presbyterian peacemaking conference in Washington, DC, and was previously published in Church & Society, Vol. 81, No. 1, September-October 1990.