Advent 22

The Fourth Monday of Advent, December 22, 2008

Isaiah 11:1-9 

The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and power, a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 

Do you know someone like this?  Isaiah is speaking of the scion of Jesse, but I know at least two people upon whom the spirit of the Lord clearly rests.  Perhaps you do, too. 

Ralph was a colleague, a fellow math teacher in a small rural school district in the Hill Country of Texas, for ten years.  We were hired at the same time, and as the months merged into years, I saw that Ralph, a dedicated Catholic, was a man of quiet, consistent integrity.  He never raised his voice.  He enforced school rules with dispassionate fairness.  In a few years his reputation in our small town was gold, and rightly so.  No student would defy him, out of respect, but also because the parents were always on Ralph’s side. 

Our society craves men and women like Ralph.  When one rises to public view, there is a visceral attraction.  Consider Martin Luther King, Jr., Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, and Bobby Kennedy.  Crowds flocked to hear and see—and touch—them.  These men spoke out against the evils of their day—discrimination and poverty, mostly— not with invective and threats, but with hope and enthusiasm.  They invited all people, black and white, poor and rich, into a just society.  All types of people caught their vision of a better world. 

But they were murdered. 

We are awaiting the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, the scion of Jesse, upon whom the spirit of the Lord will rest.  He will be born to poor parents in a few days.  Thousands of people will flock to him, hungry for words of healing and justice. 

And he will be murdered. 

If we continue to look for a few good men and women, we will always be disappointed, because they will always be killed.  But what if we become these men and women?  What if we recognize that the spirit of the Lord rests on us, and we begin to live our lives quietly committed to justice and mercy?  What if the crowds that follow good men and women, became more like them, flooding towns and neighborhoods with honor and integrity? If we all realized that God’s spirit rests on us, all of us, and we acted that way, wouldn’t the world look like the Kingdom of God?