The readings for Advent II take us to another of the visions, or inspirations, of the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem. He sees a deliverer coming, but not the kind of deliverer one might expect:
The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord…
With righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth…
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s
den.
They will not hurt or 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 a strange picture, like the endearing quaintness of the early medieval pictures of saints and kings – the wolf and the lamb playing together, the calf and the lion… What it depicts is a life without fear. Children are safe. This theme has been picked up by many, including Franklin D Roosevelt who listed four basic freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. (It is ironic, then, that the USA is the only country not to have ratified the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child.) Roosevelt’s list was enshrined in 1948 by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The American artist Norman Rockwell movingly depicted children going off to bed free from fear. These days it is more the case that we have to teach children danger-savvy, what to be afraid of and how to deal with it. Numerous United States children are taught to feel safe if there are guns in the house (and membership of the local gun club). How do children feel safe in Syria, or in any Kiwi home housing drugs and violence?
The Christian scriptures convey the insight that it is fear, not hate, which is the opposite of love. Hate is derivative from fear. In contemplative life and prayer we tackle fear on deeper levels. What are you afraid of, asks Jesus – why are you afraid? Love casts out fear, writes John[1] Love and fear are mutually incompatible. As fear takes over, love and peace, understanding, retreat. We are learning, slowly it may be, to lay down the burden of fear so that fear is not ruling our lives, or determining our decisions. Obviously there are times and situations in which fear is appropriate – we would be silly not to be afraid. But that is different from a chronic fear of life, being afraid of tomorrow, afraid of difference, afraid of change, needing always first to feel safe… Once again such a vision seems far out of reach – but it is the way Jesus invites his people to live, and in Advent at any rate we remind ourselves not to lose the vision, and to turn our steps in that direction.
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