How the Story Ends
You may listen to this devotion in audio form via podcast here.
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
….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.
- Isaiah 11:1, 6
What does it mean when we hope for something? Sometimes it’s really casual, almost a wish for good fortune: we might hope that the teacher doesn’t give a pop quiz today, or that the light will stay green just a moment longer. Other times it’s much more serious and desperate: We hope that we can break the cycle of addiction, or we hope that the surgeon gets all of the tumor. For those kinds of problems, we need a hope we can grasp, that we can count on.
This reading from Isaiah gives Israel and Judah that kind of hope. It is the 8th century BC. The Assyrian empire is becoming a superpower, and Israel and Judah have become vassal states, paying tribute to Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III. There is doubt that the royal line of David will continue. However, the chapter just before this, chapter 10, promises that in the future there will be a faithful remnant of Israel who will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. About how there is a future beyond the present destruction and suffering—about how there is hope. Our reading, chapter 11, describes the hope of that promise, of a Davidic King, a royal messiah.
A little closer to our time and place is the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, NYC. This is the same church in Harlem that Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent time with in the 1930s while he was in America. One writer has described this church more recently, saying that “from its gothic spire, one could see just about anything one would want to see. Or, to put it more accurately, one could see just about everything one would not want to see: blocks and blocks of burned-out buildings, shabby little pawn shops, and boarded up storefronts,…in the shadows of which prostitutes and crack dealers plied their trades. Many churches had given up and moved elsewhere, but that church continued to hang in there—keeping watch, staying alert, as if every moment mattered!” They set set up latchkey programs for kids, put together neighborhood redevelopment agencies, set up Bible studies in housing projects. They even organized a locally-owned bank. But still, it was Harlem.
A newspaper reporter once interviewed the pastor of this church. “Sure,” he said as he framed one question, “you’re doing great stuff, but it’s hard to see what difference you’re making; so what enables you and your folks to keep going?”
And Calvin Butts, the Senior Pastor, responded, “We’ve read the Bible, and we know how it ends. We aren’t at the end yet, but we know how it ends, and that’s what makes the difference.”
It is by realizing where they are in the story that they could continue. It is by knowing how the story ends that they could live as a community of hope in a bleak and seemingly hopeless world.
And by living as a community of hope—by proclaiming the gospel, by establishing those programs, by living out their faith, they give those around them in Harlem a reason for hope. They live as Christ’s hands and feet in the world, being a witness in that neighborhood to that same Messiah that Isaiah promised: that Christ who has died, that Christ who has risen, and that Christ who will come again.
This kind of example should make us pause for a moment to ask a few questions. How do we here at Visalia CRC live as a community of hope? Do our neighbors here at Linwood and Tulare know about the hope that we have? Do our neighbors at home know about the hope that we have? How do we live out our hope? Does how we live show how Christ is present and active in our lives, bringing about the purposes God intends? By the way we live, do our neighbors know how the story ends?