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I don’t
know whether you’ve noticed or not, but not everything that
looks tame is tame. Like some of the animals that run around
my neck of the woods. One Sunday afternoon, a little red fox
scampered across our deck. Then, just a few nights ago, we
froze him in our headlights on the side of the road. Maybe it
wasn’t the same fox. And maybe it wasn’t a fox at all. Not
that I would know.
But
Eric Sharp would. Eric knows all about the wilderness and
writes about everything he knows. I’ve been reading him for
years in the Detroit Free Press. I figure that a city
boy ought to have some “smarts” about things in the wild.
Just the other day, Eric was writing about wolves. The title
of his column caught my eye. “When More Wolves Draw Near,
How Will We React?” Truth be told, I don’t have the
faintest idea how I’ll react. One little red fox running
across my deck….no big deal. But wolves in the ravine behind
my house….very big deal.
Not that
I’m likely to see them anytime soon, given that they’re
miles removed from me. A few have apparently crossed the ice
of the Straits of Mackinac and taken up residence somewhere
between Roger’s City and Gaylord. But most live north of the
bridge, where the DNR estimates the wolf population to be
about 360. There’s plenty of food for them up there. Eric
writes: “Even if there were double that number….and even
if every wolf ate a deer a week…..wolves in the U.P. would
still kill only a fraction of the deer that starve each
winter.” In fact, Eric bets that cars kill more deer in the
U.P. than wolves do.
But
he thinks about what might happen if they begin knocking off
household pets, like dogs….which they will do if they get
the chance. Or, as he adds: “I wonder what will happen when
the wolves figure out that they can make a much easier living
by hanging out near a town and eating those four-legged
offerings the nice people put out for them?”
Yet
even the domesticated species can be vicious and cruel. The
phrase “It’s a dog-eat-dog world” had to originate some
place, didn’t it? And just the other night I was in the
lovely living room of some lovely people who have some lovely
cats….which they have to keep separated, one from the other.
Because when their two lovely cats are in the same space at
the same time, they are not necessarily lovely to each other.
From
time to time, on my way from HGTV (my wife’s channel) to
ESPN (my channel), I interrupt my surfing and scrolling at the
Discovery Channel, just long enough to watch some lion stalk,
pounce, kill and eat some wildebeest or another, totally
without braising, broiling, broasting or barbecue sauce. So I
ask you, what chance does a lamb have?
I
vaguely remember hearing, several years ago, of a world peace
exhibit at some world’s fair or another, featuring (you
guessed it) a lion and a lamb in the same exhibit. People
loved it…. thronged to see it….said (collectively), “Can
you believe it?”….but seldom asked, “How did they do
it?” The answer was simple. At least once a day….more
often twice….it required the introduction of a new lamb.
Which called to mind the satirist who was overheard to say:
“Sure, the lion and the lamb may lie down together. But the
lamb better not count on getting much sleep.”
Yet
we love these verses from Isaiah 11 suggesting idyllic harmony
in the animal kingdom, even though we know it will be easier
to turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks
(two other images from Isaiah describing things that will
come to pass when that old stump of Jesse….David’s father,
for those of you who flunked, or never took, Old Testament
101…yields forth a shoot, then roots, then a branch, on whom
the Spirit of the Lord shall fully rest, and in whom the Spirit
of the Lord shall fully dwell, and through whom the Kingdom
of the Lord shall fully come….meaning Jesus, for those of
you who flunked, or never took, New Testament 101).
The Peaceable Kingdom Banner
Right
here beside me, even as I preach, hangs a banner depicting our
text of the morning. Called “The Peaceable Kingdom,” it is
one of our oldest and loveliest banners. It comes complete
with a little child in the lower left-hand corner. Presumably,
this is the child who is not afraid to place his pink, pliant
little hand over the very hole where the poisonous snake
dwells. Perhaps Isaiah is suggesting that when creation is
finally and fittingly healed, that messy business between
snake and human which is alleged to have begun in the
Garden….where the Creator said “Don’t sit under the
apple tree with anyone else but me,” and the serpent said
“What does he know?”….maybe that messy business is now
about to be healed and restored.
Yet
I remain cautious. When I once asked the chief resident at Red
Bird Missionary Hospital in rural Kentucky about the most
frequent cause of admission to his hospital’s emergency
room, he said, “Poisonous snake bites.” Leading me, who
earlier that day had been hiking those trails, to ask whether
the victims were bit on the trails. To which he said: “No,
not on the trails. They were bit in the churches.” Then he
went on to describe snake-handling rituals during public
worship, where people regularly test the depth of their faith
and the power of biblical prophecy by allowing poisonous
vipers to crawl all over them. Were I to suddenly reach to the
floor of the pulpit and reappear with a snake draped over my
arm…..harmless or viperous….all but those in the balcony
would scatter quickly. And I’d be retired early. Yet we love
this text, even though one of the commentators I read in
preparation for my sermon suggested that “it passes all
bounds of probability”….suggesting that most Christians’
idea of utopia does not include such sentimentality.
I
find it interesting that in this version of the prophecy, it
is not the lion that shall dwell with the lamb. Rather, it is
the wolf. The lion is with the calf….“and the fatling
together” (whatever the fatling is). Except recent Hebrew
scholarship suggests a mistranslation here. The word
“fatling” is better translated “friends”….as in
“the lion and the calf shall be friends together.”
For
whatever reason, we prefer linking lions with lambs in
everything from children’s books to weather reports.
Browsing the internet, I learned I can buy any number of
“lion and lamb” products from figurines to drink coasters,
and from walking shorts to underwear. Better yet, the next
time I am on Cape Cod, I intend to stay at the Lion and Lamb
Inn, which is a B and B in Barnstable, built in 1740.
But
for those of us who seriously question the ultimate
compatibility of wild beasts, farm animals and house
pets….and just what is that little girl going to do if she
does get a hippopotamus for Christmas?….what could this text
possibly have to say to us?
Could
it be that the message to be appropriated is not so much about
the animals around us….the animals beyond us….or even the
animals beside us (“nice kitty”)….so much as the animals
within us? I mean, if the world be divided (for purposes of
classification) into animal, vegetable and mineral, where are
we most commonly classified if not “animal?” We may have
the spark and soul of the divine (at least some of us think
so). And we may be capable of actions that are quite angelic.
But we are neither deities nor angels. We are animals….in
some ways, wonderfully unlike the rest….but in other ways,
very much like the rest.
For
years, I have been telling preachers….even preachers who
love poetry….not to quote poetry in their sermons. Because
the average congregation cannot follow poetry….indeed, will
not follow poetry. But there was a day when, as an Albion
College sophomore….a dateless Albion College sophomore….I
offered to usher at a public reading by the late Carl
Sandburg. And because the sold-out chapel reserved no seats
for ushers, when I finished my duties, I came down front and
sat on the floor, resting my back against the pew. Which means
I was almost on top of Sandburg, actually looking up at him
where he sat perched on a stool. He was white of hair….lined
of face….hollow of voice….and eighty of age. What he did
was read through the body of his work, beginning with his poem
about Chicago and that memorable line about the Windy City
being “hog butcher to the world.”
Then he
launched into a poem about the wilderness, saying (by way of
introduction): “I was forty when I wrote it, and the animals
were alive in me.”
There
is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for
tearing
gashes. . . a red tongue for raw meat
.
. . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this
wolf
because the wilderness gave it to me
and
the wilderness will not let it go.
There
is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I
sniff
and guess . . . I pick things out of the
wind
and air . . . I nose in the dark night
and
take sleepers and eat them and hide the
feathers
. . . I circle and loop and double-cross.
Oh,
to be sure, there are other ways of looking at our nature. We
are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” as the
psalmist says (Psalm 139) and as Bill Loechel loves to remind
me on Wednesday mornings. And just this past week, another man
well into his eighties….renowned atheist philosopher Anthony
Flew of Oxford….is alleged to have opened the door to belief
in an intelligent creator, suggesting that he knows of no
other way to account for the incredibly purposeful genetic
material we know as DNA. Yet Sandburg returns to humble us:
There
is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a
machinery
for eating and grunting . . . a
machinery
for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I
got
this too from the wilderness and the
wilderness
will not let go.
Followed
by:
There
is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-
blue
water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of
herring
. . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises
.
. . before land was . . . before the water went
down
. . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter
of
Genesis.
And
this:
There
is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed
.
. .dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot’s hunger
.
. . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the
hawk-eyed
hankering men . . . here are the blond
and
blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled
asleep
waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . .
ready
to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep
the
baboon because the wilderness says so.
Along
with this:
There
is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and
the
eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my
dreams
and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I
want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the
early
forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in
the
underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes
over
the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And
I got the eagle and
the mockingbird from the
wilderness.
The
last time (in the last church) when I dared voice Sandburg’s
words to a real-life, flesh-and-blood congregation, a lady
verbally accosted me over coffee. She said that none of this
spoke to her….made sense to her….accurately described her.
So I agreed with her. Then I apologized to her. Even though I
knew her to be one of the more cutting and pain-inflicting
parishioners I had encountered in my ministry.
And
in a week that has given us news of massive starvings….child
beatings….rock concert killings….and our own local version
(in Farmington Hills) of desperate housewives….you tell me
that where human beings are concerned, the animals are all
domesticated and the wilderness is totally a thing of the
past.
Oh,
but there is more to this story. And more to the poem.
Sandburg concludes:
O,
I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under
my
bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I
got
something else: it is a man-child heart, a
woman-child
heart: it is a father and mother and
lover:
it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going
to
God-Knows Where—For I am the keeper of the
zoo:
I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work:
I
am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
I do not
know whether Carl Sandburg was even interested in things
religious. But I know that we gather at this season of the
year to say that we’ve got something else inside our
ribs….that we who came from God-knows-where can know the God
of God-knows-where….and that everywhere you find the human
animal, it is religious. In part, because the image of God is
within us. But in greater part, because the Son of God is born
like us. The word “flesh” can never again be diminished or
downgraded, given that it was once deemed fit to house the
eternal.
Which
gives me confidence that we can reconcile the
animals….harmonize the animals…. domesticate, pacify, even
tame the animals. Leading to closure with this.
A
grandfather is talking to his grandson a few days after the
terrorist attacks of 9/11. Looking at his grandson, the
grandfather says: “I feel like I have two wolves barking
inside of me. The first wolf is filled with anger, hatred,
bitterness….and mostly revenge. The second wolf is filled
with love, kindness, happiness….and mostly forgiveness.”
At
which point the grandson looks up at his grandfather and says:
“Which wolf do you think will win, Grandpa?” And the
grandfather responds: “Whichever one I feed.”
Note:
The “peaceable kingdom”
language from Isaiah 11 was written in the 8th century BC. The
author, sometimes known as first Isaiah, is not to be confused
with the author of the beloved “suffering servant”
passages of Isaiah 53. This latter material is generally
ascribed to an author known as second Isaiah and dates from
the 6th century BC. As to the debate about who this “shoot
from the stump of Jesse” shall be (and whether this is a
literal prediction of Jesus Christ), I make no comment here.
While the author may be referring to a forthcoming king in the
tradition of David, the language clearly shaped the messianic
expectation that Jesus later fulfilled. All of which is a
debate that fascinates biblical scholars and theologians, but
is of lesser interest to congregants.
Concerning
Isaiah 11:6-8 of R. B. Y. Scott writes: “The state of peace
and well-being to follow is symbolized by the idyllic picture
of wild beasts and dangerous reptiles in harmonious
companionship with domesticated animals and children.” It is
Scott who also alludes to the Garden of Eden narrative and the
“perpetual enmity between man and serpents.”
Eric
Sharp’s article “When More Wolves Draw Near, How Will We
React?” can be found in the Detroit Free Press of
Thursday, December 9, 2004. I am also indebted to the late
Carlyle Marney and his book, The Recovery of the Person,
for his treatment of Carl Sandburg, especially the section
entitled “Menagerie and Myth.”
The
poignant story about “two barking wolves” has appeared in
any number of articles and sermons of late. I cannot account
for its origin, but I thank Eric Ritz of New Holland,
Pennsylvania for passing it along.
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