Saturday of the Third Week of Advent

Lectionary: 194 

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David;
As king he shall reign and govern wisely,
he shall do what is just and right in the land.
In his days Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell in security.
This is the name they give him: “The LORD our justice.”

 

Several years ago a punitive measure called “Three strikes and you’re out” was rushed through several state legislatures. The idea was that a third felony conviction should result in the criminal’s incarceration for the rest of their life. It sounded reasonable to many persons with little experience of criminal courts and America’s overpopulated prisons. It promised to simplify the sentencing procedures, removing from the hands of pusillanimous judges the discretion to give a lighter sentence.

The results were predictably disappointing. Crime did not decrease as persons with poor impulse control do not think of consequences. Crowded prisons became overcrowded; convicted felons were still released from prison to return to their crimes, and taxpayers complained about bad people enjoying “three hots and a cot.” 

Three strikes and you're out attempted to make the judiciary less personal. It should have worked like a machine. No ifs, ands, or buts.

In today’s passage from Isaiah, we are assured, “As king he shall reign and govern wisely.” The Lord does not promise that a machine would replace his governance. Although God gave the laws, he also provided a lawgiver and a judge to administer the law. There was nothing automatic about it, partly because no one in 1200 BC had ever imagined automation or machinery. (Etymologically, the word machine is borrowed from the theater and describes plots and schemes, as in deus ex machina.)

Nor need we look to machines, technology, programs, robotics, and algorithms to save us. These human devices have their use but the joyful cry of Advent is, “The LORD our justice.”

 

 Our God, we must announce continually, is a personal God; more precisely, a three-personed God who knows you and me not as ciphers or units but as infinitely mysterious and rapturously beautiful. If the personhood of God is beyond anything we can imagine, it is not so far beyond that we cannot use the same word -- person -- for the human being. God is not a force, power, or principle; and certainly not a symbol for something else altogether. 

Made in God's image we are persons and we must always relate to one another as persons. No one should suffer being treated like an animal or an object. When warfare would regard us as casualties; the market economy, as consumers; and industry, as commodities, human beings resist and protest. 

Our scriptures come to us as testaments to an ancient time when the entire universe seemed peopled with gods, demons, angels, and spirits. Our doctrine of one God has not depersonalized that sacred place; it does remind us that we are responsible to "the Lord our justice" who reigns and governs wisely, who does what is just and right in the land.