Belmont University Advent GuideExemplo

The Apostle Peter is a famous denier as well as a famous cutter-offer of ears and a famous walker on water. Faced with Jesus, a years-long friendship with Jesus and the privilege of being an eyewitness to the miracles of Jesus, we might think a disavowal of Jesus under threat of arrest is a temptation many of us could hope to resist. But to presume as much is to miss the witness of today’s readings, taken together, and to ignore the deep sense in which Peter’s context bears certain similarities to our own.

The passage from Isaiah evokes a messianic expectation we know from our memory of any number of Christmas songs: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace. But like Isaiah, Peter’s hope is in a final righting of human disorder, and that hope is expected to take the form of solid, facts-on-the-ground, social reordering, a shuffling of the fates that leads to everyday thriving for the people of Israel. The true king will break the bar placed upon the shoulders of Jewish people by Rome and the rod of every oppressor (9.4), burning the boots of tramping warriors (9.5), and uphold the throne of David with justice and righteousness forevermore (9.7).

Like the elders and scribes who demand a stronger showing of power of anyone they are expected to take seriously as a messiah, Peter is understandably dismayed by the idea of meekness inheriting the earth (not just figuratively but also literally) and he can perhaps be forgiven for wondering how getting arrested and suffering state execution could be part of a plan for reversing the endless degradation of human beings in the here and now.

The psalmist attributes to God qualities that Jesus and Peter and the elders would perhaps all affirm: “You love righteousness and hate wickedness” (45.7). Similarly, they could all agree that Jerusalem is to be a “holy mountain” which is also “the joy of all the earth” (48.2). But how God’s righteousness is to be realized among us was and is a complicated question we are often prone to answer in powerfully unrighteous and even wicked ways with our thoughts, words, and practices. God reigns, we are assured throughout the biblical canon, but rightly discerning this reign is a difficult task requiring new and unexpected feats of attentiveness on the part of the God-seeking community. True power and wisdom, we are made to see, are contrary to what we have been prone to credit as worthy. What unworthy conceptions of greatness will we need to put away in the days to come.

David Dark
Assistant Professor of Religion and the Arts