Isaiah 11:1-10, Psalm 72:1-8, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12 

The portion of Psalm 72 just sung this morning, is a blessing for a king, probably offered at a coronation. This psalm blesses a king up one side and down the other, hoping he will be a champion of the poor, the needy and the oppressed.

Having been raised in a country where a democratic government and the Episcopal Church both, calculates the human-need for a check on the balance of power, built into our U.S. Constitution and church canons, it’s hard to wrap my brain around the idea of having a king. It’s challenging to capture what’s at the center of kingly descriptions. Surely centuries of Anglicans saw in their minds eye nothing less than Kings and Queens of England – splendid royalty dressed to the nines and living as the upper crust. The current Annie Liebowitz photos, on display at the Corcoran, which includes three shots of Queen Elizabeth, catch this royal ness with distinction. And yet, on some days more than others I can relate to the desire to have a wise, visionary, justice-defending, kind of person running things, which ‘king’ surely implies. I don’t mean only at the leaders-of-the-world and church sort of scale. I’m also talking about at the level of my own life. There are plenty of days where I find myself wishing that someone would just come along and take care of everything. But then, child of democracy that I am, it’s hard to imagine having, much less living under, a king. But that’s because my own images of kingship don’t allow much room for anything short of royal manliness and success and power.

That’s not, however, what the psalmist had in mind when she sung, “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice? May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.” Advent turns the kingship that lords it over others on its head, imploring us to wait, watch and prepare for a child to come. The kingship of a child will redefine what it means to lead--for Advent is the season that overturns our expectations about how God rules.

Unlike King David the son of Jesse, this child will be born not to privilege but into a cold and dark and inhospitable world, yet will bring to the world warmth and light and the prophetic hospitality of the reign of God. The Jesus-child rules, not the man; peace prevails over the strength of military victory; the poor and meek, not the rich and mighty, take their places at the center of this new vision of a monarch’s reign. Lions and lambs will then live not as predator and prey, but in harmony; a child will lead them and will lead us.

The Psalmist, and Isaiah, and Paul and Matthew all share this vision of something new breaking in during this season we call Advent – a season of the odd-pairings of reality and possibility that up to now has existed only in the world of dreamers. Advent is the season of wondering, wondering what it would it take for us to believe in, and bring into being, a world where such unlikely pairings would exist not just in dreams and visions, but real in our lifetime?