Advent Reflection 2: Isaiah 11:1-10 (Messianism: between Judaism and Christianty)

Isaiah 11:1-10
11:1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
11:2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
11:3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;
11:4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
11:5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
11:6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
11:7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
11:8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
11:9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
11:10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Comment:
Here we are presented with messianic prophecy; messianism in one of its earliest forms. The full scope of the “messianic idea” will not come into view, Gershom Scholem tells us, until it is extended through the reflections of the rabbis and, even more importantly, the historical or “acute” messianisms, the popular messianic movements, that have punctuated the history of Judaism. Of course the problem with acute messianisms – and Christianity can be counted among them – is that its idea becomes subsumed in its figure: messianism, as it were, is abolished in the Messiah – Bar Kokba, Sabbatai Zvi, Jesus. In order for messianism to survive beyond the Messiah it must render each messianic figure, each messianic movement provisional or void. The moment the messianic idea becomes an acute messianism, all bets are off. It is for this reason that Scholem ends his reflections on the messianic idea with a calculation: the “cost of messianism” to the Jewish people. The tremendous richness of the idea has been subsidized by a refusal on the part of Jews to enter history (e.g. in the form of politicized messianic movements – Scholem has his version of Zionism in mind). By virtue of a certain kind of sublimation – a redirection of libidinal/messianic energy – the messianic idea comes to us in all of its intellectual and theoretical splendor.

The text from Isaiah arrives here (in the lectionary) in this moment (Advent) in the mode of a determinate expectation, not the indeterminate hope that conditioned its first announcement. There is a certain telos in view here. In its lectionary form, this prophecy is not merely messianic, but Christological. (Although the Gospel reading that this text supplements (Matt 3:1-12) is not yet Christological [perhaps proto-Christological], it too is still anticipatory: it is the story of John the Baptist’s preparation for the coming of the Messiah Jesus.) This is the Christian destiny of the messianic idea, it has allowed the Messiah to subsume messianism; and it had to for the sake of its own emergence and survival. I am not questioning the legitimacy of this move, but one potential (and often actual) consequence that results when we return, after the Messianic arrival, to a text like Isaiah’s is that the prophetic-predictive moment is privileged over the prophetic-political; the figure that is announced is given a greater importance than the messianic vocation. Thus, the figure who is the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” is given precedence over the task of judging with justice. If in Judaism the figure of the Messiah gives way to a universal human calling – such that the Messiah as an individual merely demonstrates or symbolically enacts what is the task of the messianic community, and ultimately the whole of creation – then in Christianity the messianic task gives way to its singular incarnation – the Christ. The messianic vocation does not thereby disappear in Christianity, it simply becomes refracted. The messianic community – the Church – is still subject to the demands of justice. Refraction does not diminish the demand, in fact it may even increase it such that the messianic community will do “greater works than” those of the Messiah (John 14:12).