“I have a dream!” that "the wolf will dwell with the lamb" (Is 11,1-10)

Biblical meditation of the shepherds Battisti Angelo Reginato and Lidia Maggi on Isaiah 11.1-10 held in online prayer in the Week of prayer for the victims of homophobia and transphobia of May 14, 2021

A sprout will emerge from the trunk of Iesse, a virgulty will sprout from its roots. The spirit of the Lord, spirit of wisdom and intelligence, spirit of advice and fortress, spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord will be laid on him.

It will be pleased with the fear of the Lord. He will not judge according to appearances and will not make decisions by hearsay; But he will judge the miserable with justice and make fair decisions for the oppressed of the country. His word will be a rod that will strike the violent; With the breath of his lips he will kill the wicked. Band of his loins will be justice, belt of his hips loyalty.

The wolf will dwell together with the lamb, the panther will lie down next to the kid; The veal and the lion will graze together and a boy will guide them. The cow and the bear will graze together; their little ones will lie down together. The lion will feed on straw, like the ox. The infant will be caught on the aspid hole; The child will put his hand in the lair of poisonous snakes. They will no longer act in early nor will they plunder throughout my holy mountain, because the wisdom of the Lord will fill the country as the waters cover the sea. On that day, the root of Iesse will rise to a banner for the peoples, the people will seek it anxiously, his home will be glorious.

Pastore Angelo Reginato:

This word reaches us today in a time that is certainly not of great hopes, indeed, a time that seems free of visions and where dreams are suspicious. Because sometimes dreams have turned into nightmares. How many projects, how many ideology that wanted to give shape to a new humanity have left rubble on the field. And today we live a little the recourse of those failures. It seems to us that dreams are deceptive, that you have to be with your feet on the ground, that you have to be a little more pragmatic and less idealistic.

So what does it mean to listen to such a word in our time? First of all, it means that we must listen to it carefully: the first Christians said that the Word of God should be ruminated, should not be digested in a blow and an author said that God loves to hide in detail.

You really have to try to understand where this vision comes from. Which is not naive at all: there is talk of a virgulty, a twig, a sprout that arises from a trunk that has been cut, which is dry. Iesse is Davide's father, Israel had a moment of glory with Davide: a small kingdom, but finally unitary with his dignity.

But immediately after the death of his son Solomon, the Kingdom divides in two: the North Kingdom that will be conquered by Syria and will disappear and the Kingdom of the South which will be conquered by the Babylon and along the rivers of Babylon the descent of David is disperse.

Here we are told: yes, it is still possible to speak of hope, but as long as we look the situation in the face, the Bible is a book full of realism and here we are faced with a "literature of the crisis". So how important it is that in this week we look in the face of the victims and horrors that have to do with homophobia, a reality in which the wolves continue to be wolves and do not graze together with the lambs. I think this loyalty to the earth is important, this mystique of the eyes open, this being people who look in the face of reality and do not remove it, even if we would like to forget it when reality is painful.

There is a task to carry out: in order to be announcers of hope, to be able to say: "I have a dream!" You must first be sentinels. Of people who know how to scrutinize in darkness and know how to report injustice. But there is another condition that in my opinion makes this utopian scene that gives us Isaiah and that is that this vision of new skies and new earth, of harmonious relationships, starts legible today, starts from a single person who lets himself be guided from the spirit of the Lord.

Let's face it in simple terms: the future, however utopian it would seem, always arises starting from us, starting from an assumption of personal responsibility. And you understand that this word that reaches us tonight takes a little in difficulty, because we, rightly we are led to see in others the cause of a situation and if we have to report a situation in which we suffer the injustices that we are victims is clear That we must report the situation, we must fight so that it is recognized, so that there is a legislation that can eliminate and in any case dissuade certain behaviors. And on this we must not get back of a millimeter: there is a battle to do and it is important that we carry it on.

But immediately after the word he tells us: «And you? Because look that you must convert too! ». When you make a battle there is the risk of always seeing the problem in the other. But it is as if the Bible told you: you too are called to let yourself be shaped by that spirit that renews your humanity, which makes you right and therefore shouts for justice, which makes you work for your consistency and then you ask for consistency in the society.

Here I think that these two conditions help us to root this utopian vision in the earth and to feel that this word concerns society, but it also concerns us, asks conversion, asks to try to live in our existence that change that we would like to live throughout the society.

Pastora Lidia Maggi:

What strikes me of this text is that hope is born from the bottom. Hope does not break into a God who enters the scene. The judgment bursts with a God, just before the verses that precede this song stages a God who truncates the branches in a terrible way: the highest are cut, the most superb are landed, he breaks down the thick of the forest with the iron: Lebanon falls under the blows of the powerful. And singing opens after having staged a god who takes the dark in hand and breaks down the forest of the superb. Moreover, with great irony: the dark before had been Syria that had hit the Forest of Israel and God took that dark and lashed it out against the powerful.

But as regards the construction of hope God is back back, is reticent and hope arises from below, was born in a time of crisis, from a trunk cut as a humble sprout, but everything is entrusted to the earth, which must produce his own fruit, it must become generative of the new. Then of course! There is the spirit of the Lord who remarried on them: the Spirit of wisdom and intelligence, but this Spirit also refers to a primordial spirit, that spirit of life that God has given to the human creature creating it in his image and likeness.

What I am trying to say is that to change the situations, we often would like to delegate to the Savior on duty, the one who has the Spirit of the Lord, this responsibility and instead the Canticle and the dream of Isaiah goes in the direction of saying: "Al ' Internation of your reality was born hope, as a small sprout to be guarded and to work ». And hope is rooted in justice that comes from accurate political choices.

So there is truly a secular direction in thinking about how to transform reality and in this secular direction, from below, there is the truest faith, the spirit of the Lord who "rests". And the image of a spirit is beautiful that can finally rest on the one who is able to practice justice, of rightly govern, of emitting Eque judgments.

And then suddenly the tone changes, we enter a bucolic dimension, we enter this framework of natural harmony. The consequence of a right government also has repercussions on creation, we say this towards the earth: the political choices we do have consequences in the way the air, water and all the earth responds. The earth is angry when we use it, pollute it, the air becomes poison when we pollute it.

Here you are! Isaiah makes the same speech, but does it with animals, imagining how human pacification, which leads to a right government, has consequences (because we are all interconnected in this creation) also on the animal world. And then even the hostile animals, the wolves that snort in a right way to govern the earth, will hold their hostility and the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down next to the kid, the calf with the leoncello. Images that seem to postpone to the ultimate times, to an impossible dream (how can the wolf stop tearing the lamb?

We know it very well: the wolf loses the hair, but certainly not the vice) but look at that this image that seems to postpone the island that is not there, in reality it is rooted here in human action, because the human action that leads To govern with justice has consequences throughout the creation. To remember that when only one oppressed is injured, the whole world is injured. When it is restored for a single victim, justice is restored for the whole created.

A virgult that arises from a broken strain. Because that virgulty becomes judge capable of issuing right sentences is needed the long process of growth and care. And here we enter the field, on preparing the context so that political and cultural choices can take place. Justice is a process, it does not happen by magic. Even when there is a right law, if there are judges who do not apply that law it will be helpless.

So thinking about this process, thinking about the growth of this virgulty we realize that a reality is sterile when it is not able to plan processes that lead to cultural and social changes, creating debate, creating law proposals, creating sensitivity , creating culture, through art, music, preaching, faith, liturgy and everything you need to ensure that this virgulty grows and can then administer society with justice and in administering with justice the company reconcile the whole created.

We received this spirit when the human creature has been shaped, the story of Genesis tells us. So we have to recover this breath. It is true that they were difficult times: we missed the air, we missed our breath and sometimes difficult situations that have raised this breath, but this breath is still in us. And then we resume breath, we open our lungs, let's fill ourselves with this spirit of life, spirit of hope, which is a secular way to say the Spirit of God.

We let this spirit rest on us while we take those steps that will create the conditions of justice to which we are called.

Text> Vigil for victims of homotransphobia on May 14, 2021