“The wolf will walk with the lamb, the leopard will sleep beside the little goat. Calves and full grown beasts and lions all together, with a small child in the lead. Cows and bears will graze, and their young will take their naps together. The lion and ox will both eat hay. The unweaned child will play over the serpent’s den, and the weaned child will place their hand on the snake’s hole” (Isaiah 11.6-8).
It doesn’t seem like a Good Friday passage does it? Isaiah appears to present us with an Easter world where the blood, violence, and horror of this day have passed away and the world has been redeemed from all its sorrow and sadness. No, this vision seems like a terrible mockery of what this day will bring. Yet this vision loses its power without this day. It is, in fact, the tragedy in just how different this day could have gone.
I’ll gamble that you’ve come across some depiction of this vision somewhere. Maybe it’s in your children or grandchildren’s Sunday School room or in one of their picture books. And while there are likely exceptions, all the ones I’ve seen lack teeth. Not one of them shows the wolves, the leopards, or the lions with their mouths wide and their sharp teeth exposed. They look, to be honest, as if they’ve been defanged.
I suppose none of us wants to confront the reality of the peril in this scene. It changes the image, doesn’t it? Something of the pastoral peace it appears to convey disappears the moment we are reminded that these wild beasts are still capable of snatching up these vulnerable creatures and turning them into lunch.
But that is the reality, at least the possibility of that peril is real. There’s no more a promise of safety for the little calf than there is for the child with their hand in the rattlesnake’s den. It takes only one quick motion, one strike and blood will be spilled. Pain will flood the picture.
As it does on this day. Those who acted on this day—who did not like the words of this preacher from Nazareth, who thought his vision was out of touch with reality—were not defanged. No, they had teeth. And they chose to draw near to the vulnerable, and they bit. And Jesus, from those wounds, bled and died.
This vision then isn’t some picture of docile creatures upon the grass of the hillside. These aren’t predators radically changed in demeanor and biology, they are the vicious, instinctive beasts we know today. The only difference is in their action. That they have chosen, rather than attack, to lie still, to try a different way.
And if they can, red in tooth and claw, so can we. Jesus didn’t come to pull the sharp teeth from our mouths. Instead, he stretched out beside us, giving us the chance to attack or to rest with him. Each and every day, he does this and offers up his vulnerable body to us—the most vicious of all God’s creatures. His body is present in each and every person we encounter, even every creature.
How do we will react? What will I choose? To strike or lie still. To draw blood or to eat grass.
To be led by the grown-up or the child?
Jesus, today we remember your death and our complicity in it. I remember the blood I’ve spilled—the words spoken with sharp teeth, the actions made with razor claws, the ferocity of my intents. Forgive me for the choices I have made, and teach me to lie down in green pastures and refuse the violence that darkens our days.