The Way of Peace

Sermon preached at Midway Hills Christian Church

Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10

 

            Well we are off to a good start in our observance of Advent. What a wonderful Hanging of the Greens service we had last Sunday! It was such a joy to have so many folks participating by sharing liturgies, reading scriptures, and adorning our sanctuary with the symbols of the season. I want to remind you that this beautiful sanctuary is open throughout the week and there will be soft music and devotional material available if you want to stop by for prayer and meditation. It’s a real treat for me to be able to enjoy this holy space everyday of the week—one of the perks of the job.

            You know, Advent is a double-edged season. Originally the season’s focus was penitential, observed with prayer and fasting, in preparation for the Second Advent of Christ. During the season Christians also celebrate with joy and thanksgiving the first Advent and in doing so make room in our hearts for ways Christ can be born afresh and anew. And so the assigned texts for these four Sundays are a mixture of warning and waiting, joy and judgment.

            Today, this second Sunday in Advent, is Peace Sunday. In churches all over the world the candle of Peace will be lit on the Advent wreath, and the prophecy of Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom will be read. On this Sunday, which also begins the observance of Human Rights Week, all Disciples congregations are encouraged to focus their worship and study on the call from the Prince of Peace to be peacemakers and to consider the issues of peace with justice in our communities, nation and world. How fitting that we here at Midway Hills will have our Alternative Christmas Gift market after worship today. Instead of spending money at the malls, we have an opportunity to give a give a gift of peace to the world by purchasing an alternative gift of food, medicine, livestock or education in honor of a friend or relative. The alternative gift market is one way we can help to make Isaiah’s prophecy of peace a reality.

            Isaiah’s prophecy of a spirit-filled ruler from the stump of Jesse who will wear righteousness like a belt and issue in an age in which the wolf shall live with the lamb is part of a larger collection of prophetic utterances that deal with God’s judgment and restoration of Israel. These prophecies have been ‘tamed’ over the years as we have heard them sung in Handel’s Messiah, animated in Charlie Brown’s Christmas, or captured in a snapshoot on the front of a Christmas card. Many of us have received countless cards with a lion and a lamb lying together depicting this particular passage in chapter 11 of Isaiah. Note however that the passage claims in God’s peaceable kingdom the wolf and the lamb will live together. The calf and the fatling get to hang out with the lion.  I guess in modern renderings of this scene the lion and the lamb were more photogenic!

            One person visualized Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom in this way: One day a zoo keeper noticed that an orangutan was reading two books—the Bible and Darwin’s Origin of Species. Curiously he asked the ape, “Why are you reading two such opposite books?” Well, said the orangutan, “I’m trying to figure out of I’m supposed to be my brother’s keeper, or my keeper’s brother.”

            This prophecy in Isaiah was given during a particular historical context in the Middle East of 700 BC. Isaiah uttered these words in the midst of war, the waxing and waning of political regimes and the building of coalitions to resist evil empires. How do we receive these words of Isaiah in this land, in this time, with a historical context that is much the same as in Isaiah’s day?

           

            First of all, we receive them as words of poetry.  The prophets’ primary mode of speech was poetry not narrative. Poetry suggests, evokes, and leaves room for interpretation. This poetic image of the peaceable kingdom evokes our deep longing for peace. We long for an age when: 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. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

            This menagerie coaxes us to the most important verse of the entire passage: 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.

            Can we—do we dare—imagine the world with no more hurt or destruction?? The story is told of the Venezuelan painter Rafael Vargas who produces magnificent paintings of the world in fiesta—the earth breathes at the top of its lungs, the greenest of trees burst with fruit and flowers, fish, birds, and roosters jostle one another like people.  What is so remarkable about these paintings is that Vargas creates them from his poverty stricken dirty village.  Vargas’ paintings are prophecies—not of the reality he knows, but the reality he needs.

            This vision of Isaiah’s is the reality we need and we dare to claim it, to continue to work toward it by ceasing our hurt and destruction of each other and the planet. How do we do this?  What is the way to this kind of peace? The way is within.  We begin by looking inside ourselves to see where the shoots of violence grow out of us.

            This cultivation of peace within does not result in a withdrawal from the world’s problems. It leads us first and foremost into the depths of our own brokenness and woundedness in order to bring them to God’s healing light. The Apostle Paul admonishes us, “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For everything exposed by the light becomes visible, and everything that becomes visible is light.” [Ephesians 5:8-14]

            Out of our own healing we move into the larger world to work for peace. That is the meaning of compassion: com-passion, a ‘being with’ others, the world, from the humility of our own humanity.  It is out of our own struggle that we are able to understand and assist others—our brothers and sisters who travel the same path.

            It was that kind of sharing in our common humanity that did lead to peace on earth for one day—in 1914.  Perhaps you have heard of the famous Christmas truce that occurred during World War I, on Christmas Eve of 1914, that first year of the War. German and British forces were facing each other on the battlefield, each in their muddy trenches.  The few hundred feet that separated them was called No Man’s Land.  Restless in their trenches, covered in mud, and eating the same rations every day, some soldiers began to wonder about the un-seen enemy, men declared monsters by propagandists.

            The uncomfortableness of living in trenches coupled with the closeness of the enemy who lived in similar conditions contributed to a growing ‘live and let live’ policy.  Sometimes the two enemies would yell at each other.  Singing was also a common way of communication.  On December 7, 1914, Pope Benedict XV suggested a temporary hiatus of the war for the celebration of Christmas.  Though Germany agreed, the other powers refused. Even without the cessation of war for Christmas, the soldiers decorated their trenches with lights and Christmas trees.  In some areas the two sides exchanged Christmas carols.  German soldiers raised their voices to “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” and the British soldiers replied with “The First Noel.”  When the British started “O Come All Ye Faithful” the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words ‘Adeste Fideles.’  Two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.

            In some parts of the line representatives of each side met in the middle, in No Man’s Land, and negotiated a truce that began on Christmas Eve and ended at midnight on Christmas night.  On Christmas Day British and German soldiers exchanged small gifts of cigarettes and food.  In No Man’s Land they sorted through dead bodies to bury them and in some rare instances joint services were held for both the British and German dead. A soccer game even broke out in No Man’s Land on that Christmas Day in 1914.

 

            Many soldiers were surprised to discover that they were more alike than they had thought.      

 

The high commanders on both sides were displeased with this kind of fraternization with the enemy.  They knew friendships formed between declared enemies would hinder the business of warfare and so the men were ordered to go back to war.  What a shame that those men were not free to obey their own desire for peace!

 

            We were made for peace, not war! But the reality of the world and our human condition is that we have let fear reign in our hearts instead of the living God.  We must let God be born in us today!  We must let peace have its way with us.

            What is the way to peace?  Thomas Merton describes it this way:  “Only love—which means humility—can cast out the fear which is the root of all war.  So instead of loving what you think is peace, love others, and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war.”

 

            The soldiers who were in those trenches that Christmas Day in 1914 entered for just a brief moment into Isaiah’s vision.  One corporal was known to have said: “This experience has been the most practical demonstration I have seen of ‘Peace on earth and goodwill towards men.’

 

Let us pray….