Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12
Howard W. Roberts
December 9, 2007
           
The Scripture lesson read from Isaiah is a beautifully poetic metaphorical picture of what peace looks like.  The picture Isaiah paints with his words is of an animal kingdom where the natural predators and their prey live and function side by side in harmony.  Is this really possible?
           
Edward Hicks, a19th-century painter, has a painting based on this passage from Isaiah.  Hicks called his painting, “The Peaceable Kingdom.” Hicks' vision, like that of Isaiah, is of a world of peace, and of love and tranquility. Even among the animals who are ordinarily obedient only to the genetic mapping embedded in their primitive biosystems disobey the mapping and live in peace.
           
Contrast this type of tranquility to that of Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, where cats, pigs, hamsters, alligators, chickens, rabbits, parrots, turtles, dogs and a lion cub share the same acre of earth.  Which of these two visions, "The Peaceable Kingdom" or the Pet Cemetery comes closest to approximating the most plausible conditions under which an alligator and a chicken, or a wolf and a lamb might coexist peacefully?  That's right.  A wolf and a lamb will lie together in peace - if they're both dead.
           
When we open Isaiah and read the words of 11:1-10, it's possible that we layer this same kind of pessimism over the glowing optimism of the passage. It describes a utopia that is utterly disconnected with our sense of reality. The wolf and the lamb? I don't think so. The Palestinian and Israeli? No way? The Serb and the Muslim? Nope. Peace? Sunni and Shiite?  It’s not going to happen.
           
 In light of this sentiment, it's all the more surprising when we hear voices that suggest that peace is breaking out, that the fox and the rabbit might have a future together. At the Parliament of the World's Religions, a Thai Buddhist monk, Ajahn Phra Maha Surasak Jivanando, was asked how the differences among the religions, which seemingly had caused so much bloodshed, might be reconciled. "Simple," he replied through an interpreter. "Each religion must follow its own precepts, be true to itself. Then there will be peace. War comes not from following religion but by disobeying it."
(Brian Muldoon, The Heart of Conflict (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1996), 212).
           
Political scientists looking at both the present geo-political realities as well as cultural developments, argue that future wars are becoming less probable - for five reasons. Here's a quick review:
           
1. Aging. The graying of societies may mean fewer wars in the future. With proportionally fewer young people to spare, many countries may be less willing to put their youth in harm's way to defend national interests.
           
2. Technology. Future conflicts may be limited to disrupting electronic targets rather than killing humans.
           
3. Economics. The globalization of the economy may reduce the threat of war because multinational corporations, with extensive facilities all over the world, have too much to lose.
           
4. Cultural change. Telecommunication allows people to work and make friends in multiple locations, including multiple countries. And migrants have increasing political and economic influence both in the countries they leave and in the countries they enter.
           
5. Trends in government. Future world governance will be "multi-centered," rather than controlled by a single entity. Nation-states in perpetual conflict will wither away.
           
So, are we moving into an era of war no more? Maybe yes, maybe no. There was positive news this week that Iran has not been developing nuclear weapons as we had been led to believe.  It is interesting to note, as columnist Thomas Friedman has, that no two countries with McDonald's franchises have ever gone to war.
           
Today's Scripture lesson is a prophecy of Isaiah, composed at a time in which the dynasty of King David, the son of Jesse, has been reduced to a mere stump. The people of Israel are cowering in fear of the Assyrians, who are as cruel to the Israelites as the Egyptians had been. In the middle of this frightening and violent time, God promises to launch a new political initiative, a serenity so pervasive, it bypasses the genetic hard-wiring of nature itself, allowing the wolf and lamb to share their personal space without either temptation or intimidation.
But how will it appear?
           
The prophets in general and Isaiah specifically clung to the hope that God would bring peace.  God can bring peace but only if people cooperate.  The people of Israel anticipated the coming of peace with each new king who came to the throne.  The prophets of Israel had a consistent message:  “God wants to bring peace with justice to the world.”  The way God will do that is through leaders and with each new leader came the hope that this time, this leader will take seriously what God wants and will work to bring peace with justice to the world.  When a leader does that, here is what it will look like.  Isaiah gives his poetic description of the lion lying down with the lamb.  Every time a new king came to the throne there was hope for peace and every time the people were disappointed because the king would not cooperate.  Invariably any efforts toward peace that kings made were laced with violence and force.  No peace comes by force.  Reinhold Niebhur said if you want peace, work for justice. The kings of Israel never did that.  But the expectation and anticipation was that that would occur.  Thus the concept of advent developed, a time of waiting, anticipating, preparing in order to be ready when the one came who would bring peace by working for justice. 
           
Eventually there was one born, not a king, but a peasant who when he was grown took seriously living in peace and working for justice.  When his life was over, it became increasingly evident that the way he lived was the way to bring peace and justice to the world.  This one was born as a vulnerable baby in Bethlehem, the city of David.  Once again peace is possible but only if people cooperate.
           
He doesn't come to us at Bethlehem as a leader with unlimited military might although it was difficult for people to comprehend how peace could come separated from military might and force. Rather than scorching the earth with firepower, this one born in Bethlehem grew up to encourage people to love the world and work for peace.  The initial creation of the reign of God introduces the Prince of Peace, one who has "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and reverence for God" (Isaiah 11:2).  Any other messiah is going to make an unholy mess.
           
According to Mahatma Gandhi, there are two kinds of power: One is obtained by threats of punishment. The other arises from acts of love.  This is not the sentimental sense often associated with the word "love." Instead, it is a love that has practical power. When Quakers broke the food blockade on Germany and Austria after World War I they were not motivated by emotional love toward individual Germans, but by a higher sense of what makes politics work. And in fact, they seem to have been correct. Thirty years later, Quaker relief groups, and they only, were allowed to rescue Jews inside Germany, even at the height of the war. Because they did not use threats of punishment but what Gandhi referred to as "acts of love," they made an impression on the mindset of people as dehumanized as the followers of Hitler.
           
So, what kind of power are we hoping for in this season of Advent? Coercive power? Or compassionate power? Our choice dictates whether we have a peaceable reign or a pet cemetery.
           
We may not be able to bring the reign of God to the globe, but we might be able to bring it to our neighborhood. And as we act faithfully locally, the effects might be felt globally - such is the interconnected nature of our lives today. That's why compassionate power that we bring to our context can have a glocal (both global and local) impact.
Such a difference is made possible because there is one who lived in such a way as to treat the poor with righteousness and acted with equity for the oppressed of the earth. He taught us to destroy the violent not by use of force or threat of punishment, but by speaking the truth.  God can bring peace but only if we cooperate.    
           
So, as we anticipate the arrival of God in new ways this Advent, are we doing whatever we can to bring peace, or are we merely gravediggers in a pet cemetery? Are we influencing each other through threats of punishment, or through acts of love?
Do we show concern for the poor and the oppressed of the earth? Do we speak the truth in love, especially to those who are hurting themselves and others?
           
War no more. It's a beautiful vision, but it won't take full shape until it takes shape in our lives. There's just not enough righteousness and faithfulness loose in the world, and not enough people who are committed to practicing love instead of punishment. But in the meantime, in this Advent season of preparation and in the days beyond, we can graft our lives to the one who shows us how to make peace possible, and pray for peace to fill us and transform us.
           
We need leaders working for peace with justice and we need to be leaders working for peace with justice. Working for peace seems to be such an unnatural approach toward life for us. It goes without saying that wolves eat lambs, and lions eat antelopes - this is the natural order of things. But violence goes beyond the wild kingdom to play a very important part in the functioning of civilization. "We are quite literally a people that live off our wars," say Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. We "live off our wars because they give us the necessary basis for self-sacrifice so that a people who have been taught to pursue only their own interest can at times be mobilized to die for one another." War makes people stop looking at themselves - it inspires them to identify with the whole society (Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989], 35). If the violence of war is a part of the natural ordering of society, then peace is unnatural. We need godly leaders to show us a better way.  You and I need to be some of those leaders.  For there to be peace among the people of God, we cannot simply stay the same. We must be transformed.
           
The theme of Thomas Friedman's book The Lexus and the Olive Tree is captured in a pivotal anecdote in which Friedman describes the modern day clash of the human drive for prosperity and modernization against the pull of relationships and community.
           
In 1992, Friedman visited the Lexus luxury car factory outside Toyota City in Japan. Back then, 66 humans and 310 robots were making 300 sedans a day. Then, while riding the bullet train back to Tokyo, he read an article about the latest furor between the Arabs and Israelis.
           
"It struck me then that the Lexus and the olive tree were actually pretty good symbols of this post-Cold War era: Half the world seemed to be emerging from the Cold War intent on building a better Lexus, dedicated to modernizing, streamlining and privatizing their economies in order to thrive in the system of globalization," Friedman writes in the book. "And half the world - sometimes half the same country, sometimes half the same person - was still caught up in the fight over who owns the olive tree."
(Michael Cinelli, "New York Times columnist to discuss his latest book," Rice University News, April 29, 1999)
           
Author Frederick Buechner observes that in Beauty and the Beast, it is "only when the Beast discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself becomes beautiful." It is only when we discover that God loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike.  This transformation is a long and painful change "because with part of themselves sinners prefer their sin, just as with part of himself the Beast prefers his glistening snout and curved tusks."
           
But little by little, "the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person. God does most of it." And the end of the process is eternal life (Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC [New York: HarperCollins, (1973) 1993], 104). We need a leader to transform us into people who can live together in peace.
           
Ultimately, peace comes from God, but peace requires that people cooperate with God.  Isaiah teaches that the Spirit of the Lord will rest on the leaders who bring us peace. Their gifts of wisdom and understanding will be seen when they judge impartially and in fairness for the lowly and marginalized of society; their gifts of counsel and might will be clear when they show fierce hostility to the wicked; the gift of knowledge and their love of God will be evident in their righteousness and faithfulness. The leaders who establish the peace of God will be gifted people, fully open to the presence of God and able to take decisive action. We need such   leaders if our world of conflict is ever going to be replaced by a world of justice, harmony, health and hope.
           
It is never enough to establish peace and justice in one corner of the world, in an isolated community or gated suburban subdivision. Conflict and injustice anywhere threaten society everywhere, so our vision should be directed to that "holy mountain" of God, where no one hurts or destroys any more, and "the earth will be full of the knowledge of God" (v.9).
           
The leaders who will rule this peaceful new world are those whose hope and confidence rest in God and who seek to bring peace by working for justice.  The one who best emulated this is the one whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, the bearer of the Spirit of God. He is the one who brings us the peace that passes all understanding, but also the one who calls for a sacrificial struggle into the middle of a violent world. To follow Jesus on his mission of peacemaking is to accept the fact that his peace is not natural, that it requires transformation, that it comes from God, and that it will not be complete until the knowledge of the Lord fills the earth "as the waters cover the sea" (v.9). The peace of Christ is a difficult peace, but it is the only peace worth pursuing.  It is the only peace that is possible and it is possible only if you and I begin living transformed lives, doing everything in our power to live in peace with all people.  Then peace can break out in the world.  Peace is possible if you and I cooperate with God and do our part to live and work for peace.  Peace starts here with you and me.  Will we make peace possible?  Will you?  Will I?