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Prophets of
Peace
by the Rev. Rich Smith
December 9, 2007
Isaiah 11:1-9
The troubles began when our children got their driver’s
licenses. They were fine drivers, and paid their own insurance
and all, but the problem was that we very quickly went from a two-car
family to a four-car family. We lived on a cul-de-sac, five
houses on pie-shaped lots -- we had a lot of room in the back but very
little in the front along the street, meaning that parking was in short
supply. The one space in front of our house was shared with a
neighbor, which he claimed for his own, and no matter where our
kids parked, someone always complained, and relationships in the
neighborhood were not exactly cordial. We finally solved the
problem by moving here, far away from the troubles, and thus
becoming the only people in history who came to Washington in search of
better parking! But I do remember remarking how I could
understand, given how hard it was to resolve such disputes in our own
neighborhood, why it is so difficult to bring peace to the Middle East,
where people have been fighting over a lot more than parking space for
centuries.
Our scripture reading for this Second Sunday of
Advent takes us to a time when Israel was in the thick of such
strife. Scholars aren't sure whether the text dates from the
threat of the Assyrians (8th c. BCE) or from the Babylonians (6th c.
BCE), but in any case, the political situation of the people of Israel
is in disarray. Wars, invasions, attempted coups, risky foreign
alliances, corruption, greed, squabbles over land – all the usual
suspects have served to reduce the once proud and powerful Davidic
dynasty to the equivalent of a clear-cut forest. Things were
about as bad as they could get, and yet in the midst of this comes the
prophet Isaiah with what I call his “stump speech.” You know the
way the older versions render this text – “a shoot shall grow from the
stump of Jesse,” referring to King David’s father – a prophecy that God
will raise up a new ruler from this line, one who will yet save the day
and inaugurate not merely a return to the glorious days of old, but a
new realm altogether – not just Israel returned to power but the whole
creation transformed into the peaceable kingdom!
We read these verses in Advent and lay on them more
meaning than they were intended to have when we assume they are talking
about Jesus. That’s understandable, for they certainly describe
the yearnings for things to be different, for the age of true justice
and real peace that following the way of Jesus would result in.
Isaiah’s poetry has been employed for centuries by artists and
composers and theologians and people of faith to depict humankind’s
wildest hopes and most fervent prayers. But when Isaiah spoke, it
was not about a far-in-the-future messiah, it was to give hope to the
people of his own day.
The first half of the passage describes the one who
will rise from the tree stump, the charismatic leader who will be
endowed by God’s Spirit with just the right gifts for leadership –
“wisdom and understanding,” “counsel and might,” “knowledge and the
fear of the Lord.” Credentials of the ideal ruler. Just as
Mitt Romney described himself the other day, right? Or as most of
the candidates would like to have us see them.
The one part I wasn’t sure about was the line “by
his breath he will slay the wicked.” I had a girlfriend once who
said that described me.... Actually, I think it means that this
ruler’s words will be incredibly powerful: He says it and it’s done!
In any case, it is the attention to justice (which
the Old Testament calls “righteousness,”) that will be the ruler’s most
important quality. It is this justice for the poor, the outcast,
the left out and left behind that will result in the kingdom of peace –
not bigger and better WMD’s or a gargantuan economy or higher “security
barriers.” As Pope Paul VI famously said, “If you want peace,
work for justice.” He’s right, and you know how often I agree
with popes! But that’s also the theme of Jimmy Carter’s book,
Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid. Until there is justice for
Palestinians and a recognition of Israel’s right to exist by Arabs,
there will be no lasting peace.
But if it should happen and peace should break out,
Isaiah, in the second half of the passage, gives us that poetic
description of the peaceable kingdom – “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.”
I’m not sure this is an image an environmentalist
could get behind – after the clear-cutting comes an upset of the whole
natural order - predator and prey changing their ways, when we know
ecological balance depends upon life feeding life. Take away the
wolves and the deer population gets so out of balance that nothing
works right and that’s hardly peace... But let’s not take it too
literally and simply agree that it’s really all about a world made safe
for domestic animals and children, in other words, the most vulnerable.
The terror in which much of the world lives gives way to a sense of
safety and security – for everybody!
This human longing was expressed visually in the
famous painting by the American Quaker artist, Edward Hicks, where
along with all the animals lying down, and all the beasts and little
children playing together, one sees off to the side William Penn making
a treaty with the Native Americans -- Hicks’ contemporary vision of
what peace looks like. Of course that peace did not last, for it
was not a peace based on justice.
One wonders if the peaceable kingdom will ever be
more than fantasy, a wild hope, an “impossible possibility,” as Walter
Bruggemann put it. As one skeptic remarked, probably Woody Allen,
“The lamb will lie down with the lion, but the lamb won’t get much
sleep.”
I still have an article that was written in the
summer of 2001, suggesting that in spite of then-recent events in
Bosnia and Somalia, peace was on the verge of breaking out, war
rendered obsolete by geo-political realities as well as cultural
developments, that the fox and the rabbit might actually have a future
together. Five reasons for this were given:
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.
And the article quoted NY Times columnist Thomas
Friedman who pointed out that no two countries with McDonald's
franchises have ever gone to war with each other. That’s the best
rationalization for Big Macs I’ve ever heard. Go figure!
I was going to use this article as the basis for an
optimistic sermon after I got here, but September 11 came two days
after I began. And then it all became about security, and war was
the answer. Not justice for Palestinians, or health care for
children, or the health of the planet. But as the pope said, If
you want peace, work for justice.
I think another thing that might help bring Isaiah’s
vision to fruition would be to take seriously what another Roman
Catholic and prophet of peace, Hans Kung, said: “There will be no peace
in the world until there is peace among the world’s religions.”
Religions that claim the exclusive path to God, which gives them the
right to behave badly towards those of other faiths, do not do the
cause of world peace any good.
And Christianity’s reputation – and track record –
as one of those exclusive faiths doesn’t do us any good. There
are a lot of people who might be more attracted to our faith if they
thought it was otherwise. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in her
wonderful current best selling book, Eat, Pray, Love, “Culturally,
though not theologically, I’m a Christian. I was born a
Protestant fo the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do
love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do
reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what
indeed He would do, I can’t swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity
insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking
then, I cannot call myself a Christian.” Is that really the one,
fixed rule? I thought I was “Love God and love your
neighbor.” Maybe I’m not a Christian then, either. But it’s
exactly that attitude of exclusivism that keeps so many suspicious of
people of other faiths. “There will be no peace in the world
until there is peace among the world’s religions.”
There was an article in the Washington Post a couple
of weeks ago about “rumors and emails circulating on the
Internet....that (presidential candidate Barak) Obama is a Muslim, a
‘Muslim plant’ in a conspiracy against America” – exposed to the
faith in Indonesia, reared in an Islamic terrorist school, that if
elected he would come out of the closet and rule this country by
Islamic law, put terrorists in the Cabinet, and so on . Now we
know that he is a good and loyal member of the United Church of Christ,
a faith he chose while working as a community organizer in the south
side of Chicago. And his campaign is working hard to tell this
truth – but it’s always reported in a way to suggest that Obama is
“Denying the charge.” Why must it be a charge? Wouldn’t it
be enough to say, “I am a Christian, but what if I were a
Muslim?” And to use the exposure he’s had to the Muslim world as
a positive thing. Last year Minnesota elected the first Muslim
member of Congress, Keith Ellison. He took his oath of office on
a Koran that was owned by Thomas Jefferson. What a furor that
caused in the blogosphere, and Fox News. Isn’t this rather an
opportunity, not a threat? How can we use this to enlarge our
vision of faith, bring us closer together rather than further apart,
bring us nearer the vision of the peaceable kingdom?
Then on Thursday Mitt Romney gave his “Mormon
speech” in which he attempted to deal with the charge from the
religious right that Mormons aren’t really Christians. I read the
Post article announcing the speech, “Romney Aims to Prove his
Christianity” and I thought, “Can you really do that in a
speech?” Wouldn’t be better proved by his proposed policies, or
maybe his actions? And one phrase in the article caught my
attention: “Like all Christians, Mormons worship Jesus Christ as the
son of God who atoned for their sins by dying on the cross....”
Wait a minute – there may be a few who call themselves Christians,
maybe even one or two in this room, who wouldn’t fit that
definition. It’s another whole sermon, of course, but I’m not so
sure that’s the only way to be a person of Christian faith. I
think Mormons certainly could be considered part of the Christian
family, even if some of their beliefs seem strange to us. Maybe
some of mine do also. Some suspect Mormons because Joseph Smith
(no relation) put forth a new revelation from God, and as we all know,
God has been silent since the Bible was dictated.... Oh, wait,
somewhere I heard that “God is Still Speaking,”.... Whether God
was speaking to Joseph Smith I do not know, but I have known a lot of
Mormons who were very good people. I think of my freshman
basketball coach, Mr. Goodwin, a wonderful, kind, encouraging teacher
and human being, and a Mormon. The fact that he kept me on the
bench most of the season is probably why I ended up in the ministry and
not in the NBA, so we all owe him a great deal, I’m sure.... In
any case, whether one is “Christian” according to some definition of
the religious right, is not what makes a person qualified to be
president. I’d rather inquire as to how they measure up to that
shoot from the stump of Jesse, with their wisdom and understanding,
counsel and might, concern for justice for the least and the lost.
Kung is right. There will be no peace in the
world until there is peace among the world’s religions. It
doesn’t mean boiling them all down to one common denominator, but
recognizing the unique contributions that each faith makes. It
certainly means getting beyond exclusivism, saying believe my way or
else! It would mean a broad and generous interpretation of that
phrase near the beginning of our Westmoreland Statement of Purpose,
which we will read together in a few moments, the awkward one that
says, “believing that other foundation can no one lay than that which
is laid, which is Jesus Christ...” That’s a quote from 1
Corinthians 3:10, an earlier translation, which on the face of it
sounds like we’re saying Jesus is the only way. Of course when
Paul wrote those words, he was not arguing for the supremacy of
Christianity over other world religions (it was still a relatively
small sect), but rather: If you are going to build a church, build it
on Jesus. Not me, not some other founder or leader. Jesus
is the only true foundation for a church. And he’s right about
that. So when we recite our Statement of Purpose together, we’re
saying we build this church on the teachings of Jesus – Jesus who was
never exclusive, who challenged his hearers to value all human beings,
to see the good in all people, especially enemies, and to include in
God’s love those outside the circle.
As the prophets of peace remind us, there is no
peace in the world until there is peace among the world’s religions,
peace that includes respect, openness, generosity of spirit. And,
there is no peace without justice. When we get that right, maybe that
day promised by the first prophet of peace known as Isaiah will finally
arrive. And the rule of the Prince of Peace will finally come to
pass.
.
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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