At What Price Peace?

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

December 9, 2007, Second Sunday of Advent.

In a 1986 before-dinner speech in Germany, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used an adaptation of an old Isaiah 11 joke:

“I recall the story of the Western visitor to a Soviet zoo who was very impressed to find a wolf lying down with a lamb, with a sign above them extolling this example of peaceful coexistence.
He asked the keeper how this miracle could be achieved in the Soviet Union.
"It’s perfectly simple if you have a fresh lamb every morning" he replied.”

When we listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah, it does seem a pipe dream to think of wolves and lambs, lions and calves lying together in peace and contentment. In fact, while the picture is one of peace and tranquility, it is physically impossible because the carnivores would have to change their very natures. Wolves, lions, bears, leopards, are by their nature meat eaters, and meat comes from live animals. So they would have to change their very nature to become herbivores. So what the prophet of first Isaiah is telling us seems rather silly.

Or is it? Jean Clift says Isaiah is not so naïve to think that wild animals will change their nature, but that the prophet speaks instead “of the one created animal, which can choose to change its nature – the human animal.” The Jewish Encyclopedia comments on Isaiah's vision of a messianic age in which the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the calf with the young lion (Isaiah 11:6): Maimonides believes that Isaiah's language is metaphorical (for example, only that enemies of the Jews, likened to the wolf, will no longer oppress them). A century later, Nachmanides rejected Maimonides's rationalism and asserted that Isaiah meant precisely what he said: that in the messianic age even wild animals will become domesticated and sweet¬-tempered. A more recent Jewish "commentator," Woody Allen, has cautioned: "And the lamb and the wolf shall lie down together, but the lamb won't get any sleep." Can humanity let go of its warring nature and lie down in peace with its neighbors? Isn’t that the question of today’s passages? Isn’t that the peace we so fervently hope for, and yet seems so far from us?

Can Irish Catholics and Protestants eat together? Can Serb and Croatian sit at the same table without the urge to do violence to the other? Will Iranians and Jews ever be able to sit and have a civil conversation, and laugh and tell jokes? Will Sunnis and Shias ever sit and have a nice cup of coffee together? And perhaps the most difficult: Will fundamentalist Christians and ultra-liberal Christians ever be able to share communion together? That is what this passage is about. Can we change our natures enough to be graceful with one another, or is Isaiah a pipe dream? I think for many it is a pipe dream, because they would rather hold on to their animosities, and hurts, than find ways to peace.

Paul is searching for this same peace in his words to the church at Rome. Listen once again to what he says.

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. ⁸For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, ⁹and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name”;

The circumcised represents the Jews, and the gentiles represent everyone else. In ancient and modern Judaism you’re either a Jew or a gentile. There is no other classification. So for Paul you had all of the Jews, which included the secular Jews and the religious zealots and everyone in between, and the gentiles which included the Greeks and the Romans who had been and still were the oppressors, all the people of the other pagan religions, not to mention the various Christian groups that were springing up all over. Paul is calling for harmony among all of them. Paul is saying, Can’t we all get along? He was the contemporary first Isaiah in the early Church.

The importance of passages like ours from Isaiah and Romans is not so much that they portend a time of peace, but that they hold up a vision. They hold up a template for what we should be striving for. The Rev. Paul Nancarrow, an Episcopal priest writes:

While no actual earthly society – no human community and no ecosystem – may be able to achieve the fullness of peace under the conditions of this world, yet the vision serves as an ideal against which any and all societies can be measured.

The writer of Proverbs said it so well, “Where there is no vision the people are unrestrained,” or as the King James Version says, “the people perish.” Without the vision there is nothing to restrain us from humanity’s madness. Without the vision, there is no hope.

The vision compels us to seek ways to make the vision a reality, and it is here that we come to the words of John in our gospel passage today. As we wait for the celebration of Christmas – the coming of Emanuel – God with us, we wait during Advent by having a vision of what a life with, God-with-us, would be like. Advent asks us the question of what we think our world, our own individual lives would be like with Christ among us, with the presence of Christ available to us by the power of the Spirit. It is not so much about the second or third coming of Christ as it is about what we believe it would look like, and working for that vision ourselves out of our faithfulness to God and God’s gift of the vision. The operative word in that sentence was “working.” And that is where Matthew’s account of John comes in.

First of all let us understand who John was. John was the son of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, according to Luke. John had become a part of a group called the Essenes. The Essenes were a conservative group of Jews who left the cities and places of corruption to live in the desert and closely follow the law. That is why we hear John preaching in the desert; because he was comfortable there; he felt it freed him from the vice and corruption of the cities. Hence it gives power to his words:

...when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance. ⁹Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. “

John saw the religious establishment as much of the problem. They preached a soft faith and had compromised with Rome so they could keep their lofty positions. John was preaching of the coming of one who would clear society of corruption and usher in a time of faithfulness. And John believed Jesus was the one. We hear in the Gospel of John chapter 1:29, John the Baptist says, “The next day he (John) saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

John believed that Jesus was the one to bring in God’s reign of peace for the Jews and the world. So when Jesus begins to preach of love and not repentance and judgment, John begins to question if Jesus was the one. John was in prison and experiencing his own dark night of the soul. We read in Luke 17:18ff:

John summoned two of his disciples ¹⁹and sent them to the Lord to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ ²⁰When the men had come to him, they said, ‘John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ’ ²¹Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. ²²And he answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. ²³And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.’

This is the John people are flocking to hear. While John may not have understood the mission of the one to come, he did recognize that a transformation was needed. If God’s reign was to be felt on earth, then it would require a transformation of natures. People could not sit back and expect it to happen. They could not continue to live their separate, individual lives and expect peace to come on earth. If the Spirit of the Prince of Peace resides in us then we have to change how we relate with others. Their needs have to become just as, or even more important than our own. Justice, fairness, and equity are the marks of one with the Spirit of Christ within them. This is true for nations, and for individuals. However the temptation to take shortcuts is strong in humanity. We want to save a little something for ourselves. The price of peace is to give up our need for security, for wealth, so that others may experience peace and equality. Many will say that is not possible, or I’m just not that good of a Christian to be able to do that. But that is the word from today’s passages. If you want peace in the world, in your life, in your marriage, in your family then it is highly likely you’re going to have to give something up to help make that happen. It may take giving up a grudge and offering forgiveness, it may mean recognizing that you did something wrong and asking for forgiveness. It most certainly means that things cannot go on as they have in the past.

How badly do you want peace? What price are you willing to pay for it? All we have to do is look around the world and see what happens when people are not willing to pay the price. Is that what you want for your life?

Then I urge you to catch the vision, and allow yourself to begin to be transformed.

Amen

© 2007 Rev. Dr. Thomas T. Peters