Our Longing for Peace (Advent 2)

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

Roger Lynn

December 4, 2016

Second Sunday in Advent

(click here for the audio for this sermon)

On this second Sunday in the season of Advent, when the theme of the day is “Peace,” we recognize that deep within us there is a longing to live in a world which is shaped by peace. Not simply peace as the absence of conflict, but peace as the harmonious, interrelated connection of all that is. We look around at the brokenness, the pain, the violence which rises up at every turn, and we instinctively know that life was meant to be more than this. We see the suffering, we hear the cries for justice, we experience the divisions, and we want desperately for things to be different. In this season when “Peace on Earth” is proclaimed on everything from cards to banners to songs, the contrast between our longings and our reality can be stark and disheartening.

The writer of Isaiah 11 knew something about this longing. Life was hard. The Hebrew people living in Jerusalem were a people at war. Violence was everywhere. And Isaiah knew that such conditions did not represent God’s plan for humanity. He looks back with nostalgic eyes to the glory days of King David’s reign and longs for such days to come again. He dreams of a ruler who will rise up and bring God’s peace to bear in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is a sweeping, majestic vision of peace in which even seemingly natural enemies will find a way to co-exist in harmony. The vision ends with the amazing declaration which Isaiah boldly dares to speak on behalf of God – “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God...” (Isaiah 11:9)

And yet, there is a dark note in this vision as well. A note which I believe should serve as a warning to those of us who get caught up in the passion of our own longing for peace in the midst of this tumultuous world in which we live. Right in the middle of Isaiah’s vision, between the descriptions of the new Davidic ruler and the divergent cast of characters who will live together in the peaceful age which is coming, Isaiah wanders off track with an ominous description of  actions he thinks this new Davidic ruler ought to take. “. . . he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” (Isaiah 11:4) So overwhelmingly aware that God’s peace is being sidelined by truly awful actions, Isaiah simply cannot imagine any other way of dealing with the problem except to call down divine assassination. 

I always find such statements to be sobering, particularly when they occur right in the middle of such grand and sweeping visions of an alternative reality. Isaiah can imagine a world in which wolf and lamb, leopard and goat, calf and lion can all live together in peaceful harmony, and yet cannot come up with any other way for God’s peace to be ushered in except by killing those whom he deems to be wicked. I simply cannot accept that God’s plan for peace is founded on violence. The radical peace of God becomes possible not through a continuation of more of the same, but through a fundamental healing and transformation which calls all of us back to our basic God-given nature. Of course it’s an outrageous vision. Faith is outrageous. It stretches us beyond our own limitations, because it is precisely when we rely solely on our own limitations that we resort to violence in the first place. Isaiah’s tragic detour into the myth that violence can lead to peace serves as a warning for us precisely because it is a detour which is so easy to take. When we get passionate about a cause, even when the cause is God’s peace for the whole world, it is remarkably easy to start seeing anything or anyone who stands in the way of that cause as an obstacle which must be eliminated. The more just the cause, the easier it seems to be for us to head down this path. And it always, always leads us away from life rather than towards it. It puts us in the very role we are objecting to. In the words of the old comic strip character Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and they is us.” 

We find another prime example of this tendency in the figure of John the Baptist as he is portrayed in Matthew’s Gospel. I have always been drawn to this wild man in the wilderness, dramatically proclaiming the coming of God’s reign. He is so passionate about his message. He believes it with every fiber of his being, and he desperately wants everyone else to believe it as well. But as it was with Isaiah, John is so distressed with the brokenness he sees all around him that he cannot imagine any other recourse except for God to destroy the evil-doers. He even puts Jesus, the one we have come to call “the prince of peace,” into the role of fiery destroyer of all things wicked. It is a dangerously slippery slope we tread whenever we let our passion for peace become infused with even a hint of violence. It so easily blinds us to the dramatically damaging implications. I am convinced that it simply does not serve us well in our quest for shalom – the wholeness which is the truly defining characteristic of God’s peace. 

Rick Lowery is a Disciples biblical scholar who taught at Philips Theological Seminary in Tulsa. Rick once said something at a Bible study that has always stuck with me, and seems to be relevant here. He said, “Every time I read the Bible I hear a message from God. And sometimes the message is ‘don’t do this!’ ” And so, sufficiently sobered by the reminders we find in Isaiah and John about how easy it is to stray from the true path of peace, we return again to the closing words of Isaiah’s vision and simply wrap ourselves in its intoxicating glory. “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9) And this, finally, is what will enliven and empower and inspire us – the promise that God’s ongoing and active presence among us will become so fully recognized and so fully embraced that violence will simply become an inconceivable option. May we open ourselves to God’s presence. May we proclaim the reality of God’s love. May we allow our longing for peace to shape and inform every aspect of our lives. May it be so in this moment and in every moment of our living. Amen.