Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-10, Psalm 72
Romans
15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12
Today we lit the second Advent candle, the candle of
peace. Today, we lit the second Advent
candle, as we lit the second Advent candle around this time last year, and the
year before that. But with every passing
year, we seem further from peace. Or
peace seems further from us. Perhaps we
experience peace to be like a mirage in the desert, that seems so inviting at a
distance, but that seemingly evaporates as we approach it.
Our reading from Isaiah chapter 11 gives us a lovely vision
of peace. It begins with a description
of a person who is called “a shoot from the stock of Jesse” – Jesse was King
David’s father. I should mention for
context that the preceding chapter, Isaiah chapter 10, features a vision of
what we might call “God as lumberjack” – the nations, including Israel and
Judah, are compared to a forest, and God cuts down all the trees, leaving
nothing but stumps as far as the eye can see.
The nations are cut down because of their corruption, injustice, and
rebellion against God. It’s a desolate
scene – and many of us have seen enough photos of forests clear-cut for logging
or mining to have some idea of what this would look like. Seemingly, it’s a
scene of no hope. But then, hope
appears, in the form of a twig growing from one of the stumps.
This twig is a person, a descendent of King David, of whom
we’re told, in part,
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
It’s easy for us to see why the early church identified this
description with Jesus.
And then we’re given a vision of nature, with the instinct
for predation removed. Wolf lying down
with lamb, leopard with goat, the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child leading them. Bears
grazing in the same way cows do, lions eating straw, and a child playing in
safety near a snake pit. (Note to any
children in the audience – do not try this at home. Pastor Dave says, “Stay away from snakes.”) Isaiah sums up this description with the
words, “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.”
This very much seems like a mirage. For these animals, predators and prey, to
live in peace seems unimaginable. Old
Testament professor Walter Brueggeman experienced this same sense of unreality,
of unimaginability, as he read this. But
as he pondered the passage, he asked himself, “Why is this unimaginable? Why is
this so hard to envision? Why have I –
why have we all – accepted violence and predation as normal?”
I don’t think there’s a lot we can do about helping wolves
lie down with lambs and so forth – at least I don’t want to, because I don’t
much want to have my face chewed off.
But Brueggemann’s question prompts a larger question about the violence
among humans that we accept as normal, as “just the way things are” – and while
I can’t reason with wolves and lions, it should be possible at least in theory
to reason with other people. The
violence we call normal: Wars that go on for a decade and more. Shootings…..at this point, we’ve become so
numb to shootings at schools, malls, houses of worship, and other public places
that they hardly register, hardly create a blip on our spiritual radar. Another gunman – and it’s almost always a man,
with multiple weapons and a chip on his shoulder – another body count, we send
up a prayer for the deceased and the survivors, shrug, and go on with our
day. And of course, on the streets of Philadelphia,
gun violence happens on the daily, and in Philadelphia, a child or teen under
age 18 is shot every 3.7 days, and 16-year-old Ceani Smalls, shot last weekend,
was the 106th person under age 18 shot in Philadelphia in 2019. And this violence around us has a way of
getting inside us, poisoning the halls of our schools with bullying and our
family life with domestic violence. And
then, there’s violence turned inward – alcoholism, addiction, self-harm,
suicide. We accept so much violence as
“just the way things are”, as “normal”.
Perhaps violence will strike especially close to us, and we’ll attend a
candlelight vigil….an important act of witness to a resolve that this person’s
life mattered, and his or her violent death is not ok. But at the end, as we blow out our candles, along
with the flame we seemingly also extinguish any resistance to violence we can
muster.
I spoke of peace as seemingly being a mirage, attractive in
the distance but elusive at close range.
Perhaps this is because we view peace as a destination – if we do this
and that and this and that, we will arrive at a place called peace. But what if peace isn’t the destination, but
the journey? Years ago I saw a bumper
sticker that read, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” My
first reaction was to dismiss it – the driver must be some kind of bliss ninny,
disconnected from reality. Is that a
California license plate I see? But over
time I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom in that bumper sticker. Violent means won’t bring about a truly
lasting, truly peaceful outcome – from earliest times, people have tried to
enforce peace with a club, a sword, a gun, a bomb. It works for a time – maybe a really long
time – but eventually someone will find a bigger club/sword/gun/bomb.
In our reading from Matthew’s gospel, the people are going
out to John the Baptist. They are
crushed under the Roman occupation, and the Temple leadership in Jerusalem
offers only to add to their burden. They
go out to John seeking deliverance. But
John the Baptist tells them that they have to start with themselves, that the
way to begin resisting oppression is to remove oppressive behavior from their
own lives. Luke’s gospel tells us more
about John’s teaching, that the one with two shirts should share with the one
with none, and the same with food, that tax collectors should collect only what
is due and soldiers should be content with their pay and not try to shake down
the populace. All of this falls under
the heading of repentance – not just making a sad face and saying we’re sorry,
but actually changing our behavior. And
those who resolved to live in this new way were baptized, signifying a new
start to their lives.
In the same way, the journey toward peace starts within us,
from the inside out, and not the reverse.
It starts with rejecting the world’s ways of violence, maintaining a
kind of “holy discontent” with the violence around us, in order to accept
Jesus’ alternate vision of peace, what he called the peace that the world can
neither give nor take away. It starts
with rooting out the violence from our own thoughts, words, and actions. It starts with looking for ways to
de-escalate conflict with others. It
starts with modeling nonviolence for our children. It starts with us, with not adding to the
ever-escalating sum of violence in the world.
It starts with us.
We need a peaceful center within us if we are to be at peace
with the world around us. I’m not great
at this…anyone who has driven with me knows that I’m rarely at peace with the
drivers around me…..and sometimes life feels like being stuck in traffic on
I95, running our engines, going nowhere. Or dodging others who don’t stay in their
lane. But times of prayer and meditation
can help us create a kind of peaceful center within ourselves, that we can take
with us when we’re driving or elsewhere.
I have to confess that while I do a lot of praying – of the kind that feels
like I’m giving God a shopping list -
meditation – just being still and silent before God and giving God a
chance to get a word in edgewise – does not come naturally to me. I’ve tried various meditation and centering
prayer techniques, but my mind just races or jumps around. Buddhists call this mental chatter and jumping
around our “monkey mind” – it’s a pretty accurate image - and in meditation we
quiet our monkey mind down. The Rev Wanda Craner, former Associate Conference
Minister of the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference, who now practices Gestalt
Pastoral Care, gave me the gift of an entry into meditation that actually
manages to get me centered, to quiet the chatter in my mind. Sometimes.
Two weeks ago we read Psalm 46.
Verse 10 of that Psalm is familiar:
“Be still and know that I am God.”
We can get comfortable, close our eyes, and meditate on this verse as
follows, holding the words in our minds, maybe repeating them in our minds like
a mantra:
“Be still, and know that I am God”
“Be still, and know that I am.”
“Be still, and know.”
“Be still”
“Be”
Maybe we can just take a moment or two in silence, to pray,
to meditate….
“Be”
“Be still”
“Be still, and know”
“Be still, and know that I am”
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
And I’d invite us as we feel led to open our eyes.
If that is a helpful entry into meditation, feel free to
thank the Rev Wanda Craner, former Associate Minister of the Pennsylvania Southeast
Conference. If not…..I was going to say
you can blame the Rev Wanda Craner, former Associate Minister of the
Pennsylvania Southeast Conference, but there’s no need to blame. We’re all wired differently, and may find
different ways to quiet our monkey mind. I’ll also say that for me, writing….as in
writing sermons…..mentally takes me to a more centered place, a place where I
can lose all sense of time, even if it’s Sunday morning and I’m trying to
finish up my sermon before starting out on my pickups for rides to church. I think of it as going down the rabbit hole,
and it really feels like that for me, like I’m in my own space no matter what’s
going on or who’s stomping around on the surface above me. If you don’t write sermons, perhaps journaling
or writing letters to yourself can do the same thing. For those more artistically inclined, perhaps
sketching or painting or working with clay.
The point is to find some kind of peaceful center within us, to hold
that peaceful center so that we can take it with us even into the most
stressful situations.
There is no way to peace.
Peace is the way. Be still, and
know that I am God. Be still. May we walk in the way of peace, both so that
we can be at peace ourselves, and so that we can model peace to those around
us. God grant us that peace of which
Jesus spoke, which the world can neither give nor take away. Amen.
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