Prophet of Peace

Prophet of Peace

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

November 27, 2016

Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is the season of the church year when we anticipate and prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas. Advent is in some ways a rather theatrical season. We suspend our disbelief and pretend that Jesus hasn’t been born yet, never mind that he was born over two thousand years ago. Advent is not Christmas, it is preparation for Christmas. Out there in the world it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as the old song goes. In here it isn’t Christmas. It’s Advent. Christmas is coming. It’s on a Sunday this year, so in addition to our Christmas Eve service on the evening of the 24^th we will have a service on Christmas morning at our regular time. It will be Christmas then, but not now. Now it’s Advent.

Every year as we enter the season of Advent one question occurs to me more than any other: Who are we waiting for? The obvious answer of course is Jesus, but for me that response raises more questions than it answers. Who, after all, is Jesus? What does he mean for us? What does he mean for the world? How are we to understand him? The Christian church has long answered those questions by saying that he is the Son of God who came to earth for the purpose of suffering and dying to pay the price of human sin so that those of us who believe in him can go to heaven when we die. If that answer works for you, OK I guess. I won’t argue about it with you; but I am convinced from reading the Gospels that that is not primarily what Jesus was about. He was more about how God calls us to live this life.

Mostly he was about reviving the voice of ancient Hebrew prophecy. That part of the Hebrew tradition was already ancient by Jesus’ time. The voices he heard and echoed date mostly from the 8^th century BCE, more than seven hundred years before Jesus. That would be like someone today reviving a message from the 1300’s, which I’m sure sounds like a long time ago to all of us. It is a long time ago, and the Hebrew voices of faith that Jesus revived came from a long time ago in his time. One of those voices was the prophet Isaiah from whom we just heard in our first scripture reading. That passage gives us a wonderful vision of a glorious future of peace and international understanding and cooperation. It imagines that many people will come to Jerusalem to learn the way of the Lord, that is, of the god Yahweh, the god of the Hebrew people, the God we know as the one and only true God. It says God will settle the peoples’ disputes, which I think we can take to mean that the people will settle their own disputes peacefully because all of them will be seeking to follow the ways of God. Then there will be no more war. In some of my favorites lines from the whole Bible Isaiah says “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Always reminds me of the old spiritual with the refrain “I ain’t gonna study war no more.” Isaiah then calls his people, and calls us, to that way of living when he says: “Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

And I suppose it’s natural to ask at this point: Why does the lectionary give us this text for the first Sunday of Advent? After all, it doesn’t mention Jesus. Christianity has long thought that Isaiah predicts the coming of Jesus (which I don’t), but there’s nothing in this passage that sounds like a prediction of a person. So why this text for the first Sunday in Advent? I think it’s because, although this text doesn’t predict Jesus, it points to something profoundly true about Jesus. This vision of a world at peace with no war is a vision that Jesus picked up hundreds of years after Isaiah. It is a vision he developed and proclaimed to his world and to ours. The ancient Hebrew prophetic call for a world at peace resonated in Jesus’ soul because he knew that God is a God of peace not war, a God of peace not violence, a God of peace not fear, a God of peace not anxiety. We Christians call him the Prince of Peace, and indeed that is what he is. He spoke of the Kingdom of God as a time on earth when God’s vision of peace for all the world becomes a reality.

For me, when I think of peace, I think first of all about an end to war and to all physical violence between people. Indeed, Jesus is our prophet of that kind of peace; and that kind of peace is really important. But it is equally true that peace is like an onion. There are many layers to it. I remember a quote that I think is from the Dalai Lama, although I couldn’t find it online. It goes something like: If you want peace in the world, begin by being at peace in yourself. The idea is that outer peace begins with inner peace. That’s an idea Jesus would fully embrace, for he sought to transform the world by transforming individual souls. So today as we think of peace, let’s think first of all about the inner peace we can find in our Lord Jesus Christ. He calls us first of all to inner peace, and we can find that inner peace in him. In him we can be at peace because in him we know that God loves us unconditionally. We know that God forgives us unconditionally. We know that God is our eternal home that awaits us at the end of our time on earth. He said “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” He said “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 That’s the inner peace we can find in him—rest for our souls. That peaceful rest in Jesus is the beginning of peace not only for our souls but for the whole world. If you want peace in the world, start with finding peace in your soul. That is a message I desperately need to hear today. Perhaps you do too.

Now, I’m preaching on peace today; but the Advent theme for this first Sunday of Advent is actually not peace but hope. So it occurs to me to ask: Is there really any hope for peace in the world? I sure struggle to find that hope these days, but I know that the answer to our search for a hope of peace is God. God is always the answer to any kind of hope. God is how we can hope for that which seems so unattainable in our lives and in our world. We can hope for peace or any other great thing that we lack because we know that God is present and active in our lives and in the world. God’s presence and activity in the world are always subtle. They’re always quiet. They can be hard to perceive, but they’re always there. Always working. Always calling us and the whole world to build that peaceful Kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke. So hope for peace? All the worldly evidence to contrary notwithstanding, yes. Yes, because God.

Recently I have seen two things that seem to me to be signs of a possible peace in the world. They are, of all things, two television commercials that are running this holiday season. One of them is an ad for amazon.com. In it a Muslim imam goes to visit his friend. An imam is a Muslim prayer leader, the closest thing Islam has to a priest or pastor. His friend is of all things a Catholic priest. They have a friendly visit. They talk. They laugh. In the course of their time together they both show signs of having knee pain. The imam bids his friend the priest good-bye. After he leaves, both of them unbeknownst to the other go online and orders his friend a pair of knee pads, from amazon.com of course. Both are surprised when their unexpected gift arrives. They both put on the pads and go to their places of worship, the imam to his mosque and the priest to his church. They both kneel on their new knee pads and pray. The ad doesn’t say so, but they’re both praying in their different ways to the same God, to the God of reconciliation and peace. That ad nearly brings me to tears, for it is a sign that some people in the world get it. They get it that peace and reconciliation are the way of God.

The other ad is for Apple, the computer company. It features Frankenstein’s monster. In the ad he appears as a large, dark, unhappy creature. The first thing he does is record a music box playing the song “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays.” He records it on an i phone of course, for this is an ad for Apple. Then he screws red and green Christmas lights into sockets in his neck, where they light up. He walks into a town where people are celebrating Christmas. The people shrink back. They’re afraid. They don’t know what this man who looks like a monster will do. He starts to play his recording and to sing “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays.” One of his Christmas lights goes out. A little girl beckons him to come to her. He does, and she tightens the light on his neck that has gone out so that it comes back on. She sings with him. Then everyone sings with him. They all relax and welcome him to their town. It turns out that this creature who everyone saw as a monster was just a lonely man looking for friendship and acceptance, looking for home. The ad ends with a line on the screen that reads: “Open your heart to everyone.” And I say thank you Apple, and amen. Open your heart to everyone indeed. That is the way of peace. That an enormous corporation like Apple would run an ad like this in a world like this is a sign of hope for peace, that peace we so lack and so badly need.

So in this Advent season as we await the birth of Jesus Christ, let us be at peace. And let us hope for peace in God’s world. Let us be hope for peace in God’s world, and let us start by being at peace in our souls. Let us begin by caring for the other, the stranger, the one very different from us, the ones who pray differently, the ones we might think are monsters when they really aren’t. Let us begin by opening our hearts to everyone. Then perhaps we will find the peace that Jesus brings. The peace that Jesus is. Thanks be to God. Amen.