The Promise of Peace
Sermon
Promise of Peace, Call for Justice
SERMONS FOR ADVENT, CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY
The Irish seem constantly at war, seeking to kill each other for religious goals. Arabs and Jews wage war, both hot and cold, of hatred and survival. The Russians and Afghans are engaged in mortal conflict for oppression and freedom. In Central America there is fighting and killing for control of land and destinies. In South Africa there is a race war of horrendous proportions being waged, that destroys and imprisons people. In our own country we continue to expend billions upon billions of dollars to fuel a military machine. We claim that machine is for defensive purposes. We must be strong in order to keep and maintain peace. We seem more than determined to be militarily mighty so nobody on this earth will mess with us. And always there is The Bomb that hangs heavy over our heads. The threat of nuclear holocaust is an invidious reality which permeates our world and our thinking. The potential disaster from one nation's being outguessed or outsmarted in the international game of power politics is too horrendous to contemplate. War and conflict are not just an international reality. Wars and rumors of war are part and parcel of our daily lives. Spouses are sometimes at each other's throats. Parents and children engage in skirmishes. Siblings struggle for attention, love, or position. These battles also maim and kill and destroy. Conflict, hurt, and war seem to be constant companions in our lives and world.
But there breaks in upon us a word from outside our battle-scarred lives that promises peace. A word from the Lord God that speaks of a world without war. A world without conflict. A world in which people live together in harmony and well-being. A world whose reality is shaped by the righteous rule of our God. This world is a world of God's promise and of God's action. It is a world of God's time.
In "the latter dass" says our text, God will bring in the promised kingdom of peace. In God's time, the end-time of fulfillment and completion, God will work mighty deeds and produce peaceful results for all of humanity. Mount Zion will grow to become the highest mountain. It will serve as a beacon and magnet to attract many people and nations to itself. From Jerusalem God's Word and law will go forth to teach people God's ways and shape their behavior.
God will rule over all people and the divine judgment of that rule will produce peace among peoples, peace among nations.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
(Isaiah 2:4, RSV)
God's righteous rule and just judgment will reverse the call to arms for war. Instruments of death and destruction will be made into instruments to produce food. God will establish a worldwide kingdom of peace and well-being centered in Jerusalem. Peace will prevail in the human community. The prophet Micah images this time of peace in a verse thai he adds to this same salvation oracle appearing in the book which bears his name.
But they shall sit every man under his vine and
under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
(Micah 4:4, RSV)
In peace and well-being, in a time of no anxiety and no fear, all people will dwell in safety and security.
This word of promise proclaims a future that will be reality because God has spoken it. It is a future which elicits hope from us. It is a promise that can energize our lives. It is a promise assisting us to shape and re-create our present.
This salvation oracle is addressed to a people who have experienced defeat and disaster in the Babylonian exile. The promise proclaims what God will yet do to and for his people and the world. The oracle ends on a note that calls the recipients of this promise and us "to walk in the light of the Lord." It is a call to change our lives, to reorder and reshape our world, to seek peace and justice for all people now.
God promises that in the Lord's time he will bring this world to peace and harmony. This promise from our Lord enables us to work mightily for peace. This promise is a power that moves us to be reconciled one to another in our families of discord and contention. Rather than to battle and scratch and claw, we are called and empowered to seek each other's well-being and interest. Rather than to seek love and attention, we are called to love and give attention to each other.
In this Advent time we are called and empowered to work mightily for peace. To become engaged in our community and nation in the quest and search for peace. To become a voice crying out for sanity in the midst of nuclear holocaust possibilities. To demand of our leaders no more tanks and jets and weapons of destruction so that food and medicine and adequate housing can be provided for all persons. To seek to restructure our own lives and our national life so all people can live together in harmony and well-being.
On this First Sunday in Advent, we do not await the miraculous growth of Mount Zion to become the tallest of the mountains. Rather we await the coming of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus in all of the divine glory at the end time. We hope for the manifestation of our mighty Lord when all of God's promises will be fulfilled and made complete. We await the Kingdom of peace and righteousness and justice for all people which our Lord will bring in its fullness.
Our hope is in the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Our hope is in Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the suffering and dying One who makes whole and reconciles all things. Our hope is in the Spirit who calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps us as we "walk in the light of the Lord" seeking earnestly those things that make for peace.
Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2
The Promise of the Savior King
Every four years we hold an election for President of the United States. Candidates for the office campaign, making speeches and uttering promises of what they will accomplish if elected. We listen to the speeches, hear the promises, and make a decision for whom to vote. A candidate is elected to the office of President and, in January of the next year, is inaugurated as President.
At the time of inauguration most of us, I suspect, even if our candidate was not elected, have a heightened sense of expectation. Maybe this time, maybe in this presidency the promises will be kept. Maybe in this four-year term reality will match the hope that has been generated. Just maybe the rhetoric will be enfleshed in action. Maybe we shall not again be disappointed.
The accession to the Judean throne by a member of the house of David to reign as the new monarch probably engendered similar hopes and expectations. Maybe this time the reality will match the promised dreams and expectations of God and God's people.
The text for today is an oracle for the accession to the throne of David. God is keeping the promise made to David through Nathan the prophet that a descendant of David would sit upon the throne in Jerusalem in perpetuity. This ruler will be anointed with the Spirit of God to act righteously and faithfully so this reign will produce peace in the whole earth.
The savior king is promised the gift necessary to rule in the political, military, and administration-of-justice spheres, in light of God's purpose for the monarch and the people who are ruled. The necessary wisdom, counsel, and might will be provided for the king to serve according to the divine intention.
In the administration of justice the ruler will not act on evidence gained by surface appearance or hearsay. Rather, the monarch will deal justly and righteously so the poor and weak and defenseless will be defended and protected. Necessary punishment will be enacted in order that justice will be established in the human community. The garments of this ruler will be righteousness and faithfulness signifying that order and justice will be maintained.
The result of this rule will be that the earth will again live together in peace and harmony. Wild animals and domesticated animals, often natural enemies, will live together in paradisaical peace. A very young child shall be able to lead these creatures who no longer will respond violently to each other. There will be no fear in the earth. The just social order established by the reign of the righteous will produce Shalom in the earth!
No member of the house of David ever fulfilled the dreams and hopes of this oracle. Each disappointment pushed this hope into the future again and again. In fact, we today still await the fulfillment, in final form, of this vision of a ruler whose reign will create a just social order and peace on the earth.
And yet this vision, this dream, this hope continues to stir the imagination of people and move them to seek ways and means and people to enflesh and make reality a just and peaceful community. This promise of a savior king makes us uneasy and dissatisfied with leaders who are not wise nor just nor righteous. This promise of a righteous ruler enables us to seek alternative ways of behaving and structuring our political and communal life. This promise helps me not to be deceived by pretenders and false leaders who do rule by surface appearances and hearsay. This promise can empower us to dream dreams again of what might yet be the way we could structure and organize our lives.
And yet this promise is also tied for us to the savior king whose rule was one of righteous suffering and death on behalf of all persons crushed by injustice, oppression, hate, fear - by all that breaks and destroys life. Jesus of Nazareth is of the house of David. God again kept the promise to raise a righteous ruler, a mighty monarch for us. This savior's might was made perfect in weakness. Yet God raised this saving ruler from death and made Jesus to be Lord of all the cosmos.
We live in Advent's promise and hope. We still await the final fulfillment of God's promise to David when the savior king will rule justly and righteously. We still hope for the time when justice and righteousness will turn enmity into friendship, strife into harmony, brokenness into wholeness in our world. We await God's reign in Jesus the Messiah and that hope makes us uncomfortable and uneasy with pretenders and false leaders. No wonder we so often are disappointed and yet again and again dream dreams and pray with fervent hope: Come quickly, O Lord our Savior King.
Isaiah 35:1-10
Advent 3
The Promise of Wholeness
Nicholas Berg is the protagonist in Wilbur Smith's novel Hungry as the Sea. We meet Nicholas as he walks up the gangplank to his sea-going tug in the cold, damp air. He is thinking of his life as it now confronts him. He had been the prime mover at Christie Marine, one of the world's largest and best shipping companies. He had married old man Christie's beautiful daughter and they had a son. Their marriage seemed to be solid and lovely.
But now he is divorced from his wife. She had fallen for the new wonder-kid at Christie, with an accountant's mentality for the bottom line and no knowledge of shipping. He had lost the power struggle within the company and all he had to show for it were two sea-going tugs, one still in dry dock, and a five-million-dollar debt. He has one firm job in his hand, but nothing beyond that. He is filled with self-doubt, fear, and a sense of hopelessness.
Given the world in which we live, Nicholas Berg could well exemplify many of us today. Even given our achievements and advancements in our world and lives, many of us seem to be fearful, despairing, hopeless.
Israel addressed in today's text found herself in a similar situation. She had been defeated by Babylon. Jerusalem lay in ruins. The temple was totally destroyed. The nation Israel was defunct, in exile in Babylon. The times were marked by despair, hopelessness, resignation to defeat.
But into this situation of ancient Israel there comes a Word of the Lord. You exiles will be set free. God is about to deliver you from Babylon. And the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah is a hymn of joy, sung in the midst of defeat, death, and despair. It is a hymn of joy that celebrates God as Israel's Creator and Deliverer.
The prophet sees the desert bursting forth into lush greenery. A new exodus will take place. God will act to create a new path of escape for his people, to restore them to the land of promise and make them whole. God will make the earth whole, working his creative power in the midst of dryness, weakness, blindness, lameness, and muteness. The future action of God is proclaimed on the basis of what he had already done for Israel.
We know what God has done for us. We see it all wrapped up in the human figure of Jesus. A stinking straw bed, the dust and dirt of a traveling rabbi, the enmity of the establishment, a cross crammed into a hill-top hole, a gaping grave. In the person of Jesus is God's ultimate deed, God's creative act of deliverance. In Jesus is God's deed which gives shape and meaning to our present and our future, which makes us whole.
In our present time of anxiety, fear, international tensions, domestic brokenness, economic ills, God is at work creating, continuing to bring about new possibilities, new life, new hope. God is at work creating new attitudes, new situations. The prophet in today's text spoke of the desert blooming, lush growth in the midst of dryness.
In the dry despair of an alcoholic spouse or child, through Alcoholics Anonymous, God is at work to bring new life into existence. God enables the non-alcoholic family members to live life different than what is being determined by the drunk member of the family, bringing sobriety and a new way of behaving to the alcoholic.
God is at work to create from a diverse group of people a community of God's people who gather together and care for one another, in spite of skin color, economic status, intellectual capacity, political philosophy, or whatever might divide persons. This was my experience in a four-week work camp composed of people with different languages, different cultural backgrounds, different experiences, and different perspectives. In our living together as Christians engaged in a common task, the presence of God formed us into a community that created a new situation for each of us and we could be forgiving and caring for one another. We were given life together in wholeness rather than in division.
In images of God's creative redemption in Israel's past, the prophet spoke a word to the exiles in Babylon. The word was a promise that God was about to do a new thing for them and with them. God was about to act to deliver them and put them on the move from exile into freedom. The people of Israel were to become again an exodus people, living out of the promise of God towards the future God promised.
The church is God's exodus people. We have been redeemed and created anew by our baptism. We are a people living out of the promise of God towards the future that God promises us. God has said we are God's people and in that new creation we are being pulled and pushed toward the future of God.
It is our faith and hope in this promise of our Lord that sustains and nourishes us on our journey. The promise of God's future to us does not negate the present. God's promise does not gloss over the fear, frustrations, anxieties, and despair of our lives. God's promise does enable us to see these present realities in a new light and to deal with them in ways that become creative and redeeming rather than deadening.
Like Nicholas Berg we confront our present life with all of its darknesses and drynesses. We still hurt and hate, fight and fear, struggle and scream; but we can do so in a different way. We can act and deal differently because our God promises that this present in which we live is not the final word about us.
We are an advent people. We are a people on the move towards God's promised future. Shout for joy and sing exultantly, because the Lord will take away our grief and groanings, our despair and defeat, our hate and hurt. God will make us whole.
Be strong, fear not!
Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
God will come and save you. (Isaiah 35:4, RSV)
Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
But there breaks in upon us a word from outside our battle-scarred lives that promises peace. A word from the Lord God that speaks of a world without war. A world without conflict. A world in which people live together in harmony and well-being. A world whose reality is shaped by the righteous rule of our God. This world is a world of God's promise and of God's action. It is a world of God's time.
In "the latter dass" says our text, God will bring in the promised kingdom of peace. In God's time, the end-time of fulfillment and completion, God will work mighty deeds and produce peaceful results for all of humanity. Mount Zion will grow to become the highest mountain. It will serve as a beacon and magnet to attract many people and nations to itself. From Jerusalem God's Word and law will go forth to teach people God's ways and shape their behavior.
God will rule over all people and the divine judgment of that rule will produce peace among peoples, peace among nations.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
(Isaiah 2:4, RSV)
God's righteous rule and just judgment will reverse the call to arms for war. Instruments of death and destruction will be made into instruments to produce food. God will establish a worldwide kingdom of peace and well-being centered in Jerusalem. Peace will prevail in the human community. The prophet Micah images this time of peace in a verse thai he adds to this same salvation oracle appearing in the book which bears his name.
But they shall sit every man under his vine and
under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
(Micah 4:4, RSV)
In peace and well-being, in a time of no anxiety and no fear, all people will dwell in safety and security.
This word of promise proclaims a future that will be reality because God has spoken it. It is a future which elicits hope from us. It is a promise that can energize our lives. It is a promise assisting us to shape and re-create our present.
This salvation oracle is addressed to a people who have experienced defeat and disaster in the Babylonian exile. The promise proclaims what God will yet do to and for his people and the world. The oracle ends on a note that calls the recipients of this promise and us "to walk in the light of the Lord." It is a call to change our lives, to reorder and reshape our world, to seek peace and justice for all people now.
God promises that in the Lord's time he will bring this world to peace and harmony. This promise from our Lord enables us to work mightily for peace. This promise is a power that moves us to be reconciled one to another in our families of discord and contention. Rather than to battle and scratch and claw, we are called and empowered to seek each other's well-being and interest. Rather than to seek love and attention, we are called to love and give attention to each other.
In this Advent time we are called and empowered to work mightily for peace. To become engaged in our community and nation in the quest and search for peace. To become a voice crying out for sanity in the midst of nuclear holocaust possibilities. To demand of our leaders no more tanks and jets and weapons of destruction so that food and medicine and adequate housing can be provided for all persons. To seek to restructure our own lives and our national life so all people can live together in harmony and well-being.
On this First Sunday in Advent, we do not await the miraculous growth of Mount Zion to become the tallest of the mountains. Rather we await the coming of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus in all of the divine glory at the end time. We hope for the manifestation of our mighty Lord when all of God's promises will be fulfilled and made complete. We await the Kingdom of peace and righteousness and justice for all people which our Lord will bring in its fullness.
Our hope is in the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Our hope is in Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the suffering and dying One who makes whole and reconciles all things. Our hope is in the Spirit who calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps us as we "walk in the light of the Lord" seeking earnestly those things that make for peace.
Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2
The Promise of the Savior King
Every four years we hold an election for President of the United States. Candidates for the office campaign, making speeches and uttering promises of what they will accomplish if elected. We listen to the speeches, hear the promises, and make a decision for whom to vote. A candidate is elected to the office of President and, in January of the next year, is inaugurated as President.
At the time of inauguration most of us, I suspect, even if our candidate was not elected, have a heightened sense of expectation. Maybe this time, maybe in this presidency the promises will be kept. Maybe in this four-year term reality will match the hope that has been generated. Just maybe the rhetoric will be enfleshed in action. Maybe we shall not again be disappointed.
The accession to the Judean throne by a member of the house of David to reign as the new monarch probably engendered similar hopes and expectations. Maybe this time the reality will match the promised dreams and expectations of God and God's people.
The text for today is an oracle for the accession to the throne of David. God is keeping the promise made to David through Nathan the prophet that a descendant of David would sit upon the throne in Jerusalem in perpetuity. This ruler will be anointed with the Spirit of God to act righteously and faithfully so this reign will produce peace in the whole earth.
The savior king is promised the gift necessary to rule in the political, military, and administration-of-justice spheres, in light of God's purpose for the monarch and the people who are ruled. The necessary wisdom, counsel, and might will be provided for the king to serve according to the divine intention.
In the administration of justice the ruler will not act on evidence gained by surface appearance or hearsay. Rather, the monarch will deal justly and righteously so the poor and weak and defenseless will be defended and protected. Necessary punishment will be enacted in order that justice will be established in the human community. The garments of this ruler will be righteousness and faithfulness signifying that order and justice will be maintained.
The result of this rule will be that the earth will again live together in peace and harmony. Wild animals and domesticated animals, often natural enemies, will live together in paradisaical peace. A very young child shall be able to lead these creatures who no longer will respond violently to each other. There will be no fear in the earth. The just social order established by the reign of the righteous will produce Shalom in the earth!
No member of the house of David ever fulfilled the dreams and hopes of this oracle. Each disappointment pushed this hope into the future again and again. In fact, we today still await the fulfillment, in final form, of this vision of a ruler whose reign will create a just social order and peace on the earth.
And yet this vision, this dream, this hope continues to stir the imagination of people and move them to seek ways and means and people to enflesh and make reality a just and peaceful community. This promise of a savior king makes us uneasy and dissatisfied with leaders who are not wise nor just nor righteous. This promise of a righteous ruler enables us to seek alternative ways of behaving and structuring our political and communal life. This promise helps me not to be deceived by pretenders and false leaders who do rule by surface appearances and hearsay. This promise can empower us to dream dreams again of what might yet be the way we could structure and organize our lives.
And yet this promise is also tied for us to the savior king whose rule was one of righteous suffering and death on behalf of all persons crushed by injustice, oppression, hate, fear - by all that breaks and destroys life. Jesus of Nazareth is of the house of David. God again kept the promise to raise a righteous ruler, a mighty monarch for us. This savior's might was made perfect in weakness. Yet God raised this saving ruler from death and made Jesus to be Lord of all the cosmos.
We live in Advent's promise and hope. We still await the final fulfillment of God's promise to David when the savior king will rule justly and righteously. We still hope for the time when justice and righteousness will turn enmity into friendship, strife into harmony, brokenness into wholeness in our world. We await God's reign in Jesus the Messiah and that hope makes us uncomfortable and uneasy with pretenders and false leaders. No wonder we so often are disappointed and yet again and again dream dreams and pray with fervent hope: Come quickly, O Lord our Savior King.
Isaiah 35:1-10
Advent 3
The Promise of Wholeness
Nicholas Berg is the protagonist in Wilbur Smith's novel Hungry as the Sea. We meet Nicholas as he walks up the gangplank to his sea-going tug in the cold, damp air. He is thinking of his life as it now confronts him. He had been the prime mover at Christie Marine, one of the world's largest and best shipping companies. He had married old man Christie's beautiful daughter and they had a son. Their marriage seemed to be solid and lovely.
But now he is divorced from his wife. She had fallen for the new wonder-kid at Christie, with an accountant's mentality for the bottom line and no knowledge of shipping. He had lost the power struggle within the company and all he had to show for it were two sea-going tugs, one still in dry dock, and a five-million-dollar debt. He has one firm job in his hand, but nothing beyond that. He is filled with self-doubt, fear, and a sense of hopelessness.
Given the world in which we live, Nicholas Berg could well exemplify many of us today. Even given our achievements and advancements in our world and lives, many of us seem to be fearful, despairing, hopeless.
Israel addressed in today's text found herself in a similar situation. She had been defeated by Babylon. Jerusalem lay in ruins. The temple was totally destroyed. The nation Israel was defunct, in exile in Babylon. The times were marked by despair, hopelessness, resignation to defeat.
But into this situation of ancient Israel there comes a Word of the Lord. You exiles will be set free. God is about to deliver you from Babylon. And the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah is a hymn of joy, sung in the midst of defeat, death, and despair. It is a hymn of joy that celebrates God as Israel's Creator and Deliverer.
The prophet sees the desert bursting forth into lush greenery. A new exodus will take place. God will act to create a new path of escape for his people, to restore them to the land of promise and make them whole. God will make the earth whole, working his creative power in the midst of dryness, weakness, blindness, lameness, and muteness. The future action of God is proclaimed on the basis of what he had already done for Israel.
We know what God has done for us. We see it all wrapped up in the human figure of Jesus. A stinking straw bed, the dust and dirt of a traveling rabbi, the enmity of the establishment, a cross crammed into a hill-top hole, a gaping grave. In the person of Jesus is God's ultimate deed, God's creative act of deliverance. In Jesus is God's deed which gives shape and meaning to our present and our future, which makes us whole.
In our present time of anxiety, fear, international tensions, domestic brokenness, economic ills, God is at work creating, continuing to bring about new possibilities, new life, new hope. God is at work creating new attitudes, new situations. The prophet in today's text spoke of the desert blooming, lush growth in the midst of dryness.
In the dry despair of an alcoholic spouse or child, through Alcoholics Anonymous, God is at work to bring new life into existence. God enables the non-alcoholic family members to live life different than what is being determined by the drunk member of the family, bringing sobriety and a new way of behaving to the alcoholic.
God is at work to create from a diverse group of people a community of God's people who gather together and care for one another, in spite of skin color, economic status, intellectual capacity, political philosophy, or whatever might divide persons. This was my experience in a four-week work camp composed of people with different languages, different cultural backgrounds, different experiences, and different perspectives. In our living together as Christians engaged in a common task, the presence of God formed us into a community that created a new situation for each of us and we could be forgiving and caring for one another. We were given life together in wholeness rather than in division.
In images of God's creative redemption in Israel's past, the prophet spoke a word to the exiles in Babylon. The word was a promise that God was about to do a new thing for them and with them. God was about to act to deliver them and put them on the move from exile into freedom. The people of Israel were to become again an exodus people, living out of the promise of God towards the future God promised.
The church is God's exodus people. We have been redeemed and created anew by our baptism. We are a people living out of the promise of God towards the future that God promises us. God has said we are God's people and in that new creation we are being pulled and pushed toward the future of God.
It is our faith and hope in this promise of our Lord that sustains and nourishes us on our journey. The promise of God's future to us does not negate the present. God's promise does not gloss over the fear, frustrations, anxieties, and despair of our lives. God's promise does enable us to see these present realities in a new light and to deal with them in ways that become creative and redeeming rather than deadening.
Like Nicholas Berg we confront our present life with all of its darknesses and drynesses. We still hurt and hate, fight and fear, struggle and scream; but we can do so in a different way. We can act and deal differently because our God promises that this present in which we live is not the final word about us.
We are an advent people. We are a people on the move towards God's promised future. Shout for joy and sing exultantly, because the Lord will take away our grief and groanings, our despair and defeat, our hate and hurt. God will make us whole.
Be strong, fear not!
Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
God will come and save you. (Isaiah 35:4, RSV)
Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
