The Peaceable Kingdom
FUMC Fort Dodge
December 9, 2007
Mark Haverland
Isaiah 11 1 Then a shoot will spring from the stem of
Jesse, And a branch from his roots will bear fruit. 2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on
Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and
strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 And He will delight in the fear of the
LORD, And He will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor make a decision by what
His ears hear; 4 But with righteousness He will judge the
poor, And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will
strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He
will slay the wicked. 5 Also righteousness will be the belt
about His loins, And faithfulness the belt about His waist. 6 And the wolf will dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young
lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. 7 Also the cow and the bear will graze,
Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the
ox. 8 The nursing child will play by the
hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's
den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy in all
My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As
the waters cover the sea. 10 Then in that day
The nations will resort to the root of Jesse, Who will stand as a signal for
the peoples; And His resting place will be glorious.
Isaiah 11
1 Then
a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, And a branch from his roots will
bear fruit.
Jesse was the father of David. So the stem of Jesse is David, the
first king of Israel. At the time this
passage from Isaiah was written the people were off in captivity and the nation
was in ruins. David lived as a hero of
mythic proportions. A
great King from the time when Israel was a great country. The prophet dreamed of a new King David who
would restore the past glory? Sometimes
the word “stem” is translated stump, drawing attention to the apparent
barrenness of the royal line. David
legacy is as dead as an old stump. But a
stump sometimes sprouts new life, like my lilacs, which seem to die back to
nothing every few years, only to send up new growth and grow again into a great
shrub. The art of cutting back a stump
to intentionally create new growth is called coppicing. I imagine the author of Isaiah knew of this practice
and knew also that often the new growth is more hardy
than the old. Isaiah hints that the
branch from the stump of Jesse will be even greater than David. We Christians understand Isaiah to be
speaking here of Jesus so this passage is used extensively at Christmas to help
Christians focus on the advent of the Christ.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on
Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and
strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
The spirit of God is wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength,
knowledge and reverence. I’m interested
to note that the prophet calls on the intellectual powers of God. In other words, the Messiah is smart. Fear of the Lord means that these powers
should serve the will of God. I find
that my most fervent prayer for our leaders, especially now that we are in a
dangerous time, is for them to be smart enough to do the right thing. The minister at my mother’s memorial service
said that my mother was a difficult person to have in the parish because she
always expected her minister to be smarter than she was. I experience the same pressure here at
FDUMC. We expect of our leaders to be
smarter than we are, that they be smarter than we are. This is important because we bear the
consequences of their decisions. When
politicians and generals make mistakes, ordinary soldiers do the dying. There is no doubt that the trouble our
country is in results from a lack of wisdom and understanding in the foreign
policy of past and present political leaders.
This is always the case. Ordinary
people pay the price for their leaders’ mistakes.
3 And He will delight in the fear of the LORD,
And He will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor make a decision by what His
ears hear;
How wonderful to learn that the Messiah is not a
literalist. Those who hear only the
literal meaning of words live an impoverished two dimensional life. The Messiah will see the Truth behind and beyond
what people say and do. I imagine you
share my sense that people seldom say what they really mean. If there is one expression I would eliminate
from our speech, it is “But you said....” because people seldom say what they
really mean My greatest sorrow comes
from people who misunderstand my words – usually by missing the irony, the
humor and the hyperbole. For instance, I
refer to any team playing against the Drake Women’s BB team or the Minnesota
Vikings as the “bad guys.” I don’t mean
it literally, of course. It is just my
twisted sense of humor. I sometimes say
that I don’t like kids, by which I mean that they bewilder me and render me
often helpless. Sometimes the jumbled message
is tragic. For instance, what do you
suppose that boy in Omaha who killed all those people was really trying to
say? Somebody please help me, love me,
save me? Sometimes it’s really hard to
hear what people are really saying.
Few of us really know how to listen well when someone else
speaks. Mary Frazier, the counselor
hired by the Conference for us ministers, once led a dozen or so of conference
pastors in a discussion of ministry to trauma victims. During the course of this workshop, she
stressed the importance of examining ourselves.
One of the questions we must ask ourselves is “Am I able to listen? Do I hear words or feelings? Do I listen for the meaning underneath the
meaning of the words? Do I wonder about
why this person communicates in a particular way?” It takes someone of great compassion and
wisdom to look behind the words of an aching heart. As my mother used to say, “I know you think
you know what you think you heard me say.
But what you don’t know is that what I said is not what I meant.”
4 But with
righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the
afflicted of the earth;
Our religious tradition has a strong bias toward the poor and
the afflicted. We act this out in a
variety of ways. In this church, we give
generously to the Lord’s Cupboard, to our United Methodist Committee on Relief
and to other efforts to feed and clothe and house the poor of the world,
including right here in Fort Dodge. Audra
and I have talked about ways that we can involve the members of FUMCFD even
more in service to our neighbors far and near.
I hope we can develop some new opportunities for us to be in service to
the poor and the afflicted. According to
Isaiah, God is on their side so we had better be on their side also. The church is the one organization which
exists for the primary benefit of non-members.
5. And He
will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,
And with the breath of His lips He will slay
the wicked.
The Messiah need only speak a word of judgment on those who take
advantage of the poor and afflicted to bring down the evil forces. I read the other day that archeologists have
uncovered a stone on which the only known words of Cleopatra are recorded. The words are, “Let it be so.” Great rulers make something happen with the
power of their words. How wonderful it
is to have a Messiah whose words have the power to destroy evil. Jesus destroyed our demons, cured our
diseases, and freed our spirits with the breath of his lips. The spirit of the Messiah is the same breath
of God which breathed life into the world at creation and continues to breathe
life into us today.
6 And the
wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will
lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling
together; And a little boy will lead them.
7 Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down
together, And the lion will eat straw like the
ox. 8 The nursing child will play by the
hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his
hand on the viper's den. 9 They will not
hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth
will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.
I lump all this together because it is a picture that the
prophet paints of the Peaceable Kingdom.
Edward Hicks painted the picture now on the screen, drawing on the
vision of Isaiah. It is a strange vision
of the coming Kingdom of God in which all of creation is transformed. Even the lions will no longer kill and eat
other animals, but will lie down with the lambs and eat straw with the cattle.
This is truly the impossible dream of peace. The world is full of war and rumors of war
and the prophet dreams of a world of peace.
Such prophets are almost always dismissed as crazy and naive. Remember how much fun we had at the expense
of the French who warned the United States not to rush to war in Iraq? Think how much better off we and the world
would be now if we had listened to the French.
The people of Israel were at the end of their rope when Isaiah
penned these words. They were enduring
the ravages of years of war with no end in sight (sound familiar?). Along comes Isaiah and paints a picture of a
peaceable kingdom which must have seemed as unlikely, as quixotic, as lunatic,
as impossible, as naive, as ridiculous, as the ravings
of a mad man. It is no wonder people
turned away from such wild eyed dreaming and went back to the business of
trying to think of ways to ward off those pesky Assyrians who were besieging
the city and threatening to carry everyone away into captivity. The city of Jerusalem was a mere stump, a tree
lopped off near the ground, void of branches, void of hope, void of any sign of
life. This was no time for lonely voices
telling of impossible dreams.
I love going to a live performance of a symphony orchestra. I especially like the marvelous, cacophony of
sounds which greet those who arrive early.
As the stage gradually fills with players, the sounds of their warm-ups
increase and mingle until there is a chorus of discord. Lots of sound, but no
discernable melody, no harmony, no order whatever. And then there is a magical moment when
everyone becomes silent and a clear tone emerges from the midst of the
orchestra. The oboe plays one clear,
sonorous note. This note is picked up by
all the other instruments and as they tune the chaos of sound returns and the
one lone note disappears. The note is a
moment of clarity, truth and beauty in the midst of chaos.
The prophet Isaiah is like that lonely oboe player. He strikes a note that appears to be a fresh
start, a clear tone, a bright light, a clarion call to return to the simple and
true. At first people stop, look and
listen. For a moment they are drawn to
the new vision. Soon, however, they
drift on about their lives. They return
to the noise and distractions of their everyday lives. No one can survive on the one lone note of
truth. It’s not realistic. It’s impossible. It’s a dream of a world too far removed from
reality to be taken seriously. We’ve a
war to fight here – and we’re losing, they no doubt thought. Throw the naive dreamer out.
When I prepare for my sermons, I often go back to old sermons
preached on the same text. As it turns
out, I last preached on this passage from Isaiah in the fall of 2001. Our nation was lunging toward war with
Afghanistan and Iraq. Very few voices
were raised in opposition to war and they were all dismissed as naïve fools or
worse, traitors. If you are not with us,
you are against us, the president said.
One of the traitors for peace was the Council of United Methodist
Bishops. They wrote a letter cautioning
against the use of violence to slate our thirst for vengeance. This letter was to be read in all United
Methodist Churches on December 9, 2001. Six year ago today. I
read it to my church in Polk City.
Perhaps your minister read it to you.
For a few minutes all United Methodists listened to the tuning note of
their religious leaders. After a few
moments of silences, however, and after we tried briefly to mimic their clear,
calm tuning note of peace, we gradually returned to the cacophony of war. Had we tuned our instruments permanently to
their tuning note, think of the cost in lives and treasure which could have
been avoided.
Here’s how
the letter ended:
We, your bishops, believe that violence in all of its forms and expressions
is contrary to God's purpose for the world. Violence creates fear, desperation,
hopelessness and instability. We call upon the church to be a community of
peace with justice and to support individuals and agencies all over the world
who are working for the common good for all of God's children. We also call
upon the church to study and work toward alleviating the root causes of poverty
and the other social conditions that are exploited by terrorists.
As people of the
resurrection, we believe that peace has been achieved in Christ; however, this
peace is yet to be fully realized in human relationships. The message of the
resurrection is that love is stronger than all the forces of evil. Furthermore,
it is only sacrificial love, not war, which can reconcile people to God and to
each other. We call upon the church, leaders, nations and individuals around
the world to make room for love so that the patterns of our common life might
reveal God's justice.
The
peaceable kingdom remains a dream of prophets and visionaries and bishops,
destined to be ignored and dismissed as naive dreamers if not evil traitors. Isaiah and all those who call for the
Peaceable Kingdom in our own times are destined to preach to deaf ears. Christ has come, but he has not yet triumphed
over the evil in our world and in our hearts.
Hear our prayers, O
Lord. Invite us today into your
peaceable kingdom that we may hear and take heed of your call to live in the
world as you wish for it to be. Embolden
us to see a new vision of peace in a time of war, of hope in a time of despair,
of light in a time of darkness. We know
in our hearts that the season darkens our world, only in preparation for the
new birth of a Christ child who will bring your light back into our world and
our lives. Help us live in the light of
Christ, who offers us salvation if we would only reach out and accept. Amen
God
of promise, we look beyond outward reality and see with eyes of imagination the
world you envision. In this way we gain new meaning, new purpose, and new
energy for service. We make this offering now as sign of our commitment to
look, wait, and work for the coming of your realm among us in all its glorious
fullness. Bless our giving, we pray.
Amen