This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Sunday, November 27, 2016.
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 24th 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 8th
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.
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