Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Matthew 24:36-44
The latest Newsweek magazine featured an article on Carl Honoré, a Canadian journalist who has written In Praise of Slowness, a book which urges us to live life at a more leisurely pace. Among other things he urges us to down size our calendars, take up slow hobbies such as gardening, knitting, and reading, sit down and eat, walk, and turn off the tube.
I believe that Carl Honoré would approve of the church season of Advent, a time of the year when we are encouraged to slow down from the hectic pace of the Christmas rush and simply learn to wait for the coming of our Lord.
Waiting is something our daughter Annie has learned to do in Africa. The Peace Corps will not allow her to drive a car. She does have a government-issued bicycle, but often it is waylaid by thorns in the tires. When she travels to another town she has to wait by the side of the road for a Koombi, a mini van bus which picks up people whenever it chooses to do so. Annie has learned the art of creative waiting.
This is also a lesson that any of us might learn, even if we are never forced to wait for an intermittently scheduled bus in Africa. During this Advent season each of our Sunday lessons will teach us about waiting.
Today Isaiah urges us to patiently wait for peace.
Next week... community
The following week.... healing
The last week of Advent.... salvation
Isaiah was a prophet and priest living in a time of turmoil. His country had split into two sections, north and south. There were threats from abroad. In this situation Isaiah dreamed of a mountain where God would give lessons on peace. From this prophecy we have a phrase which I am sure is familiar to us all:
"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."
To make the image even more accessible for us, Eugene Peterson translates the passage this way:
"They’ll turn their swords into shovels,
their spears into hoes.
No more will nation fight nation;
they won’t play war anymore."
In this time when terrorism is one of the biggest concerns in our nation, if not the world, does such an image have any power? Is it totally naive and unrealistic to think that peace is a possibility? Can we learn not to "play war?" I remember a comment from our friend Nelson Kyasooka when he talked about the wars in Africa and spoke of the danger of putting guns in the hands of young men and even children ----- who in many ways are "playing war." Thinking they are important simply because they have a weapon.
In this season of Advent we are challenged to believe that peace is possible and we are encouraged to actively wait for that peace. "Be up and awake to what God is doing!" urged the great church leader Paul when he saw his people losing faith. "Be ready!" we read in Matthew’s lesson for today.
Our challenge as Christian people in a time of violence is to keep the vision of peace alive, to practice peaceful and charitable living in our daily lives ---- to keep the faith. And to wait. We are not always agreed on when to wait and when to act, are we? Soldiers of our nation are fighting the city streets of Iraq because our government chose not to wait. Now our government challenges us to wait while the war goes on there.
Is there any hope in this violent world? Can we overcome our own innate tendency to rely on war to solve our problems? Will Isaiah’s vision ever be a reality? Or is it "pie in the sky?"
Gene M. Tucker, a biblical scholar, has written:
"International peace may not come, even as we visualize it and hope for it. Wishing, and even praying, will not necessarily make it happen. But it certainly will not come unless we imagine it, unless we believe and articulate the vision that God wills the end of war."
I think of a song from thirty or forty years ago:
"All we are saying, is give peace a chance."
Where in our world are people willing to give peace a chance? Where are we willing to even "imagine" peace. Do any of us really believe that God wills the end of war?
After attending "It’s a Wonderful Life" last Sunday at the Children’s Theater in Eau Claire Karen and I stopped for coffee and a cookie at the Acoustic Café. Karen picked up a brochure encouraging people to attend a peace rally where no political signs or derogatory statements would be allowed. Naive? Innocent? Foolish? Perhaps. But look where hardheadedness and so-called realism have gotten us. We could do not worse.
Take a look at the picture on my left. An Afghani craftsperson is fashioning Russian-made bombs into flower pots. You can see the blowtorch illumining the artist and offering a hint of hope.
Heather Murray Elkins tells this story about a similar vase:
The vase is heavy and holds its own on the shelves . . . Family memory, and therefore, identity, is shaped by stuff. . . .
My father holds it in his hands, turning it as he tells its story. "After the shelling stopped, village women would cautiously hunt for the artillery shell casings, discarded in the fighting. Each casing was reshaped, polished, and etched.
"Sometimes silver was beaten into the sides, shaped like blossoming flowers. A weapon turns into a vase."
. . . The strong hands of women are needed to turn weapons of death into instruments of peace. Fierce imagination. . . .
Fierce imagination. That is what we need today.
Fierce imagination.
Energetic expectation.
Active waiting.
Positive patience.
Courageous creativity.
The ability of women and men in Afghanistan to turn shell casings into flower pots.
The ability of women in Neillsville to turn old greeting cards into new greeting cards, which this Christmas will once again proclaim: "Peace on earth. Good will to all."
Fierce imagination. Energetic expectation. Active waiting. Positive patience. Courageous creativity. These are Advent qualities.
I have seen them in several places this year:
This summer Karen and I viewed the AIDS monument in Durban, South Africa. A giant red ribbon erected in memory of Gugu Dlamini, one of the first women to publicly acknowledge that she had AIDS. We remember this courageous woman three days before International AIDS day.
After Yasar Arafat died this month, King Abdullah of Jordan stated: "History holds moments of great potential, when we look forward with hope even as we experience crisis and uncertainty. Perhaps now in a moment shaped by both loss and hope, the time has come." Do I sense energetic expectation?
After sixteen years of civil war in Mozambique with 1.5 million dead, negotiations have led to a peace accord. One of the negotiators has said: "Faith could seem weak in the face of the complexity of society and the powers of evil. But believers have a power for peace, founded in the power of dialogue." Positive, persistent patience?
Two Nigerian clergy sit side by side ----- one Muslim and the other Christian. The Muslim Imam stated: "We were two militant religious activists, but now we are working to create space, not just for peace, but also for the transformation of society." Fierce imagination?
Pie in the sky? Pollyanaish? Unrealistic? Perhaps. Each of these people knows that peace does not come easily, and does not come without trust in the God who spoke through Isaiah and acted through Jesus. This Advent we could do much worse than to "give peace a chance" ------- even if we have to wait.
