2019-12-10
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-10; Peace in the Midst of Conflict
If I invited us to share aloud what makes for peace, I bet I’d get a huge variety of responses. Some of us would picture a house emptied of raucous kids, with a few minutes for a leisurely bath, or a chance to read a long-awaited book. Some of us would imagine twenty minutes to pray or do yoga or meditate. Some of us would picture a huge weight lifted off our shoulders—maybe a problem at work being solved, or a worry about a family member dissipating, or a Christmas shopping list being finished.
And some of us might go in an entirely different direction. If I asked us to picture peace, some of us might imagine arguing neighbors getting along, or squabbling colleagues finding common ground, or, on the biggest scale, warring countries reaching a ceasefire.
We use the word peace in two distinctly different ways, don’t we. Sometimes it’s internal peace that’s craved. We imagine deep breaths and relaxed bodies and unrushed schedules. A peaceful day is one that’s calm and serene. At other times, though, that word has a far more interpersonal connotation. We imagine dividing walls broken down and bickering friends reconciled and fighting nations cooperating.
When the Bible talks of peace, I suspect it means both kinds of peace. Sometimes it means internal peace, a kind of serenity. When we say “Peace be with you,” as we did earlier in the service, we’re hoping to bestow a mindfulness that lets us breathe deeply and relax our shoulders and necks and dispense with our tension.
At the same time, though, the Bible hopes to confer a peace between and among people and the earth itself. Isaiah’s vision of the Peaceable Dominion is a vivid example of this sort of peace. The passage we read today, while it never uses the Hebrew word for peace, “shalom,” nevertheless gives us a graphic image of harmony. Peace, says Isaiah, is what arises when the right ruler comes forth and pays attention to those who are “poor” and “meek.” God, says Isaiah, will “judge the needy by what is right, [and] render decisions on earth’s poor with justice” (11:4, The Message).
Tending to those who are poor, meek, needy: this, says Isaiah, is what makes for peace. Inevitably, of course, this sort of peace has political implications. Caring for those who are poor, meek, and needy entails decisions about public policy. I can’t tell you how often in my ministry the church and I have been criticized for being “too political.” So I will say clearly, first, that I sympathize when a prophet’s or preacher’s policy observations rub some the wrong way. It can be irritating to have our beliefs and views countered or called into question. I don’t take any of that lightly. And I will say, related to that, that preachers and prophets miss the biblical boat entirely when all they do is spout the partisan line of a particular political party.
At the same time, though, I am struck by the consistency of a biblical message that over and over again advocates for those whose lives have not been easy, for those who have existed on the margins, for those who have suffered from policies and cultural mores that hold people down and push them into corners. Given that vulnerable lives mattered so much to Jesus and the prophets, is it really surprising that he and they would have cared how the society organized itself? Or, to frame it another way, is it really likely that Jesus and the prophets would have insisted only that we be kind to each other in one-on-one encounters, but wouldn’t have cared a whit about whether people got adequate health care and education, whether the societal deck was stacked against people of color and LGBTQ+ people, whether immigrants and refugees were treated by a nation with grace and love? Is it really possible that for Jesus and the prophets it’s important to be nice and pleasant, but that it doesn’t matter at all whether we organize our society to be fair and caring?
Hardly. Again and again the biblical prophets call us to live fairly and justly. “Do justice and love kindness,” says Micah (6:8). “Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute,” say the Psalms (82:3). “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” says Amos (5:24). And Jesus could not have been more in sync with that prophetic tenor: “But woe to you Pharisees! For you . . . neglect justice” (Luke 11:42). And in his Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . those who mourn . . .the meek . . . those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . . the merciful . . . the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:3-9).
The reason so many biblical writers talk with such insistence about this need to be just is precisely because we find it so hard to do, and have neglected the dictates of justice, and sometimes resist it with every fiber of our being. If it were easy to be just, if that were our natural inclination, the Bible would spend no time admonishing us about it. We would just do it naturally. When biblical writers harp on the subject, though, it’s because they know how we human beings are made, and they know we need a corrective to our natural self-centeredness.
So I understand any resistance to doing justice and to talking about doing justice. I have to overcome my own self-centeredness all the time to remember that God is especially with those who have little and who find the deck stacked against them and who are too often seen as the scum of the earth. Like you, I have to be reminded of this holy priority, because it simply isn’t my natural tendency. My gentle reminder to all of us, though, is that this nudge to justice-making is not the preacher or the church choosing some offensive line of thought just to tick some of you off. This is the stuff of Jesus. This is the stuff of God. The Bible points us in this difficult, but ultimately salutary, direction because it knows that there can be no greater satisfaction in life that in adhering to and advocating for values and priorities that come from the very Creator of the universe. The biblical witness insists that we arrange our societies so that everyone—everyone—has fullness of life.
“I thought the subject today was peace,” you may be thinking, “not justice.” Which is why we always need to remind ourselves of that pithy dictum that “If you want peace, work for justice,” a line memorably uttered by Pope Paul VI some years ago. Social peace is, at least in part, a byproduct of careful and sustained work for a fair and equitable ordering of society. When we treat each other justly, peace ensues.
Justice is empty, though, isn’t it, if we can’t treat each other, in our daily interactions, as if everybody matters. I can advocate ’til the cows come home for just policies, but if I treat you like dirt, haven’t I entirely missed the sort of peace we can practice on a day-to-day basis? So while work for justice is vital, so also is the determined work of finding peaceful coexistence with our families, friends, and co-workers. Peace comes from kindness as well as justice.
And this, too, can be extremely difficult, can’t it. If a parent or sibling has hurt you deeply, if a boss continually demeans you, if a neighbor repeatedly disrespects you, how in the world do you make peace? Making peace with those close to us so often involves forgiveness, doesn’t it. And forgiveness is one of the toughest challenges we face.
I’m struck by an old line of the comedian Lily Tomlin: “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.” Forgiveness means letting go of past hurts. It entails a willingness to start over, as though a past injury has been released. It doesn’t excuse a pattern of continuing to inflict pain—that’s masochism. No. When we forgive, we say, “I won’t stand for your ongoing wrongdoing, but I am willing to start over. I am willing to not count the past against you, and to begin afresh.”
Many of us remember the ugly brawl between the Browns and the Steelers several weeks ago. Browns defensive end Myles Garrett ripped the helmet off Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph and pummeled Rudolph on the head with it. Garrett claims Rudolph had uttered a racial slur. Which may be true—who knows. In order for there to be peace, though, one of them has to take the initiative to reach out and apologize to the other one. One of them, and eventually both of them, have to “give up all hope for a better past,” and to say, “For our own well-being, and for the good of our teams and our families and the world, it’s crucial that we find a way to care about each other.”
In the macrocosm, justice is a critical part of society’s peace. And in the microcosm, part of the way we bring justice into being is to act with integrity and care and forgiveness toward the people with whom we live every day. Peace needs big gestures—justice—and it needs little gestures—forgiveness and love on a daily basis.
That’s not all, though. The final puzzle piece, and the gift that makes all our efforts for justice and peace possible, is the opportunity for us to absorb the divine peace that is always ours, if only we’ll receive it. Among the 420 or so uses of the word “peace” in the Bible, countless times, God, or a character in the story, says, “Peace be with you.” And Jesus reiterates this many times in the gospels. “Go in peace,” he’ll say, or “Peace be with you.” In some words that we often hear at memorial services, Jesus says to the disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).
The striking truth of the matter is that, when you and I pass the peace of Christ to each other, we are praying for each other on several different levels. We are hoping to live harmoniously with those around us, and together to contribute to a just world. And at the same time, we are conveying the sort of centered, internal peace that only God can give. We need that deep internal peace—the peace that assures us that all shall be well—we need that internal peace if we’re to be effective and committed agents of interpersonal and societal peace. Those two kinds of peace are thoroughly intertwined.
The Quaker artist and minister Edward Hicks painted the scene Isaiah describes over 100 times. What Hicks conveys again and again in these paintings he calls “The Peaceable Kingdom” is peace being lived out on several different levels. In this version (https://www.google.com/search?q=hicks+peaceable+kingdom&rlz=1C1EJFC_enUS822US822&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiluqWHuqTmAhVFMawKHfW5AucQ_AUoAXoECBEQAw&biw=1895&bih=888#imgrc=HgXi7VxNdGvVzM:), you see wolf and lamb, leopard and kid, calf and lion, cow and bear all living peacefully together, predator and prey happily coexisting. Nature is reconciled.
In the background, to the left, you see a group of Quakers led by William Penn having a warm and respectful conversation with Delaware Native Americans, as if to break down cultural barriers and live in peaceful coexistence. Not only is nature reconciled, but people, too, are joined together as one.
And all the characters in the painting seem to be possessed of a preternatural internal calm. They look relaxed and serene. It’s as if to say, “Not only are animals reconciled with each other, and not only do people live in harmony with each other, but so also does every living creature draw its strength and sustenance from the One who gave them life and breath.” We’re beckoned to live together in peace. And we’re given that peace by the One who never lets us go. May God’s peace abound in all its many-faceted glory, this day and always.