RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - December 9, 2007

“Do You Dream of Peace?”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Isaiah 11:1-10

When you close your eyes:
Do you dream of peace?
Do you dream of flowers on the hill?
Do you dream you see your mother smiling?
When you close your eyes, do you dream of peace?

So Judy Collins sings in “Song of Sarajevo”, but it is true isn’t it? In Advent, perhaps more than any other time of the year, don’t you dream of peace? In the dark of the night, in the midst of the glitz and the glitter, in the airport when you see a young soldier walk alone to his departure gate, when you listen to the news before you go to bed, don’t you dream of peace? Don’t you just want to close your eyes to the world as you know it – and when you open them, instead see flowers on the hill and your mother smiling?

As Edward Marquart wrote, “Wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if there wasn’t so much killing going on right now in Iraq? Wouldn’t it be nice if Muslims and Christians (Israelis and Palestinians) miraculously started to live together in peace? Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were peace on earth?

Or, if we can’t have peace between nations, wouldn’t it be nice to have peace within our families? Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a whole week together as husband and wife and not have a fight? Wouldn’t it be nice if our children did not argue with each other? Wouldn’t it be nice to go on a family vacation and not have any blow-ups? Wouldn’t it be nice if tempers didn’t flare so quickly, like a match that suddenly ignites? If we can’t have peace in Iraq, maybe we could have peace at home and in our families. That would be nice.

Or, if that isn’t possible, wouldn’t it be nice to have peace within ourselves? Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t so harsh with ourselves? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t explode at ourselves in anger? Wouldn’t that be nice? If we can’t have peace between nations or peace within the family, maybe we could at least have some peace within us?

Or, if we couldn’t have these, wouldn’t it be nice to have peace at least a few days before or after Christmas, that time of year when we are often short of money, short of time, and short of temper. In preparation for the Prince of Peace, wouldn’t it be nice to have a little bit of Christmas peace at your house or mine?

When you close your eyes, do you dream of peace? Isaiah did. Way back in 700 BC, Isaiah dreamed of peace. He was sick and tired of his world. The Jews had been fighting for 40 years – his whole life. First the Assyrians, then the Egyptians, then the Assyrians again, and then back to the Egyptians. Isaiah was born and bred in a world of war. He had never known peace, but he dreamed of it.

Isaiah was tired of four decades of killing. He was tired of children being trained to kill – so they would not be killed. He was tired of mothers and fathers and sons and daughters fighting with each other. He was just plain tired of people at war in one way or another (Marquart). Isaiah longed for peace. He dreamed of peace.

Because Isaiah knew – he knew that this crazy world was not how God intended it to be. He was no dummy. He had read the Book of Genesis and realized how it had all been when the world was new. Isaiah understood what it meant to be made in God’s image.

He knew that we were created to be at peace with one another. Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, parents and children, Arabs and Israelis, Christians and Muslims… God intended for us live peacefully – because we are sculpted from a sacred mold.

Don’t you hate it when anger overwhelms you? Doesn’t it bother you when the world seems so stressful that you would do almost anything to make it stop moving so uncontrollably? Doesn’t it hurt you every time you read about another person killed or maimed in Iraq? Doesn’t it scare you to think that a preemptive strike against Iran might still be in the cards this Advent season?

Do you close your eyes and dream of peace? Isaiah did, and so he wrote one of the most beautiful peace poems known to us. In Isaiah’s vision, wolves will dwell with lambs, and leopards will lie down with kids. Nursing babies will play with wasps and not be stung, and young boys could even put their innocent and curious hands into a den of cobras and not be bitten. Calves and lions and little children will find what we have all been searching for. Do you close your eyes and dream of peace?

Hogwash, we say. Religious fantasies and preacher rhetoric. But no, it’s not. It can not be a wildly speculative dream because it is precisely what Advent is all about. Isaiah has so beautifully articulated the promise of God which, of course, has come to us as the child born in Bethlehem, the Prince of Peace. Emmanuel – God with us. It is the promise which sustains us, which must sustain us, in our very darkest nights.

Out of the dead stump of Jesse, a new and green branch has sprung up. And so, in spite of all the times the ax has slashed through the trees supporting our fondest hopes and dreams, tiny green shoots have persisted, and new life has emerged. God will not allow death and despair, war and conflict, hate and fear to be the last words. That is not God’s intention. That is not God’s way.

Advent reminds us not to look at the world around us in the old familiar ways. Advent calls us to define a new reality, to simply recognize that most often what is real to us is simply what is the most familiar.

As William Green wrote, “King Herod got used to cunning and cruelty. For him that was political reality. The innkeeper got used to making a profit. For him that was commercial necessity. The wise men were taken by the splendor of their gifts. For them that was impressive benevolence… We look in vain for salvation within our own points of view. ”

Advent calls us to dream – and dream big. Advent calls us to dream outside of our own little realities. Advent calls us to dream, like Isaiah did, of peace.

Oh, come on, we say, Isaiah was a bit on the odd side. All those prophets were. I mean, look at that John the Baptist guy in his camel’s hair loin cloth and diet of locusts.

But then, again, as Caldwell Quinn noted, “Prophets tend to be at least a little bit odd, for the God for whom they speak tends to do some pretty odd things--like entering history as a human being.

And because of that particular reality, the one which we call the Incarnation, the Coming of Christ, Emmanuel – God with us – because of the reality of the Child born in the stable, we who proclaim ourselves to follow him can not help but end up doing a lot of odd things too.

Caldwell Quinn continues by saying that “we share meals together and believe that God sits at the table with us, we proclaim that the poorest and most despised are dearest of all…we announce that our flawed and broken churches are the very body of God in the world. When the world tells us we are crazy, we dream of peace.

Make no mistake: these are not things that the world considers normal. And yet they are the stuff we are made of, the signs that we say we want to be known by. They are the way God continues to speak to God's odd people.”

When you close your eyes, do you dream of peace? I hope so. I hope you dream of flowers on the hill and see your mother smiling. Because, if you stop dreaming, how can the Spirit of the Prince of Peace live within you? How can right and righteous relationships be born among people and nations? How can you work for the justice that lies at the heart of peace?

If you stop dreaming, how will you nurture the shoot that sprouts from the old dead stump? How will the lamb lose its fear of the wolf and the calves learn to trust the lions?

When you close your eyes, do you dream of peace? Do you dream of flowers on the hill and see your mother smiling? I hope so because without your dreams, surely all is lost.

Sermon - December 9, 2007

“Do You Dream of Peace?”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Isaiah 11:1-10

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Isaiah 11:1-10