Creekside Church Sermon of December 6, 1998 "Peace by Piece " Isaiah 11:1-10	Rev. David Bibbee
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Seals, dolphins and killer whales performed aerial acrobatics, cart-wheeling and leaping through hoops high above the water. The mammals and trainers had a special bond which was evident in their precisely choreographed performance. The chatter and splashing of the creatures was greeted with great laughter and applause from the crowds. The interplay between the animals and the audience created an unexpected response in Buechner. Tears were welling up in his eyes. He had seen something...a glimpse of a beautiful vision. He did not look to his wife or daughters, lest they notice his reaction. He just kept it to himself.

A year later he was speaking at a preacher's conference in Washington D. C. and he mentioned the incident. Afterwards he was approached by an Anglican priest from Great Britain. He also had been to Sea World in Orlando. He watched the same show, but didn't know how to talk about it because for some inexplicable reason, he also cried. It was as if a veil had been lifted and like Buechner, he saw a vision of biblical proportion.

The fear and apprehension displayed between the human and animal world and within humanity itself, had for those few moments been suspended. For a precious little while, these two men had been given a glimpse of God's peaceable kingdom. It was only a moment, but it was enough to begin to feel what it was like for harmony to be restored with everyone and everything belonging together in a state that could be described with one word...peace.

During Advent we hear from Isaiah who prophesied during the dark days when Judah was under the harsh rule of Assyria. Their situation, to say the least, was bleak, but Isaiah struck a needed tone of hope, proclaiming that one day God would restore and redeem His people and His peaceful purpose for the world would come to fruition. The imagery Isaiah employed is as rich as any you will find in scripture. A time of peace would come, not through military force or political savvy, but by a descendant from the lineage of David; a shoot from the stump of Jesse. He will not establish peace with an iron fist, for there is no peace with fear at the heart of it. The righteous branch will exercise a spiritual rule. Wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, the knowledge and fear of the Lord, justice and righteousness will characterize the rule of this ideal king.

Isaiah then paints a picture of a broken order restored; a scene that could only be painted in poetry. There will be strange bedfellows in this new order. Wolves shall lie with lambs, calves with lions. The cow and bear shall eat from the same trough. Vegetarian lions will eat straw like an ox. Little children playing over a poisonous snake pit. No creature will fear another. They shall not hurt or destroy; the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Such a beautiful vision that still might stir someone to the point of a tear or two the way Buechner and the priest at Sea World experienced, precisely because it is so unlike anything we have ever seen. Such a beautiful vision...one that is as far from reality as you can possibly get. In one of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons, Noah and several pairs of animals are on the ark, gathered in a circle gazing at the floor in shock. Legs and hooves are sticking up; one leopard is casting a guilty gaze to the other, and Noah laments, "Well...so much for the unicorns. But, from now on, all carnivores will be confined to C Deck."

Larsen tells it like it is. Isaiah is dreaming. His vision isn't just unusual, it's unnatural. It is one way of saying that peace does not occur naturally either. A survey of history shows that periods of peace have been short, few and far between. Conflict is the norm. Peace is the exception. When did you last see a headline that peace had broaken out? Peace is so scarce that we are cynical about ever having it, at least in a way like the Bible envisions. If someone says they are at peace, we think they have checked out and given in. Someone has pointed out that we equate peace with passivity. "To hold one's peace means, 'Be quiet!' To keep the peace means, 'Obey!' To make peace is to surrender. To rest in peace is to die."

We have seen and even been part of efforts to achieve peace on scales both small and large, but our efforts haven't done much, it seems, for we are arguably living in the most violent period of history.

I was in high school during the height of the Viet Nam war. I recall a conversation I had with an older lady named Berniece. I said that peace would happen if we would just pull out of Viet Nam. Berniece said, "There won't be peace in the world till people have peace in their hearts." At the time I thought that was a copout. In the years since then, I've changed my mind.

Can we achieve what we haven't experienced? Isn't the conflict of the world a symptom of the conflict inside our own skins? Not a day passes that we do not feel the turmoil that exists within us. We want to replace our turmoil with tranquility and we try to do it in so many ways...through exercise programs, diet, prayer, spiritual disciplines and counseling, and we benefit from all of these things, but peace continues to elude us.

Well then, if peace is not the norm -- if it is so difficult to come by, and the world is obsessed with it's own destruction, why bother with Isaiah, or for that matter any other biblical texts which hold up the promise of peace? The answer lies in what happens when we have felt grasped by something from beyond...a peace that passed all understanding which was enough to set you seeking it and working for it. The slightest stirring of the peace that comes from God is all it takes. It doesn't matter if nothing comes from your efforts. It doesn't matter if your efforts at forgiving and reconciling are not accepted. The outcome is always God's, and though you can't always say how, you become better for having tried.

A Pollyanna, feel-good approach to peace won't work, because it underestimates how resistant the world is to peace as God wants to establish it. You need only look to Jesus to understand how hard it is. The price of the peace he gave was his life. It wasn't an easy peace. At the Last Supper he said, "Peace I leave with you." But don't forget that he also said, "I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword." Do these seemingly contradictory statements cancel each other out? No. They are two sides of the same coin. It has been said that the tension is resolved when you understand that for Jesus, peace wasn't the absence of struggle, but the presence of love.

Stand for and work for peace, and you'll have a fight on your hands. You will need more than noble ideals, clear thinking, and steel resolve backing you up. You will need the One upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests. You will need his resolve to keep seeking a peaceable kingdom that often seems as likely to happen as a lamb snuggling next to a wolf.

In "The Godfather, Part Three" Don Corleone, the Godfather, goes to the Vatican to work out a business deal as a way of covering his tarnished reputation with a cloak of respectability. He met Cardinal Lamberto who asked if he wanted to make a confession. He refused, saying the confession would take too long, but he needed the Cardinal's help, so in a nervous, stammering manner, he confessed his marital infidelities. Then he poured out his heinous sins, including the murder of his own brother, and Don Corleone began to sob. Cardinal Lamberto then spoke the words of absolution, "I know you don't believe this, but you have been redeemed."

Advent calls us to believe what is easy to believe. In Ephesians Paul says, "He is our peace. He has broken down the wall of hostility. He preached peace to those who were far off and those who were near through the cross."

When we consider the hatred and warfare that engulfs our world, when we think of the conflict which rages within us, we are tempted to dismiss Isaiah's vision.

The possibility of a world at peace seems as unlikely as the animal behavior portrayed in Isaiah. Living in peace, like forgiving and being forgiven, isn't natural. It is not at all how the system works, but it is the will of God we orient ourselves toward.

I have often wondered why it is that God gives us tasks too big to tackle. Why not give us something we can handle so we might gain a little confidence and then go on to something more substantial? The reason is that God wants us to do what can't be done without him. Since his son's first advent, we have been enlisted in a project which requires perspective and patience and persistence, until his second advent.

There once was a man to whom God had given a task. God showed him a huge rock and told him to push against it with all his might. Day by day, year by year, he toiled from sunup to sundown, his shoulder set squarely against the unrelenting rock. Every night he collapsed in his home, exhausted, and feeling more and more like his labor was spent in vain. He started thinking, "Why am I doing this? Why should I kill myself pushing a rock that hasn't moved a half a millimeter?" The more he thought, the more discouraged he became, till one day he voiced his complaint to God.

"Look, Lord, I've labored long and hard, giving my all to do what you asked, but the rock hasn't moved. What's wrong? Why am I failing?" God replied, "You did exactly what I asked of you. I asked you to push the rock. I never said I expected you to move it. You think you failed, but look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscular, your back sinewed, and your legs are massive and hard. Your calling was to be obedient, to push, to exercise your faith and trust my wisdom. This you have done. Moving the rock is my job."

We long for a time when no one hurts or destroys, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord. We can work for what we long for, energized by those moments when we are kissed by the peace of God. Even though we only experience it a piece at a time, and even though to work for it at home and at church and in the world is a struggle, we can continue to hope for it, pray for it, and work for it, knowing that it will come, in God's good way, and in God's good time.

(Thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor whose essay "A Fierce and Realistic Peace" inspired this sermon.)

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