Advent Peace
Isaiah 1:2-5
December 2, 2007
Let’s begin this morning with a song. This is Fred Small’s Peace Is.
I love that song, and it works for me on several levels. First, it’s easy and fun to sing – always a good thing in a song because it invites you in. But more than that, it invites you to consider how you think of peace. By saying “peace is the bread we break” the song invites us to move to the level of metaphor – which is precisely the level that this morning’s Advent texts work on as they invite us also to consider what peace is.
So, what is peace to you?
As the song I began with suggests, peace, like bread, is fundamental; it is essential for life; it is deeply rooted in the dust of creation; it is simple.
Why, then, is it so very rare?
One could quickly, and not inaccurately, fall back on the preacherly truisms here: we are broken people, prone to idolatry, living in a broken world. All that is surely true.
Nevertheless, we are just as clearly called, as followers of the Prince of Peace, to the work of peacemaking. As the Presbyterian Church has put it plainly for quite some time, peacemaking is the believer’s calling.
So, where to begin?
During the past few weeks, in working with Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, I’ve heard over and over from many folks across the nation speaking about the burning out and the tuning out of so many who are so tired of the present war.
Somewhere amidst the weary litany of frustrations, my mind turned back to my own first encounter with the idea of peacemaking.
I was in the sixth-grade chorus of the Rivermont Elementary School in Chattanooga. It must have been about 1970 or 71 – the country mired waste deep in the big muddy of Vietnam. We did a concert – perhaps around Christmas, I don’t recall. But I do remember singing, “let there be peace on earth … and let it begin with me.”
That simple piece has lingered with me far beyond what its music merits. What it lacks in sophistication, though, has been more than made up for by the power of its simple challenge.
A couple of years later, as I grew into the pop music of the day, I encountered the Crosby, Stills and Nash anthem, “Chicago,” with its refrain that declares, “we can change the world.”
It’s another piece that has stayed with me as a challenge far greater than the music.
The difficulty of the challenge, though, it not so much in imagining peace than it is in imaging that it could, somehow, begin with me.
The word of the Lord that came to Isaiah, in the midst of his people’s own strife and violence, says, “For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; 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.”
In other words, Isaiah wants us to understand, peace does not begin with me – it begins with an invitation from God. The world may change, and I may participate in that changing, and even contribute mightily toward it, but I cannot do it at my own initiative. The changing of the world begins with God’s invitation.
So our first charge, as peacemakers – whether we’re talking about creating peace in our families, workplaces, schools, or in the larger world – is to listen, to prepare our own souls for the work.
As the reading from Matthew reminds us, we don’t know when we are going to be called to make peace – to be a peaceful presence in a conflict, to be a calm center amidst the vicissitudes of life.
But Jesus’ words are clear: stay awake! The time will come. The opportunity will arise. The voice will sound. There will be wars and rumors of wars, and we will be called to hear the ancient summons, to take the ancient vision and recast it for the present moment, and to remind the nations about swords and plowshares, spears and pruning hooks.
Whether our calling as peacemakers is to arbitrate between the nations or, perhaps, between the toddlers or the colleagues or the students, we will be called.
Peace begins – true peace begins as we recognize that calling and respond to it with a hope that casts bright light into the present darkness. That hope is the light of this season of watching, waiting and preparing.
We are sustained in our watchfulness by gathering at table and sharing this bread and cup. If peace is the bread we break, then peace begins here.
Let us pray.
December 2, 2007
Let’s begin this morning with a song. This is Fred Small’s Peace Is.
I love that song, and it works for me on several levels. First, it’s easy and fun to sing – always a good thing in a song because it invites you in. But more than that, it invites you to consider how you think of peace. By saying “peace is the bread we break” the song invites us to move to the level of metaphor – which is precisely the level that this morning’s Advent texts work on as they invite us also to consider what peace is.
So, what is peace to you?
As the song I began with suggests, peace, like bread, is fundamental; it is essential for life; it is deeply rooted in the dust of creation; it is simple.
Why, then, is it so very rare?
One could quickly, and not inaccurately, fall back on the preacherly truisms here: we are broken people, prone to idolatry, living in a broken world. All that is surely true.
Nevertheless, we are just as clearly called, as followers of the Prince of Peace, to the work of peacemaking. As the Presbyterian Church has put it plainly for quite some time, peacemaking is the believer’s calling.
So, where to begin?
During the past few weeks, in working with Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, I’ve heard over and over from many folks across the nation speaking about the burning out and the tuning out of so many who are so tired of the present war.
Somewhere amidst the weary litany of frustrations, my mind turned back to my own first encounter with the idea of peacemaking.
I was in the sixth-grade chorus of the Rivermont Elementary School in Chattanooga. It must have been about 1970 or 71 – the country mired waste deep in the big muddy of Vietnam. We did a concert – perhaps around Christmas, I don’t recall. But I do remember singing, “let there be peace on earth … and let it begin with me.”
That simple piece has lingered with me far beyond what its music merits. What it lacks in sophistication, though, has been more than made up for by the power of its simple challenge.
A couple of years later, as I grew into the pop music of the day, I encountered the Crosby, Stills and Nash anthem, “Chicago,” with its refrain that declares, “we can change the world.”
It’s another piece that has stayed with me as a challenge far greater than the music.
The difficulty of the challenge, though, it not so much in imagining peace than it is in imaging that it could, somehow, begin with me.
The word of the Lord that came to Isaiah, in the midst of his people’s own strife and violence, says, “For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; 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.”
In other words, Isaiah wants us to understand, peace does not begin with me – it begins with an invitation from God. The world may change, and I may participate in that changing, and even contribute mightily toward it, but I cannot do it at my own initiative. The changing of the world begins with God’s invitation.
So our first charge, as peacemakers – whether we’re talking about creating peace in our families, workplaces, schools, or in the larger world – is to listen, to prepare our own souls for the work.
As the reading from Matthew reminds us, we don’t know when we are going to be called to make peace – to be a peaceful presence in a conflict, to be a calm center amidst the vicissitudes of life.
But Jesus’ words are clear: stay awake! The time will come. The opportunity will arise. The voice will sound. There will be wars and rumors of wars, and we will be called to hear the ancient summons, to take the ancient vision and recast it for the present moment, and to remind the nations about swords and plowshares, spears and pruning hooks.
Whether our calling as peacemakers is to arbitrate between the nations or, perhaps, between the toddlers or the colleagues or the students, we will be called.
Peace begins – true peace begins as we recognize that calling and respond to it with a hope that casts bright light into the present darkness. That hope is the light of this season of watching, waiting and preparing.
We are sustained in our watchfulness by gathering at table and sharing this bread and cup. If peace is the bread we break, then peace begins here.
Let us pray.
posted by David Ensign at
1:44 PM
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