The Peace that Passes All Understanding sermon Isaiah 11:1-10

Peace is so much. It is too much for a sermon. Can’t be explained. Mysterious, Divine.

Peace is small, like feelings of calm and moments of quiet.

Peace is strong, like beating swords into plowshares and choosing discussion rather than destruction.

Peace is big, like wholeness, Shalom.



Shalom…God’s peace….peaceable kingdom…looks like the wolf living with the lamp, the leopard lying down with the kid, the cow and bear grazing together, a baby reaching up to play into the mouth of a cobra, and a toddler having a tea party with a viper.



The peaceable kingdom that Isaiah describes is almost too abnormal for us to believe. In her reflections on the peaceable kingdom, minister and writer, Kate Huey writes,



“The promises are astounding and perhaps even unbelievable: "the order of nature" that we all learned about in science class, the violence of predators that we came to accept as natural, will be overturned. The rules of life will be changed, bent in the direction of gentleness and peace, not just any peace, but shalom. "Shalom," Walter Brueggemann says, "is creation time, when all God's creation eases up on hostility and destruction and finds another way of relating" (Peace). Things are going to go back to the way they were originally created, the way things were meant to be. "This poem is about the impossible possibility of the new creation!" We are told, he says, that "the old practice of the big ones eating the little ones is not the wave of the future….The rightly governed world will indeed be detoxified, no more a threat to the poor, the meek, the children, the lamb, the kid. The new world will indeed be safe for the vulnerable" (Isaiah 1-39, Westminster Bible Companion).”



God’s peace is so strange, abstract, and rare in our broken world that I’m not sure any of us would often recognize it when we saw it. The great bigness of it looks like the image given to us in scripture, but it also looks like the little glimmer of wholeness we experience every now and again. Even if we wanted to be peacemakers, would we know what to do and who or what to look for?



I believe there are several very important elements that characterize Divine Peace.



First, I’d like to suggest that God’s peace has something to do with a ruler. “and a little child shall lead them,” says Isaiah. Minister and writer, Safiyah Fosua says,



“…under God’s promised new ruler, springing from the lineage of Jesse, everyone and everything in creation could live in peace with one another, posing no threat to any. The necessary precondition for this kind of peace to emerge was a promised ruler who would act with justice and righteousness, judging with particular care to ensure the poor received justice and their oppressors would not stand. So characterized by righteousness and justice, as well as devotion to God would this ruler be, that the prophet says he wears righteousness as a belt around his waist, faithfulness as a belt around his loins.”



God’s promised ruler is characterized by the kind of righteousness that is radical, changing this world’s order into the divine order, molding the chaos we have become accustomed to into the peacefulness of the kingdom of God.



I remember hearing about a ruler like that, someone who turned things up on their heads and revealed God’s kingdom to the blind. “The righteousness Jesus offered,” says John Donahue, “the love he proclaimed – was too radical, too inclusive, too dangerous to survive without creating chaos for the status quo – then or now. “



Isaiah didn’t know of a man named Jesus. Jesus had not come into the world yet. But, Isaiah proclaimed a God of peace, even in a world of injustice. He foretold of a righteous leader who would not put up with wickedness and inequity.



As we seek to be peacemakers, we must look toward the righteous ruler the Prince of Peace. One who, as Donahue writes, “ is strong an d mighty in battle, all right – but the battle in which he is engaged is a battle over fear and the weapons he employes are the weapons of mass reconciliation; truth and justice, peace and love.”



Secondly, I’d like to suggest that living into God’s peace has a lot to do with repentance. Much of the book of Isaiah is about repentance: Isaiah Chapter one:



Hear, O heavens, and listen O earth; I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me…children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord, who have despised the Holy One of Israel… Why do you continue to rebel?...your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire… it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners…Hear the word of the Lord…listen to the teaching of our God…I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams…I am weary of your festivals…Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow…though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; through they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.



The Peaceable kingdom is a place of great transformation, a place where humble repentance is required. “Professor Mary Hinkle Shore writes that humility will prove stronger then the military might of any empire.” The kind of humble repentance that Isaiah describes begins with cleansing, removing evil from our doings. But, it does not stop there. Repentance also includes action: “learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed.” (Is 1)



“One is reminded of Jesus [here], who wasted no energy on the legions of the Roman Empire, but kept his attention on the sick, the marginalized, the broken, and exerted his power on their behalf.” (Shore) The Peaceable Kingdom of God does not allow for people to hurt or destroy one another. It is a state in which the “earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (Is 11:9) The Message version of this scripture puts it this way, “The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive, a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.” The repentant remnant will be recovered and restored to the peaceable realm of God.



Lastly, and possibly most importantly, when we are looking for the peace of God, we must remember that it is a peace that passes all understanding. It is supernatural, beyond what we can imagine or fathom. Bigger than us. Greater than our powers. Belonging to God. Not of this world alone. “In his book, Peace, Walter Bruggemann encounters the promises [of peace] very personally: ‘Un heard of and unimaginable! All these images of unity sound to me so abnormal that they are not worth reflecting on. But then I look again and notice something else. The poet means to say that in the new age, these are the normal things. And the effect of the poem is to expose the real abnormalities of life, which we have taken for granted. We have lived with things abnormal so long that we have gotten used to hem and we think they are normal.’” (Huey)



To seek the peaceable kingdom is a daring adventure. One in which we hope for a “new normal” in the midst of old status quo. The adventure of following righteous ruler who begins his leadership with the miracle of a virgin born baby lying in a animal feeding trough, sleeping with cows and sheep, lit by the night light of a great star in the sky, and listening to the lullabies of angels overhead. An adventure that calls us to be cleansed in the way of Christ at the waters of the Jordan, to take up our cross and follow the one who took notice of the gave sight to the blind man and healing to the pleading woman. This Advent adventure of peace requires us to pray for our enemies and welcome the stranger into our midst. The Peaceable “new normal” sits us at the table with sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, and criminals and gives us one piece of bread and one cup from which to eat and drink and share together.



The table is set, the ruler is reigning, may we seek to be cleansed and take action toward humble repentance so that we too may be restored to the Peaceable- God With Us- Kingdom. In the name of Emmanuel, Amen.