Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Isaiah 11:1-10

December 9, 2007

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

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One time a man found himself on a crowded commuter train, wedged in between two other people. It turned out to be a pretty awful trip because his two seatmates kept arguing across him about whether the window should be open or shut. The one furthest from the window said that she would die of heat stroke if it wasn't open. The other one said he would catch pneumonia if it didn't stay closed. Back and forth they went until the conductor arrived to take their tickets. The two appealed to him to settle the argument, but he didn't have a good solution either. Finally, the man in the middle spoke up and said, "How about this. First open the window. That will kill the one. Then close it. That will kill the other. Then maybe we can have some peace."

Now I don't suppose we would call that a very gracious response, but it certainly is a very human response isn't it. Lord knows, we find ourselves in stressful situations and it isn't long before decidedly unchristian thoughts start going through our minds, whether we say them out loud or not. This is a story my congregation in Westport would easily identify with, since so many of them were commuters. But even in this serene paradise of Midcoast Maine, I'm sure we all feel frustrated at times.

Long time ago, I remember reading Robert Heinlein's book, Stranger in a Strange Land. Most of the details are fuzzy by now, but there was one thing from the book that has always stuck in my mind. The main character was a guy named Mike. Mike's parents were members of the crew of a spaceship to Mars. Unfortunately, the adults on that trip didn't survive, but Mike did, and he ended up being raised by Martians. Really! When he was about 25, another group on a second mission to Mars discovered Mike and brought him back to earth.

Shortly after that, we learn that, because of his special upbringing, Mike has powers that no other human being has. He can slow all his bodily functions down and go into a deep trance at the drop of a hat. He can move things around with his mind and do other tricks that people think of as magic. But, we discover, his most disturbing trick is that when he gets into an encounter with "bad" people, he has the ability to reach out with his mind and simply send them off into another dimension. Police come at you with a gun? Someone try to hurt one of your "water brothers?" Phony priest try to bump off the competition? Poof! They're all history. No muss. No fuss. And best of all, no evidence.

The first time I read that, I remember thinking to myself, "Wow. How cool is that!" There was a guy at school that used to pick on me every chance he got. I thought, "Man, wouldn't it be nice…. And wouldn't I be doing the human race favor?" Believe me, I know we're not supposed to think that way. Even back in Junior High I felt a twinge of guilt at the idea. But over the years, long after I had forgotten the rest of Heinlein's story, that idea of simply making difficult people disappear kept popping back to mind. Idi Amin? Saddam Hussein? Osama bin Laden? Poof… Wouldn't we be doing the human race a favor? Of course, what happens is that we so easily begin thinking of all kinds of other people the world would be better off without. It becomes pretty hard to draw the line.

You know as well as I do that we're in morally ambiguous territory here. But it's not like there hasn't been precedent. Allow me to call your attention to this morning's scripture reading. This is Isaiah's vision of what the world would be like under the grand umbrella of God's peace: wolves and lambs, lions and calves, children and snakes, all playing nicely side by side. The world is full of justice, the meek and the poor will finally have their due. But right in the middle this beatific vision, we discover that all this shall come to pass because "with the breath of his lips [God] shall kill the wicked." Peace will come, finally, when all the bad people on earth are destroyed. Do you believe that? Do you believe that the way to stop terrorism is to kill all the terrorists? An awful lot of people do. I suspect that's part of the reason The Sopranos was so popular. "Hey. Ya don't like da guy. Not ta worry. We'll take care of it for ya."

Let's be honest. There are plenty of times when this kind of thinking seems like a simple and obvious solution. And there certainly are times, World War Two for example, when it hardly seems like we have a lot of choice. I'm not a passivist. I do believe there are times when situations demand that we stand up to people who do not have our best interests at heart. But, over the years, I've come to know enough about human psychology and spirituality to realize how extremely difficult it is to stand up to violence without getting sucked right in to it. Violence begets violence. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. We have thousands of years of recorded human history, the great majority of which ought to make it clear to us that trying to make peace by killing off our enemies is ultimately doomed to failure. We might free ourselves from an immediate threat, but only by planting the seeds of threats we will have to face in the future.

Peace, is one of the most highly desired of human experiences, and yet it eludes us so easily and so often. We long for it deeply. We pray for it continually. But then, all too often, we don't seem to believe we have any control over making it happen, and that isn't actually true. There are all kinds of things we can do in the interests of peace. There are things we can do personally, things we can do in our communities and, in fact, around the world.

The first thing we can do is realize just where our lack of peace comes from. I'm a firm believer that the conflict we see out in the world is often a reflection of the conflict in our own hearts. The two are intimately related. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, we have to be peace before we'll ever be able to make peace. Very often we blame the world for our own unhappiness. We project our internal frustrations out into the world: on our friends and family, the people we run into on the street and, especially, the faceless and nameless people that can so easily seem threatening, even when they're not.

If we truly want of peace, we need first to figure out what it is in our lives that isn't peaceful and do something about it. Maybe you're suffering from a relationship that's been conflicted for years. Why not make an effort, reach out, open your heart, forgive. It's interesting, every time I talk about forgiveness, invariably, someone will come to me and say, "There's a situation that's been going on in my life for a long time and, I'm sorry, but I simply can't forgive them because they don't deserve it." Did you ever feel that way? Well let me tell you something, how about forgiving because you deserve it.? How about forgiving because, refusing to forgive poisons your life, all the while not really hurting the one your mad at much at all. Forgiveness, reconciliation… they lead toward peace, and when we have peace on the inside, it's much easier to be at peace with the world.

There are also lots of things we can do out in the world for peace. And this morning, I have a specific suggestion. Our denomination, some of you may know, is trying to collect $100,000 this holiday season, by January 6, for the purpose of addressing the needs of Iraqi refugees. Were trying to give Iraqi families who have suffered as a consequence of war, access to food and water and health care and education, and, most importantly, hope. Our goal of hundred thousand dollars can make a huge difference.

If you have a hard time with this idea, that by itself is interesting. We've grown used to thinking of the Iraqi people as our enemies in the past few years. Personally, I don't believe most of them are. I believe most of them just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace, just the same way most of us do. If we truly want peace, we have to make peace. We can't have it just by making war. And making peace is what this campaign is all about. So far over $50,000 has been raised, so we're already halfway to the goal of $100,000, raised from churches just like ours in the United Church of Christ. Certainly, collecting money isn't the only thing we can do, but it is a very important step in the right direction.

There is a saying I came across while putting this sermon together. The saying is, "peace is not always the absence of conflict, but it is always the presence of God." Isn't that beautiful? In this Advent season as we look forward to the coming of the Christ Child, which we understand as the coming of peace into the world in a new and special way, I invite you to think about how you can play a role, a more active role, in the making of peace.

I leave you with this benediction:

Deep peace of the running wave to you

Deep peace of the flowing air to you

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you

Deep peace of the shining stars to you

Deep peace of the gentle night to you

May the moon and stars pour their healing light on you

Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you

Amen.