Isaiah 2:1-4
This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
In the last days
the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established
as chief among the mountains;
it will be raised above the hills,and all nations
will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up
to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us
his ways, so that we may walk in his paths."
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
NIV
Matthew 24:36-44
"No one knows about
that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the
Father. As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying
and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen
until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the
coming of the Son of Man. Two men will
be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be
grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
"Therefore keep
watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand
this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was
coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken
into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour
when you do not expect him.” NIV
Christmas – the celebration
of the birth of the one we call ‘the Prince of Peace.’
And yet, there is
no peace in the world.
Have you seen the
videos of those terrible attacks on people in cities and communities. It is a game called “knock out,” and young
people, mostly gang members, approach an unsuspecting person from behind and
hit them as hard as they can in the head, with the goal of knocking the person
out. These are terrible attacks.
When will we have
peace on earth?
Last week there was
a video of children in Syria. CNN reporters were interviewing these
children about the war in that country. One
of the children described how one day she saw an explosion and a man’s head
flew overhead. What a terrible way to
live. And during the interview, there
was yet another explosion in a building behind the children and everyone was knocked
on their feet. Once the dust settled,
the video camera was turned back on and these children calmly continued to
answer the questions of the reporter – war and violence are so much a part of
their lives that an explosion that knocks them down is no big deal.
When will the fighting
in Syria
end?
The War in Afghanistan has
been going on for 12 years, 1 month, 3 weeks, and 3 days. When will that war end?
In fact, on
Christmas Day – that first one, the one when there was a baby in a manger and
shepherds watching their flocks by night – the angels sang about “peace on
earth.”
Well, when is that
going to happen?
Our Old Testament
lesson was written by the prophet Isaiah.
It was some 400
years before the birth of Christ, and it was a time of war and violence. The kingdom was divided – Judah in the South and Israel in the
North. There was civil war between the
two. Judah
was in revolt against super-power Assyria
under King Hezekiah.[i]
You can imagine the
people of Isaiah’s time asking the same thing the people of our time ask, “when
will this war end? When will violence stop?
When will there be peace on earth?
Isaiah answered by
recalling the words of another prophet, Joel, who some 2 or 3 hundred years
earlier had called the people to prepare for war by telling them to beat their
plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears.[ii]
What Isaiah does is
to lift that phrase out of the writings of Joel and he turns them around.
They will beat their swords into
plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword
against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
What an idealist
dream!
Imagine taking the
weapons of today and recycling them as Isaiah proposed, turning guns and
bullets and missiles and jets and tanks – into farming equipment, medical
tools, building materials for schools.
Can there ever be a
day when “nation will not take up sword against nation,” or “train for war
anymore?”
When will wars end?
In Matthew’s Gospel,
the people asked Jesus about when the Kingdom would arrive on earth. That’s
more than just the end of war. That’s
the end of poverty, disease, injustice, racism, violence, hatred – as well as
war.
And at first
glance, the news is not good. Jesus
looks at the disciples and gives us the straight news. “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars,
but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is
still to come.
“Nation will rise
against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and
earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.”
Well, I don’t know
about you, but I’m tired of living through these birth pains. I want the end of the age to come, and with
it, I want Jesus to establish his kingdom on this earth.
In the early years
of the church, the disciples expected Jesus to return at any moment. They thought it would be “6 days, 6 weeks,
probably not 6 months.”
But the months
turned into years. And the years turned
into centuries.
And we are still
waiting.
Waiting for an end
to racism. Waiting for an end to
injustice. Waiting for an end to poverty
and disease and hunger.
Waiting for war to
end.
We’ve waited so
long, that it seems almost useless to continue to wait.
Why work for peace,
when wars will not end?
Why fight this war,
when ten years later, or 20 at best, another enemy will appear?
Several years ago I
was teaching a 3rd grade Sunday School class. We were studying our New Testament lesson for
this morning, from Matthew’s Gospel. The
memory verse was from the lesson we read just a little while ago. “So watch, for you don’t know when the Son of
Man will come.”
Geeze, I couldn’t
believe it, but one of the kids memorized it incorrectly. Instead of saying “So watch,” the child
thought it was “So WHAT.”
And that is the way
many of us live our lives.
“So what, we don’t
know when the Son of Man will come.”
“So what. We don’t know when Christ will establish his
kingdom.
“So what. We don’t know when poverty, injustice, hate –
and war – will end.”
You reach a point
at which you feel like giving up.
“So what?” There
will always be hate. There will always
be crime. There will always be
racism. There will always be war.
But against this,
the Word of God calls us to work for peace.
Psalm 122 says,
“Pray for peace.”
II Timothy, chapter
2, calls on us to pray for our nation’s leaders, “that we may live in peace.”
In fact, we are to
do more than pray for peace, we are called to be actively seeking peace. The psalmist said that we should “seek peace
and pursue it.”[iii]
Jesus promised a
special blessing to those who worked as peacemakers, promising that those
people would be called children of God.[iv]
But it is so easy
to just say, “So what?”
It is so easy to
think that things will never improve, and that things will never get better.
But to say that is
to have no hope.
More than that, it
is to have no faith, and to call Christ a liar.
For He himself promised that he would establish peace and that he would
establish his kingdom.
Today is the first
day of Advent, the beginning of a new year in the Christian calendar.
Advent is a time to
anticipate the day when we can celebrate the first coming of Christ and to
celebrate his birth on Christmas.
But Advent is also
a time to anticipate the return of Christ.
The day will come
like a thief in the night, as unexpected as we could possibly imagine. But it will come.
And then all wars
will end. And so will injustice, and
crime, and hate.
Meanwhile, so what?
What difference
does this make?
This past week I
read a book that was published in 1858, TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE. It is now a movie which is currently in the
theaters, which I have not seen, but in the book the author is telling about
his true experiences as a free Black who is kidnapped and taken to Louisiana
where he lives as a slave. A dozen years
later, he is finally able to send a letter to friends and family who are able
to secure his freedom and return to his home in New York.
As the book is
coming to a close, Solomon Northrup, after 12 years in slavery, is leaving Louisiana and is saying goodbye
to other slaves. Among the friends he
leaves behind, some have a sense of hope that someday they will be free. They absolutely no idea how that will happen,
but they have that hope. It is a hope
that any reasonable person would say was vain and senseless.
But – the modern
reader knows something that back in 1858, the writer of that book had no
clue. In just two years, the Civil War
would begin. In less than 5 years, Lincoln would issue the
Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in ten of the states that made up
the Confederacy. In 7 years, the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution would forever outlaw slavery in all of the United States. Slowly, freedom came to all of those who in
1858, had hope, but no evidence, that such a day would come.
We live in an age
of violence. There are wars and rumors
of wars.
But it is our task
to live in hope, and not to let hope die, that someday there will be true
peace. And while live in hope, it is up
to us to live out peace within ourselves and within our relationships with
others.
In his New
Testament letter to the Romans, Paul said, “As far as it depends on you,
live at peace with everyone.”
Copyright 2013, Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights
reserved.
For copies of other sermons, visit www.Pittendreigh.com
