Comments of "The Peaceable Kingdom" Sermon

Marrianna and I went to church last Sunday, and the sermon has been on my mind since.  I think I want to disagree, but then the last sentence of the sermon grasps me, shakes me, and tells me to pay attention.

The scripture was the first nine verses of Isaiah, Chapter 11, known by many as the Peaceable Kingdom. 

Isaiah 11

The Branch From Jesse

 ¹ A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
       from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

 ² The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
       the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
       the Spirit of counsel and of power,
       the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD -

 ³ and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
       He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
       or decide by what he hears with his ears;

 ⁴ but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
       with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
       He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
       with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

 ⁵ Righteousness will be his belt
       and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

 ⁶ The wolf will live with the lamb,
       the leopard will lie down with the goat,
       the calf and the lion and the yearling ^[a] together;
       and a little child will lead them.

 ⁷ The cow will feed with the bear,
       their young will lie down together,
       and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

 ⁸ The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
       and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.

 ⁹ They will neither harm nor destroy
       on all my holy mountain,
       for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
       as the waters cover the sea.

The artist Edward Hicks used the passage for a series of paintings, and to me it was particularly interesting that, as the sermon pointed out, Hicks often put William Penn in the background making treaty with the Native Americans.  When I looked at the painting later at home, it was the first time I had noticed that.

I am among those who don't have the vision of Isaiah, or Hicks, or Bob, our minister.  I'm much more pessimistic about the condition of the world, and indeed of our own little corner of it, than I've been in many years.  I don't have the hope that even a 12 year old living in the South Bronx in New York, quoted in the sermon, sees:

People will come hand-in-hand.  It will be bright, not dim… all friendly animals will be there, but no mean ones… As for television, forget it!  If you want vision you can use your eyes to see the people that you love.  No one will look at you from the outside.  People will see you from the inside. All the people from the street will be there.  My uncle will be there, and he will be healed.  You won’t see him buying drugs, because there won’t be any money.

No violence will be in heaven.  There will be no guns or drugs…  You’ll recognize all the children who have died when they were little.  Jesus will be good to them and play with them.

This boy has a view that is difficult for me to understand.  Our local papers and TV news have been full of the destructive events around us - a local school board undoing the years and decades of building a school system that is diverse both racially and economically; a young 4 year old girl tortured and sexually abused to the point that she died at the hands of her tormentors; the environment, local and national, is being destroyed; our nation had 66 of our young soldiers and marines die last month; there is no peace in our very Congress, men and women elected to lead us; and so it goes.

It seems to me that there is no hope, no chance for even a peace treaty between Democrat and Republican.  We are at the bottom, without a vision or visionary.  The Peaceable kingdom is a myth written 2500 years ago, clung to by generations, and yet we are no closer to its becoming real.

Bob ends the sermon with a vision that tells us what is necessary for the Peaceable Kingdom to arrive.

... And in the meantime, because we believe the vision is true, we know we have work to do. We have family to attend to; there are votes to be taken and decisions to be made.  There are orders to be filled, and patients to see, and clients who need us. There is work to be done… the quiet work of making peace in our own lives … the relentless work of securing hope for generations yet unborn.  A work that leans and lives into that future for which we still wait all these years after Isaiah described it.

We have work to do, the quiet work of making peace in our own lives.  I don't envision a Peaceable Kingdom, ever, not even in my own life. But perhaps it is something I can work towards.  And if the very last sentence of the sermon is true, and I believe it is, perhaps there is hope for the vision.  That last sentence grabs and shakes me, giving me some slight measure of hope.