Everybody wants peace. Well, almost everyone. We all know people who are never happier then when they’re in the middle of a crisis, and of course there are terrorists and other people who try to get what they want by violence. But even those would probably say that they too want peace. It’s just that they want it on their terms, and are prepared to kill to achieve their objectives. Others - like Patrick Henry with his famous “Give me liberty, or give me death” speech - find the price of peace to be too high. But most people just want to be left alone to live their lives without fear - or interference. And since people also want to believe that what they want is possible, they’ll follow almost anyone who’ll promise them peace.
WWI was called “The War to End All Wars.” It was one of the most appalling ever fought, with over 8 million killed, over 21 million wounded and nearly 8 million more prisoners or missing, on both sides. The Geneva Conventions banning poison gas and biological warfare hadn’t been ratified yet. Woodrow Wilson’s dream project, The League of Nations, was supposed to substitute talking for fighting, but the US never ratified it, and it never really accomplished much. WWII came along all too soon.
And yet throughout the intervening 20 years, a mood of almost militant pacifism reigned. No one wanted to believe that such a thing could ever happen again, and so we were taken by surprise. But with the advent of nuclear weapons, it finally seemed as though humanity had learned that war was simply too dangerous - and so practically anybody who was anybody joined the United Nations and we began the Cold War, where talking and “Mutually Assured Destruction,” also known as MAD, kept us all from killing each other in anything like the numbers of the previous wars. Well, of course there were Korea and Vietnam and the killing fields of Cambodia and Angola and Afghanistan... and so on down the alphabet - but still the lid was sort of kept on by fear of worse. And as soon as the Berlin Wall fell, we all breathed this huge sigh of relief, declared a peace dividend, and started planning for a peaceful, democratic, prosperous etc. world where wolves would indeed lie down with lambs. After all, if France and Germany can kiss and make up, can’t everyone? The great nonsense poet Ogden Nash once wrote,
“The Frenches do not like the Germans, who call them names in hymns and sermons.
The Germans do not like the Frenches, who like to shoot at them from trenches.
Let’s hope that all this fuss and commotion stays where it started - across the ocean!”
Yes, peace is a universal dream, and every now and then it seems to swim tantalizingly close. In Isaiah’s day, the big threat was Assyria. The northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered and its people put to the sword or sold into slavery, and yet the people of Judea still wanted to believe that, somehow, they’d escape the gathering threat. Isaiah didn’t offer them much comfort, though. Although the Assyrians did withdraw after King Hezekiah listened to Isaiah’s advice and trusted God instead of foreign alliances to save them, Isaiah and anyone who was really listening knew that this was only a temporary reprieve. But he did hold out hope for the future.
Some day in the future, a descendant of King David’s father Jesse would come onto the scene. And this is the first clue they missed. It wasn’t a shoot from the stump of David, the warrior king, it was a shoot from the stump of Jesse - the peaceful Bethlehem sheepherder. The way to peace would no longer be through war. The other clue that they wouldn’t get - until after Jerusalem fell 150 years later - was that the royal line would be all but wiped out. Israel would no longer be the flourishing vineyard that God had planted, but instead a field of burned-out stumps.
Into this desolate scene will come someone completely different. Isaiah goes on to describe the coming rescuer as someone who will not only be “a man after God’s own heart” as David was, but he will actually rule “with wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.” [v. 2] King David, as we know, had loved and feared God, but he was a little short on wisdom, understanding and counsel, as is obvious the minute we look at his home life. As a husband and father he left a lot to be desired. At any rate, this promised rescuer would be the kind of person who not only knew what was right, not only desire what was right, he would also have the authority to make it happen. And yet he isn’t going to achieve it by military power. Instead, his words will carry the clout that will change things. “He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,” proclaimed Isaiah, “and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” [v. 4]
In Jesus’ day, Israel lived under something called the Pax Romana, or the Roman Peace. And in some ways it really was a peaceful time. Pirates had mostly been cleared from the seas and people could travel throughout most of the empire without fear of bandits. That is, if they had armed guards and good security - remember what happened to the poor fellow on the Jerusalem-Jericho road who was rescued by the Good Samaritan. This so-called peace was only an absence of outright war, though, and it certainly wasn’t characterized by justice or righteousness. It certainly wasn’t the kind of peace the Jews had been promised, and in any case the price was too high for many, if not most of them. They chafed under Roman rule and longed for the day when they would be in charge of their own destiny.
Into this hotbed of simmering resentment and feverish expectation came a man straight out of their prophetic tradition, striding out of the pages of Isaiah dressed in camel’s hair and preaching repentance. The people knew what this meant, and they lined up in droves. If John was right, their dreams were going to come true. If John was right, the Messiah was just around the corner. If John was right, the Romans would be gone and Jerusalem would rule the world.
John was right. The Messiah had come. But the Romans stuck around and Jerusalem still didn’t rule the world. Wolves and leopards and snakes were just as dangerous as ever, and the earth was not filled with the knowledge of God as the waters fill the sea.
John was right. The Messiah has come. And people in Western culture, the heirs of 2000 years of Christianity, have finally gotten the idea that lasting peace doesn’t come at the point of a sword.
Scholars argue over whether or not the beautiful images of the Isaiah’s peaceful kingdom that have tantalized our imaginations and fueled our dreams are to be taken literally or metaphorically. Is there going to be a literal millennial reign, when Jesus Christ actually does rule the world? Or is this supposed to be a picture of a dramatic change in human nature, where the aggressiveness and cruelty that are so much a part of us will be forever changed? Are the lions and wolves metaphors for the human predators among us? Are the lambs and kids the innocent, defenseless poor?
I think it’s quite likely to be both, myself. We have a glimpse of what a redeemed community looks like in the many ways in which the Christian church has led the way in limiting warfare, caring for the poor and sick, abolishing slavery, insisting on the value of each life as bearing the image of God. And yet it is imperfect. Even within the church there are wolves and snakes... there is conflict and greed and self-indulgence, there is anger and ambition, arrogance and ignorance, resentment and failure and despair. So even as we claim the Spirit of God and the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we are still waiting for that vision of perfect peace and righteousness that Isaiah dangles in front of us. It’s both here - and not here.
One thing we do know. We know for a fact that this peace comes only through the grace of God and by the Spirit of God. The peace that Isaiah speaks of, the peace Jesus brings us, comes only when both the wolf and the lamb come at his call and obey his commands.
Jesus is the leader, model, and king for us who carry his name. To the extent that we receive God’s Spirit from him the kingdom of God will start to grow on earth. Wherever Jesus rules, the predators will lose their appetite and the prey will lose their fear.
We are nowhere near the end of this cosmic process. But we are part of it. Dis-harmony, alienation, cruelty, indifference and exploitation are all contrary to God’s final purposes. And by the power of him who is at work within us we can make a difference in this world, giving the hopeless a glimpse of what can be - indeed of what will be - when all people everywhere hear and obey the word of the Lord. We know in what direction God wants the world to go and roughly what he wants it to be, we have our mission mapped out for us. All the virtues of the Spirit that Jesus had, “wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the LORD,” he has given to us. We cannot have peace without him, and we cannot fail to have peace if we follow him. And though we continue to stumble and fail, still every year comes the reminder that Jesus Christ has come, and is waiting only to be received and embraced.
But as long as there is evil in the world, as long as there are those who follow other goals, other gods, the promise of Christ brings danger as well. As Matthew tells us Jesus sends us “like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” [Mt 10:16] The wolves are still out there in the world, and even occasionally, to our shame, within the body. Christians are people of peace. We are not to repay injustice with injustice, cruelty with cruelty, anger with anger. “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” [Ro 12:18] That is the innocence Jesus calls us to. But at the same time we must be cautious. There are wolves. There will always be wolves. And although Jesus doesn’t call us to lie down with them; until he comes, we do have to dance with them. But by his grace, we do not have to let them lead.
