“Will We Follow the Prince of Peace?”

Scripture – Isaiah 9:2-7

Sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Gregory Knox Jones

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Have you seen the image of “Christ in the Rubble”? The Reverend Munther Isaac is the pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Last year at this time, two months into the War in Gaza, he circulated a photograph of a vastly different nativity. In place of the serene pastoral setting with Mary and Joseph huddled around the baby Jesus lying in straw, you see a baby lying in the midst of a pile of stones and broken concrete in a bombed-out home.

The unsettling picture of “Christ in the Rubble” is circulating again this Advent to prevent us from averting our eyes and from ignoring the fact that in the land where Jesus was born, all is not calm and bright. A year later, conditions are far worse than they were last Christmas. More than 44,000 have been killed. The deaths include doctors and journalists and chefs, and more than 13,000 of them are babies and children. The death toll will continue to rise because with limited aid being allowed in, many are starving. These are people who in the words of Isaiah, “live in a land of deep, deep darkness.”

Surveying the current conditions in our world and in our own nation, where divisions are deep, lies are commonplace, bullying is rampant, and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are raging, we might demand renaming the four Sundays of Advent. In today’s world Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love might sound like a cruel joke, or at best a naïve wish. In the face of today’s conditions, perhaps we should insist on renaming the four Sundays of Advent to Despair, Strife, Sorrow, and Revenge!

Seven centuries before the time of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah spoke to people who were oppressed. Suffering had become their way of life. The boot of the Assyrians was on their neck and the prophet said that the people lived in a land of deep darkness. The Hebrew phrase could also be translated, “shadow of death.” They lived in the shadow of death. Despair was a heavy blanket that shrouded the entire population. Yet, it was in the midst of this unfathomable darkness that Isaiah said that a light pierced the gloom. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined.”

Jessica Patchett, a fellow Presbyterian minister, notes that lately she has been hearing a routine comment on Sunday mornings following worship at coffee hour or in the parking lot. She says it has become a refrain as common as the refrain they use in worship: “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.”

The refrain she hears in these casual conversations goes like this: “Lord, that’s awful. But it doesn’t surprise me.”

She says “that in our culture, violence, vulgarity, and an unapologetic disregard for life is tragically commonplace. We are no longer shocked or surprised. Death comes at us so rapid-fire, that we have developed socially appropriate liturgical responses that help us acknowledge it, but then quickly move on. ‘Lord, that’s awful. But it doesn’t surprise me.’”

“But we must wake up to the fact that all of this violence and vulgarity is traumatizing…It’s changing us; it’s changing the fabric of our souls…Will our casual, socially appropriate resignation (to evil) turn into outright accommodation? (Or will we) tell the story of a God who surprised a violent world by showing up as a Prince of Peace?”¹

In his widely acclaimed book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote about the trauma of living in a concentration camp and one of the keys to survival. He said that despite all of their power and control over the lives of their prisoners, one thing the Nazis could not do was determine how each person reacted to his/her suffering. They could torture, starve, beat, and kill, but they could not determine how each person would react to their oppression.

Following the war, those who survived the concentration camps responded in one of two ways. As Jonathan Kuttab writes, “Some became agents of light against the forces of darkness. Others were so filled with understandable bitterness that they lost faith in humanity and turned their energy into ensuring the victory of their own tribe even if it caused suffering to others…After what they suffered, they felt no one had any right to question them.”² But, as we know, oppression leads to revenge. Killing ensures more bloodshed. And 80 years later, we are drenched in blood again.

Returning to today’s passage, it is amid deep darkness that Isaiah has a vision of a better future; a day when the people are liberated from their oppressors. He says, “For the yoke of their burden and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, (God) has broken.”

In verse five, Isaiah foresees the end of war as he describes the burning of soldiers’ uniforms. He declares, “For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all their garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.”

This dismantling of military implements is an echo of what Isaiah declared a few chapters earlier. He wrote about the future day when people “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

This is God’s intent for the world, and isn’t it also the longing of the human heart? It is the vision of a world where people turn their instruments of war into agricultural tools. It is the dream of a time when we stop killing each other. Our country does not need to keep supplying offensive weapons.

It is essential to recognize that Isaiah does not declare that God will act unilaterally to bring peace to the world. After embracing God’s dream for the world, the people – not God – turn their weapons into shovels and rakes and hoes. Also, notice that Isaiah’s vision is not simply to cease fighting. The people neither bury nor destroy their weapons. Rather, they turn them into tools that benefit humankind. They become tools that help them to plant and produce food that will nourish and sustain life.

On one of our trips to the Holy Land, we bought a Christmas ornament made by Palestinian women. They created this Christmas ornament from the top of a tear gas container that had been thrown at them by soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force.

How can we live in our world today and not forfeit our souls? One way is to bemoan all of the violence, hatred, racism, greed, Islamophobia, homophobia, and transphobia and simply shake our heads, and say, “Lord, that’s awful. But it doesn’t surprise me.”

OR we can cling to the words of Isaiah and muster hope for a reality that is not yet realized. We can dream for and refuse to stop working for a better world. We must not resign ourselves to accepting things as they are. We can envision new, life-enriching possibilities and then work hand-in-hand with God and fellow believers, to turn those hopes into real peace.

Benedictine Priest, David Steindl-Rast, says that hope is being open to surprise as we stand between the already and the not-yet. It is a passion for the possible that holds the present open for a fresh future. In life, whenever we experience sickness, loss or suffering, “it is our hope for wellness, vitality and a better life that urges us to move forward into an unknown future with treatments, protocols, and requests for help. Hope sets our heart and our sight on goals and stokes our desire to attain them. Hope does not require us to be optimists instead of pessimists. It simply requires that even in our most cynical moments we do not shut the door on new possibilities.”³

 “There is a Ukrainian couple who turns military ammunition boxes into Christian icons. Artist Oleksander Klymenko was struck by how much the cover of a wooden ammunition box could resemble a Christian icon panel. He borrowed one of the boxes from his military base and painted a Byzantine icon featuring the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child. He said the icon looked like a historic one that was 800 years old. The experiment led Klymenko and his artist wife, Sofia, to start a charity to raise money for a volunteer field hospital treating soldiers in eastern Ukraine. The project is called, “Buy an icon – save a life,” and is based on the idea of transforming instruments of death, symbolized by the ammo boxes, into life, symbolized by the Christian icons. The artist says, ‘It is important for me to show people that the war is real, that this ammunition box is real, and it stored real weapons which kill real people. An ammunition box, like a coffin, is taken from under the ground, where it was stored. Once it is opened, death breaks out of it and destroys everything around it. We transform it by painting life.”⁴ Their project is a modern-day example of Isaiah’s prophecy to turn swords into plowshares.

Peter Storey, a Methodist Bishop who fought to keep the Church from becoming a mouthpiece for South Africa’s Apartheid warned, “The Church must be different from, and often over against and in contradiction to, the ways of nations. This alternative identity must be cherished and guarded as the most important characteristic of the Church…. The richest gift the Church can give the world is to be different from it. It must be a constant irritant the world doesn’t want, but cannot do without.”⁵

People of faith, we are called to be a stubborn and bullheaded lot who believe that what is today does not always have to be. The prophet exhorts us to catch God’s vision of a world at peace, and even though it might be a goal too distant to attain in our lifetimes, we are expected to do everything in our power to march toward that goal. The prophet hounds us to follow the one who is the Prince of Peace and despite all of the obstacles the world throws in our path, we are to persist in showing the world that there is a better way than violence, there is a better way than revenge. We are to embrace this wild and crazy notion that a light shines in the darkness and despite the long odds, one day the light will overcome it.

NOTES

1. Jessica Patchett, “Editor’s Forward,” Journal for Preachers: Advent 2024, p. 3.
2. Jonathan Kuttab, “Survival and Hope,” Friends of Sabeel North America, November 23, 2024.
3. Gretta Vosper, a service of worship entitled “Gifts of the Season,” 2003.
4. Agnes Norfleet, “Created for prophetic community,” June 26, 2022.
5. Peter Storey, With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship.

 Prayers of the People

The Rev. Dr. Randall T. Clayton

God of grace, we come this day with grateful hearts, thankful for times of joy, for moments of peace, and for the hope you offer in the midst of all that goes on around us that seems off kilter. We pause this day, not just to offer thanks, but to lay before you the needs of the world, and our own needs as well. Bring comfort to those who are hurting. Offer hope to those who are dispirited. Provide healing for hearts shattered by grief. As we decorate our homes and churches, we ask that you move us to be generous with what we have – generous to the poor, to the outcast, the lonely, and to those who are pushed down in this world. In a world full of “hot spots,” we pray for peace – peace in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Ukraine, and anywhere around the globe where bombs are dropped and bullets fly. We pray for peace, too, in countries where there is civil unrest, where there are significant divides leading to further polarization and creating harm, especially to the most vulnerable in our world. Help us to be bringers of peace in our world, a peace that breeds hope for all, a peace that shares love generously, and sings joyously. As we move toward Christmas, we lift up to you those ministries that are supported by this church’s ECHO Giving offering—those programs supported globally as well as those we support locally. Let our giving be signs of hope in homes across the world, and let our giving bring a new measure of peace to hurting and hungry and desperate people.

Preparing to celebrate again the birth of our Savior, born in a stable more than 2,000 years ago, we pray for the programs and ministries of this congregation – we lift up to you this afternoon’s concert and the special reception that follows, the Longest Night service, the Living Nativity, our Christmas Eve services, handbells, carols, the sounds of the organ and piano and flute and stringed and brass instruments which accompany our journey. May these opportunities deepen our faith and renew us. With gratitude for all who help make our journey to Christmas special here at Westminster, we also remember the family prayer which Jesus taught us praying, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.