Peace is the Way

Peace is the Way
Isaiah 11:1-9 John 29:29-42
Alan Claassen January 19, 2008

JB didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas. Jesus wasn’t the powerful, wipe out all the bad guys type of Messiah he thought God was sending.
JB had good reason to expect something, he just forgot that it was going to come from something small. Something as small a new shoot that grows from a fallen tree.
That’s where it all begins, with God’s eternally creative spirit. It cannot be stopped. It is genetically wired into creation.
John the Baptist knew this. He lived very close to creation. And undoubtedly he knew his prophets, including this very passage we just heard read this morning. And he also could see evidence all around him, in the actions of the Romans, and his own religious leaders, that the intentions of God were not being carried out.
And so he gave these most amazing, upsetting, impolite, set of speeches and performed the symbolically rich act of purifying people in the Jordan River, in nature, rather than in the corrupted Temple, and he told everyone that something is big is going to come and wipe away all the bad and lift up the good.
And this is exactly what Jesus did not do.
John didn’t get what he wanted; a powerful new ruler who would annihilate all evil.
Because the fact is that Jesus did not have coercive power. Jesus did not have financial or military power. In the ways of the world Jesus was incredibly poor and weak. And it is so helpful, I believe, to remember this, when trying to make sense of what Jesus said.
I want to talk about this power that Jesus had, this power that I want to call lamb-power, in light of today’s passage from Isaiah.
Isaiah
The Wolf and the lamb lay down together.
This is very good news for the wolf.


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I can imagine a wolf family sitting around the breakfast table eating breakfast and reading the morning paper.
Headline reads, Prophet Isaiah says, Lambs and wolves to lay down together.
Papa wolf says, “Great news family. No more hunting.”
“According to this Isaiah guy the lambs are just going to come and lay down with us, when they do, we’ll eat them.”
The lamb and the wolf laying down together means some basic so-called laws of nature are going to have to be changed. Or else we have some very well-fed wolves on our hands.
And if you read on in the passage, not only are the wolves going to be well fed, but the lions are going to become vegetarian? What was Isaiah thinking?
This is ridiculous naive pie-in-the sky garden-of-Eden thinking that won’t get us anywhere.
And what is the Papa Lamb thinking as he reads the same headlines?
The situation in Jesus’ time was that Israel was the lamb and Roman empire was the wolf, and a great number of the religious authorities, to save their own hides, wore the wolves clothing.
Jesus came onto the scene, a tender branch, a shoot from a once and mighty family, but without any power, and began talking about the power of the lamb.
Let me tell you what I mean.
Part of the problem we have in understanding Jesus is that we read the lamb’s teaching from the point of view of the wolf, and we think it is naive, idealistic, not helpful.
Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence have been perverted into injunctions to passive non-resistance, which is the very opposite of active non-violence.
Reading from the new Scholars Bible, Jesus said, “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.” The meaning is clear: don’t react in kind, don’t mirror your enemy, don’t turn into the very thing you hate. Jesus is telling us to resist evil, non-violently.



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Many years later there was a Christian organization in this country that understood this injunction to resist non-violently. The Fellowship of Reconciliation devised a non-violent plan when they sent the Freedom Riders to the south, to sit, black and white together, in restaurants, and then to sit together black and white in jails, and there to refuse bail. To stand with strength and say we will not be humiliated. And we will not resist violently. We will bring the pain ourselves in an act of courage that is meant to awaken a nation and heal the curse of racism.
That’s lamb power.
Gandhi had lamb power. He couldn’t violently oppose the British, though many of his countrymen were trying.
ML King had lamb power. He couldn’t violently oppose the racism in this country, though many of his countrymen were trying that method.
Nelson Mandela had lamb power and the whole world took part in the non-violent revolution that took place in South Africa.
Each of those leaders used great force to achieve their goals, but they didn’t use violence.
But what do we as a nation do in our relations with other nations that can be in keeping with the wisdom and teaching of the Bible?
We need to balance the wolf and the lamb.
The first section of the Isaiah passage describes this.
It describes how the king shall act and the results of his reign.
The future king would resemble David’s son Solomon, renowned for the wisdom of his judgments. No “appearance” or “hearsay” would mar his ability to judge, instead, he would go to the heart of any matter brought before him. He would not rule by deceit.
The poor would find in him a friend, and the ruthless an enemy. So strong would this ideal king be that the justice he meted out, and his “faithfulness” to God’s law, would be as readily seen as the royal sash he wore in public to signify his authority.
Being filled and guided by the spirit of God this ruler will act on behalf of the poor, the weak. In other words, the wolf cares for the lamb to have a world of peace.


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The wolf acting alone can think that power is all that is needed. He can fool himself into thinking, “I can have my way and not ask any tough questions or be responsible to other nations or to the law or the earth itself because I have all the power.”
But it will not last.
The wolf and the lamb in balance with one another, can create a situation where evil is stopped in its track because there is justice in the land.
The wolf and the lamb in balance with one another realize that my well-being cannot be at the expense of another’s basic needs.
The wolf and the lamb in balance with one another. The only way for that to happen is for both of them to be well fed.
I can give you an example from US history when the wolf did lie down with the lamb.
I wonder if any of you can remember these words of advice from a senior U.S. military officer and statesman recommending how the people of the United States should deal with a part of the world torn by war, poverty, disease, and hunger:

"...it is of vast importance that our people reach some general understanding of what the complications really are, rather than react from a passion or a prejudice or an emotion of the moment....It is virtually impossible at this distance merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp at all the real significance of the situation. And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment."

The speaker was General George C. Marshall, outlining the Marshall Plan in an address at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. Surveying the wrecked economies of Europe, Marshall noted the "possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned." He said that there could be "no political stability and no assured peace" without economic security, and that U.S. policy was "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.


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As Marshall's words so plainly suggest, stopping the terrorism that exists in our day will should include a much more ambitious campaign, one in which the rich countries approach the appalling inequities of the world with the same boldness and determination that the United States brought to bear in Europe under the Marshall Plan.
The United States and the other industrial nations should launch a global "Marshall Plan" to provide everyone on earth with a decent standard of living.
We can already hear the cries of people claiming that such a global plan would "cost too much." But let's look at the numbers.
A 1998 report by the United Nations Development Programm estimated the annual cost to achieve universal access to a number of basic social services in all developing countries:
$9 billion would provide water and sanitation for all; $12 billion would cover reproductive health for all women; $13 billion would give every person on Earth basic health and nutrition; and $6 billion would provide basic education for all. 40 billion dollars in all.

Too much? Military expenditures by all nations? $780 billion each year.
(Source Dick Bell and Michael Renner, World Watch Institute)

What would it sound like for a President to think like this? Well, I can tell you, here are some words actually said by a former President of the United States.

“There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can easily bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that goal through arms alone.”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
"There can be no enduring peace for any nation while other nations suffer privation, oppression, and a sense of injustice and despair. In our modern world, it is madness to suppose that there could be an island of tranquility and prosperity in a sea of wretchedness and frustration." Dwight D.Eisenhower

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This is the kind of thinking and acting that plants the seeds of peace and thinks for generations and generations not just for today. This is the kind of thinking and action that has a chance of resisting evil without becoming evil.
And as we know this is the kind of connections that Martin Luther King was making in the years that followed his I have a dream speech, namely that the end of war, the end of poverty, the end of racism are linked together.

This is the wolf and the lamb acting together. This isn’t idealism, this is spiritual, practical, earth-friendly, and the intention of creation that was planted in us by God.

What can we do, in the part of the world that we can touch, that will convince the wolf of his need to change his diet?
In my January newsletter column I made a couple of suggestions for what we can do to bring peace into our lives. One of those suggestions was to read a book called, Non-Violent Communication, A Way of Life, written by Marshall Rosenberg.
This book describes and teaches non-violent communication and it is filled with stories of when Marshall Rosenbergy has applied these tools himself in conflicts that range from parents trying to get their children to clean their rooms to resolving conflicts between warring tribes in Africa. I would like to share with you a story that comes from the book that I would describe as lamb power.

See pg 13-14, Non-Violent Communication- A Way of Life, by Marshall Rosenberg

Using the tools of non-violent communication, which in this case meant listening to another human being’s pain without judgment but with compassion, Marshall Rosenberg was able to move this enemy into a host, and they shared a sacred meal together, a Jew and a Muslim.
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There were men who were followers of John the Baptist who left John and caught up with Jesus who was on the move, making the road of peace by walking it. Jesus turned, looked over his shoulder at the disciples, and asked “What are you looking for?”
“What are you looking for?”
Can you imagine what it would feel like to have Jesus ask you, “What are you looking for?”
The men replied:
“Where do you live, Jesus?”
“Come and see,” was the reply.
To see where Jesus lives we need to walk the path of justice and peace.
We need to follow in love.
We need to trust that when we walk together we have a strength far beyond our imaginations.
And when we use that strength, not for ourselves, but to heal the fractures in the world, then we become stronger still.
Even when are in prison we are free.
Even if we die the truth lives on.
We learn by following. We learn by acting, doing, resisting without violence.
We make the road to peace by walking in peace, peace is the way.

As Martin Luther King Jr would say years later, “ Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved country to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.”
One cannot doubt that Martin Luther King Jr., like Jesus, was baptized in the spirit and was alive past the point of death. And that spirit gave him the courage to speak the truth, with the power of a lamb who has made friends with the wolf next door.


I wonder where Jesus is living, today?
I wonder where the power of Christian love, peace and social justice is most powerfully present in our world today?
Do we need to know what that would look like?
Jesus, rising from the Jordan River, from the blessing of God, found some men standing by the side of the road, and he said to them, Come and See.
And over the centuries some men and some women have seen power of non-violence. And Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was one of them, because his eyes saw the glory of the coming of the Lord, and he saw the spirit of the Lord coming right at him,
and our country, his beloved country, was changed forever.
What is Jesus inviting you to Come and See today?
How would you answer Jesus, “What are you looking for?”
And how will that change your life?
How will it change the life of a stranger?
Or the wolf next door.