A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Winnette

Imperfect People and Shalom: Isaiah 2:1-5

March 21, 1020

Missionary writer, Basil Matthews told a story about walking in an Arabian village and seeing a tall Arab boy playing a flute in the dusty streets. He was curious and asked the boy if he could examine the heavy looking instrument. Basil was surprised to see that it was made out of an old gun barrel. The boy had found it on a nearby battlefield. He had filed it down, drilled holes in it, and out of a weapon designed to inflict injury he created an instrument of music. [1]

Our passage today from Isaiah reverberates, it reverberates as powerful poetry. It calls to deep places within us awakening our yearnings for Shalom, our hopes for peace. The transmutation of swords into plowshares or rifles into flutes inspires us to hope. The peaceful miracle motivates us to optimism. It motivates us to hope in God’s dreams of Shalom. 

The poetry invites us into eschatological hopefulness. The poetry invites us to believe that God’s peace will reign as God guides life and our God indeed guides life. The poetry invites us into peace activism calling us to bear witness to God’s prophecies of shalom. Can you feel it -- the yearning for peace washing upward from your souls as you hear -- swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, missiles into grain silos, pistols into piccolos? 

Unfortunately, another reply seeps out of our minds. When we hear Isaiah’s words, the lion shall lie down with the lamb -- when we envision spears becoming pruning hooks our reasonable minds leak out quips like – “yeah right – lions and lambs together”, “when hell freezes over – tanks to tractors”, “not in my life-time- battlefields to soccer fields.”   And we are demoralized. Our observational minds wage war with our visionary souls. They battle and we too readily allow the glorious hope in God’s Shalom to flit away leaving us with an aftertaste of apathy and the dis-ease of disappointment.   Our rationale minds suck away the passion for peace.

Have you seen the bumper sticker, VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS?   It is a humorous corruption of the popular bumper slogan, VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE.    But we might as well visualize mushy peas if we expect that peace will come to the world through human agency alone. We need God’s dream to inspire us, God’s passion to empower us.   

There was a commercial out three or four years ago selling a bicycle. The bike was alluring and new and you heard the voice of a child saying, “Oh, I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas. I hope to get a bicycle for Christmas – and peace on earth, of course- but I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas.”    The child might as well be realistic and ask for the bike.    Our minds can too easily convince us of the improbability of real peace so we skip the frustration, turn the page of the newspaper, flip the channel, and move on to our creature comforts.

I cannot believe that Sandra Bullock has an Oscar.  I am happy for her that she found a more inspiring role than Miss. Congeniality. You remember the movie; she plays a rough FBI agent forced into impersonating a beauty queen.   When told she is to go undercover she responds, “No freaken way… Cause I'm not gonna parade around in a swimsuit like some airhead bimbo that goes by the name, what Gracie Lou Freebush and all she wants is world peace?” 

The audience laughs with her at the implausibility and the sheer stupidity of a beauty queen responding to the question, “What does our society need the most?” with the answer “world peace.”   In today’s world of multiple wars, a country of deep bi-partisanship, of surviving racial division, and increasing poverty - the vision of world peace appears too utopian and esoteric to carry much weight in our imaginations. Our holy yearning is silenced by the cacophony of practical observation.

Yet Jesus said “and how many of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life…Consider the lilies of the field…strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow…” Strive for God’s will, God’s peaceful will and God will work it into your lives. Jesus commands us to hope, to hope, to counteract our pessimism and realism with holy hope.

So for now let’s put aside the impractical notion of world peace. For the moment put aside the world shaking notion of our God enacting a perfect global peace where swords and spears, instruments of death are transformed into implements that nurture life. Move with me from the seeming impossible macro vision of world peace to the manageable micro vision of many smaller circles of peace. 

The Hebrew term shalom can also mean “safety.”  Imagine creating micro environments of safety where our families prosper with joy, well-being, and they live in harmony. Imagine creating communities where we live together in safety not fearing each other but trusting each other.    Look at the Youth Bulletin board outside James’ office. You will see some of the youth who offered our children’s sermon today in photographs performing exercises of trust.   Emily, Lane, and Kate are blindfolded and they are trust walking, trust sitting and trust running.   They are relying on their friends to protect them and keep them safe. 

It can be frightening at first to be blindfolded and to trust others - to trust that they will not let you fall or run you into a tree. But the exercise is wonderful once you release your fears and fall into trusting others.   They were practicing what it means to be Shalom people. 

In Ezekiel chapter 34 we are invited to trust that God is actively creating environments of shalom. As Children of God we are emboldened with God’s generative power to create circles of shalom too. God promises:

I will make with them a covenant of (shalom) and banish wild animals from the land, so that they may live in the wild and sleep in the woods securely. I will make them and the region around my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. The trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase. They shall be secure on their soil…...they shall live in safety, and no one shall make them afraid.   Praise be to God – what a promise.

You know what it feels like to be safe; it’s wonderful.   You are running to home base and you fear the opposing team’s frenetic tossing and effective catching. You leap to the base and hear the umpire shout, “safe.” You made it home. You are rock climbing a 98 foot cliff face and your foot slips, your breath catches, and you fall. 

It’s quick and terrifying until the rope goes taut and you realize that your belay man has caught you. You are safe. You are in worship surrounded by friends and strangers and your favorite hymn, Be Thou My Vision, is played. You abandon self-consciousness and begin to bellow it tout in your best Irish accent and with your not-so-good singing voice. But no one turns to give you a harsh look or a shushing finger – they seem only to sing with excitement with you. You are safe, beloved.   You come for a Maundy Thursday service and the congregation is invited up for hand washing. You go forward to a deacon and reach out your hand and they gently wash it with love.  You are safe, beloved.  

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s final year of life he compared the world to a global home. Dr. King shared an image from a novel where a widely separated family inherited a house in which they all had to learn to live together. He said, “This is the great new problem of (human) kind. We’ve inherited a large house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together—black and white, Eastern and Western, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu—a family…separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” [2]   By God’s will we can create homes and neighborhoods of safety, even cities, nations and continents of safety.

So let’s start small in our own families. Welcome each other into safe haven. When angry with a family member seek God’s Peace. Ask for God’s creative power then gather the weapons: shouting voice, snarling dagger, punishing behavior, and baneful glare.   Turn them into patient silence, fruitful forbearance, good will and a simple smile.

Start within your schools, gyms and work places always moving farther out of your self-interest to ensure that the people around you feel safe, welcomed, and beloved. Start on the highways, when aggressive driving tempts you, ask God to transform the finger into a wave, your competitive acceleration into blessing and the blasting horn into a prayer. Start here at Bradley Hills growing with BJC as an interfaith witness. 

You might come back to Bradley Hills on Tuesday afternoon for the Managing Fear through Faith Seminar. We cannot create safe places until we conquer our fears, we cannot make the world a home until we learn how to respond to difference. It will be worth your time to take the afternoon off, to bring some friends and to listen to some wise speakers discuss ways to create and protect peace in our world.

We start shalom living in our worship of God. We acknowledge that we cannot make safe places alone, we need each other and we need God. We need God to teach us to be non-anxious, to trust like sparrows, and to bloom like lilies. Embrace seeds of hope in God. Let them be deeply planted within your soul so they can combat the pessimism of your minds. 

Remember Ruby Bridges, one of six African American children in 1960 chosen to integrate the New Orleans public schools?   She wrote about her experience, how the four federal marshals would escort her alone into the school past the shouting crowd.   She shared later in life about how frightening it was for her when a family pushed toward her a black baby doll in a coffin.[3] This went on for months. A Harvard child psychologist went to New Orleans to interview the child Ruby and he asked her teacher how she thought Ruby could tolerate the continual adversity and abuse. Her teacher shared that she watched people spit at Ruby, and shake their fists at Ruby and Ruby smiled at them. She said one day Ruby turned around and smiled to the mob and told one of the marshals that she prayed for all the people every night before she went to bed.  

Dr. Coles asked Ruby himself about her prayers. She said, “Yes I do pray for them.” When he asked why, she responded, “Because Mama said I should…I go to church. I go to church every Sunday, and we’re told to pray for people, even bad people…the minister says, ‘we don’t have to worry….God is watching over us…if I forgive the people and smile at them and pray for them, God will keep a good eye on everything and he’ll protect us.” When the Dr. asked her if she thought the minister was on the right track she said, “Oh yes. I’m sure God knows what is happening. God’s got a lot to worry about, but there’s bad trouble here. God can’t help but notice.  He may not do anything right now, but there will come a day, like they say in church, there will come a day. You can count on it. That’s what they say in church.”

May we have the courage of young Ruby, to pray for our enemies, to make safe places with our smiles.   Friends, allow God’s Spirit of hope to emerge victorious in your lives moment by moment, peaceful circle by circle. Allow your minds to relax and your souls to win the battle between reason and hope. Don’t dwell on the swords and spears of our world -- imagine into reality peaceful plowshares, piccolos, pruning hooks, corn silos, communion plates, baptismal fonts, organ pipes, photo albums and coffee mugs. Imagine peace-filled smiles and helping hands and trust walks and safe places and worship and meals together. Imagine shalom. Visualize world peace.   Amen.