Stephen Baldwin
OT: Isaiah 11.1-10
NT: Matthew 3.1-12
The Peaceable Kingdom
The image
of the wolf and the lamb lying down together in peace, natural enemies
reconciled, fascinates me like few other Biblical passages. Especially this time of year, during Advent,
on the Sunday when we light the “peace” candle.
There’s a famous painting called
“The Peaceable Kingdom” which depicts that scene. It shows the lion eating straw in the
background while a child is surrounded by all the creatures who should be enemies. You’ve probably seen it before, but if you
haven’t you can certainly picture it. It
looks like a petting zoo set in a park with a small child at the center. I think that’s how most folks picture
Isaiah’s words: A cute and cuddly greeting card with a happy baby surrounded by
his favorite stuffed animals. It’s
enough to make you say, “Awww, how precious!”
That was Hick’s first painting
depicting Isaiah 11. When he was a young
man. It was simple and colorful and
pleasant. As he grew older, his life
took several wrong turns. He battled an
addiction to alcohol. His Quaker
community forbid his ornate paintings.
He gave up his artistry to become a farmer, but he failed
miserably. He no longer saw the world as
a cute and cuddly place. The more he
lived, the scarier the world became. Can
you identify with that? Is the world a
scarier place now than when you were a child?
Over the course of his life, Hicks
drew that same painting 62 different times, and it always looked
different. With each new version, the
scene grew darker, more imposing, and downright scary. He added more animals. He made the animals increasingly larger. Whereas they once looked down submissively,
they now stare at the child aggressively.
Some of the animals fight one another in the background. The once leafy, lush trees lost their
leaves. The once plush, green grass died
and withered away. The child looked in
control at first, but now…he looked as though he was on the verge of
tears. The more of the world Edward Hicks
saw, the less he thought “The Peaceable Kingdom” was a possibility. Can you identify with that? Is peace on earth a nice thought…but a naïve
impossibility?
Don’t tell me when you sat around
the Thanksgiving dinner table you didn’t wonder about peace. It may have felt like a wolf was sitting next
to a lamb and you weren’t sure how long the peace would last! So let’s think about what “peace” meant in
Isaiah’s day. We think of peace as inner
contentment, but that wasn’t what Isaiah had in mind.
When Isaiah was written, peace was
something the Hebrew elders talked about…it was not something people of that
day and age had experienced. They were a
small nation with little land always being conquered by more powerful, more
aggressive, better funded, better equipped nations. They were sheep surrounded by wolves. So Isaiah, playing the role of cheerleader,
assures them that it will be OK. He told
them the messiah would one day make the wolves lie down with lambs.
And they reacted just like you do
when a beauty queen says she wants world peace.
Get real! It ain’t gonna
happen.
The Hebrews wanted a savior to get
rid of the wolves! Not make them get
along, because that was a ridiculous idea.
They wanted a hero to ride in on a white horse with his sword drawn and
his army in tow to slaughter their enemies!
Instead, they got a baby in the middle of a petting zoo.
That may sound silly but it is
monumentally significant. You see, back
in that day, killing a lion was a sign of divine favor. A human who did that was seen as worthy to
rule as a prince or king. For example,
David was chosen to fight Goliath because he once killed a lion when defending
his herd of sheep in the wilderness.
Kings fought and killed lions.
That was their role. People
wanted a king who could slay lions, because if they could do that then they
could surely defeat their enemies!
But the king of Isaiah 11, the king
of the Hebrews, the prince of peace, the baby at the center, does not hunt or
kill lions. He remakes them. He has them lie down with their enemies, and
he sits in between them to keep the peace.
Getting a baby in the middle of a petting zoo instead of a warrior says
something fundamental about who our God is and what the Christ child’s mission
is. His peace is different.
So let’s think about peace. What is it?
What is peace at the family Thanksgiving meal? Is it not talking about the election or whose
dessert is the best? One of my
relatives, who shall remain nameless since this is a small town, once started a
fistfight at Thanksgiving. So the next
year, peace meant there wasn’t a fistfight.
God sets a higher bar.
Peace is not just the absence of
visible conflict; it is not a warm and fuzzy feeling. In Hebrew, the word for peace is “shalom,”
and it means wholeness, harmony, completeness, prosperity, and welfare. Peace, then, is not just a “me” thing; peace
is a “we” thing. It’s wholeness for an
entire community. Jesus came not to hunt
or kill or destroy anyone; he came to bring shalom to everyone. He came to ensure that we can all sit down
together in peace.
That was the idea that fascinated
Edward Hicks enough to paint about it 62 times.
By the end of his life, it was not as frightening as it once had been. It wasn’t a scene from a Disney movie,
either. He was asked near the end of his
life why he painted it so many times.
“Because the child’s offer is still on the table.”
On this peace Sunday in Advent, we
must know that the peaceable kingdom is not a fairy tale. Neither is it yet a reality in this world
where humans devour each other for sport.
The peaceable kingdom is God’s intention for our world, so much so that
God sent the child to sit in the middle of sworn enemies and keep them safe from
each other.
The offer still stands. Will you accept it? Will you embrace it? Will you make peace this Advent? Amen.
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