LIVING TOWARD THE DREAM

(Preached on Sunday, December 9, 2007)

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lied down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 

          -Isaiah 11:6

 

Did you hear about the zoo that mounted a special exhibit during the Christmas season?  They put a lion and a lamb in the same cage together.  This unusual pairing brought visitors by the thousands.  A reporter asked the zoo director if having such different animals in one cage presented any problems.  ANot really,@ the zoo keeper replied.  AOf course, we have to put in a new lamb every couple of days.@

 

Isaiah looks into the future and sees a time when the lamb will be safe with the lion, when the bear and the cow can feed together, and the weak will no longer fear the strong.  Isaiah=s poetry is beautiful.  Like last Sunday, we are in the presence of an amazing, truly beautiful vision of life in a world as God intends it to be.  Again, we should let these words wash over us and baptize us in their beauty and joy!

 

Isaiah=s vision of what is to come is breathtaking.  Familiarity over time has not lessened its impact on my being: I can never read it without being moved deep in my soul.  Isaiah sees God=s reconciliation embracing the whole of creation.  Even beyond all the divisions between human beings, clans, tribes and nations, he sees even the animals, both domestic and wild, caught up in the new world of harmony.  This is a new world where relationships are reordered, rearranged, divisions are healed, and there is peace.  That peace comes as a gracious gift of a God who comes to rule in a troubled world, bringing order, justice, and peace. 

 

It takes a large imagination for us to imagine the world as a place where God=s reign makes a difference.  Do we have the eyes to see such a world coming to be among us?  Have we the imagination to comprehend the width and breadth of that new age?  When I was much younger than now, old men told me, AYour youthful ideals are all well and good, but soon you=ll need to adjust yourself to the facts of life and learn to get on in this world as it is.@  Since then I=ve grown up and now know that these wise old men lied.  They told me that I would grow up and lose my ideals and adjust to the world as it is.  I have come close several times, but as yet I have not succumbed to their tired view of the world.  It=s odd that people with ideals, those of us who still are able to dream of something better than merely present arrangements, should be considered naive, unduly optimistic.  It=s those who are adjusted to the present, who feel no restless discontent with things as they are, who are simple and naive. 

 

We live in the grip of a kind of fatalism which believes that everything is as it has always been and forever more will be.  Everything proceeds like clockwork.  A leaf is green because it could be nothing else.  The poor are poor because they are poor.  There are people who do evil things, like the terrorists, because they are evil.  There is war and killing because that is the way it has always been in the affairs of men and nations.  (Someone pulled together this incredible statistic: since the beginning of recorded history the entire world has been at peace less than eight percent of the time!  That is, out of 3,450 years, only 286 years saw peace.  In that time more than 8,000 peace treaties were made C and broken.)  Everything is as it is due to routine, predictability and given enough time and sufficient government research grants, everything shall be explained, demystified, emptied of significance.

 

What do you expect?  More of the same?  Do you worry about the worst C or anticipate the best?  Or do you just quit thinking about it?  Advent is about getting ready for good news.  This means repentance: turning from our ways  to God=s ways, giving up reliance on ourselves alone.  That is why the other major figure of Advent beside the prophet Isaiah with his beautiful poetic visions is John the Baptizer, with his powerful call to repentance.  This beautiful vison Isaiah presents is a beautiful gift God is giving to us.  But how often we neglect the appropriate response to God=s grace and go off on our own way!  Selfishness obliterates sharing and forgetful ingratitude eradicates thanksgiving.

 

In truth repentance is not a burden, it is an act of hope.  It=s a joy not a job because it involves something to look forward to!  It=s anticipation: expecting that goodness and mercy far greater than our own are waiting to be born anew for us and in the world.  It is a complete change of heart, of mind, and of attitude.  It is a reorientation of one=s whole life, and of one=s whole view of the world.  Instead of always seeing the worst, it expects to be surprised and see the best coming to be.

 

There was a young man who went on his first cruise ship voyage alone.  Among the crowds of aging patrons he felt a stranger.  But one youngish woman kept sidling up to him in the most unlikely of spots.  She seemed to recognize him, at least by the knowing look in her eyes.   Finally, he apologized for not having a clue who she was.  AI=m sorry,@ she said.  AI didn=t mean to stare at you, but you look so much like my first husband.@  Taken aback, he stammered a halting condolence, and asked hesitantly what had happened to her husband.  AOh,@ she replied cheerfully, AI haven=t been married ... yet!@

That is hope and expectation!  That is looking at the world with the vision of Isaiah, and Jesus, and seeing the possibilities, instead of the same old same old.

 

Early in his life, Gandhi learned an important lesson that he carried with him his whole life.  Just having earned his law degree in England, Gandhi was on a train in South Africa on his way to begin the practice of law.  He was told that because he was Acolored,@ he could not sit with white people in first class on the train.  Even though he had in his pocket a letter from the Queen that certified that he was an attorney, he was told by the angry train conductor: AAttorneys can=t be colored in South Africa.@  He refused to give up his seat, so he was beaten, and then forcibly thrown from the train.  Nevertheless, he clung to the truth that he knew about himself.  For the rest of his life, Gandhi was ever convinced that truth will always win out over lies.  His whole life became an Aexperiment with the truth.@  That is, his life became a test of the truth.  Can truth make its own way int he world?  Is truth more powerful than falsehood.  Can confrontation with the truth change lives?  Enemies of the truth can beat you, can even take your life, but they cannot defeat the truth.  The truth is always more powerful than its enemies.  This is what Gandhi taught his followers and, working with millions of his fellow Indians, he led the movement that liberated India and won a country its independence., leading to the largest democracy in the world. 

 

Martin Luther King, Jr., read Gandhi=s autobiography while a student at Boston University, and he followed the same principal in the Civil Rights movement in America.  King knew the truth C God had created all people equal and it is evil to treat people otherwise, and he lived into that reality.

 

The world can change, is changing, to slowly attain Isaiah=s vision.   There are signs of hope all around for those with eyes to see.  This fall an overture for understanding was made from 138 Muslim clerics and scholars (representing all major schools of thought in Islam) addressed to the Roman Catholic Pope and other Christian leaders.  The letter stated AThe future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians,@ and it called for dialogue among the leaders of Christianity and Islam.  The letter quotes from religious texts from Islam, Christian and Jew to show two shared, fundamental beliefs: love of one God and love of neighbor.  The pope has responded positively as have other Protestant leaders.