FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
November 25, 2001
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-9
Text: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
(Matthew 5:9)
When the Quaker folk artist and preacher Edward Hicks died in 1849, he had produced during his lifetime more than 50 original paintings called “The Peaceable Kingdom.” This past week the curator of American art next door at the High Museum named Sylvia Yount, helped me with the research for this sermon and I am indebted to her because she found a book of all of those paintings by Edward Hicks. Each one is different, reflecting the joys and the sorrows, the contentment and the conflicts in Hicks’ own life and the theological dissension and divisions, which marked the Quaker movement during the 18th and 19th centuries in America.
But each and every painting that Hicks created was focused on the vision of Isaiah, recorded in the 11th chapter of his book of prophecy, which describes the peaceful dwelling of the wolf with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, the cow with the bear, and the calf and ox with the lion, and a little child leading them (Isaiah 11:6-7).
Hicks depicted those animals with different expressions on their faces, ranging from fear and anxiety to joy and tranquility. In many of the paintings, the artist positioned in the background a scene of William Penn and his compatriots signing the 1681 Treaty with the Indians. In some of the paintings, an angel appears, attempting to bring the animals and human beings together. But in all of the paintings, a little child is shown in the foreground, leading and beckoning the other characters toward the hope and prayer of peace. (Taken from “Edward Hicks: A Gentle Spirit,” produced by the Andrew Crispo Gallery, Inc., New York, New York, 1975, and loaned to me in preparation for this sermon by Sylvia Yount, Curator of American Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia…to whom I am deeply grateful).
Most of us who have seen those different paintings on Christmas cards or in books of art, have some awareness of what Edward Hicks was trying to show us in the 19th century and the prophet Isaiah was attempting to tell us during the 8th century B.C. about “The Peaceable Kingdom of God.” But who of us in this country could say at the dawn of the 21st century, that we are drawing closer to that Peaceable Kingdom on earth today?
I.
Over the past 100 years, the United States has fought in two world wars, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War and the Persian Gulf War. In each of those conflicts, we have identified and faced our adversaries, mobilized our armed forces, and with the exception of Viet Nam, we have had widespread support of the population back home as we engaged and overcame the enemy abroad.
What is different now, as all of us are painfully aware, is that we have been attacked on our own shores by terrorists, many of whom we are still trying to find; we have lost the lives of more than 4000 civilians and military personnel in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Western Pennsylvania; we have suffered an outbreak of anthrax deaths that probably are connected to September 11; and the war which has begun has ignited a collision of religions looking more like the Crusades of long ago than any battles we have waged in recent history.
So we have already discovered that the predictions of our President, Secretary of State and military leaders were true. They told us this would be a struggle unlike any other which our nation has gone through. And as the bombings continue across Afghanistan, as the Taliban government and army fall apart, as American soldiers and their allies move in and as the search for Osama bin Laden goes on, we need to keep praying that this conflict will be resolved and that the suffering and pain in that region and in our nation will not be in vain.
But even then, we will still face the question: Are we drawing any closer to God’s Peaceable Kingdom on earth?
II.
There are those who say, “Well, if the Israelis and the Palestinians could bury the hatchet, maybe that would do it. At least we’d be moving in the right direction.”
The sad truth is that over the past fourteen months, both the Israelis and the Palestinians, together with their allies on both sides, have been moving in the wrong direction. An article by Jim Galloway in last week’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it this way: “The collapse of last year’s peace initiative, the (Palestinian) intifada that erupted afterward, and the violent Israeli response have left everyone disillusioned.” The article traces what the author calls “a century of conflict,” stretching back to 1897 when the Jewish Zionist Movement began and was met at the outset by resistance from their Arab counterparts. (See “Backgrounder: Israel and Palestine – Statehood Looking More Likely” and “A Century of Conflict” by Jim Galloway, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 23, 2001, pages A-10 and A-11).
And yet, as all of us know and few of us really understand, the conflict in the Middle East surrounding the Holy Land has been going on for thousands of years, stretching all the way back to the births of Isaac and Ishmael from one father, Abraham, and two different mothers, Hagar and Sarah (Sarai) (read Genesis 16-17, 21). The people of Arab descent on one side of that family tree and Jewish lineage on the other side belong to the same father whose blood flows in their veins and they worship the same God, although in different ways. But what has happened to them and between them down through the generations is tragic and traumatic and has become the most complex and explosive struggle in our world today.
Some cynics say that the situation is intractable and unsolvable. I have told you before about what one cynic, Mark Twain, once said about such violence and discord among God’s creatures, and how he decided to take the matter in hand:
“So I built a cage and in it I put a dog and a cat. After a little training, I got the dog and the cat to the point where they lived peaceably together. Then, I introduced a pig, a goat, a kangaroo, some birds and a monkey. And, after a few minor adjustments, they learned to live together in harmony. So encouraged was I by this success, that I added an Irish Catholic, a Presbyterian, a Jew, a Muslim from Turkestan and a Buddhist from China, along with a Baptist missionary that I had captured on the same trip. And in a very short while, there wasn’t a single living thing left in the cage.”
Now we know that Twain was a cynic, and even though he had a great sense of humor, he lived most of his life without any real sense of hope. So we would expect that kind of attitude from him – despairing about human nature and our inclination toward discord and dissension.
But was Twain that far off when we recognize that, although Isaiah prophesied that one day the lion and the lamb would lie down together, the history of the Middle East has shown that the lamb hasn’t gotten much sleep? You say, “Well, who is the lion and who is the lamb in the Israeli-Palestinian situation”? Therein lies the heart of the problem. Because both sides claim that they have been victimized, blame each other for their suffering and the deadly game of retaliation leads in only one direction – toward mutual destruction.
It is no secret that the United States has been aligned with Israel since its official formation in 1948. Following the Holocaust and the mass murder of six million Jews, we did the right thing back then to help them, even though it meant that many Palestinian people who lived on that soil were forced to leave the place they called home. Today, America needs to do the right thing again; to help establish the State of Palestine as was agreed in the Oslo Accords of 1993, and to come alongside both Arabs and Jews to end the discord and to work toward the promise of peace.
Now if that sounds like “pie in the sky” and a Walt Disney world of make believe, let me remind you of some of the miracles we have seen unfold before our eyes: the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, the Iron Curtain was torn asunder, most Latin American nations now hold free elections as democracies and South Africa was set free from apartheid without a civil war.
God knows we still have a long way to go in the Middle East and Afghanistan, in Northern Ireland, in the Sudan and in other places on this planet, which are still plagued by violence and oppression. But the promise of a Peaceable Kingdom on earth which Isaiah envisioned is still our greatest hope and God’s grand and glorious plan for this world.
As Christians, we believe that is so because of a little child who was sent here to show us the way. What Isaiah foretold with words of prophecy and Edward Hicks painted on canvas so beautifully, has become our shining light in the midst of the darkness – that a little child would come to lead us and help us live together in peace.
When He was born in Bethlehem – in the Middle East – the angels sang about peace on earth, and that song is still alive in our world today.
And as He grew to become a man, He taught His followers and friends that The Peaceable Kingdom not only included them but also needed to be proclaimed by them, saying Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of god. And so are we all, each and every one of us on this earth because of the birth of that little child, born to be a king, whose name is Jesus.
In one week we begin the Advent Season. As we look with anticipation for the celebration of His birth, let’s not miss it this time as we look toward God’s Peaceable Kingdom on earth. Perhaps this poem by Vic Jameson can help lead us in the right direction:
God of Christ-child born of old,
God of frankincense and gold,
God of song-filled starry night,
Fill my heart with manger light.
God of peace and God of strain,
God of hope and God of pain,
God of sorrow and of mirth,
Grant my heart a Savior’s birth.
- Vic Jameson
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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