Word to the Wise
Sunday, December 5, 2010 - Second Sunday of Advent
[Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3:1-12]Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors,together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra's den, and the child law his hand on the adder's lair.......[Isaiah]<br /> Whatever was written previously was written for our instruction, that by endurance and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. [Romans]
Recently I visited the home of George Washington, Mount Vernon, located at a spectacular site on the Potomac River. Next to the home there is a large visitor's center with an extensive museum. To my surprise, there was on display one of the renditions of THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM by Edward Hicks, a Quaker artist who was a contemporary of Washington's. Hicks painted a large number of these works with some variations in them. In doing this, he put scripture into art and now preaches Isaiah's text over and over again. One can find the painting easily on the internet or when shopping for Christmas cards! Isaiah's great vision of peace inspired Hicks and he,in turn, has added encouragement to the text by putting it into a visual form.
In the Advent season of hope, the vision of Isaiah offers us the opportunity to use our own imagination to envision "the peaceable kingdom" of our own time. In those contrasts, perhaps, we could imagine Palestinian and Israeli, or any other set of antagonisms! Perhaps we could find the parties in our own homes! It is sad to realize that during the Advent and Christmas seasons that conflict in families and amongst acquaintances seems to magnify! The early Christian community had no difficulty in identifying the child in Isaiah's vision with the birth of Christ. Can we see in that "crib set" a form of Isaiah's vision?
A dear friend of mine is dedicating her life to the study and ministry of conflict resolution. Perhaps she personifies to me in her dedication the hope of peace - a peace that requires attentive human effort working with God's Spirit. Could more of us be inspired by Isaiah, or even by Edward Hicks' art, to work for peace - even a little peace - in this season? Some are all too skeptical of it and dismiss Isaiah (and Hicks' painting) as utopian and unrealistic. The "words of encouragement" from Isaiah can move us to prove the skeptics wrong. AMEN
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