They were written about 700 BCE when Isaiah was walking about telling everyone the messages he received from God.
Here is what the first text says:
“The message Isaiah received:
There is a day coming when the mountain of God’s House will be the highest of Mountains. Solid, towering over all the mountains, lifted above all the hills. All the nations of the world shall stream like rivers towards it. People will come and say, “Let’s climb God’s Mountain so we can be near and they can show us the way we can live in Love.” And God’s good message shall come. God will make things right between all the peoples, and settle the disputes of mighty nations. Then the people of the nations will beat the iron of their swords into ploughs and shape their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, war will be no more. Come, siblings of Love, let us walk in this way.”Here is the second reading:
“The day is coming” says Isaiah, “the day is coming when a shoot of new life will emerge from the stump of destruction. It is a sprout of wisdom and understanding, carrying with it the Spirit of Love, giving direction and building strength…This presence of Love will bring justice and calm, bringing an end to oppression. Each morning Love will pull on sturdy work clothes and boots and get to work in the world. We will know the vision is underway when we see the wolf playing in the field with the lamb and the leopard napping with the goat kid. Calf and lion, cow and bear will laze about, grazing in pasture with their calves and cubs frolicking together. The nursing child will crawl across rattlesnake dens and toddlers will stick their hands in the hole of the serpent. Nothing will harm or destroy and Love will ripple across the lands like the waves of the sea.”
During one of our open conversations, a church member shared that for him, faith is a decision. A decision to live life as though there is a loving God. I went for a walk with a friend last week and this came up again during that walk. Faith as a decision.
Now really, we make 100,000 decisions each day about how we are going to choose to live. What our priorities are, how we spend our money and our time, the way we interact with anyone we encounter. Those are the day to day decisions that sometimes we don’t even put that much thought into. And then, on this larger scale, we decide the filter through which we make those decisions. So what if we decided to use the filter of the belief in a loving God, a loving power at work in the universe, to guide our decisions?I want to return to that church member for a moment. Using that light switch analogy, he referred to the fact that we don’t wonder every time we reach for the switch whether or not the light will turn on. But I got thinking more – if you know me you know I love to run with a good metaphor. We might not pause before each time we reach for the lights, but it is because we are practiced with having electricity without much interruption. But what about someone who moves here from a place where the electricity is intermittent, unreliable. They might wonder if the light would turn on each time they reached for the switch. But with time, they come to rely on, to expect it. I think that faith is like that sometimes. Some of us here made the decision to live in the world as though there is a loving force, a power greater than ourselves, God, a long time ago. And have practice making life decisions through that filter. Others of us here are only just beginning to consider what it would be like to live in that way.Which places us right at the feet of today’s topics: hope and peace. Hope as a decision to live as though more is possible – that peace is possible.I want to take time to go back to that Vision from the prophet Isaiah. Let’s start with the first reading.
We have this imagery in the text that is almost like this big blockbuster movie image of a mountain of God being the highest of all the mountains – the Hebrew language though gives us an image of the mountain moving – the mountain of God emerging as the highest of all the mountains, like this great seismic activity of geological peaks forming before our eyes – crashing, pressing to greater heights. This other cool thing in Hebrew that we miss in English is that this is a word play of sorts – the text reads that the nations of the world will stream like rivers towards the mountain. But – as people surrounded by water and mountains, we know that water does not typically flow in that direction. So there is that play of the juxtaposition of the flow of the direction of water it is not what is expected – the water flows towards the mountain. AND there’s another word play! The word for flow in Hebrew is really similar to the word for gaze, like to gaze upon something. And so you have this extra layer of word play that brings in this idea of a mountain so high that all will be able to gaze upon it. And because this mountain is such a vision of beauty with this *something* that folks will be drawn towards it. So the word play works in such a really cool way!
A day is coming Isaiah promises, a day is coming when God’s vision will be what stands out above all and that humanity will draw towards it in a way that seems impossible.
And what is that vision? What is this that we will be drawn to?
Peace and Justice. Isaiah describes two visions. One: that the things that cause such suffering in this world would be transformed before our eyes into things that can no longer cause harm. Swords into ploughs and spears into pruning hooks: the very stuff of war having its brutality taken away. The tools of war transformed into the tools of cultivation and care. And then two: a world beyond that, so safe that the lion might lay down with the lamb, that the child might stick it’s hand into the serpent hole. Where natural enemies might live together in harmony and safety. That is the vision that draws us.
Remember, I mentioned earlier that Isaiah was speaking in about 700 BCE – 700 years before we reset the calendar so to speak, so this is nearly 3000 years ago in Jerusalem. A land that had, at that time, been ravaged by war for generations, a land that was under violent oppression during Isaiah’s lifetime, and as we know all too well, is still in a state of violence. Where even different humans were considered to be natural enemies. The very notion of taking iron – a metal very difficult to get from the earth and manipulate into tools at that time – the notion of taking the iron that had been carefully, through the sweat labour of many, fashioned into weapons of violence, taking that iron and not putting it into storage, into the ground for a just in case, but to physically transform the weapons into farming equipment is a vision of incredible hope. It is a vision where, as it reads, “war shall be no more” to the point where the people would be completely unprepared for it, completely vulnerable with no protection, that is how safe, how secure they would be.
I wonder, What might that look like in todays language? That rockets and missiles and guns and tanks might be melted down and transformed into tractors and grain silos and bread pans and ovens? Not even that tanks laying in the fields in Ukraine will rust and go unused, but that the metal will be put to use in the direction of community nourishment. That Palestinians and Israelis would brunch together. That Pro-choicers and pro-lifers could live in unity. That children could play games on the internet without fear?
The people who were listening to Isaiah all of those years ago, in that place of war and oppression, hatred and enmity, made a decision to live towards the vision of hope he shared with them. It was what kept them as a people together, moving through hardship, in that same direction. They made a decision to believe him when he told them that God had a different way for the world, and that they were a part of it. Isaiah shared with them, shares with us, a vision of hope where justice and love rule the day, where we won’t even need home security or pepper spray or tanks or missile defense systems. Where neighbour will actually love neighbour. Isaiah and dreamers and artists like him in the years since have laid out an understanding of what God’s peace in action might look like. Where a peace beyond our present circumstances and almost beyond our imagining starts to form in story and with oil on canvas, in dance and music, in acts of love.
This week I read the book “Namwayut” (num-whey-oot) by Chief Robert Joseph – Namwayut is a Kwakwala word that means “We Are One.” In the introduction, Chief Joseph reflects that Reconciliation embodies the spirit of Namwayut – the idea that we are all one: one people, one community, one environment, one spirit. He recalls, as he looked out over the 10s of thousands of people in Vancouver who joined in the very first Walk for Reconciliation in 2013, his heart understood the simple and small along with the universe and universal. That namwayut – we are one – refers to the forests, the animals, those that fly and those that swim in the ocean, and the things we can’t see or feel or touch in the spirit – that which is everywhere and that which is nowhere – the music of the interconnected everything that we are together.
Chief Joseph came to this deep understanding after a vision he received from Creator many years previous. A vision for what could be, in stark contrast to what he was experiencing in his life, after alcoholism took everything from him; in stark contrast to what so many other residential school survivors like him were experiencing. The vision: a message, a voice, telling him that he was loved, that he was a part of the whole brilliant universe, and that he belonged. He reflects that, 20 years later, if he remembers the vision: that he belongs and is loved and is connected to everybody and everything, it counters the suffering he endured and gives him purpose and value.
The vision he lives, just like the vision proclaimed by Isaiah is peace. Where all can come to know a justice so big, so bold, where all are loved and included and connected that peace comes as a result.
A society ruled by the vision of love and peace and justice, rather than power and oppression and violence at work in the world we know. Chief Joseph tells us, Isaiah tells us, that God has a great big vision, and that we are a part of it.
May we dare to dream along with God and act accordingly. Amen.
