Scripture Text: Isaiah 2: 1-5

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. ²In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. ³Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. ⁴He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. ⁵O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

This passage is actually from the first Sunday of Advent for Year A.  (See, to write every day, I usually have to add Scriptures.)  It is familiar, perhaps one of your favorites.  Filled with beautiful imagery, it provides a promise of a reconciliation of God’s people as they stream together to one place, a great gathering with echoes of peace and unity. It’s a hard read in this time of turmoil and war.  That image seems to have slipped farther away than ever.  What can we do?  How are we supposed to be a part of this peaceable kingdom when we’re so afraid and so divided and, yes, so incredibly angry at one another?

The meaning of this season of Advent, like most of our church seasons, is not easily condensed into a pithy phrase.  It’s complicated and nuanced.  See, part of it is remembrance of the past, of the people that wandered for centuries as they waited for a Savior.  That’s why we read Isaiah so much that we might in some way finally know the story of exile and redemption.  Advent is also about our own preparation.  Are our hearts ready for what is next?  Are we prepared to perhaps not just welcome the Christ child in some sort of annual re-creation but to actually change the way we walk from that place?  And, finally, this season is one that beckons us to look ahead to that peaceable kingdom, to the time of peace and unity and that imagined great gathering of God’s people.  But here’s the crux.  This season of preparation is not just about getting your house ready or getting all the gift-buying done or even preparing your heart for Christmas Eve.  That’s only part of it.  We are being asked to do something else.  We are being asked to be a part of calming this world that it might awake to what it is called to be.  We are called to be catalysts of change and instruments of peace.  Rather than merely decorating our trees, we are actually called to do some manger-lining, to prepare for the birth of Christ and the birth of the Kingdom.  Our waiting is not passive.  We are called to be part of it.

What in the world does that mean?  I’m so bothered by our world right now.  I pray for peace.  But I don’t think that’s enough.  See, I’d like to be a pacifist.  I think it is the way of Christ.  I think it is the way to be human.  But my pacifism flew out the window when I walked into Auschwitz.  When you step across the train tracks that brought humans in cattle cars to their demise, when you walk across the noisy sharp rocks that still remain on the floor of the camp, and when you enter the barracks with scratches in the walls where someone tried to maintain their sanity and dignity, you begin to realize that peace is not merely an absence of war. 

Auschwitz has piles of things that were unearthed when the camp was freed and all of these belongings are there to help us remember.  I was drawn to a suitcase, a suitcase with the name Anna Kraus on it.  My grandmother’s maiden name was Krause, so the name caught my eye.  I’ve thought a lot about her over the years and, particularly, over the last few months.  In recent years, there have been great strides in completing the database of the victims of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.  Now I know.  She was born May 19, 1898.  Her last residence was the district of Seegasse in Vienna.  She was transported from Vienna to Terezin and then from Terezin to Auschwitz on October 23, 1944 with 1,713 other deportees.  Of those 1,517 were murdered.  Anna was one of those.  Now I know.

Now we know.  What now?  What part do we have in lining the manger for the birth of that Kingdom?  This season of Advent is the one that calls us to do that.  As I said, I’d like to be a pacifist but maybe I don’t have the stomach for it.  I believe that the people of Israel have a right to defend themselves.  I believe that for Anna.  I also believe that the people of Palestine have a right to safety and dignity and, yes, a place to live, a place to thrive. I believe that we have to speak out against anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim rhetoric.  I believe that we should always speak out against any notion of certain races or certain ethnicities or certain ways of life or certain ways of worship being better or more deserving than the next.  I believe in that great gathering with all of us streaming into the Peaceable Kingdom.  I believe that each of us has our own part in lining that manger for the birth, a part in beating all the swords into plows.  Peace is not merely an absence of war.  In Hebrew, Shalom is more about wholeness or completeness.  If people do not have dignity and freedom, if they are not whole or complete, peace is not present.  I think peace is perhaps more of a calming of rhetoric, a calming of anger, a calming of violence, a calming of the world we know that it might become what God envisions it to be.  God will bring the Peaceable Kingdom to be.  But perhaps we are called to line the manger with a world that is calm enough to know that.  Because now we know.

There is a Muslim prayer for peace that prays, “In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful.  Praise be to the Lord of the Universe, who has created us and made us into tribes and nations, that we may know each other, not that we may despise each other.”

Shalom to you as you do your part in the manger-lining.  May this Advent be a season of Peace.

Peace does not come rolling in on the wheels of inevitability.  We can’t just wish for peace.  We have to will it, fight for it, suffer for it, demand it from our governments as if peace were God’s most cherished hope for humanity, as indeed it is.  (William Sloane Coffin)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli