Isaiah 2:1-5 (New Revised Standard Version): The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In 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. Many 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. He 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.
There is a famous Steve Martin comedy routine in which he shares his wishes for the holiday season. He begins by saying that if he could have but one wish this Christmas season it would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in a spirit of harmony and peace.
Then he says that if he could have but two Christmas wishes this season the first would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in a spirit of harmony and peace, and the second wish would be for thirty million dollars a month tax free deposited to him in a Swiss bank account.
Then he says that if he could have only three wishes this Christmas season the first would be the stuff about the kids, the second would be for the thirty million dollars a month, and the third would be for absolute power over every human being on the earth. Then he suddenly begins to question the logistics of actually getting all the children of the world together, and by the end of the routine he decides that his first wish would be for revenge against all his enemies, and his final wish—the one least likely to be carried out—is for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in a spirit of harmony and peace.
It’s a comedy routine, but doesn’t it illustrate what we usually think concerning the prospects for peace? “Peace on Earth” almost becomes a holiday cliché, but we don’t really expect it.
We are used to a world in which peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians are constantly breaking down. We’ve become accustomed to escalating drug violence along the U.S. - Mexico border. And nearly sixty years after an armistice was signed, the recent saber rattling between North and South Korea hardly surprises us. We’ve come to think of all this as normal.
The Prophet Isaiah had a different idea about what constitutes normal. What is normal for Isaiah is for all the nations of the world to stream to the mountain of the Lord and receive direct instruction from God. What is normal is for the nations to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. To us Isaiah’s vision seems like nothing short of fantasy, but to Isaiah it is the normal status quo—the way that things are supposed to be.
Peace is more than a Christmas wish. It is what God intends for the whole creation. It is what is supposed to be normal.
A few years ago a delegation of U. S. pastors traveled to South Korea so that they could meet with a group of South Korean pastors. The Korean pastors started talking about ministry opportunities that would start to open up once the two Koreas were reunited. This puzzled the American pastors. They had not heard of any recent developments in the news concerning the prospects for reunion. So they asked their South Korean counterparts if there had been any significant thaw or breakthrough in relations between the North and the South, and their hosts acknowledged that there had not been. Then why, the American pastors asked, are you talking about reunion as though it were an imminent possibility? Because, the Koreans responded, we’ve been praying about it for over fifty years.
How do you explain such persistence in prayer? I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that the South Koreans have a different understanding of what’s normal.
All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.
The Rev. Jack Cabaness, Pastor
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Westminster, Colorado
