“He will speak peace” (Psalm 85)

 

I wonder how many of you, when you’re reading a book, take time to examine the copyright page or read through the backflap or the author’s bio. I have to admit that as often as not I am one of those people. When I’m reading a book I can often find it helpful to know a little bit about who wrote it and his or her life and ideas. But I admit that I have never really carried that principle into my reading of the psalms. Perhaps you’ve scarcely noticed that a great many of the psalms are preceded by little introductory notes. Generally they are fewer than a dozen words. And they are usually printed in a different font from the psalm itself. So we just skip over them as though they didn’t really matter.

By and large that is totally understandable. Because nearly half of the psalms, and many of the most familiar and beloved, feature the name of King David: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” (Psalm 103) “O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8) “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14) “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19). And if there were a psalm hit list, the one that would come at the top: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23)

In addition to naming the author or composer, many of the psalms are also preceded by what are called superscriptions: “For the memorial offering” (Psalm 38), “A Song for the Sabbath” (Psalm 92), or “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God” (Psalm 90). Some offer us a little bit of their context or an event underlying their composition: “A song at the dedication of the Temple”(Psalm 30), “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord” (Psalm 102), or “A Psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom” (Psalm 3). Still others suggest a tune or other musical instruction: “For the flutes” (Psalm 5), “With stringed instruments” (Psalm 4), and one of my favourites, “According to the Dove on Far-off Terebinths” (Psalm 56).

By and large we just ignore those little introductions. It’s almost as if they didn’t exist. But in doing so we run the risk of missing out on some potentially valuable insights. And this morning’s psalm is a case in point. It begins: “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah”. And it is one of a dozen psalms that are preceded by this attribution.

A song of peace

So I find myself asking, who were the sons of Korah? For an answer to that question we need to turn to the book of Numbers. There we find a man named Korah assembling a gang of 250 powerful men to challenge the leadership and authority Moses. “You’ve gone too far!” he shouted at him. “Why do you act like you’re running the whole show? What right do you have to act as though you’re greater than anyone else?”

Korah’s attempt to overthrow God’s appointed leader very quickly proved disastrous, as the next day the judgement of God fell upon him and his co-conspirators. Suddenly the ground underneath their tents began to shake violently, until it split apart into a chasm and they all plunged to their doom, never to be seen or heard from again.[1]

Indeed for the next two hundred fifty years or so the Bible makes no mention of the family of Korah. But then suddenly they turn up during the reign of King David—not as contemptuous rebels this time, but as faithful leaders of the instrumental and choral music of the tabernacle. They were also the composers of eleven of the most beautiful psalms in the Bible.

A number of them you will recognize in some of the popular hymns and songs we sing in the church today, three thousand years later: “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” (Psalm 42) “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme… my tongue is like the pen of a ready writer.” (Psalm 45) “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46) “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with songs of joy!” (Psalm 47) “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God!” (Psalm 48)

Far from any evidence of arrogance or rebellion, their songs express a deep devotion to God and a humble longing for his presence. And that is exactly what we find in this morning’s psalm.

No one is entirely sure when Psalm 85 was composed or what the events were that lay behind it. Could it have been the response to a series of disastrous crop failures? Could it have followed the invasion and subsequent withdrawal by an enemy army? It might very well have been either or both of these things—or something else altogether—that caused the sons of Korah to compose this psalm, as Judah’s history by and large was a continuous series of ups and downs.

Whatever the case, it looks as though the crisis has passed and a fragile hope is beginning to stir in the hearts of God’s people once more. “But will it last?” some are asking themselves. “Is it realistic to imagine that things have really turned around?” In the midst of their faint optimism they still have lingering doubts, and we hear an echoing plea to the Lord:

Restore us again, O God… Put away your indignation…
Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
Will you not revive us again…?

It is clear that these people are still feeling a lingering pain. The crisis may have passed, but their wounds have not yet healed. And so in the midst of their sorrow and confusion, through their hesitation and doubts, the psalm encourages the people to stop and to listen: “Let me hear what the Lord God will speak…” And what is it that the Lord God will speak? The answer comes in the very next words: “He will speak peace to his people.”

The nature of peace

It is the psalmist’s unflinching conviction that peace, true peace, is God’s desire for each and every one of his people. That is the abiding message that we hear again and again through the Scriptures. It was the message of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace…!” (Luke 2:14) It was among Jesus’ words of assurance to his disciples on the fateful night before his crucifixion: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) It was Jesus’ first word to his disciples following his resurrection: “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) And it was while he was languishing in prison that the apostle Paul could write about the peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

One of the challenges for Christians in our day and age is that when the Bible speaks about peace, it is pointing to something distinctly different from what is popularly regarded as peace in our contemporary society. Today when many people think about peace, what comes into their minds? In my observation, as often as not their ideas are suffused with vague notions drawn from Eastern religions or pantheistic philosophies. Here is one definition I pulled off the internet:

Peace … is a profound sense of well-being and contentment that arises from an intimate connection with the divine or spiritual essence within and around us.

It all sounds very lovely, but definitions like that miss the mark by a wide margin.

I remember years ago attending a seminar focusing on how Christians can benefit from Eastern meditation techniques. My recollection may be a little vague, but I seem to recall that much of our day was spent trying to maintain a relaxed posture with our eyes closed and echoing the monosyllabic “Om, om…” again and again. I can’t say that I ended up feeling any more peaceful at the close of the session. (Perhaps a little more wound up would be closer to the truth!)

Now it’s not my intention to put down other religions. But what I do want to say emphatically is that that is not what the Bible means by peace. Shalom is, in essence, how things are meant to be. It is a slice of heaven. Peace—true peace—is not something we can ever drum up within ourselves, no matter how hard we may try. No, if we take what the Bible teaches seriously, peace is God’s gift. And that is the conviction that underlies Psalm 85.

Let’s take a look at it again. What does the psalmist say in verse 8? Not, “Let’s all take a few deep breaths and try to focus our minds on peace.” No, it’s “Let me hear what the Lord God will speak, for he will speak peace to his people…”

So what does the Bible mean when it uses the word peace? When it comes down to it, there is no single English term that can fully translate the Hebrew shalom. It means much more than the mere absence of conflict. Shalom carries within it the notion of fulfilment—of entering into a state of wholeness and unity, of restored relationships. Ideas of completeness and harmony are closer to its real meaning. In nearly two-thirds of its occurrences, shalom describes the state of fulfilment which is the result of God’s presence.[2]

It is generally agreed that the fullest and most eloquent expression of what shalom means was given to us by Moses’ brother Aaron in the book of Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

So we don’t look inside ourselves for peace. Because we’ll never find it there. No, with the sons of Korah we look instead to the Giver of peace. And we affirm with the apostle Paul, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Romans 5:1) God is the one who will speak peace to his people.

The gift of peace

But the sons of Korah are not finished. They have more to sing about peace. And we find it coming up in verses 10 and 11:

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs up from the ground,
and righteousness looks down from the sky.
Yes, the Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.

Do you see the picture they are painting for us here? It may have been a challenge for the people to imagine, as they looked around and saw nothing but ruin and destruction. But what we have is the promise of the near approach of spring. The nation had lived through calamitous times, but now they could look forward to something better. Don’t let discouragement bring you down, the psalmists are singing to the people. It may seem like winter now, but spring will surely come.

I wonder if the sons of Korah could have imagined that their psalm would find its true fulfilment not in the temporary relief of a season of peace, but in a person—in the one whom the prophet Isaiah would hail as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6)?

In this Advent time we remember the long centuries through which God’s people faithfully awaited his coming. And we ourselves look forward to our celebration of the fulfilment of their hope in the birth of a tiny child in Bethlehem. And to hearing once again the hymn of the angelic chorus:

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! (Luke 2:14)

With the apostle Paul and with our fellow believers down through the ages and around the world we can joyfully proclaim, “He is our peace…” (Ephesians 2:14). Yet we must not allow the serene innocence of the manger scene in Bethlehem blind us to the fact that the peace that Jesus came to bring came at a cost—and it would be nothing less than his life’s blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:20). It was there at the cross that, in the words of our psalm this morning, God’s perfect righteousness and God’s perfect peace finally and forever would kiss each other. The hope of Advent finds its fulfilment in the sacrifice of the cross.

It wasn’t the sons of Korah, but another Israelite, the prophet Isaiah, who wrote the beautiful words:

You will keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you… (Isaiah 26:3)

We have just over two weeks till we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace. Amid the glitz and glitter, amid all the sales hype and the incessant message to “Spend, spend, spend!” may we intentionally keep our hearts and minds focused on our gracious God. And may you allow him to speak peace to your heart and to kiss you with his peace.

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[1]     See Numbers 16

[2]     See “shalom” in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 931

“The Original International Man of Mystery” (Hebrews 7:1-3)

 

I wonder if anyone can tell me what is the Old Testament passage most frequently quoted in the New Testament…

You might think it’s something like Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If you’re really into the writings of the minor prophets, you might come up with an obscure verse like Habakkuk 2:4, “The just shall live by faith.”

Depending on how you do your calculation, there are something in the range of three hundred quotations from the Old Testament that can be found in the New. But the quotation that tops them all is from Psalm 110, verses 1 and 4, which run like this:

The Lord says to my Lord:
    ‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’ …
The Lord has sworn
    and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever
    after the order of Melchizedek.’

The first place we find these words is in each of the first three gospels. They come up in the course of one of those nitpicking encounters between Jesus and the religious authorities. We hear them, not on the lips of Jesus, but from his opponents. They use them to try to debunk what people are beginning to say about Jesus: that he is the promised Messiah. Clearly, they recognized these verses as a messianic prophecy.

The next time we come across them is when they are quoted by Peter. They are to be found in the middle of his sermon on the day of Pentecost. He was addressing the large crowd who had gathered in the street when they heard Jesus’ followers praising God in what they recognized as their own languages. And after citing these same verses, Peter proclaimed, “Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah.” (Acts 2:34-36)

This in turn brings us to the Letter to the Hebrews, which we have been following now since the beginning of the year. So I will forgive you if you don’t remember way back in chapter 1, where this text is quoted once again. There, pointing to Jesus, the author asks the question, “To which of the angels has God ever said, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’”? (Hebrews 1:13)

Finally we come to the verse immediately preceding the passage before us this morning: Hebrews 6:20. There the author writes of Jesus as “having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”.

When I was scratching my head early last week trying to come up with a title for this sermon, I thought of calling it “Who the heck was Melchizedek?” And perhaps that’s exactly the question you’re asking yourself right now! Well, the answer comes in the three verses which make up this morning’s passage from Hebrews.

The author takes us far back into the mists of history—in fact, to chapter 14 in the book of Genesis. Now here’s the scene: The rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah had been trounced in battle by the rulers of some of the neighbouring settlements. Among those whom they took as captives was Abraham’s nephew Lot. When Abraham found out about it, he pulled together his armed men and staged an overnight raid on the two rulers and their forces. The result was that Lot was made a free man once again and Abraham forged a treaty with the ruler of Sodom. And that is where Melchizedek enters the scene.

He appears to come to Abraham out of nowhere. He is the king of Salem (later to become Jerusalem) and the scene takes place in the nearby Valley of Shaveh. Melchizedek brings with him bread and wine and pronounces a blessing on Abraham. In response, Abraham returns to him a tenth of all his possessions. Then, as mysteriously as he appeared, Melchizedek disappears into the mists of time.

Now I have to say that this scene is one of a few in the Old Testament that never fail to bring shivers down my spine. It is up there with the three mysterious visitors who later came out of the blue to visit Abraham as he stood at the entry of his tent. And with the fourth man who stood amid the flames with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego inside King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. I ask myself: Could it be that what those men witnessed—and what Abraham witnessed that day in the Valley of Shaveh—was a foreshadowing of the eternal Word, Jesus, who was with God and who was God from the beginning? I’ll leave it to you to come to your own conclusion.

King of righteousness

But back to Melchizedek. Our passage this morning tells us three things about him. The first is a translation of his name. It is a combination of the two Hebrew words melek, which means “king”, and tsedeq, which means “righteousness”. Put them together and Melchizedek’s name means “king of righteousness”—and as such he points directly to Jesus.

But before we go any farther, perhaps we need to ask, what does it mean to be righteous? Many people confuse righteousness with self-righteousness. In reality the two could not be farther apart. Jesus put the lie to what masquerades as righteousness when he told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to pray in the temple. You will recall how the Pharisee strutted in and parroted, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get…” That isn’t righteousness: that is shameless, delusional pride.

Several years ago one of my brothers had new neighbours move in next door. In an effort to be friendly, he went over and invited them over for a barbecue. He was taken aback by their response: “Oh no. We couldn’t do that. Our church forbids us from sharing meals with outsiders.”

As Jesus’ followers we need to be so careful not to radiate that false brand of righteousness, the one that gives the impression that we see ourselves as better than other people. True righteousness is what we find in the tax collector, who crouched in a shadowy corner of the temple where he was barely noticeable. And not having the boldness even to lift up his eyes and look towards heaven, he murmured, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:9-14)

The truly righteous recognize their constant need of God’s grace. They seek to live in daily dependence on him. And this is what we see in Jesus, who said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” And again, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 4:34; 6:38)

We call Jesus righteous in a unique sense, though, because he did what no other human being has ever done: he lived a life of perfect, uninterrupted communion with his Father. Jesus is the true King of Righteousness. In him we are able to see all that it means to live in a relationship with God.

King of peace

The second fact about Melchizedek that our passage this morning points us to is that he was King of Salem—and Salem in Hebrew is the same word as shalom, which means “peace”. My Bible dictionary informs me that that word shalom involves a much broader understanding than what we commonly mean by “peace”. It carries with it a notion of “completeness”, “soundness”, “well-being”, “safety”.

So it was that, on the night before they were to face what would be their greatest trial, Jesus could comfort his followers with the words, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

A few days later, as they gathered in fear for their lives behind locked doors, suddenly Jesus was in their midst again with the familiar words, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) And today Jesus comes to us with those same words, “Peace be with you.” Peace as we face tragedy and suffering. Peace as we run into broken relationships and conflict. Peace as we seek to negotiate the storms and setbacks that are an unavoidable part of life in in a fallen world. And in all of those circumstances, Jesus is able not only to give us inner peace. He also empowers us to be makers of peace. After all, peace is one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Yet there is more to it than that—infinitely more! The peace that Jesus gives us in the here and now is only a foreshadowing of the real and lasting peace that he will bring with him in the new creation. This is the peace that we read about in the prophets:

“No more shall there be…
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days…
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
    they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
    and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labour in vain
    or bear children for calamity,
for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,
    and their descendants with them…
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
    the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
    and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
    in all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. (Isaiah 65:20-25)

That is a picture that never ceases to amaze me! (And what a stunning contrast it is to the images that we see in the news daily right now of bombed-out buildings and desperate refugees fleeing for safety in Ukraine!)

Yes, Jesus does bring us peace as we lay our troubles before him. But the real peace he came to bring is the shalom of the new heaven and the new earth, when all creation will thrive as it hasn’t since the Garden of Eden, in the light of his unending glory. And it is the vision of that peace that calls and arouses us to be makers of peace in the here and now.

Our eternal high priest

Thirdly, Melchizedek was a high priest. Abraham recognized this when he gave him a tenth of all that he had. We don’t know what kind of sacrifices Melchizedek offered in his high priestly role. But we do know the sacrifice that Jesus offered for us in his own life’s blood poured out for us on the cross.

Words are not sufficient to describe what Jesus accomplished for you and for me on that first Good Friday. The closest I can find are from my Anglican Prayer Book when it speaks about what Jesus has done for us through his death as “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world”.

The Letter to the Hebrews will have a good deal more to teach us about Jesus’ eternal priesthood in the succeeding chapters—and I don’t want to steal from what preachers might be led to say in the Sundays that follow.

Yet allow me to say that, unlike Abraham’s response to Melchizedek, we can’t be satisfied with giving just a tenth. Jesus demands our all. As he said to his first disciples, he says to you and to me, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) The apostle Paul said much the same thing a generation later when he wrote to the believers in Rome: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1)

Switch now for a moment to the twentieth century, to 1937, when the Nazi party had all of Germany in its oppressive grip. A young Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat down to put together a study on the Sermon on the Mount. He could not have known that eight years later he would die as a martyr to Hitler’s brutal régime. Nor could he have known how prophetic his words would be when wrote, “The cross is laid on every Christian… When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”[1]

As we focus our thoughts this morning upon Jesus, the King of righteousness, the King of Peace and our Great High Priest, the only response that enters my mind comes to me in the words of the hymn writer Isaac Watts:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

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[1]     The Cost of Discipleship

“What Will We Wear?” (Colossians 3:11-17)

 

“What will we wear?” Back when I was first ordained, that was a question that many people asked themselves on a Sunday morning. In those days, people used to dress up for church. Tie straight, pants pressed, shoes polished… People would talk about putting on their Sunday best.

By and large, that kind of formality has gradually disappeared over the last twenty years or so—and I can’t say that I regret it! So I find it interesting that in the few verses we have read from the Bible this morning the apostle Paul stops to tell us how we in the church ought to dress. Of course, he is speaking not literally but metaphorically. And he is not referring just to Sunday mornings but to a whole way of life, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

But before we get too far into this passage, I want us to look at the brief snapshot that Paul gives us of the church in Colossae in the opening verse, because it was a truly remarkable collection of individuals. In Colossians 3:11 we are given a picture of the kind of people we might be likely to meet if we joined with the congregation there on a Sunday. There were Greeks and Jews, barbarians (and here he doesn’t literally mean what we do by “barbarian”, but people from distant lands, whose native language was not Greek or Latin). And finally, there were the Scythians, who had migrated from the north shore of the Black Sea and who really were regarded by and large as a crude, cruel and uncultured people. And if that were not enough, there were both slaves and their masters.

Nevertheless, there they all were in the Colossian church, singing together, learning together, sharing in the Lord’s supper together, serving Christ and proclaiming the good news together. And here we should pause to note that what was true of the Colossian Christian community by and large was true of the dozens of little clusters of believers that had begun to crop up all over the Roman Empire. It was a truly remarkable (dare I say revolutionary?) phenomenon. Indeed, they had already been accused of turning the world upside down (Acts 17:6).

Yet while those differences were a source of strength and something to celebrate, they also brought with them some potential pitfalls. Indeed, some of them were serious enough that they could easily have splintered the church into pieces. We see it happening as early as chapter 6 in the book of Acts, where a dispute arose over the assistance being given to the Jewish versus the Gentile widows. And much of the ink in Paul’s letters (and the other letters in the New Testament for that matter) was devoted to dealing with the cracks and divisions that cropped up and threatened to tear apart the fabric of the church.

The love of Christ

Now Paul is not suggesting that ethnicity and race, slavery and freedom, culture and heritage, are unimportant or insignificant. Far from it! In fact, Paul frequently drew from his own background when the occasion demanded it. Besides, that variety is what gives the church its flavour and richness. I was impressed a few weeks ago when someone pointed out that there were (was it eleven?) different nationalities represented here that morning. I leaned over to my wife and whispered, “This is a church that has a future!”

The problem was that the Colossians had allowed their differences to become sources of misunderstanding and annoyance, of not being entirely honest with one another, and of putting others down. The situation had led to the point where people had begun to sense that they didn’t have the freedom to be who they really were. As a result, they felt forced to wear a kind of costume.

At this point it is as though Paul turns and opens up a closet full of clothes. And he says to the Colossians, “This is what you should be wearing. Take off those costumes you’ve been putting on and try these clothes instead.” What were those clothes? Paul lists them for us in verse 12: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness…

Every one of those qualities has a beauty all of its own and we could give a whole sermon over to each of them. Yet Paul says that they are only the undergarments. For over them all we are to put on something that outshines and incorporates them all—which is love.

But let’s be clear. When we talk about love, we’re not talking about some airy-fairy feeling. It is that very practical Christian word agape—what one person has described as “a steady direction of the will towards another’s lasting good”[1]. It is the love with which God so loved the world. It is the love that led Jesus to give up his life for you and for me on the cross. It is the love that has been poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”. It is the love which, when everything else will have passed away, will still abide.

Now I am not saying that as Christians we cannot have our differences. The New Testament is very clear about that. There are some issues over which we cannot compromise and when sadly we must choose to walk apart. Yet I believe those issues are much rarer than we might think. And if we are willing to clothe ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness and above all love, many of our differences will begin to have far less importance and become small in comparison.

The peace of Christ

At this point Paul shifts our focus from what we put on the outside of our lives to what is happening on the inside. In verse 15 he calls upon us to “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts”. What do you think of when you hear the word “peace”? Whenever I see it in the New Testament, I think of what Jesus said to his followers at the last supper: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

At that point Jesus was preparing his disciples for what would take place later that night, when he would be roughly dragged off by armed guards to await an unjust trial and a painful death. Their hearts must have been racing as those events unfolded uncontrollably around them. All they could do was to cling to Jesus’ promise. And in those times when nothing is going right and our lives seem to be spinning out of control, we can still bank on that promise today.

However, the peace that Paul is writing about in our passage this morning is something different. It is not so much internal peace as it is interpersonal peace.

I don’t believe that there is anything quite as unbecoming as a church fight. In the fourth century Athanasius got involved in a clash over the deity of Christ. In the fourteenth century John Wycliffe caused controversy through his conviction that the Bible was the final authority on the truth about God. In the sixteenth century Martin Luther became embroiled in a dispute over the question of salvation by faith. In the eighteenth century William Wilberforce in England and John Woolman in America engaged in a battle for the abolition of slavery.

Yes, there are issues worth fighting for. But disputes like the ones I’ve just listed are rare. And they make the clashes that happen in far too many churches today seem petty and insignificant by comparison. And why? Because for the most part they are insignificant. But the damage they do is incalculable. And the result is that people all too often end up leaving the Christian community altogether, while those on the outside see church people as fractious and combative. And in either case, the devil couldn’t be more delighted.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus tells us, “for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). Peace doesn’t just happen. It takes effort. It has to be made. It requires humility and a willingness to swallow our pride. We may not always be successful. But at the same time, let us never forget that we follow one who brought about our peace at the cost of his life, through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20).

The word of Christ

Besides love, there is something else that Paul calls us to carry inside us—and that is the word of Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…,” he challenges us in verse 16. The word he uses for “richly” means “fully”, “abundantly”, “overflowingly”. One translation of this verse runs, “Be at home in the gospel story, and let it be at home in you, so that it may always be ready for use.”[2] Some time later Paul would tell his young apprentice Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the messenger of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

I am impressed that a number of you have taken on the challenge of reading though the whole of the Bible in the course of the year. But I trust you won’t just do it in a mechanical fashion, so that twelve months from now, after you’ve read the last chapter of Revelation, you can slam your Bible closed and with a breath of relief pat yourself on the back and say, “I’ve done it!” No, each time you open your Bible ask the Holy Spirit to be your teacher and take time to let its words sink in and be absorbed into who you are on a daily basis.

In my Anglican tradition we have a prayer that calls upon us to “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Scriptures. That means that we need take in the Bible’s message with all our senses, to allow God’s message to reach down into us and to penetrate into our being in a whole variety of ways: on Sunday morning, through the proclamation of God’s word from the pulpit and as we sing it in worship and carry those spiritual earworms with us through the week; in small groups where we can reflect on it with other believers and learn from their experience; in taking time to read and meditate upon it daily; in making the effort to commit portions of it to memory so that, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find those verses popping back into your mind in your daily walk.

I can still remember the first Bible verses I memorized, not many months after I committed my life to Christ as a teenager. They were Psalm 119:9 and 11, and they were in the old King James translation: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word… Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”

May God’s word be hidden in your heart—perhaps like the crocuses I planted in our garden back in the fall. A few months from now, just when I’m beginning to wonder whether spring will ever arrive, they will poke up through the surface of the ground and burst into bloom. The same is true of God’s word as we plant it in our hearts. It will surely bring beauty and meaning into our lives, often at those times when we need it most.

So, what will we wear? As this new year begins, I challenge you to take a look at the spiritual wardrobe that God has graciously provided for us in his Son Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit. As each day begins, clothe yourself with those beautiful and lasting garments of compassion, kindness, meekness, humility, patience and forgiveness. But above them all may you put on that most excellent gift of love—the love that is ours in Jesus.

As you do so, may the peace of Christ rule in your hearts and the word of God dwell in you richly as together you seek live in the power of the Holy Spirit and to serve the Lord Jesus Christ throughout this year of 2022.

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[1]     Stephen Neill, The Christian Character, 22

[2]       N.T. Wright quoting A.L. Williams, Colossians and Philemon (Tyndale NT Commentaries), 144

“What Isaiah Saw” (Isaiah 2:1-5)

For the past ten weeks we have been making our way through what is called the “Narrative Lectionary”. It is a scheme that has been designed to take us through the whole broad sweep of God’s revelation in Scripture over a four-year period. And so far it has been quite literally a whirlwind tour. Just as a whirlwinds sweep across the countryside, touching down at this point and that, so we have touched down on the story of Noah and the flood; the call of Abraham; the roller coaster fortunes of Joseph; the escape of the Hebrew people from their slavery in Egypt; the giving of the Ten Commandments; the renewal of Israel’s covenant with God under Joshua; the long reign of King Solomon; the prophet Elisha’s cleansing of the leprous Syrian general Naaman; and then last week the prophet Micah’s call “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”. Today we come to Isaiah.

Micah and Isaiah were both what we call prophets. Their words are recorded in the last one-third of the books of the Old Testament. They wrote in different places under a variety of circumstances. And their writings comprise a wide diversity of styles—from lofty poetry to heartbreaking lament, from strange visions to biting satire.

Here is what Eugene Peterson had to say about the prophets:

These men and women woke people up to the sovereign presence of God… They used words with power and imagination… The prophets purge our imaginations of this world’s assumptions… Over and over again God the Holy Spirit uses these prophets … to put [his people] back on the path of simple faith and obedience and worship in defiance of all that the world admires and rewards. Prophets train us in … keeping present to the presence of God… They contend that everything, absolutely everything, takes place on sacred ground… Nothing escapes the purposes of God.[1]

There are seventeen books in the Old Testament that are ascribed to the prophets. But the one that seems to rise above them all is Isaiah. It is from Isaiah that we will soon read at Christmastime: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given…” (9:6). It was from Isaiah that Jesus quoted at the outset of his mission: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (61:1-2). It is to Isaiah that we look when we want to make sense of Jesus’ crucifixion: “He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; by his wounds we are healed” (53:5). And thirteen out of the thirty-four biblical texts in Handel’s Messiah are taken from Isaiah.

Again Eugene Peterson has written,

Isaiah is a large presence in the lives of people who … are on the lookout for the holy… Isaiah is the supreme poet-prophet to come out of the Hebrew people… Isaiah does not merely convey information. He creates visions, delivers revelation, arouses belief. He is a poet in the most fundamental sense—a maker, making God present and that presence urgent.[2]

A Vision

In our passage this morning Isaiah opens with the words, “This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw…” This is the second of four times that Isaiah will say this about himself. The first is in the opening verse of the book and it more or less summarizes all that he is going to put into writing in the chapters that follow.

The third comes in chapter 6 as Isaiah stood worshipping in the Temple. I suspect that for everybody else who was present that day there was nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual psalms and prayers and sacrifices. But to Isaiah there was revealed the ineffable mystery that stood behind it all: the presence of the Lord of heaven and earth. Even the vastness of Solomon’s Temple could contain no more than the train of his robe, as six-winged seraphs sang aloud, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (6:1-3).

I can imagine the other worshippers glibly walking away from the Temple that day. Had there been a fellowship hall they might have gone for a cup of coffee and a few minutes of chitchat—and then back to their usual routines. But for Isaiah things could never be the same. His eyes had been opened to hidden realities. He had seen the Lord.

If we had read further on from the story of Naaman a few weeks ago, we would have come to another incident in the story of Elisha. It was dawn and his servant had gotten up to prepare for the day, when he saw a sight that terrified him to the bone. As he looked around, he could see that all the hills surrounding the city were filled with the chariots and horses of an enemy army. All he could think to do was to run to his master and shake him. “What are we going to do now?” he asked in fear and desperation. I can’t imagine it helped when Elisha responded, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” With that he stood up and prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” And this time when the servant looked around he could see an even greater army arrayed in protection around the city, with horses and chariots of fire (2 Kings 6:15-17).

Much the same was true of those two followers of Jesus as they were making their way back to their home in Emmaus a couple of days after the crucifixion. Why didn’t they recognize the stranger who so convincingly opened the Scriptures to them? Luke tells us that it was only as he broke the bread at the table with them that their eyes were opened and they recognized that they were in the presence of Jesus.

Now I am not suggesting that we should all be dreaming dreams and seeing visions. That is the privilege of the few. But what I do want to say is that a large part of following Jesus is learning to see the world, to see our lives, from a radically different perspective. “Do not be conformed to this world,” wrote the apostle Paul to the Romans, “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is” (Romans 12:2).

I recall a member of my church years ago sharing with me how important it was for her to be there Sunday by Sunday. Because it was in that weekly encounter with God and his word that she was renewed in a vision and an approach to the world that was often diametrically opposite from what she was being told through the rest of the week. As we follow Jesus we will inevitably begin to see ourselves and our world from a new perspective. So what was it that Isaiah saw in our passage this morning?

A Mountain

I have never been to Jerusalem or to the Holy Land, but I understand that Mount Zion, the hill on which Jerusalem stands, is not especially impressive. There were much more imposing sites in the mountains to the north and to the south. Mount Lebanon, Mount Hermon, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal all have higher elevations, to name only a few peaks in the region. And even the Mount of Olives, just a short distance away, stands taller than Jerusalem itself. Yet in Isaiah’s vision Mount Zion towers above all other mountains. And as we look more closely, what do we find but people from every land and nation streaming towards it.

Now under normal circumstances, that would be something not to be welcomed but to be feared. The tiny kingdom of Israel (or Judah as it was known in Isaiah’s time) was precariously situated on a crossroads between powerful empires—Assyria to the north, the Medes and the Persians to the east, and Egypt to the south. As a result, except for brief historical intervals, Jerusalem was under almost constant threat of assault from one direction or another.

Later on, in chapters 36 and 37, Isaiah gives his own eyewitness account of exactly this kind of scenario. Sennacherib, the king of the vast Assyrian empire, after sweeping through the little kingdom of Judah and conquering all its fortified cities, sent his field commander to Jerusalem to negotiate terms of surrender. Isaiah tells how in desperation King Hezekiah tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and sent a delegation to seek his advice. Isaiah’s words to the king were the same as those of Elisha’s to his servant a century before: “Do not be afraid.” So Hezekiah went into the Temple and prayed for deliverance for his people. And that was exactly what happened. We aren’t given the details, but Isaiah tells us that the angel of the Lord put to death 185,000 of Sennacherib’s men.

The scene that Isaiah puts before us this morning, however, is entirely different. This vast, numberless horde of people, streaming in from every corner of the globe, is coming not to invade or to conquer but to learn and to be reconciled. The promise made to Abraham centuries before is at last coming to fruition: “I will make you into a great nation … and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3).

All of this stands in marked contrast to another scene in the Bible: the tower of Babel. Babel was the product of human arrogance and pride. It was founded on the assumption that there is no height that we cannot scale, nothing that ought to lie outside the reach of our grasp. On the other hand, what lies at the core of the passage before us is a deep and genuine humility in the presence of God, a willingness to learn from him—to put down the weapons of human conflict and striving and to surrender to his pure and peaceable rule.

An Invitation

As we look at this amazing scene we are offered an invitation: “Come …, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

Now my natural inclination is to interpret those words as saying, “Let us learn to live according to God’s truth.” (I have no doubt I’ve been influenced at this point by that old gospel hymn that begins, “When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word…”) But Old Testament scholar John Goldingay points us to Psalm 44:3. There we find what I think is a better interpretation. Here is what it says: “It was not by their sword that [our ancestors] won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was by your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.”[3]

We find the same idea embedded in the blessing that we so often hear at the conclusion of our worship: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). So the invitation that we are being given here is to live in the recognition that behind everything in the universe there is a God who looks upon us and loves us. And it would be on Isaiah’s mountain that that love was most clearly and powerfully demonstrated.

Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Years later the apostle Paul would write, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 3:19-20).

The first believers were privileged to see the beginning of the fulfilment of that promise, as men and women and children from all over the known world responded to Peter’s message at Pentecost. And I suspect that they would be amazed to see how far the good news of God’s love in Christ has spread today, reaching out to peoples and nations they could never have dreamed of.

Yet we still await the day when Isaiah’s vision comes in its fullness: when people from every nation will gather around the throne of God, their swords beaten into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, with the Lord as their everlasting light. In the meantime, it is so fitting that this church should choose to call itself “All Nations”. May that name impel us to live out the vision that God gave to Isaiah. And may we be unceasing in sharing the light of his love with people of every background and colour, tribe, language and nation.

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[1]     Eugene Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, 115-117

[2]     Introduction to Isaiah in The Message.

[3]     Isaiah, New International Biblical Commentary, 44