Tom Coop

Isaiah 11:1-10

December 9, 2007

Go Tell Yell it on the Mountain

One of my favorite PEANUTS cartoons has Lucy coming to Charlie Brown and saying, “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown. Since it’s this time of the season, I think we ought to bury past differences and try to be kind.”

Charlie Brown asks, “Why does it just have to be just this time of the season? Why can’t it be all year long?”

Lucy looks at him and exclaims, “What are you, some kind of fanatic?”  I guess if he is, that’s what we all should be, wouldn’t you agree?

One more bit of Peanuts wisdom. Lucy has a score to settle with Charlie Brown. She chases him, shouting, “I’ll get you, Charlie Brown! I’ll get you. And when I do, I’ll knock your block off!” (I think Lucy may have just a little anger control issue)

Charlie Brown, who has been running full speed, stops, turns around and says, “Wait a minute! Hold everything! We can’t carry on like this! We have no right to act this way . . . The world is filled with problems . . . People hurting other people . . . People not understanding other people . . . Now, if we as children can’t solve what are relatively minor problems, how can we ever expect to . . .”

Whereupon, Lucy interrupts Charlie Brown in mid-sentence, hitting him with a left to the jaw, knocking him out.

Says Lucy, “I had to hit him QUICK! He was beginning to make sense!”

Our theme for this second Sunday in Advent, as you heard from Mike and Debbie, is PEACE. And the title of my sermon is: Go Yell it on the Mountain.  There is a connection. 

In our Old Testament scripture reading for this morning, Isaiah’s message is about an ideal society. One where everyone gets along, “the wolf dwelling with the lamb, the cow and the bear feeding together.”

Even if Lucy didn’t, Isaiah believed in the possibility of peace, a time when there wouldn’t be any violence, a time when even fierce adversaries would live in harmony.

Was Isaiah being naive? Did he really believe what he was saying or was he just giving his listeners false hope?

Today we live in a world which is filled with conflict. There are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And those are just two of the myriad of hot spots around the world. 

Even in this country people clash because of race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, and economic status. And we wonder, “Can these differences ever be resolved?”

Then there are health problems like cancer and AIDS. We question whether terrorism is stoppable.  We worry about how we can keep our schools safe. 

And what about places where we do business? Did you read about the guy who went berserk in the shopping mall in Nebraska a few days ago, killing at least eight people, and then himself? 

What about the struggle to end the problem with drugs? And we ask, “will there ever be a day when everyone can afford a home to live in? Where no one will be hungry?”  The list is endless!

I don’t know about you but resolving all these seems hopeless to me.

Isaiah spoke to a world that also perceived it had no hope. They were not unified. They were under foreign rule. They lacked resources and also the leadership to guide them. They were filled with fear.

Certainly the chances of them listening to Isaiah were minimal at best. But Isaiah was called to be a messenger of peace. As an agent of God, he promised them that peace would come and that God would provide a leader.

This leader that Isaiah spoke of would have “wisdom, knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” And he would be “a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch from its roots.”  What did that mean?  Who was Jesse?

Well, Jesse was the son of Obed and the grandson of Boaz, who was the husband of Ruth. Do you remember Ruth from the book bearing her name?  Going the other way, Jesse was the father of eight sons and two daughters.

And one of those sons was David, the same David who was to become one of the greatest kings Israel ever had. 

In other words, this leader Isaiah spoke of was to come from a great and royal lineage.

Isaiah went on to tell of the kind of ruler he foresaw coming from that regal stump.

The leader Isaiah was talking about is one who sees and hears deeper than normal and one who ensures that the most powerless in society are taken care of.

He is an ideal king who exercises power to protect the weak.

And while Isaiah was speaking about an actual king in his own day, he was at the same time speaking a word of hope for people in all ages.

It is quite natural then that seven centuries later, followers of Jesus would see Jesus the Christ in Isaiah’s words. And so it is that this passage has become one of the key passages we read as we await the celebration of Jesus' birth.

So what are we to do with this?  Go yell it on the mountain! For this King of whom Isaiah spoke lived, died, was resurrected, AND is with us to this very day. This King is our Savior and Companion and Friend. This is Good News!

Perhaps the key in this great passage is verse 9, when Isaiah said, that in this idyllic world “the earth would be full of the knowledge of the Lord.”

In other words, despair would be defeated and hope would reign.  People then and now could be confident in the knowledge that God was with them and directed them. 

They would then be full of faith and that faith would direct them to be agents of peace and persons who are filled with compassion for the underdog.

This passage adds another dimension. Besides being persons who practice peace we are to be people who are concerned with equality and persons who see every human being as a person of worth.

Ironically, Christmas is the one season of the year when we distinguish between the “haves” and the “have nots” more than any other time.

Salvation Army buckets are a constant reminder that there are those “other” people who need our change in order to have Christmas. Christmas parties are given by folks with good intentions for all “those” who are different from us - those who may not experience a real Christmas any other way.

Our own church is giving a “Christmas Party” for the disadvantaged that utilize our food pantry.

But, as Charlie Brown pointed out, this shouldn’t be just a “Christmas” thing – but something we need to be doing all year long.

If we really want to be faithful, we need to recognize and accept our responsibility to be compassionate and loving toward all our neighbors – all the time.

But just as importantly, Isaiah was speaking of the potential reality of a life (yours and mine) that can be completely transformed.

To be “full of the knowledge of the Lord” is to embrace the possibility that our world and especially our lives, can be different. There is hope because we can change when we have a relationship with God.

We don’t have to live as adversaries, “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” There is room in our world for people who are different, “the calf and the lion and the fatling together.”

We can live in trust rather than fear, “the sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp.” It is cooperation, rather than competition that will fulfill us, “the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”

This doesn’t mean that we will never be sick or that our life will be problem free. It doesn’t mean we will be totally secure, safe from predators and mean-spirited people.

But it does mean that we can be at peace with ourselves, able to live harmonious lives because we have a real relationship with God.

We are full of the knowledge of the Lord when we are able to see the good in others.

We are full of the knowledge of the Lord when we able to include others in our lives who are not like us.

We are full of the knowledge of the Lord when we realize we are all children of the very same God.

We are full of the knowledge of the Lord when we trust that God is with us.

And shouldn’t we go yell this on the mountain? 

A man named Paul received a new car from his brother as a pre-Christmas present. On Christmas Eve, when Paul came out of his office, a street urchin was walking around the shiny new car, admiring it. “Is this your car, Mister?” he asked.

Paul nodded, “My brother gave it to me for Christmas.”

The boy looked astounded. “You mean your brother gave it to you, and it didn’t cost you anything? Gosh I wish. . .”

He hesitated, and Paul knew what he was going to wish. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the boy said jarred Paul all the way down to his heels.

“I wish that I could be a brother like that.”

Paul looked at the boy in astonishment, then impulsively added, “Would you like a ride in my new car?”

“Oh, yes, I’d love that!” After a short ride the boy turned, and with his eyes aglow said, “Mister, would you mind driving in front of my house?”

Paul smiled a little. Again, he thought he knew what the boy wanted. He wanted to show his neighbors that he could ride home in a big automobile. But again, Paul was wrong.

“Will you stop right where those steps are?” the boy asked. He ran up the steps. Then in a little while, Paul heard him coming back, but he was not coming as fast. He was carrying his little polio-crippled brother.

He sat down on the bottom step, then sort of squeezed up right against him and pointed to the car.

“There she is, Buddy, just like l told you upstairs. His brother gave it to him for Christmas, and it didn’t cost him a cent, and someday I’m gonna give you one just like it; then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in the Christmas windows that I’ve been trying to tell you about.”

Paul got out and lifted the little brother into the front seat of his car. The shining-eyed older brother climbed in beside him and the three of them began a memorable holiday ride.

As Isaiah said, “and a little child shall lead them.” 

The peace that Isaiah prophesied of is a peace that begins in our hearts and glows out into the world. 

We can make the world a better place, a safer place, a more loving place – as we embody those attributes in our own lives and in our own spheres of influence.

May this Advent season be a time when we live out what it means to be a peacemaker.

AMEN!