SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

Today’s news will likely include reminders of a rude awakening experienced on this day in 1941. On a quiet, sunny Sunday morning, residents and naval personnel on the Hawaiian island of Oahu were jolted by the sound of airplanes, the screech of falling bombs, and explosions of ships in Pearl Harbor. 

The next day, before a joint session of Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt called it a “day of infamy” as he asked those gathered before him to approve a declaration of war against Japan. Three days later, mutual declarations came from Germany and the United States against each other. These were the last official Congressional declarations of war produced in this country, but that didn’t keep us from engaging in violence in the years to come. 

These events came almost three thousand years after the prophet Isaiah declared the alternative. He speaks to a people frightened by current events and threats to life and livelihood. 

Isaiah speaks directly to King Ahaz. Ahaz is rightly worried about his people and his own well-being. He hears the voice of the prophet, but he doesn’t listen to him. Ahaz attempts to form an alliance with a sometime enemy whose greater enemy threatens the northern kingdom of Israel, who is one of Judah’s threats. You probably don’t have to stretch your imagination to recognize the many red flags flapping in the wind of that situation. 

Keep in mind that of the whole sixty-six chapters of Isaiah’s prophecy, the first 39 or so deal with events some 200 years before the Babylonian exile, but are during the time of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel. The rest pertain primarily to the southern kingdom, Judah, during and after the exile in Babylon. Scholars believe that there were three prophets called Isaiah. Tradition has it that number one became so unpopular in his teachings that he was sawn in two. Ouch. 

In 1780, in what’s now known as Langhorne, Pennsylvania, Edward Hicks was born. His family was Anglican, but his mother died when he was eighteen months old. His father, unable to care for young Edward, sent him to be raised by Friends. Capital F. After the Revolutionary War, his biological family was left destitute as were many of those loyal to the crown. What became The Episcopal Church in the United States faced a similar fate. 

Hicks became a minister of the Society of Friends, known as “Quakers.” He knew conflict, after living through the Revolutionary War, and then being part of a schism in his adopted faith. You might know him best by having seen some of his sixty-​two paintings known collectively as The Peaceable Kingdom. One is in the collection just a few miles north of here at Winterthur.

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together.” All that without searching for barbecue recipes. Promises of an idyllic life, free of conflict, death, fear, and all that comes with adversarial ways of life. If you look at some of Hicks’ paintings, you might look at the faces of some of the animals and question whether they’re thinking “how did we get here?” or just “really?” In some, the lion, munching on straw, seems to ask, “how did this happen?”

We live in a very conflicted time, but then, when has humanity not lived in a conflicted time? The rise of one side is seen as a threat to the other. Benefits to some are regarded as theft from those who otherwise wouldn’t miss their absence. Debaters hurl insults and accusations over social media posts while others carry signs and other objects of scorn through the streets.

A modern-day prophet might look on and ask, “So how’s that working for you?”

I can sometimes be a bit of a revolutionary myself. I read about the problem of homelessness and lack of shelter for the poorest among us. Thinking of the site of that art collection I mentioned a few minutes ago, I say, “There’s a house with 175 rooms nearby, already furnished and it has lots of land around for farming and raising food. Make that available for those who need a roof over their heads.”
Again, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to discern the reaction to that statement.

Isaiah gives us a vision of a peaceful, not just peaceable, way of life. It seems outlandish and, frankly, impossible. And it will remain just so because we choose to not be citizens of that kingdom. We choose instead to exercise our own comfort and wealth, electing to toss a little something in the direction of making a difference, and then go home to watch the all-important game where we hope our team will triumph and we can claim to be “winners.”

If anyone’s wondering where their bandsaw is, I can still run.

We pray “your kingdom come” while we choose to live in the alternative. That doesn’t mean God has abandoned us, but that we have abandoned God. Isaiah’s vision of a peaceful, peaceable kingdom didn’t happen in his time, nor did it happen after Jesus matured into a grown man and proclaimed its nearness.

It didn’t happen because those who heard either of them speak chose to live differently. God isn’t one to force us to choose one way or another. Instead, God presents the vision of our choices before us and invites us to select, to live the one that gives life to all, and not just for ourselves. Then, if we choose the other direction, God has a whole eternity to wait for us to learn the consequences. We fall a few years short of that amount of time.

​To bring it home, if you see someone hungry, invite them to join you for dinner. If you see someone homeless, offer your spare bedroom. If you find someone in despair, clinging to what little bit of life may be left dangling before them, stop what might seem more important to you and be perhaps the last friend on earth who offers to sit and listen, or just sit in the stillness of the moment. Isaiah didn’t say it was going to be easy. Jesus said, “take up your cross.”
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In other words, if you really want a peaceful, peaceable kingdom, live it. That’s how it works.