If you watch early morning television as I do during the week, you probably saw Caroline Kennedy Thursday morning talking about her new book A Family Christmas. It is as the book jacket says a collection of "poetry, prose, scriptural passages, and lyrics, drawing on authors as diverse as Truman Capote, Groucho Marks, Martin Luther King, Jr., John and Yoko, and Charles Dickens." When I began reading the book, I started with Marin Luther King's Christmas Sermon on Peace. This is its opening paragraph:
This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race.
We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing
fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is
sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities.
And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will
toward all ... can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of
some utopian. If we don't have good will ... in this world, we will
destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own
power. Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete.
Dr. King delivered that sermon on Christmas Eve, 1967, as the war in Vietnam was escalating. I wonder what he would say forty years later as the misguided war in Iraq drags on and on.
The verses we heard from the eleventh chapter of Isaiah contain promises as well known as the promise we heard last week about turning swords into ploughshares. Today we heard that "The wolf shall live with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." These are promises of a peaceable kingdom portrayed in the nineteenth century by Edward Hicks, the American Quaker painter. In my thinking I connect the Isaiah passage with Dr. King's words about making war obsolete.
The connection lies in the prophet's description of the kind of ruler who will make peace a reality in the world. The promise of a branch from the stump of Jesse has been so Christianized as pointing ahead to Jesus, that we miss its meaning for its first hearers thousands of years ago. Isaiah was saying to the people of his time that in the future a ruler would emerge with the characteristics he described, and that the ruler would govern in such a way that peace would prevail, that salvation would become reality.
It's interesting to contemplate the characteristics of the ruler Isaiah envisions. The ruler will be shaped by God's spirit, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Notice that these are not sectarian religious categories. They are broad, possibly even universal. Wisdom and understanding have to do with maturity and balance, the ability to think clearly and dispassionately, to use restraint when appropriate. Counsel and might relate to the capacity to use power carefully and responsibly, especially in diplomatic and military matters, while knowledge and fear of the Lord speak to the need for humility and spiritual sensitivity.
The ruler having these characteristics will use them in governing. The promised one will not look only at the surface of people or things, but will go to a deeper level, probing for ways to root out injustice. Government will ensure that the least powerful of society will have the full protection of law, that the poor will be fully cared for.
How long has it been since we have seen some or all of those characteristics in the White House, or in other centers of power in our world for that matter? I ask that only in part as a rhetorical question, of course. These qualities are what we should be looking for in the people seeking our support in next year's presidential election. Tragically our electoral process subordinates such traits to telegenic appearance and the ability to raise large amounts of money for advertising.
The second half of the Isaiah reading envisions a time when violence disappears from the natural order, and by implication from the world. Predator and prey will coexist together—wolf and lamb, leopard and young goat. Historic enemies—lion and calf—will get along. And a little child, the symbol of innocence, will be helping it all happen. War becoming obsolete!
Peace is a many-faceted subject. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached about inner and outer peace. They are not unrelated. I believe that if peace among nations and peace among warring factions of different kinds is to become reality, an essential component of the process is what Augustine and Simone Weil called "the transformation of the will"—an inner change that will find expression in a willingness to try new ways of relating to other people.
Isaiah wrote about "the fear of the Lord," and Paul's letter to the Romans points to God's filling people with joy and peace. It is not coincidental that we focus on peace two weeks and two days before Christmas. In spite of what we have done to it, in spite of how we have tried to distort its meaning, Christmas is still about eternity invading time, about Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Recently I was talking with a friend who is less than half my age. I asked him if he knew about the Christmas truce in World War I. He did not. And so I read to him from Caroline Kennedy's book. This is what I read.
On January 2, 1915, The Times of London published letters from soldiers
in the trenches of the battlefield.
This from an officer in a Highland regiment:
We were in the trenches, and the Germans began to make merry on
Christmas Eve, shouting at us to come out and meet with them. They
sang songs ... and our men answered by singing .... Christmas Day
was very misty, and out came the Germans to wish us "A Happy Day."
We went out and told them we were at war with them, and that
really they must play the game and pretend to fight. They went
back, but again attempted to come towards us, so we fired over
their heads, they fired a shot back to show they understood, and
the rest of the day passed quietly in this part of the line, but
in others a [good] deal of fraternizing went on. So there you
are; all this talk of hate, all this fury at each other that
has raged since the beginning of the war, quelled and stayed
by the magic of Christmas. Indeed, one German said, "But you
are of the same religion as me, and today is the Day of peace."
It is really a great triumph for the Church. It is a great
hope for future peace when two great nations, hating each
other as foes seldom hated, one side vowing eternal hate
and vengeance and setting their venom to music, should on
Christmas Day, and for all that the word implies, lay down
their arms, exchange smokes, and wish each other happiness.
Next year, pray God, we will all be round the fire and at peace.
Another letter says similar things but ends less hopefully:
[Christmas morning] after reveille the Germans sent out parties to
bury their dead. Our men went out in groups and began to talk and
exchange gifts of tobacco, food, etc. All the morning we have been
fraternizing, singing songs, I have been within a yard, in fact, on to
their trenches, and have spoken to and exchanged greetings with a
colonel, staff officers, and various company officers. All were very
nice, and we fixed up that the men should not go near their opponents'
trenches, but remain about midway between the lines. The whole thing
is extraordinary. The men were all so natural and friendly. The Germans
are Saxons, a good-looking lot, only wishing for peace in a manly way ....
I was astonished at the easy way in which our men and theirs got on with
each other. We have just knocked off for dinner and have arranged to
meet again afterwards until dark, when we go in again and have songs
until 9 p.m., when "war" begins again. I wonder who will start the
shooting. They say, "Fire in the air and we will," and such things,
but of course it will start, and tomorrow we will be at it hard,
killing one another.
And the killing goes on. When will our government and other governments work as hard at peace as they work for war? And when will you and I lift up our voices and hold them accountable? When will we write letters to the newspapers as Tom Driver did to the New York Times? When will we contact our legislators to urge changes in national policy?
I will let Martin Luther King, Jr., have the closing word.
I still have a dream today that one day the lion and the lamb will lie
down together and [all people] will sit under their own vines and fig
trees and none shall make them afraid. I still have a dream that with
this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring
new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith we will
be able to speed up the day when there will be peace on earth, good
will toward all. It will be a glorious day, and the children of God
will sing for joy.
With this faith, we will work for peace, we will pray for peace, and we will let peace begin with each one of us.
Thanks be to God.