Teaching Tuesday: This is Christmas - King David's King

Series: This is Christmas
Sermon: King David's King (12.22.24)
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Amid the pain and violence of our world, we hold fast to this hope: one day Jesus will usher in true and ultimate peace. He also brings us spiritual peace in the here and now as we experience redemption and live by the values of his kingdom.

And Jesus not only brings peace, he is peace…the Prince of Peace.

In 2003, journalist Chris Hedges set out to determine whether there have been any sustained periods of peace on the human record. He reviewed 3,400 years of history and defined “war” as “any active conflict that claimed more than 1,000 lives.”

The results were disheartening: he discovered just 268 war-free years. In other words, approximately 92 percent of recorded history is marked by active conflict.

Of course, the people of ancient Israel did not need a journalist to tell them that human existence is plagued by wars and violence.

They had plenty of firsthand experience with conflict and oppression. What they did need was a prophet who could provide them with a vision of peace vivid enough to counter the horrific images already seared into their memories.

Isaiah brought just such a vision to them - and us.

Consider the images presented in the second chapter in Isaiah: Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

All the nations come streaming together to the mountain of God where they discover that the supposed dichotomy between peace and justice has been false all along…the Lord brings peace through justice.  

He judges the nations and settles disputes, resolving not only wars but the underlying evil that causes them.

And then watch what happens when humans find themselves in the presence of the Prince of Peace: The swords and spears they’ve brought to the mountain - weapons they’ve long assumed were necessary to their survival - seem suddenly out of place. The people lay down their arms.

But the Prince of Peace has something even more beautiful in mind. Soon, the people are working together to convert their weapons into gardening tools. Human ingenuity is redeemed and redirected from destructive ends to creative ends.

Isaiah is not being naive here. He has seen the brutality that can and does characterize the human condition. But he has also caught a glimpse of the verdant, vibrant, peace-infused future the Prince of Peace has planned for his creation.

It’s the sort of vision that gives a weary prophet hope - a vision about the sort of prince who will one day cause angels in the gospel of Luke to exclaim: Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.

The Hebrew word that Isaiah uses to describe the peace that the Promised One will bring is shalom. “Shalom” conveys wholeness, harmony, and health.

Where we might settle for uneasy truces and Band-Aid fixes as proxies for peace, shalom represents something much more robust. Beyond the end of suffering, shalom is a transformation of the conditions that lead to suffering in the first place.

Where there is shalom, everything gets to function the way it was created to. Shalom rejects the idea of life as a zero-sum game and dares to imagine the comprehensive flourishing of every person and every thing, all at the same time.

In one vivid image after another, Isaiah describes physical healing: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame “leap like a deer,” and the mute “shout for joy.” Even the creation itself is healed, as “water will gush forth in the wilderness” and “the wilderness will rejoice and blossom” like a flower bursting into bloom.

Isaiah’s prophecy offers us a vibrant vision of relational, economic, and spiritual wholeness in the depiction of a redeemed people walking and singing together on a highway of holiness.
There are no lions here, Isaiah tells us, and we can safely assume the way is free from all other predatory or opportunistic foes. The people enter Zion together, where “everlasting joy will crown their heads.”

This ultimate shalom, Isaiah tells us, is our future. But there’s even more to it than that. Because the Prince of Peace gives us his Spirit, we are called to be people of that future - people who practice shalom here and now.

This shalom is realized now in part through the church, where even tax collectors and prostitutes find peace through the blood of Christ, when the messiah in a manger became the messiah dead on a cross.

God’s worldwide temple is made of living stones and the bricks God builds with are chosen from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Today, we can experience the promised peace of the messiah-king who says to the weary: “I will give you rest.”

But the true, full, complete shalom is still yet to come. Jesus will one day perfectly subdue and renew his creation, and the glorified world of this new creation will ultimately satisfy our deepest longings for justice and peace.

Christmas reminds us of the glorious rest given through Jesus’s first coming and anticipates the full restoration that will accompany his return.

In this time of tension between the now and the not yet, God calls us to be marked by his kingdom grace, a people who pursue justice for the oppressed and spread the knowledge of Christ in our communities.

It is through this knowledge of the Prince of Peace - a knowledge of the head and the heart - that weary sinners receive the glorious rest in Christ’s kingdom.

To know God and to make him known!

- Pastor Brady