The Peaceable Kingdom

When I listen to our reading this morning from Isaiah (Is 11:6-9), soft flutes and violins are playing a lilting pastoral melody in the background.  The lion with the goat, the leopard with the kid, the world at peace…it is such a comforting vision.

But, we turn to the Gospel passage (Mt 3:1-12) and are bombarded with clashing cymbals, booming bass drums, and discordant horns blaring.  John the Baptist is yelling at us to repent, calling the Pharisees a brood of vipers, chaff burned in everlasting fire.  What happened to the flutes and violins?

Yet, there is a connection.  To get to the peace of Isaiah’s vision, to hear the flutes and violins, we have to listen to John, and repent, reforming our lives to account for the coming of Jesus.  This is why we have seasons like Advent and Lent.  In the “ordinary” times of the year, I often become lost in the chaff of daily tasks and troubles and miss the big picture completely.  Advent and Lent are times to put aside our preoccupations with our mundane, daily concerns and think about the bigger picture.

John calls us to repent, to change our minds, to re-form our lives, to break down the walls which keep us from the one who brings real peace to the world, to re-form ourselves into members of the Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom.

Jesus’ coming impels us, as John reminds the Pharisees, to live lives of faith which bear good fruit.  For much of my life, my faith meant that I should keep the rules, follow the commandments, and keep to the straight and narrow. 

It was that narrow part that got me in trouble.  My religion was essentially a private religion.  It was just about me, as narrow as my own person.  It was a religion that was only visible on Sunday morning, when I went to church.  What happened in the world was not so important, how I affected the world was almost immaterial, as long as I kept the rules.

But the peaceable kingdom is one of relationships.  It is a kingdom where all have fully realized the unconditional love that God has bestowed on them, burning away the chaff of fears and wants and filling their lives with hope and abundance.  This not only transforms individual lives, but transforms our relationships with each other.  Desperate enemies become fast friends.  Today, the Psalmist tells us that the poor are rescued, the afflicted are helped, the lowly are treated with compassion, and, as a result, justice and peace shall flower (Ps 72:1-13).  St. Paul reinforces the communal nature of the peaceable kingdom, as he prays that we think in harmony with one another, that we welcome one another as Christ welcomed us. (Rom 15:5-7). 

This compassion and unity is the fruit that the Pharisees were missing, that I was missing, that I can still miss when my religion remains my own, private affair; that I can still miss when I am consumed by my desires to earn love and honor through my own hard work and self-righteousness.

This Advent, I pray for me as I pray for you, that Jesus shows us the chaff in our lives, the parts that keeps us from realizing that his love is a gift, undeserved, yet infinite and everlasting.  I pray that he gives us the courage to burn that chaff, that we may become the flutes and the violins accompanying His peaceable kingdom.