My name is Isaiah. I am a prophet in Jerusalem.
A city
just like Seattle; a complex web of cultures and sub cultures; everyday people
with hopes and dreams, joys of new life and sorrows of life’s let downs,
raising families, repairing relationships, buying groceries, fixing leaking
roofs, changing diapers, burying the dead, expectations both met and unmet. My
city, like yours, is filled with the hustle and bustle of commerce, politics,
economics, and people. Both of our
cities contain diverse peoples from all over the world.
I am from an upper middle class heritage. I have
access to the political and religious leaders of the day. My task as a prophet
is always a perilous one. I fulfill two roles as prophet in my day and in
yours. My first role is to encourage the people of God to remain in God, stay
in God or return to a relationship with the GREAT and MYSTERIOUS ONE. Secondly,
I speak reform and justice into unjust political structures of the day at the
secular level. These twin objectives make me unpopular at all fronts, both with
the sanctuary and on the state steps. You will not see me on Entertainment
Tonight or David Letterman. I will not win an Oscar or an American Music Award
but I still have a tale to tell.
As a
prophet the MYSTERIOUS ONE has allowed me to peer into the future to see
immediate historical realizations and future events as fulfillments of my
spoken oracles. What makes these visions unique is that I can see them down
through the ages simultaneously. I have the ability to stand on Mt Baker and
see the future fulfillments on the twin peaks of Mt Rainier and Mt Hood all at
the same time. I can see the fall and restoration of Jerusalem in my day on the
peak of Mt Baker. I can see the future hope in a promised Prince of Peace that
is laying in a manger on the peak of Mt Rainier. I can also see another return
of this great Messiah in your future on the peak of Mt Hood. Academia refers to this as a “telescoping
of events.”
The
Scripture this morning I wrote to satisfy three great concerns that I have for
people in all places and all times. The world is full of conflict and violence.
Is it possible that, as I write elsewhere, for the wolf to lie down with the
lamb? This is the promise of the
peaceable kingdom. In our unpeaceable world, we long for the fulfillment of my
promise. In a time of war---remembering that every moment of history is a time
of war---I watch a young woman holding up a sign near South Center Mall with
her poignant placard, “Peace is Possible.” She is correct, although probably not in the way she
intends.
This morning, I offer three mountain peak prophetic
perspectives that converge to form a simultaneous seasonal summit. I give them
now to orientate you to our journey. Mt Baker, the sovereignty of God. Mt
Rainier, the birth of Jesus the Prince of spiritual Peace. Mt Hood, the second
return of the political Prince of Peace to right side up the world and usher in
a supreme multi-layered justice and shalom—peace on earth.
Summit ONE; Mt
Baker and the Sovereignty of God.
What I see from the summit of Mt Baker is that God is
in control! There is no event that stands outside of the providential control
of God. In your contemporary culture it is common to see bumper stickers with
the phrase, and I will edit it, as my prophetic office will not allow me to
repeat the actual word, the sticker says, “Stuff Happens!” In a world of free
will, people will hurt one another; murder them with guns, roadside bombs and
with words. They always have and always will until the second and final return
of the prince of peace. You see God is able to remain in control by giving
people choices and freedoms to act. When they act in horrific and unspeakable
ways God is able to work the mysterious peaceable kingdom in the midst of such
unpeaceable-ness! God therefore, is all-powerful and ultimately more God than
one might think. God is in control
even when we spin totally out of control. The cosmic sovereignty and providence
of God will not be undermined even by the minuute freedoms of God’s creatures.
It may not always feel like God has our back but we are living in the chaos of
the “in between time.” I came to
encourage you this morning with these words, “God is in control of the mountain
tops!
Summit TWO: Mt Rainier and the Birth of the
Prince of Peace
I wrote in
the text this morning of the one to come as the Messiah, the Wonderful
Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. But
to what degree are we currently experiencing this Prince of peace? We experience this peace inwardly as a
personal peace of faith. It is the spiritual realization of this Messiah that
you now currently live. It is not fully a political realization. My Jewish people
missed this point. They were looking and expecting a political Messiah that
would over throw the unjust political powers of the day by establishing Gods
rule on earth. This is important for you this morning. Do not come to the word
with your own expectations seeking to be fulfilled. Come to the word with an
open mind and heart ready for the wonderful Mysterious ways of God’s
mountaintop.
Born into
a world of raging conflicts, this little child who leads us is called the
Prince of Peace. Above the rolling and dusty hillside of Bethlehem, heavenly beings
of all shapes and sizes sang out cosmic praise to his birth, “Glory to God in
the highest, and on earth peace among men and women with whom he is pleased.”
Yet to your naked eye, living in the crowded urban valleys and not the majestic
mountaintop summits, what a strange peace this truly is. Jesus said as an
adult, “Woe to those who cry peace when there is no peace.” “Peace I leave you; my peace I give to
you; NOT AS THE WORLD GIVES DO I GIVE TO YOU. LET NOT YOUR HEARTS BE TROUBLED!”
There is a peculiar peace that is available to us right now. Available to us is the inner spiritual
peace of faith. Peace is not only possible; it is a gift currently given. Jesus
gives us his peace by giving us himself, for he is the Prince of Peace.
This
morning, this advent, from this prophet’s perspective make room---make room for
the peace that is available now-the Peace of faith—in Jesus and in Jesus
alone! For political peace in the
world we must fervently pray and earnestly work. But do not be troubled or frightened
by the wars around you and the wars within you! I am keenly aware of those
struggles. The peace that is ours is not a peace of pretending that things are
not as they are; nor is it a peace of leading a blind and naïve eye to
conflict. It is the inner peace of a personal faith, in the peace child born to
an unwed mother.
Faith is
trust in this Prince of Peace. We neither hold ourselves aloof from the anguish
of a conflicted world nor do we delude ourselves that the resolution of all
global conflict is within our humanistic powers to remedy alone. Our global
neighborhood is much too complicated for simplistic ideologues. In the child of
the Bethlehem manger, in the fragility of a powerless baby, God entered our
conflict, our struggles, our wars; personal and corporate. The powers of
darkness raged the best that it can throw and it ended in a crucified God on a
cross. But that is Friday and Easter Sunday proclaims in the miracle of an
empty tomb that death is conquered and inner peace is available by faith right
now.
Summit Three: Mt Hood and the political
return of Christ
Thirdly, this morning, I am here to give you hope,
from this prophets perspective, he will come again! And when he comes the peace
he brings will be total, wonderful, mighty, everlasting, Princely, absolutely
just, complete, cosmic, mysterious, and finally upside down, to the point where
your great and majestic mountains, the Cascades and the Olympics, will melt in
his presence. The sky will shine
with the beauty and glory of holiness that blinds so beautiful, restores so
redemptively, and re-transforms a creation to its once perfect posture.
By faith in this Jesus and the victory that is already
won, we now live a small taste, a tiny morsel, of the peaceable kingdom that is
to be. I am here to tell you that it has happened, it is happening and it will happen! Believe it by faith and allow advent grace to
flood your life with peace in your hectic and burned out self. Be-live it to those around you as a
preview of the political realization of the future shalom for every person in
every city forevermore. A-men! Let it be!
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