A Longing for Peace -- Isaiah 2:1-5 (1st Sunday of Advent)

Photo credit: Teanna Morgan, used with permission via Unsplash

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We say of Advent that it is a season of waiting and anticipation. At Christmas, we celebrate the coming of Christ into the world – a baby born in a stable way back when; the coming of Christ right now into every moment of our lives; the day yet to come when Christ will bring all things to fullness and completion. During Advent, we wait. For all that – we wait and (as we said a couple weeks ago) we keep watch – for all the ways that God shows up in human flesh – in the midst of us. And with our Advent candles, we mark that waiting, as we remember that Advent also is a season of peace, and hope, and joy, and love.

If we wrap all that up together, we might say that Advent... is a season of longing. We sense, in the ache in our bones, that something is bad wrong in the world, and we long... we long for it to be made right. Maybe you’ve heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – basic human needs that must be met for humans to thrive. Now I won’t put it into a hierarchy, but I think that there are basic human longings that we all share – longings that are an essential part of what it is to be human, to live human.

·      We see the violence in the world, and we long for peace.

·      We see oppression and harm, and we long for justice.

·      We see all the hate, and we long for love – for folks – for everyone just to live with kindness.

And we are not the first. We are not the first who have felt this – who have longed for a better world. We hear it as fresh as this morning’s sunrise in these ancient texts of Scripture.

In this morning’s text from Isaiah, the prophet voices a longing for peace.

Now, we’ve been talking a lot this year about the prophets. Isaiah is the prophet of all prophets – I’d venture to say, the prophet we know best. The Book of Isaiah is expansive – 66 chapters. It spans well over 200 years of history.^[1] It includes not only writings we attribute to the actual prophet Isaiah himself, but writings that his followers wrote long after he was gone – as his prophetic word – both the peril and the promise – came to pass.

This morning’s Scripture rises up out of a world of war. Remember, Israel and Judah, together, are this tiny nation sitting at the crossroads of empire, in the midst of warring and conquering empires. The Assyrian Empire moves through, taking out 10 of the 12 tribes – scattering them throughout the known world. Then, the Babylonian Empire comes riding over the hill – razing Jerusalem and Judah and taking the people into captivity. That is, until the Persian Empire rises up, and conquers the Babylonian, and the people are allowed to go home to the rubble of their world.

Across the broad sweep of that, the people remember the words and prophetic spirit of Isaiah – urging them toward justice – and in calamity, encouraging them toward hope.^[2] God moving in the midst of their story. And for those of us in Christian traditions, we receive this Book of Isaiah, and find its call to justice and its expansive hope expressed and embodied in our experience of Christ, and so we read Isaiah a good bit in Advent.

 The Book of Isaiah is expansive – across history and tradition. But/and each part of it speaks to a particular people, in a particular moment, people living in the midst of war, people braced for the next Empire on its way.  This morning, we’re right at the very beginning of Isaiah – what we call First Isaiah – which starts out with words of judgment and woe.^[3] It is the prophet saying to the powers and the people – all the oppression you have done – that oppressive world is going to come crashing down. Most of the hopeful next things don’t come until later in Isaiah. Isaiah begins with a hard word. Chapter after chapter.

As one writer notes, it is not “uncommon in our day” to see the injustices of which the prophet speaks – greed, self-interest, corruption in high places.^[4] We can relate. Neither is it uncommon, in our day, to see the violence and war. Think of the many wars of the past century – World War I and II – trench warfare, holocaust, and the emergence of nuclear weapons. Korea and Vietnam.

With each conflict, we can imagine families in the midst of violence – families displaced, thousands of them, millions, sent from their homes as refugees – families waiting back home, with the empty chair of a loved one. All of them, longing for peace. We can imagine families on kibbutzim, remembering the trauma and terror of October 7, longing for peace. We can see the thousands and thousands of families in Gaza – cities decimated – children killed – still living in a world cut off from basic necessities – medical care, food, water. Living in something that the powers call a cease fire while bombs still continue to fall.^[5] We see the families of Ukraine – living in the rubble of cities, nearly 4 years of invasion and war; now watching as the powers parlay about their fate.

Our violence rolls on down through the generations, and pulsing through it all, there is this longing for peace that lives at the heart of our shared humanity – at the heart of our shared experience of what it is to be human. And though the geo-politics may be complex, the longing itself really isn’t all that complicated. It is the longing that our children – that all children – might be able to live and thrive. It is the longing that every child – no matter their race, or ethnicity, or nation – that every child might be able to grow into every bit of what God has created and intends them to be – that they might experience all the love and all the life – and that we might somehow find a way to make that world, together.

Out of a world shaken by war, in response to this deep, human ache – this longing for peace – this morning’s Scripture offers a vision. Now, it may start in what sounds like a nationalistic vision. The mountain of Israel and Judah’s God will be lifted up. But it swiftly becomes a vision for all nations.^[6] The nations come streaming in – all nations, all peoples – everyone in the whole wide world. Together.

And God appears as Teacher. God doesn’t appear as mighty king or vanquishing general.^[7] This “pilgrimage of all peoples”^[8] comes that God might teach them God’s ways – that they might learn peace. God appears among them as teacher, as giver of just judgments, as arbiter of every dispute. It is in this experience of justice that they learn peace. No justice, no peace. The prophets say that too. All nations, all peoples – they learn peace with justice, and they learn war no more.

And look what they do. They beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. They do something. They transform their world. They take the tools of violence, oppression, and war – swords and spears and such – they melt them down, hammer them out – and turn them into tools of community, tools for peace, tools for planting and harvest – so that everyone – so that every child – might eat, and live, and thrive.

In chapter 2, Isaiah gives this glimmer of hope – this vision of the peace that could be – and then gets back to railing against injustice. No justice, no peace.

Now what are we to do with this vision? Artists have surprisingly taken the vision quite literally. Mexican artist Pedro Reyes has taken 1,527 guns gathered in a gun-buy-back program, and melted them down into 1,527 shovels, that were then used to plant 1, 527 trees – creating his work Palas por Pistolas – Shovels for Guns^[9].  

In the US, the nonprofit RAWtools (grounded in the Mennonite tradition) has made this a regular thing. Motivated by the Sandy Hook school shooting – they gather and melt down guns and turn them into garden tools. They include the community in their work, families who have lost loved ones. And they offer nonviolence education.^[10]

What can we do with this vision? Well, first, I want to suggest a shift in our prayer – something to connect that particular longing that we feel in our own lives to that expansive longing we all share. It’s simply this: Whatever we pray for ourselves, also pray for everyone in the whole world. When we pray healing for our loved ones, also pray for healing for everyone suffering any kind of hurt. When we pray for comfort in our grieving and loss, pray that for everyone who mourns, every kind of loss. We can even do that with our gratitude: When we pray thanks for a meal, pray that every child might have enough and more. Like Isaiah, we pray the particular pain, the particular need, the particular longing – and we see it and pray it, connected to the deep need of the world – all people everywhere, this shared experience of what it is to be human.

And there is concrete action. This church knows how to do that. You have planted trees for peace in Palestine and in Afghanistan – and in the planting, you have grown relationships and learned peace. This church has advocated at the national level of our denomination for concrete actions toward peace in Palestine and Israel – most recently, saying clearly here, and asking the denomination to do the same – that what has happened in response to the October 7 terrorist attack is genocide – collective punishment, violence waged without consideration of the devastation it brings to non-combatants, an effort to remove a people from the land. What does it matter that a church or a denomination say that? Well, as Dave Jones reminds us – if nothing else, it matters to those who are suffering – it lets them know they have not been forgotten, and it helps our denomination learn peace, over time, learn peace.

A shift in prayer – connected to concrete action. I think what we can do is try to live out of this longing – live out of this longing for peace – common across all humanity – live out of this longing that every child can live and thrive and grow into everything that God has created them to be. In just a moment, we’ll baptize a child. We do this in a world of chaos and unravelling, but with determination and commitment that we will, together, work for a world where those children – our children – all children – can flourish. We commit to do that ourselves with the children we baptize in this community – as we re-commit to the expansiveness of the promise of baptism – that we are all part of the family of God. We learn peace, and pray that we will learn war no more.

Do you remember this past summer, when we were in the Book of Revelation, right at the end, where there was this vision of a new heaven and a new earth? In this morning’s Isaiah text, we have this vision of all nations and all peoples streaming toward God – to learn peace, to live peace. (left hand rising up) And at the end of Revelation, we have this vision of the heavens opening, and the city of God descending toward us – toward all humanity. (right hand coming down)

That’s Advent. As we long for peace, and long for God – what we find is God, already and always, longing for us – coming toward us. God always in the midst of us, and always on the way.

What we find is this longing for peace,

welling up in the heart of us – in the flesh of us –

this longing for peace –  welling up into life.

 © 2025 Scott Clark

^[1] For general background on this text and the Book of Isaiah, see Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998); Bruce C. Birch, Commentary in Feasting on the Word, Year A, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), pp.1-5; Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, Commentary in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, Year A (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), pp.1-2; Gene M. Tucker, “The Book of Isaiah,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. vi(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001), pp.27-70; Corinne Carvalho, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-advent/commentary-on-isaiah-21-5-7 ; Casey Thornburgh Sigmon, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-advent/commentary-on-isaiah-21-5-3

^[2] See Brueggemann, pp.1-7.

^[3] We’ve come to think of the Book of Isaiah, in three parts: First Isaiah (which warns and recounts the destruction and exile); Second Isaiah (which voices hope for the new thing that God may be doing); and Third Isaiah (which details the just reorganization of that new thing). See Thornburgh Sigmon, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-advent/commentary-on-isaiah-21-5-3

^[4] See Tubbs Tisdale, pp.1-2.

^[5] See https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/world/middleeast/israeli-strikes-gaza.html ; https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-cease-fire.html

^[6] See Tucker, pp.67-69; Tubbs Tisdale, pp.1-2.

^[7] See Tucker, pp.67-69/

^[8] See id.

^[9] See Thornburgh Sigmon, supra.

^[10] For an excellent video describing their work, see https://artscanvas.org/arts-culture/in-response-to-u-s-gun-violence-this-blacksmith-melts-guns-into-garden-tools?utm_source=chatgpt.com , and for more information on their programs, see https://rawtools.org