In 742 B.C., a young man from a good, influential family in Jerusalem responded to God’s call to bring a message of hope to a troubled and hopeless people. Despite all the difficulties that Isaiah experienced in a nation that seemed bent on self-destruction, he remained confident in the promises of God made to King David.
Isaiah was convinced that Yahweh was still in control of events, and that His purpose was to set up His kingly rule of peace over all the nations. Isaiah dreamed of a day when God would come and turn his people away from the hopeless darkness of sin and violence. He dreamed of a day when the desire to know God would turn his people and all peoples of the world, back to living as God intended for His created world. A world where justice, peace, and righteousness were the everyday reality.
During the annual Advent season, we celebrate the fulfillment of Isaiah’s hopes. This is the heart and soul of the Christmas message. On the night Jesus was born the angel announced to the world, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11).
Admiral Sir William Penn conquered Jamaica and took the land for himself. His son, another William Penn, chose an alternative way of conquering. On land granted to his father as payment of debt by the king of England, the young William Penn established Philadelphia and the colony of Pennsylvania.
Raised an Anglican, he became a pacifist Quaker and was expelled from Christ Church College, Oxford, for his nonconformist views. But that did not stop him from rebelling against the world of his upbringing. After his conversion to the Society of Friends, he was imprisoned at the age of twenty-five for publishing a booklet on Quaker beliefs.
When William Penn came to the colonies, he did not use force to take from the Native Americans the land by the Delaware River. Rather, he stayed faithful to the Quaker’s opposition to war by negotiating a peaceful and fair settlement with the Native Americans who lived on the land.
Some of the colonists had viewed the Native Americans as their enemy, but Penn’s vision of a society of peace overcame that perception and created a harmonious order. Unfortunately, that harmonious order was broken years later by others who lived and governed by self-interest and greediness.
About one hundred years after the establishment of Pennsylvania, a child born in Pennsylvania became an admirer of William Penn. Edward Hicks, a sign painter, Quaker preacher, and artist brought together Isaiah’s vision of a “peaceable kingdom” and William Penn’s peaceful treaty with the Native Americans.
He painted over eighty versions of the “peaceable kingdom.” In the foreground of one version, painted sometime in the 1830s, is the cast of characters from Isaiah; the wolf, lamb, leopard, kid, calf, lion, cow, bear, cub, and nursing child, whose hand is over the snake’s nest, and the older child with her hand over the snake’s den and leading the lion.
In another painting, just off to the side of the beasts and little children playing together there is a scene of William Penn and other leaders making a treaty with the native Americans.
Hick’s believed that all people are born with a “savage disposition,” like the leopard, bear, wolf, or lion. If undisciplined, killing and self-destruction are inevitable. In 1837 he preached a sermon on salvation, declaring that salvation depends on a willingness to allow the Divine Will to reign over self-will. The resulting rebirth transforms a person into a creature of gentleness, like a cow, lamb, or kid.
And I ask, is such a vision of the “peaceable kingdom” a realistic hope yet today? Can we hope for a day when Republicans and Democrats care more about the peace and well-being of the nation and the world than they do about the special interests of their donors, even when those interests are unfair and unjust? Will they ever be able to ignore the lobbyists and conspiracy theorists, to make governing judgments that are righteous and just.
The Bible speaks of a dream, an uncommon vision that tells us we can have a world of peace, that this is God’s intent for us, his created beings. Isaiah’s portrait of the peaceable community challenges all of us to deny selfish inclinations, which only cause devilish disunity, divisions, hatreds, and killings.
Advent, the four weeks before Christmas Day, is a time to be reminded of God’s intent for the world. God invites and expects us to live Isaiah’s vision, to give up having enemies, to make peace with them, to be child-like in trusting and loving, and to be righteous in our relationships with everyone.
Each year during the Advent season, God’s people declare by word and song the message of Isaiah’s vision to a world that has mostly closed its ears to God’s powerful proclamation of peace and joy.
The world asks, Do Christians really believe what they declare? Do they really believe God has a different vision for the world than what we see, and that God is at work redeeming and reconciling all things, all people, all creation back to Himself in the person of Jesus Christ?
I plead with you, my Christian friend, we cannot, we dare not give up praying, living, and working out Isaiah’s vision of God’s peaceable kingdom. Our faith and prayer commands it. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” AMEN!
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“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – November 30, 2022
Ray M. Geigley
Healing Rays of Righteousness 
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