Sermon for 1st Advent
The Season of Hope
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
Today marks the First Sunday in Advent, that new year season of the church year when we begin our preparation for Jesus Christ to come anew into our lives at Christmas. In the midst of Winter, when the days are short and it is quite cold in other parts of this nation, in the midst of Winter we come together for these four Advent Sundays around the themes of joy and hope and preparation.
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore…. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
These are words from the second chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, part of our first reading this weekend.
And they are such wonderful and hopeful words. If you have visited the United Nations building in New York City, you may have seen these words printed in large lettering on the side of the UN headquarters. Fitting words for the UN’s goal of peace in our world.
These words are all the more interesting because they come in the book of Isaiah right after the prophet has described the Judah and Jerusalem he sees in 800BC in very negative terms. In chapter 1 Isaiah writes of the violence, bribery and unfaithfulness he sees among the people of Judah and the desolation and trampling of the poor that has resulted from these behaviors.
But then, in chapter 2, Isaiah writes about the “days to come” when God will start over with God’s people, a vision that Isaiah himself saw. People of every nation will stream into Judah, including their former enemies. God will give instruction from Jerusalem, God will judge among nations. And, the people will be transformed.
The people will be transformed. The world will be transformed.
And one person can make a difference.
Such a person is Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian Lutheran peace activist responsible for leading a women’s peace movement, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, a movement that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Gobwee’s efforts to end that civil war helped usher in a period of peace in Liberia and enabled a free election there in 2005. She, along with two others, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing Gbowee when she visited New York City in 2011 just days after her Nobel Peace Prize was announced. Without any formal education and the mother of four young children, Gobwee was first inspired when she read the words of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, inspired to get involved in peace-making and peace-building in Liberia through her church, the Lutheran Church in Liberia.
During our interview Gobwee told me that one night as she slept that God came to her in a dream and told her to “gather the women and pray for peace.” Like the prophet Isaiah, Gobwee saw something that contradicted all of the “evidence” around her. She saw a new world of peace for her homeland, Liberia. Sharing her dream with her women peace-building colleagues, Gobwee came to see that this dream was meant not for others to lead but for her to lead.
Thus, with other women leaders of both Muslim and Christian faiths, Gbowee began to visit mosques on Fridays, markets on Saturdays and churches on Sundays. Everywhere their message was the same “We are tired! We are tired of our children being killed. We are tired of being raped. Women, wake up – you have a voice in the peace process!”
Working across religious and ethnic lines, Gobwee now led thousands of Christian and Muslim women who gathered for months in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city. They prayed for peace and held nonviolent demonstrations and sit-ins in defiance of orders from Liberia’s tyrannical president at that time, Charles Taylor.
One of their tactics was to call a sex strike – if their demands for an end to the Civil War were not met, the women of Liberia would stop having relations with their husbands. Gobwee shared with me that this had little practical effect but sure got a lot of media attention. Finally, the women occupied a soccer field along the route President Taylor travelled each day. They all wore white to signify peace. They blocked the route and could have been arrested or killed. However, somehow their efforts paid off and Taylor agreed to meet with them – 2,000 women showed up for this meeting with Gbowee as their spokesperson.
Gobwee spoke, “We are tired of war. We are tired of running. We are now taking a stand for the future of our children.”
These words coupled with the women’s continuing non-violent protests led to peace talks in the neighboring nation of Ghana. When those talks appeared to be getting nowhere, and war and violence in Liberia continued, the women travelled to Ghana and occupied the hotel hallways outside the rooms where the peace talks were being held, saying they would not leave until a peace agreement was reached. When the men tried to leave the hall without an agreement, Gobwee and her group threatened to rip of their own clothing, knowing that that would be seen as a real threat to these men since seeing naked women in public was forbidden in traditional African culture.
The Liberian Civil War ended several weeks later. The women of Liberia, led by Leymah Gobwee, had been successful.
The women of Liberia literally did “turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks,” just as Isaiah had dreamed.
Swords into plows, spears into pruning hooks. Is that really possible? Is it possible for us, you and me, to have any role in this?
The prophet Isaiah is not naïve or Pollyannaish. Isaiah’s hope for a world where weapons of war are turned into agricultural tools, death-dealing turned to food-producing, is a hope, a promise of things to come.
But, sometimes, this hope actually becomes reality, just like Leymah Gobwee’s dream of peace for her homeland, Liberia.
Today I want to suggest that Advent, this church year season of joy and hope and promise, that Advent is a time for us also to think, to dream, of the ways we, too, might transform this sometimes very dark world, a world desperately in need of transformation, a time when we, too, might dream and act in ways to bring peace to this troubled world.
We start with prayer and singing, “Come O Come, Emmanuel,” and move to actions small and not-so-small to bring peace and love to God’s world in this time and place. We start here at worship.
Then we move from this place: We start with ourselves, our family and friends, our neighborhood and move to our city and our nation and even this world. We begin small and slow – peace in our families, among our friends and neighbors and colleagues.
That’s where we start, but then it is not too much to hope and pray and act for peace in our nation and this world. That is the promise of this Advent, a promise made long ago by Isaiah the prophet.
Yes, I know that “world peace” may sound naïve and too-much like a beauty pageant slogan. However, our call as Christians is to bring hope into this world, even in times that can seem to be a hopeless.
We have a God who cares for us, who sent his Son to earth to save us all, who now calls us to pray and dream and act so that God’s word of peace might be heard in this troubled world.
Let’s start today. You and me. Our congregation and families and friends. We are on God’s side in this. We have Jesus to guide us and protect us. No more fighting, no more war. Think of Leymah Gobwee and the women in white in Liberia. They were neither educated nor wealthy. They were simply women who were tired of war and fighting.
Simple actions by rather ordinary people. If they can do it, then so can we.
Peace in this world. In Liberia, in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan. Closer to home in our cities and towns and rural areas. In our families, at school and work and among our friends. With God’s help and guidance.
This is the season of hope. It is time to hope and dream and act for peace in this world. Isaiah’s promise of hope and peace is not yet here, but the promise of the Advent season is that this hope is coming. It is coming in Christ’s name and for Christ’s purpose. This is the season of hope. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Amen.
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
November 30 & December 1, 2019
