These past weeks we have been looking with great detail at the vision of the prophet Isaiah, a vision recorded in Isaiah chapter 2, but also appearing throughout his book of prophecy and also throughout all of Scripture. For Isaiah was given a vision of God’s plan for this world, a vision that God shared with others and through their words with us. We’ve been discussing some of the nuances of that plan, of that vision.

Two weeks ago, we talked about how we are chosen to be a part of the plan. That each of us as baptized and called children of God have our task to do that will help bring the vision to fruition. Last week, we talked about what it truly means to say that God seeks for all nations and all peoples to come to him, and how that also means that God calls those people we’d rather he not. The ones who’ve hurt us, the ones different from us, the ones we call enemy and threat.

Today, I want to continue with that pattern, and tease out a bit more just what it is that God intends to do with this world and its people. What is the plan itself and what does it truly mean for us? Isaiah talks of all the nations, all the peoples of the world streaming to God’s holy mountain, where they receive God’s guidance and grace, and having received that, they take their weapons of war and beat them down into agricultural implements. Swords into plowshares, spears to pruning hooks. Tools used to kill become tools used to help things grow. Where there was a battle, there will now be a feast. Where there was death, there is now life.

Isaiah lived in a time of great turmoil. The divided kingdom of the Hebrew people, Israel and Judah, was under threat. The great kingdom of the Egyptians was on the wane and in its place were arising new empires: Assyria, Babylon, Persia. Empires bent on conquest. Empires bent upon war.

Thus it is war that is very much on Isaiah’s mind. And so God gives him a vision of a world without war, where the very tools of death and destruction are forged anew into implements to support life. It is a vision that could not be more timely for us here and now thousands of years later. For we too have war very much on our minds, and it is likely not coincidence that our minds likewise focus on those same empires: Assyria, Babylon, Persia. They go by different names now: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, but the crisis is in many ways the same. As we speak, our soldiers are within some of those nations, battling a persistent and tenacious enemy. And the threat of an expanded war with some of the others looms before us.

Most of you I think know of my personal opinions about this present conflict. But my purpose today is not to talk politics. For I believe that regardless of our political inclination, regardless of whether we support or oppose this present war, I think that in all of our heart of hearts, what we all want is peace. We may support the war effort, support the soldiers, believe the cause for which they fight is just and right, and yet still lament the necessity of it.

Still lament the loss of life, the destruction of homes and businesses. Still lament that things had to come to this, that we have war and not peace.

Some times, for some of us, that lament is a very personal one. One of my best friends, James, serves in our armed forces, has been to Iraq. He will stand with me as one of my groomsmen at my wedding and I will be so very proud to have him stand by my side. We don’t always agree, but our friendship goes deeper than politics, and I respect and honor him for what he has done and is willing still yet to do for our country. My prayer for peace centers on him, and it is that he never need make that ultimate sacrifice, that he come home again to his wife, his children, his friends and his family, safe and sound.

Ultimately, when you boil down all the politics and all the opinions, that’s really what it comes down to for all of us. We all want a world where no sons, no daughters, no brothers, no sisters, no fathers, no mothers, no friends need go off to die. And any world where that still takes place, as ours, is far from God’s plan for his people.

So God gives a vision of a world at peace.

But that peace goes deeper even than the great and terrible events of human history. It is not simply that nation no longer rises up against nation, it is not just that people do not seek violence against other people. It is more than that. For there is more that keeps peace from us than just these wars of nations, and wars of individuals. There is war within us, within our hearts, within our bodies, within our minds.

Sometimes those wars are obvious to all observers, when we battle disease and physical ailments. Sometimes it is the battle we wage against the ravages of time. How many of us with bodies with many years under then still feel in our minds and hearts that we are no more than 20 or 30 and then find frustration that we cannot do all that we once did?

Sometimes these wars are hidden to others, when we battle illnesses of the mind or the legacies of past traumas. The voices in our minds that tempt us to evil or tell us lies about who we truly are and what our value truly is.

God’s peace enters into even our disquiet hearts and calms the wars within. It is so much more than just peace between peoples and nations. It is true peace. It is the peace that Scripture so poetically calls the one “that passes all understanding.”

John the Baptist didn’t quite get it. He knew Isaiah’s vision, but in his day he saw still the tyranny of Rome, the bloodshed of its oppression, and so he questioned whether Jesus was the one or not. So he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him.

Jesus replies by saying, “Look around you. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the poor receive good news.” Christ brings the peace within and without, the true peace.

In the six years of our journey together as pastor and congregation, I have gotten to know many of your inner wars and conversely you have come to know mine. But my prayer and yours also I suspect is that we all find that peace that has been denied us. I believe that our prayer has been heard. I believe God is on the move, that He is bringing us closer to that vision of peace. It is why Jesus came. It is why we call him the “Prince of Peace.” It is why he was born. It is why he died on a cross. It is why he rose again. To bring us the true peace that passes all understanding, to give to us the world as it was always meant to be, a place where swords become plowshares, where lions lie down with lambs, where peace reigns. Amen.