The Breaker of Weapons--December 29, 2023

The Breaker of Weapons--December 29, 2023

"For the yoke of their burden,

   and the bar across their shoulders,

   the rod of their oppressor,

    you have broken as on the day of Midian.

 For all the boots of the tramping warriors

    and all the garments rolled in blood

    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

 For a child has been born for us,

    a son given to us;

 authority rests upon his shoulders;

   and he is named

 Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." [Isaiah 9:4-6]

I'll bet you know those words.  They are often read on Christmas Eve, as they were this past Sunday evening in the place where I serve.  You might even hear these words set to the music of Handel's "Messiah" (and now I'll probably be humming that tune for the rest of the day).

But I'll confess for my own part that, for all the decades of hearing these words read or sung by flickering candlelight, with poinsettias or a Christmas tree in the background, I have been terribly slow to recognize just what is being said here.  The "child" whom the prophet Isaiah pictures as the coming king is remarkable for breaking the weapons of bullies, bringing an end to war, and liberating people from the grip of oppressors.

And while it's certainly true that all these centuries after Isaiah's time we are still fighting wars against one another, still oppressing and killing each other, and still wielding an ever-increasing array of weapons with which to strike one another, it's worth remembering that Jesus' mission--his purpose, if you will--includes bringing about God's kind of peace and justice, and not just taking souls " up to heaven."  Jesus doesn't accomplish that mission the way past kings or emperors have tried it (at the point of a sword or the muzzle of a rifle), but he has come to bring the peace and justice of God's Reign.  In fact, that may be the greatest reason to hope for Jesus to actually succeed in bringing an end to oppression and violence, because he doesn't use those as his tools to forge peace, like every empire in history has done.  Rome, for example, arrogantly announced that it had established the "Pax Romana" (or see 1 Thessalonians 5:3, when Paul seems to be quoting Roman propaganda about the empire bringing "peace and security"), but what Rome meant by "peace" was something like, "As long as you do what we say and bow before us, there won't be any need for us to kill you all."  When a bully intimidates the other kids into giving him their lunch money so he won't beat them up, don't call that peace.  And when the kids on the playground play the bully's own game against him and gang up to beat him up so that one of them becomes a new bully on the block, that isn't peace, either.  

Jesus' kind of kingship doesn't look like what anybody is used to, though.  For Christ-followers, now more than twenty-five centuries after Isaiah's time, we know that Jesus' life and ministry didn't look like a military campaign or worldwide conquest, and sometimes we end up (wrongly) concluding, "Oh, I guess we wrong to hope about the Messiah bringing peace or justice, too--I guess that isn't part of the deal, after all." But I think that's the wrong move to make: it's not that Jesus isn't really the Messiah, or that we were wrong to hope for an end to war and oppression.  But the way Jesus the Messiah accomplishes God's Reign of peace and justice isn't to fight bullying with more bullying or oppressors with more oppression.  In Isaiah's poetic vision, the promised king doesn't defeat the "rod of the oppressor" by brandishing a bigger weapon, but by breaking the weapon the bully has been using in the first place.  The hoped-for Messiah doesn't intimidate people into obedience by calling himself "Christ the Conqueror" or "the Divine Destroyer," but is known as "Prince of Peace."  The prophet's picture is of someone who uses his authority to break our weapons of war at last, not to launch an arms race so we can blast our enemies to smithereens.  The peace the Messiah brings is not the silence of the graveyard but the sigh of relief from people who had been intimidated and kept in fear.

So as we witness another Christmas day and week come and go from our calendars while wars rage still across the world, I know it is awfully tempting to give into cynicism and declare real peace is too hard to hope for anymore.  It is easy to believe the most we can accomplish is to be the ones with the bigger stick to hit the people we don't like with, so they'll be intimidated into doing what we want.  It sometimes feels like the only realistic hope is to just wish we end up on the side with bigger bombs or larger arsenals.  But that isn't what we are taught to hope for from the prophets.  Isaiah introduces us to Jesus, even if Isaiah himself didn't quite know how to picture what or who was on the way, as the one who brings justice by breaking the weapons of the bullies and oppressors.  This is the One we meet at the manger. 

All hail king Jesus, the Prince of Peace, who disarms us at last.

Lord Jesus, come and disarm us and liberate us from the vicious circles of war and violence in which we have been held captive all our lives.