Imagine All the People Living: A Call to Peace

And I don't know that there is like a perfect kind of thing, like if you could go back, right? We can't. But if you could go back, and by the way, here's one of the great things about living this life of redemption and renewal and resurrection is that, though we do have to live with the consequences of our decisions in the past, there's something about God always being with us that allows for decisions that we didn't think were possible. It's called imagination. [00:57:06] (35 seconds)  #imaginePossibility

Has anybody ever used a compass walking in the woods? Do you know how you do it? You get a line on the compass that follows the topo map, usually the map that shows the topography. And you draw the line, it's like we're going to go there. And you pick usually a tree that's on that line. And then you just walk toward the tree. And if there's something in the way, you keep walking toward the tree. It's steadfast, it's eyes on it. [00:58:32] (30 seconds)  #walkTowardTheTree

And then you just walk toward the tree. And if there's something in the way, you keep walking toward the tree. It's steadfast, it's eyes on it. And I think sometimes the decisions that we are nudged, encouraged, shoved, pushed by God's Spirit to make can feel a little weird. And there's no more weirder decision than to lay down our arms, I think. To lay down our arms in forgiveness. To lay down our arms in apology. To lay down our arms in seeking not so much to be understood as to understand. [00:58:51] (44 seconds)  #layDownArms

And often when we hear that word, we think of like predicting the future, right? I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. But that's typically how we read prophecy. Isaiah is interesting in that it spans a couple of centuries, nearly a couple of centuries. Everything before Isaiah 40 occurs about 150 to 170 years before everything after Isaiah 40. Which is why Isaiah 40 is like frighteningly prescient about the events that occurred while it was happening. Prophets are much better, and much more accurate, actually, at reading the present than they are at reading the future. [01:00:09] (43 seconds)  #prophetsReadNow

When Isaiah was writing and looking at the sort of the handwriting on the wall, not just for the northern tribes of Israel. When it was easy, of course, to say, well, they fell because they made all the kinds of wrong decisions, and they were these bad folks, and we're the true Israelites, right? It's like saying, we're the true Americans, you guys aren't. We're the true Christians, you guys aren't. There's a lot of that going on, not just in our world today, but throughout time. And in the second chapter, there's this beautiful image that Murray read to us so beautifully and prayed to us so beautifully about, about all people ascending the mountain. [01:01:24] (43 seconds)  #noUsVsThem

And England submitted. It was an impressive show, particularly for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, who patterned the civil rights movement here in this country in the 60s after these non-violent precepts that had worked to bring the British Empire to its knees. And while we still have a lot of work to do in this nation to recognize the full humanity of everyone, regardless of the color of our skin, we have come a long way. [01:05:22] (40 seconds)  #nonviolentResistance

If you're struggling, particularly this season, not only in the Christian year or in the Christian calendar, if you're struggling in this season of life in this world, not only America, it just seems like fear is driving us so fiercely, so relentlessly that there seems to be no coming back. It seems to be that, you know, you've got to fight fire with fire. And instead, there's this radical notion that we can call, even and especially those that we think of as our enemies, to full humanity. And this, more than anything else, is the gift of Jesus, the Messiah, who called us all to live a life worth living. [01:06:37] (62 seconds)  #radicalCompassion

It's not a question of whether we will die and how we will live. Christ calls us to a new way of life. Yes, it's risky. Yes, it involves hurt and pain and sorrow. But let me tell you, if you haven't found out already, like Joy told the kids, there's a lot of hurt and pain and sorrow out there. At any rate, we're going to get that. But with hope comes this kind of incredible, extraordinary meaning that overcomes barriers, that reconciles warring tribes against one another so that we can be the people that God created us to be. [01:08:59] (45 seconds)  #hopeReconciles