Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10 , Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12
God’s Kingdom of Peace comes non-violently when we establish distributive justice in the world, which you heard in Neville’s sermon last week.

Sadly, violence is the dominant method that civilisations have tried to secure enduring peace. Such violence, common at the time of Jesus and which claimed his life, continues into the present – witness Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, W Papua in Indonesia, Aboriginal people in Australia where in the NT intervention, Government resorted to violence to bring peace (Film `Our Generation`). At the personal level we indulge our minds in hours of violence in the virtual reality of screen, video and print and many go on to live it out in seeking to resolve domestic, social and political issues. We even abuse and pollute the environment that sustains us. Enduring peace never comes this way, because violence inevitably precipitates more violence.

At Advent, we celebrate the coming of Jesus’ non-violent way, which we are responsible for teaching anew to the next generation. At Advent, God’s transforming message (Gospel) of enduring peace through non-violence and justice is foreshadowed in the birth narratives of Jesus, inspired by OT readings such as Isaiah 11 and Psalm 72. Here the dream is expressed as: The lion will lie down with the lamb and in Psalm 72, justice will flourish and fullness of peace forever - A Utopian Vision. John the Baptist, in our Matthew reading, proclaims that God’s Kingdom of Peace and Justice will come when we repent of our sin, or in the Greek word metanoia, change the way we think. By changing the way we think, we change the way the powers of the world act to bring about peace. However John the Baptist anticipated the coming Utopia within the dominant understanding of Judaism in that era:

A Davidic messiah as the warrior king who would destroy the enemies of Israel and institute an era of unending peace .....

Thus we read of the anticipated Messiah:

... 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, then he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.`

These are the words of an Apocalyptic. One who claims a special revelation (an apocalypse) of a day, when God will come in a campaign of punitive violence to cleanse the world of evil (Sadly this theology persists in much of the Church today). However Jesus was programmatically non-violent. Jesus makes a Paradigm Shift from proclaiming John’s Apocalyptic Utopia to proclaiming a Utopia of non-violent collaboration between God and man. From this arose Jesus’ Kingdom of God movement, where God and not Caesar reigns. In this Kingdom, the Spirit of Jesus expects his present followers to work systematically and non-violently in partnership with God, to bring about a just and compassionate world. In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu `God without us will not, as we without God cannot`. Tutu lived it out in the `Truth and Reconciliation Commission` to heal the violence of Apartheid. Tutu was also inspired by the dream of demokratia (Democracy) that first arose in Greece around the time Isaiah had his prophetic dream. Jesus’ Kingdom of God movement, combined with the demokratia ideal and radically altered the course of our history, giving us the freedom and peace we enjoy in Australia today, which is why people risk their lives to come here. Violence from injustice often emanates from the monopolisation of political power and economic wealth by the few. A democracy is a powerful tool for sharing this power with the people of the ruling few (tyrer). It is one of God’s tools to achieve the Dream of `government of the humble, by the humble for the humble` (Keane), celebrated in Mary’s Advent song (Luke 1:52) `He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble`. This is why Democracy properly applied helps achieve God’s Dream of enduring Peace.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, a leading liberal Baptist preacher from New York (where going to hear him preach was like getting a ticket to a U2 concert) said in the early part of last century: `this progressive interpretation is a religion of hope, where men and women participate in the unfolding of God’s reign in the world. This view, inspires hope that faith can better humanity and correct injustice if we do God’s work`.

Fosdick was no fool. He did not see progressive Christianity as a smooth path to modernist perfection. `The course of humanity is like a river,` he wrote; ` sometimes it flows so slowly that one hardly knows that it moved at all; sometimes bends come in its channel so that one can hardly see in what direction it intends to go; sometimes there are back eddies so that it seems to be retreating on itself.` Human history happens in fits and starts.. `a fight, tragic and ceaseless, against destructive forces.` ... Fosdick insisted, `The world needs something more than the soft gospel of inevitable progress.`

The missing piece, according to Fosdick, is that humankind is not subject to some blind force of Darwinian evolutionary progress. Rather people need a `spiritual interpretation of Life`. How do we know that history is a river and not a whirlpool? Fosdick’s answer: It is Faith that gives Christianity the hope to`tell that the river of human history is flowing out towards the kingdom of God`(from Butler Bass). This faith (my last Wembley Downs Sermon) comes from Jesus’ trust ethic that he advocated and practised, where the Kingdom of God, is characterised by the essential goodness of creation of us and of our neighbour. Only with this trust ethic can democracy work effectively to create a more just and peaceful world (Funk). Democracy is a fragile and imperfect beast on its own. It needs Jesus’ trust ethic to function effectively to create a just and peaceful world. Even Democracies can foster violence in pursuit of peace as we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and the NT intervention.
Enduring Peace does not just happen even in a Democracy. It requires a Paradigm Shift, a revolution, a transformation, a turning, a type of metamorphosis in the way we think. In Isaiah 11, we first see this radical new spiritual insight flowing into human consciousness and challenging us with the unthinkable: `The oppressor Lion lying down with the oppressed lamb`. Visualise Barack Obama sitting down with Osama Bin Laden to resolve the wars in the Middle East. Or Tony Abbot with Julia Gillard, on a Carbon Tax to counter our war against Climate. The Burmese Generals with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to bring justice to the people of Burma. Negotiations to bring about an enduring Peace, based on Justice between warring factions of humanity.

Barack Obama, Aung San Suu Kyi and most recently Liu Xiaobo of China were awarded Noble Peace prizes as a result of the Hope they engender for such Peace. From this Hope eventually comes Peace through non-violence. Why is the Noble prize for Peace issued in Norway and not Sweden? Because Norway is the only modern European democratic nation state founded without the violence of War – thanks to the paradigm shifts of Jesus and demokratia. Many (even in the Pulpit) questioned the merit of Obama’s Peace Prize, because they appeared to have forgotten the Gospel (God’s transforming message) that before Peace without violence there must first be Hope.

A story
We are all called to commit to this Paradigm Shift no matter where we are in our faith journey. I was reminded of this, when walking past tombstones in a churchyard in Kent, England. Reading the typical inscriptions `In memory of ... In memory of ..`, I came to one which read `God is Love`. A Paradigm shift in the nature of inscriptions of that Graveyard. A shift from memorialising in stone `God as Self` to `God in Self`. Not only was the inscription different from the others, but the name did not belong in Kent. It was not a Smith, a Wright or Taylor. It was `Bonnevie` of French/Italian origin. A stranger in the Kentish countryside proclaiming a dream he felt compelled to share with others, who might chance to pass by his grave.

Ernst Bonnevie was born in 1891 in Norway and died in July 1952 a long way from home. In 1951 he sold his home and business and bought boat tickets to NZ for himself and his wife. The trip began with a stopover in Kent, to celebrate Christmas with their eldest daughter and grandchildren. She had escaped the German invasion of Norway while her 4 teenage siblings became entrapped and were swept into the Norwegian resistance. At war’s end three settled in NZ to begin a new life and the one who remained in Norway later committed suicide.
Soon after arriving in England, Ernst was diagnosed with Cancer. For the next 6 months while battling the disease, he reflected on his life and loss of faith in the God of his Lutheran Church. For Ernst and many Europeans of the 20th Century, belief in an all powerful loving God who could, but did not intervene in the world of suffering and violence had slowly died. That symbol of God for these folk finally died with the Slaughter of the 1st World War, the Great Depression of the 30’s, the 2nd World War, with the horrors of the holocaust, the cold war, an iron curtain and the atomic bomb.

Ernst went from being a believer to an agnostic, but retained an instinctive faith (Trust) that life had meaning and purpose. The local vicar pointed Ernst to the actual life and teachings of Jesus. This caused a Paradigm Shift in Ernst’s thinking. He found in the Historical Jesus the meaning of God. This he could not find in the Nicene Jesusof the Creeds. His faith rekindled as he looked back over his life and realised that God had been his intimate partner from his first breath to his last. In the love of his wife, his children, friends and many strangers he met. In the freedom and justice of his beloved democratic Norway and in the beauty of nature that sustained his life. As his life ebbed away, he wrote:

`Life has no meaning without God. A human being who has not found God is irresolute, restless and cannot find peace.

God’s kindness has no limit. The misfortune in the world is because people have put themselves in God’s place and have forgotten him.
In all human beings there is a little spark of God and this spark bursts into flame when death is near, if it hasn’t done so before. It has nothing to do with the fear of death.

My greatest wish is that all my children and grandchildren will find God earlier in life than I, for God is Love`

At his request, these words from 1 John 4:8, were placed by his Children on his tomb stone. In this, he shared God’s Transforming Message with the World.

Are we also prepared for the paradigm shift needed in our Theology, to assist future generations bring enduring Peace on Earth. AMEN

References
Robert J Miller ed. 2010. The Complete Gospels: The Scholars Version. Polebridge Press. P68
Dianna Butler Ross, 2010, A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story. HarperCollins. Pp 268-269.
John Keane, 2010, The Life and Death of Democracy. Simon and Shuster, UK. pp x.
John Dominic Crossan, 2009, First Light: Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Living the Questions, Participant reader. 55pp.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, 2007, `The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Birth`. Harper One. 259pp.
Robert W. Funk et al., 1997, The Five Gospels: What did Jesus really say? Harper Collins. 553pp.
Robert W. Funk, 1998, The Coming Radical Reformation: Twenty-one Theses. The Fourth R, Volume 11, 4, July/August
Richard Smith, 2005, The Ancestors and Descendants of Ernst and Johanne Bonnevie (1683-2005). Private 33pp.
Richard Smith, 2010, Whence comes the power of faith. Wembley Downs Uniting Church, Sermon 3rd Oct 2010.