Flame and Flower: An Unexpected Peace

Isaiah 11.1-9

Russ Dean, December 9, 2001

 

On June 23, 1988 a lightning strike ignited a stand of Lodgepole Pine trees near Shoshone Lake, in the southwest corner of Yellowstone National Park. The trees were dry from several months of drought. When the snows of November finally put out the fire, 800,000 of Yellowstone’s 2.2 million acres had been burned. In those months almost 10,000 firefighters had fought the blaze with the help of $120 million taxpayer dollars. (A joke circulating at the time asked: How do you fight a wildfire? The answer: Pour money on it until it rains!)

            In the summer of 1990 Amy and I worked in Yellowstone in a ministry assignment with college student volunteers. The fire’s devastation was still clear. We grew accustomed to the black barrenness of a terrain that should have been dense and green.

            A good friend of ours is a ranger with the National Forest Service. Dan was called to duty to fight the inferno, and his stories are amazing. I had never imagined the power of a raging wildfire. A common firefighting strategy is to clear-cut a path ahead of the fire in order to deprive the fire of its fuel. But this tactic failed repeatedly in Yellowstone, because the fury of this fire was so great that it often cast fireballs into the wind, over the clear-cut, and into untouched forest beyond. In one instance the bewildered fighters stood on a riverbank, watching helplessly as the flame advanced to the water’s edge… and then burned across the surface of the river, igniting grass that was growing up from the river’s bottom. Once on the opposite bank, the fire breathed new life, and continued its march.

            Since the park’s establishment in 1872 a policy of fire suppression had been followed.[1] Through a natural burning process, the forest clears itself of dead trees, thus reducing “fuel” for other fires. Burning also recycles organic material which otherwise does not decompose in the climate of Yellowstone. So, after many years of suppressing natural fires, Yellowstone was a fuel-rich tinderbox, simply waiting to be ignited.

 

            One of our favorite pictures from our year in the Big Sky country is a close-up shot that we took of a burned-out stump, charred from flame, and black as pitch. At the base of that lifeless stump a flower grew -- with vibrant green leaves and beautiful purple blooms. In a wilderness of death, the delicate petals proclaim the tenacity of life, and for a preacher, they shout of the always unexpected peace of God – from the burned-out stump of Jesse… a shoot will come up!

 

            In an Advent season of season of waiting, watching, hoping, again, for the coming of Christ among us, the prophet, Isaiah, still speaks to us. His words have been hailed for centuries as emblematic of God’s ultimate reign, of God’s “Peaceable Kingdom.”

            But we do not live in that kingdom, do we? Osama bin Laden is out there, hiding. And in plain view, Hussein, and Kaddafi, and Arafat -- hundreds of enemies -- just waiting to spoil our kingdoms and destroy peace. Where was Isaiah living? And what was he thinking?

 

            We have struggled on recent Wednesday nights, to gain a better perspective of the tragedy of September 11^th. We have sought the words of various “experts,” but most of us have come away empty-handed. Peace? In this world? It must be only a dream, as wild as Isaiah’s world where natural predator and prey rest together. I will offer you no trite answers this morning. Certainly no quick fixes or utopian optimism, but I do believe that Isaiah offers several words for us today.

 

            First, we need to recognize that Isaiah’s world, even in the eighth century before Christ, was our world. His was a world of great danger. Of terror and war. Of alliances of convenience and allegiances of political expediency. Though the book bearing his name is actually a collection of writings that covers a period of several hundred years, in these early chapters, Isaiah was concerned for Judah (the southern kingdom of the now-divided nation). The king of Israel had forged a political alliance with his neighbor in Damascus, Syria. Together, they were threatening the security of Judah.[2] To Judah’s king, Ahaz, Isaiah speaks words of prophecy:

“The Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel… before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.”[3]

 

            These words for Isaiah were not about an unrealizable future. They were not pie-in-the-sky spiritualizing about a spiritual savior and a heavenly kingdom. They were a prophecy of practical reality. In this world. In your time. You will see peace.

So, too, in today’s text, he writes not of a future, attainable only by apocalyptic disaster and the “supernatural intervention of God,”[4] but of a ruler – a real, human leader, whose righteousness would lead the nation to peace. Christians have come to understand Isaiah’s prophecy also in a broader context, as a reference to the coming of The Christ, who would grant peace with God. And this interpretation is justified, unless we spiritualize Christ’s peace, and allow it to numb our desire to pursue earthly peace, and to make our hands idle to the task.

            Isaiah’s first challenge to us today, then, is to begin to see peace as a practical possibility. Far too much of the Christian world has washed its hands of the business of global peace, comforting itself only with the self-interested assurance that in that great apocalypse true believers will not be “Left Behind,”[5] and that ultimate peace can be achieved only by God, and then, only “in the end.”

            But Jesus taught his disciples to pray: Thy kingdom come on earth… as it is in heaven. How do you pray? Is peace possible? In your own private world? Is peace even a possibility?

What practical steps are you taking, personally, to pursue peace? Confession, here, is a practical step in pursuit of private peace. Did you hear the words Amy said to you a few moments ago: You Are Forgiven. Be at peace. Only you can make peace with yourself.

But, if we can learn to look at ourselves honestly, perhaps we can begin to look at one another with compassion and understanding. And if we can begin to confess our sins to each other, to seek one another’s forgiveness, perhaps communities, even nations could take the same simple step. What are our failures as a community? As a nation. How can we seek peace?

            Isaiah’s first word, for a 21^st century community comforted only by the sounds of its own weapons of war, is a prophecy of practical peace. Seek peace, and pursue it. Personally. Communally. Nationally. Globally.

            But there must be some larger, driving vision. If the first, practical word says, I need to ask Amy’s forgiveness for my short temper, for my selfishness, for being utterly maddening to live with, the second word is this: I’m going to promise her that this time I’m really going to change! I promise!

The practical must always be driven by the impractical. The realistic by the unrealistic. The expected by the unexpected. Peace is born on the wings of wild dreams, and is nurtured with tender hands, which give attention to practical details.

 

[This is not a political sermon. It is meant as a pastoral one. What do you dream? How do you practice? But I want to make one comment. I have no easy answers for September 11^{th --} for Osama, for al Qaeda, for terrorism. But what if the President of the United States of America had called together a coalition of the world’s greatest minds, and had demanded a solution to terrorism prohibiting the use of violence. And, what if he had placed 9 billion dollars on the table before them? Do you think they could have come up with a strategy? Of course they could have.

 

We have spent 9 billion dollars in the last three months, in the world’s oldest and least successful strategy for “fighting fire,” but how much peace have we really bought?

 

You say “you’re dreaming, preacher. You’re being too idealistic” And I say, “You bet your bottom dollar I am.” And when there are no dreamers and no dreams… this world will be no one’s home.]

 

Peace. With myself. With my neighbor. With my enemy. With my God… is born on the wings of wild dreams, and is nurtured with tough hands, which work out the hard, practical details of living, together.

What do you dream? How do you practice?

 

            Back in Yellowstone… biologists have discovered that:

the structure and composition of many of the plant communities… throughout the Northern Rockies -- is dependent on fire. Lodgepole Pine developed serotinous cones, which won’t open without exposure to [great] heat...[6]

 

Don Despain, a leading plant ecologist, observed that when the fires burned sagebrush fields, it burnout out “black holes” in the earth. Several years later, as the sagebrush began to regenerate, he noted, "The only place sagebrush is coming back is in those black holes."[7]

 

This lesson in biology illustrates Isaiah’s third, and most important point for us today: Peace always produces growth. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. The Bible does not try to smooth over the truth that you and I and all the world already know: fire is inevitable. In fact, the prophet John warned of the judgment of the “unquenchable fire of God.” The only question for the followers of Jesus, is how will we fight the fire? Will we respond with more fire, or with God’s peace?

The prophet Jeremiah warned the people that some would cry “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” You see, peace is not the absence of war. Peace is not prosperity. Peace is not national security. Peace is a state of internal “rightness” that God desires for individuals and nations, which is made manifest by the flower that blooms after the flame.

 

Are you at peace? If you are growing – struggling, striving, seeking – then somewhere deep within there is a flower blossoming, even if you can still smell smoke. Feed it with your wildest dreams, and nurture it with hands of tough and tender care. In this world of suicide bombers and anthrax, of cancer and divorce, of disease and sure death, the shoot of a burned-out stump reminds us -- any peace is unexpected.

Flame? Or Flower? Which grows in you today?