Based on Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
I’ve been a fan of Sherlock Holmes mysteries since I was young. I came by this naturally as both my mother and her father loved reading mystery stories and trying to figure out “who done it” before they reached the climax of the narrative. I marveled at how Sherlock Holmes was a master of noticing small and seemingly insignificant details that would lead him to solving the case. Each clue would help him to finally reach the conclusion of who was guilty and how they had performed their crime. This season of Advent, we will be hearing the stories once again about the promises God made that a Messiah would come. Each week we will have the opportunity to hear clues which build the case that Jesus is the Messiah and that he came so that we would discover for ourselves that truth that God is always with us.
This week we have heard the stories of the promise that the Messiah would bring peace. Finding peace in the world was challenging in Jesus’ time as it is in ours. In Jesus’ time there was the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome” which came by conquering and subjugating as many people as possible. This was peace through war – thus it was a limited and tenuous type of peace. In contrast, the peace of the Messiah is an everlasting peace – it’s Gods shalom which is not just an absence of conflict, but a healing of the nations. How do we find such a peace in our day? Here’s a story that might just offer us a clue…
Have you ever heard of the Mennonite artists Esther and Michael Augsburger? In the 1990s they lived in Washington, D.C. At that time there was a gun buy-back program in Ward 8 in Southeast D.C. The Police Department instituted this purchase program, and it was wildly successful – with thousands of long guns and handguns brought in by D.C. residents. Michael Augsburger heard that the guns were going to be melted down and made into fence posts. He had a different idea, and he and his mother Esther were able to obtain about 3000 disabled guns to create a large sculpture instead. More on this in a little while.
Our scriptures give us clues as to how we can find and create a semblance of God’s peace – the peace of Jesus – in our world today. The reading from Isaiah speaks to us about how God’s people will learn to be peaceful. How “…they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore….” It appears that the Augsburgers found a clue to bring God’s peace to earth in their artistic endeavor with the disabled handguns!
Paul wrote to the believers in Rome that the peace of Jesus is found by living in the light. We are to wake up and realize that we have already been saved through the sacrifice of Jesus. We are to give up the activities of darkness and clothe ourselves with the decent behavior of Jesus the Christ.
Jesus is speaking to the Disciples about when he will return in glory bringing God’s peace to the earth. He tells them that even he does not know the exact return time – only God knows that. Yet he tells them that like in the days of Noah, when people were going about their daily lives and making fun of the weird guy building the big boat, those people missed out on the covenant. Likewise, if people do not pay attention to Jesus’ offer of peace through salvation they will be left behind. The peace of Jesus is to be lived in the here and now, not waiting for some unknown time in the future. Like Paul notes, if we are awake to opportunities to create peace here on earth in our lifetimes, then we will find Jesus among us.
It’s time to pick back up with our story of the guns that became a symbol of peace and life rather than agents of violence and death. The Augsburgers got to work on their sculpture. They melted and molded more than 3000 guns and a whole bunch of other metal into a work of art that is 16-feet tall and weighs 4 tons! They call their finished sculpture “Guns Into Plowshares” and it first resided at Judiciary Square beginning in 1997. It subsequently moved to Eastern Mennonite University’s campus for a number of years before returning to Ward 8 in 2024. It now resides on the campus of what was once St. Elizabeth’s Hospital – approximately 1 mile from where the guns were purchased that make up its form. The Augsburgers molded these weapons into a giant plowshare to bring to life the prophecy of Isaiah. They took their clue from scripture to make peace using the gifts God gave them, while they were living their daily lives in a violent and death-menaced place.
Pastor Richard A. Kauffman writes about finding clues to the peace of Jesus in his teaching and in our daily lives, writing “…According to Matthew…No matter where Jesus is, it is time to stop living in the past and in the future and to start living right now, because whenever the end comes, that is when it will come - in the now - and meanwhile, our best chance at discovering what peace-filled [abundant] life is all about is to start living into it right now, not only one by one but also all together.
I remember something one of my professors told me once, about how the second coming of Christ was an idea cooked up by some church father with only two fingers. The truth, he said, is that Christ comes again, and again, and again - that God has placed no limit on coming to the world but is always on the way to us here and now. The only thing we are required to do is to notice - to watch, to keep our eyes peeled.
‘Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’ How do you deal with a piece of advice like that? Well, why not be ready all the time, not only for the end but for whatever the moment brings? Every morning when you wake up, decide to live the life God has given you to live right now. Refuse to live yesterday over and over again. Resist the temptation to save your best self for tomorrow. Do not put off living the kind of life you meant to live. There is no time for that, no matter how much time is left.
Go ahead and make the decision, write the letter, get the help you need, find someone to love, give yourself away. Why waste your time making preparations for an end time you cannot predict? Live prepared. Live a caught-up life, not a put-off life, so that wherever you are - standing in a field or grinding at the mill, or just going about the everyday business of your life - you are ready for God, for whatever happens next, not afraid but wide awake, watching for the Lord who never tires of coming to the world….”
The Augsburgers used the gifts that God had given them as artists and their ability to live awake and prepared to seize an opportunity to make a bold statement about how we can be peacemakers. They figured out how to put scripture to work in our world – they realized that the Bible is not just a bunch of dusty words now many thousands of years old. Scripture, especially the teachings of Jesus, are clues for us about how we can live our lives in ways that bring the peace of Jesus to life in our day and time.
The clue to finding Jesus’ peace is to live awake and prepared. Awake to how God the Holy Spirit is moving in our midst and prepared to mesh our God-given gifts and our knowledge of the teachings of the Bible to be able to make peace a reality. Opportunities are all around us to find creative ways to make the world a little more peaceful. It doesn’t take any of us being Sherlock Holmes to see the clues that Jesus left behind. It’s time to take notice, however, of his teachings and our need to apply them to our lives and world. One way to find Jesus this Advent is to find a way to implement his peace – and it doesn’t have to be 16 feet tall and weigh 8,000 pounds. It just has to fit your gifts and understanding of what it means to be a disciple. I’m looking forward to hearing how will you find and implement the peace of Jesus in our world. May God make it so, amen!