Isaiah 2:1-5 Commentary

Illustration

Beginning in 1939, Operation Pied Piper relocated 1.5 million Britons inland, North and to the country from cities and coastal towns. Nearly 830,000 of these evacuees were unaccompanied children.

When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, thousands were evacuated within the first 4 days. Children bundled onto trains, marshalled by teachers and government officials. Each had a cardboard box containing a gas mask, with a name pinned to their coat collar. Siblings clutched hands tightly so as not to be separated in the crush. Though plans had been made, execution was shoddy and involved children being bundled back off the trains in strange towns, lined up in town squares as good-hearted citizens (well, one hopes they were good-hearted) appraised the line-up and settled on their wartime houseguests, “I’ll take that one.” Siblings were often separated and, as you can imagine, post-war reports of the treatment of these children run the gamut. By the end of the war, nearly 3.5 British citizens were refugees in their own country. And the fictional Pevensie children would have stood among these evacuees.

I will confess I have never given the Pevensie childrens’ backstory much thought and their billeting in a large manor house with a benignly neglectful professor is very nearly a best case scenario. But I see them differently now: bewildered, frightened and far away from home. My heart thumps in a sympathetic beat as I imagine the heavy worries these young children carry with them. Mom and Dad left in London, which they have just been told is so unsafe that they can’t live there anymore. Homes and pets abandoned to an unknown fate. The immense responsibility they feel for one another, no doubt the news in the papers and the wireless feeding these fears. No wonder we see Peter and Susan acting like little grown-ups and bossing their younger siblings around. Edmund’s cruelty and Lucy’s fears may take part in ordinary childhood AND they may make sense at a deeper level.

The opening lines from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tell us: “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This is a story about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.” Strangely, it is through the particularity of their story — British school children sent away from home to avoid the Blitz and on-going wartime violence — that their story becomes universal. With a brief sentence, we confront the fears of all the years. Our own fears—of fragility, displacement, uncertainty, violence, needing to grow up far too soon—find home here too.

Note: In addition to our weekly sermon commentaries each Monday, check out our special Advent and Christmas Resource page for more sermon ideas and other Advent/Christmas resources.

Commentary:

Isaiah is the story of something that happened to God’s people when they were sent away from Israel because of their disobedience. At first Isaiah tries to warn. But, because all is going well, the people don’t think that they need what he’s selling. Then, in the second portions of the book of Isaiah, they are languishing in exile and Isaiah tries to console. The people, who at last know their need, heed his words and wait in hope for their return to the Promised Land. They are refugees and exiles, waiting for their chance to go home. But, as we may know, when they finally return home, it isn’t what it was when they left. The Temple, their cities, their homes are destroyed. Walls of defense have been torn down. After years of exile, it’s not like they have recently become unsafe but, kicking against the rubble of war, perhaps they have been reminded in uncomfortable ways what they would prefer to ignore most of the time: the world’s great capacity for self-destruction. The fears of all the years are told in Isaiah, in C.S. Lewis’ 1940s stories, in our lives today. Commentator Walter Brueggemann wrote, “It’s tempting for us, in an era of military conflict, nationalism and international mistrust, simply to write off such an announcement as this one, either as unrealistic or as applying to an era only beyond history and not within it … but this text, like so much of the Bible, confronts our resignation with the assurance that God will one day reign — and in peace.” Isaiah’s promise of “in the last days” marries hope to our fears.

But, the fears of all the years are not the whole picture, they’re not even the whole phrase from the beloved Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, in which we sing about “The HOPES and fears of all the years.” This morning’s text gives us an image from Isaiah of what we are to HOPE for — for a world filled with people on pilgrimage to worship God, streaming up the highest mountain to praise God’s name and submit to God’s rule. A world in which God is active: God will teach us. The law will go out. God will judge and settle all our disputes. A world in which people respond to God’s gracious invitation by inviting one another, “Come, let us go up and worship!” A world in which people are so enamoured of a vision of this thing that they have never once seen — a world at peace, without violence, war or hostility — that they lean into it, living toward its impossible truth. Until, at last, “Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” We are not left to stumble in the darkness of fear by ourselves. But rather, to walk in the light of the LORD.