The Prince and His Nephews: A Sermon on Matthew 1:4 (Fallen Leaves from the Family Tree of Jesus)

It was a hot May day in the desert. But not a quiet one. Nahshon had a feeling it wouldn't be long, and he was right. Behind him, he heard the distinctive tones as one of his linen-clad nephews blasted a sharp note of alarm with a silver trumpet. It was the twentieth day of the month of Iyar, and that sound meant it was time to finally move. Nahshon sprang into action. As the sound of the trumpet faded, he spun around to face the giant tent, and saw no cloud. It drifted instead overhead, on its way to another site, and they had to start the chase, the hunt. So Nahshon gave the orders for everyone to break down their own tents, pack them on their carts as quickly as they could. He was itching to move. And he'd have to lead the way.

It took longer than he would have liked. Nahshon may have been in the dusky years of later life, but if one virtue had struggled to grow in him, it was patience. Nahshon had always been a man of action. Never fond of waiting. Never fond of sitting around. So the last eleven months, stationary camping on the plateau at the mountain's foot, had been a strain. He couldn't wait to hit the open sands. No matter. It was time to move now. And as soon as all the tents were packed away, he shouted for his flag-bearer to raise the tribal standard high and proud. And Nahshon, his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his grandson not far behind, began the steady march – his eyes fixed like a falcon's on the shadow of that precious cloud to guide him, step by step, as an entire nation trailed in his wake. His sandals assiduously pounded the sand, daring all Israel to keep up.

The day's march was long. And as he routinely checked himself, slowed himself, so that his family and clan and tribe and people could keep up, he found it best to blunt the edge of impatience with nostalgia. He let his mind wander back to where it all started. Back, at first, to his days as a boy. He grew up in Goshen, an easterly stretch of the Nile river delta in Lower Egypt. He remembered the scoldings and the occasional playfulness of his father Amminadab, who always told him what a squirmy baby he'd been. He thought back to those days of middle boyhood, being teased by his big sister Elisheba, their exasperated father keeping peace between them when he could. Not that he always could. Nahshon didn't understand until he grew a little bit, that their family was subject to forced labor, baking bricks and laying bricks and baking bricks and laying bricks, all at the whim of rather distant Egyptian overseers armed with whips. Amminadab had tried to shelter Nahshon as long as he could. Nahshon was grateful for the glimpses of innocence. But they couldn't last.

Nahshon had grown. In the years of his strength, forced into labor himself, drafted into the chain gangs – but he still had time to himself, too. Time to attend his sister's wedding, for instance. Nahshon was still fairly young when it happened. He remembered his feeling of surprise when his sister married outside the tribe. Her new husband was a bit older, though not as old as Amminadab, and brought with him a sister-in-law. They said they had another brother, one secreted away and raised as a child of the nursery in the palace of the pharaoh's power. That was the story of Nahshon's brother-in-law's brother. It'd be a while before Nahshon really met him.

Nahshon had grown some more. Married a wife of his own. Had a son. They lived for years, decades. Often visited his sister Elisheba and her husband Aaron. Watched their own boys grow. Nahshon remembered doting on his nephews, cradling their infant bodies in his arms, all four of them, one by one. Saw them play, saw them learn, saw them keenly study and listen to their father's wisdom. As Nahshon got to know his brother-in-law, he was proud of his sister's choice in marrying him. And for his part, as Nahshon's grit and determination got him ahead, as he gained a reputation for learning and virtue and character, as he rose to a position of prominence in his father's house, in his clan system, indeed, in the entire tribe of Judah – well, Aaron more frequently started telling Elisheba that he, Aaron the Levite, was glad he'd married the sister of Nahshon of Judah!

Nahshon couldn't say he fully enjoyed life yet. Not while the chains of Egypt hung so heavy on his neck. But then it happened. Nahshon could hardly believe his ears. Aaron's brother, returning from exile among a foreign people. Aaron was the one who told him – had run into Nahshon's house, urged him to drop everything and come along, and greet his brother as he came back to Goshen. Nahshon remembered meeting the man in passing before. But not like this. Time to get to know this man, this brother, this Moses.

Moses kept Aaron busy. So busy that it seemed like Elisheba and the boys were at Nahshon's house nearly daily while her husband and his brother carried on a rough and disappointing diplomacy with the pharaoh. But far from a fruitless one. See, Moses had come to them, insisting that he'd encountered the God of their ancestors in the desert, that he'd been seized by the voice of Yahweh in a shrub on fire, that he'd been commissioned to bring liberation, rescue, salvation to their overburdened people. Nahshon was a hard sell – he'd heard the stories, but hadn't been sure he really believed they mattered any more, not after centuries of abandonment to slavery. But if this Yahweh was ready to show himself, far be it from me – Nahshon thought – to doubt once he saw.

Reports began trickling into Goshen. Something had gone wrong upstream in the Nile, making the water putrid. The land outside their district was full of frogs, gnats, scorpions. Livestock were catching diseases, people were infected with lesions, storms pummeled the land, locusts invaded the fields, a sandstorm fiercely blotted out the sun. Nahshon would scarcely have believed it, if the reports hadn't been so consistent, because where he lived, he saw nothing of the kind. And still the diplomacy had few effects. Then came the day, early last spring, when Aaron came and got him, dragged Nahshon along to a secret counsel with Moses. Leaders from other tribes were there, too. Moses gave instructions for a new ritual – told them to butcher their lambs, smear blood on the doorframes, shelter their homes from a disaster to come that would steal every firstborn male of man and beast. Nahshon, eldest son of his father and father of an eldest son, took no chances. And he made sure not a house in his tribe lacked the same. They ate that night in haste, staff in hand, as a sign; and went to bed fully dressed.

Early in the morning, before it was yet light, Aaron gave Nahshon the news. Disaster had hit Egypt, they'd been called to the palace not long after midnight, their freedom was granted. You didn't have to tell Nahshon twice! He gathered his family and herds, they took whatever they could carry, and Nahshon was so bold as to venture outside Goshen and pester grieving Egyptian homes for gifts to send them on their way. The Egyptians, for their part, were all too happy to just be rid of Hebrews. No time for breakfast, no time for lunch – Nahshon ate unleavened cakes as he walked. They marched southeast to Tjeku and the Isle of Atum in the Great Black, then curved north to the Sea of Reeds – a thirty-one mile walk. Good thing Nahshon was used to being on his feet.

Nahshon was alarmed to realize they were so close to an Egyptian garrison. Alarmed even more when he heard the pharaoh had changed his mind, given an order to pursue. Nahshon remembered the panic, the urgency – caught in their peril, backed up against a body of water they couldn't swim. Nahshon hadn't cared – he'd started plunging in anyway, a desperate confidence driving him onward, trusting that this God Moses talked about was hardly about to let them get killed. And sure enough, a wind blew him back, blew the water back, held it in place so they could march across the lake bed. Their pursuers never knew what hit 'em. Safely on the far bank, Nahshon had danced and sang and danced and sang; his wife, his sister, danced and played tambourines with Aaron's sister Miriam. What a beautiful time!

They couldn't take the north road through the desert – not with so many Egyptian forts guarding the way. They had veered south. Days passed, sixty miles beneath their sandals. Their waterskins ran dry. Suddenly, Nahshon had seen it – water, water! But, getting there, he found it was the hated Bitter Lakes. No good at all. He found his own dry mouth murmuring as he followed Moses with a bit of resentment. Fortunately, it wasn't long 'til the desert expert led them to an oasis he knew, at the edge of a riverbed. At Elim, Nahshon drank, he gave to his wife and son to drink, he filled his waterskins. Their next travels took them close to the sea – he recalled good fishing, and digging shallow holes to let them fill with filtered water. Ah, the tricks of desert life! Still, he'd been hungry – until Moses bade them wait for a solution. Soon, all the shrubs were coated with flaky crisps, curious white... well, Nahshon never did figure out what that was. And common quail dropped from the sky as the sun got low. So with poultry and flaky crisps, he'd kept his stomach from haunting him, day by day.

Passing next through the turquoise-mining district – thankfully devoid of Egyptians during the summer months – and then through a few riverbeds – they found themselves thirsty in the desert once more. Nahshon watched, he remembered, in wonder as Moses skillfully looked for black bands in a rock and tapped them with his staff, and water began to pour out – praise Yah! Still, there wasn't much, and another band of nomads, the sons of Amalek, were jealous of it – they'd had to fight them off, there at Rephidim. It was there, Nahshon recalled, that Moses had seen the wisdom of not micromanaging every petty tiff in the nation. Moses asked Nahshon to handle some of the larger cases, and if he couldn't figure out a solution, then to bring them to him. Glad to help.

It was the start of a third month, the first day of Sivan, beneath a new moon, when their eastward turn brought its dividends. They'd come out on a fine plateau beneath a looming mountain. That was the one, Moses said, the one where it would happen. And there was water here, and some patchy grass for their famished livestock, and all in all, enough room to pitch their tents for a while. Nahshon was glad to have a chance to finally wash his clothes – after a month and a half of sweat, he could barely stand their stink himself! And then it happened. On the third day of Sivan. He... even all these months later, he scarcely could figure out how to describe it. But it was what Moses had said. Fire from heaven. Trumpets of angels. Smoke and burning and tempest winds. It all settled up on the mountain; there, it rested. Nahshon whispered what he knew. Yahweh... it was Yahweh up there, in the fire and darkness. Nahshon had quaked in his sandals at the sight and smell and sound. A long trumpet blare summoned them close, but knowing that touching the mountain meant death, Nahshon and the rest held back, begging Moses to be their human shield. So Moses went up, down, brought words to live by.

Nahshon remembered a day not so long after that one. A day when Moses read the covenant to them, sprinkled them with blood – some had fallen on Nahshon's lip, its iron tinge tainting his tongue – as they vowed to live for Yahweh, their only God, who would accept no rivals and no divided loyalties. And then Nahshon got that awe-inspiring invitation. To go up. Up into the dark cloud. Up to... to... Well, up he went, climbing after Moses. His brother-in-law was there. So were his two oldest nephews, Nadab and Abihu. So was his cousin Hur. The most venerable and respected Hebrews climbed up, piercing the cloud. And Nahshon... Oh, he could barely believe his eyes! He looked up, and it was like a shield of blue, like the lid of the sky, but... but like sapphires and sunlight and... and... beyond description, but so perfectly clear! And on it, he knew there was a throne, and he could... he could see the feet of Yahweh over the sky, and he dared not look any higher, lest the flames all around bite him to shreds! But there, his heart pounding, surrounded by unquenchable brightness, he and the other men unloaded their bags of provisions... and held a picnic lunch. They ate and drank on the lower slopes, sharing a feast, in some unspeakable way, with the God of infinite glory.

And then Moses told them to wait, there in the cloud. And he went up, up, up further, climbed into the light... and left them alone, those seventy-odd men. They waited for a while, but got impatient, maybe unsettled by the uncanny sense of millions of angel eyes monitoring them unseen – Nahshon certainly felt it – and then, amidst the people, as days turned to weeks and there was no sign of Moses... Well, Nahshon didn't like to think about what happened next. But when Moses showed up after forty days, Nahshon had never seen a man so furious in all his life. Nahshon recalled the bitter taste of gold flakes in the water – the penalty for turning so quickly from Yahweh's laws of worship. Nahshon recalled hundreds or thousands dropping like flies – some slashed by Levite blades, others getting sick and never getting better. Frightful times.

Later, Nahshon remembered, he'd gone to hear from Moses, after Moses had gone up and come down again. And that same light, that same captivating and terrifying light, beamed out of his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth. Nahshon could scarcely believe that the echoes of glory could be that bright down below. Moses explained that it was time to bring Yahweh's fire and cloud down from the mountain, and into their midst. They needed to give what they could, and labor, and build a tent to receive him. And so they had. The son of Nahshon's second cousin Uri, a bright upstart named Bezalel, co-ran the project. Nahshon was mighty proud of the boy, though he admittedly felt a twinge of jealousy it wasn't his son or grandson in the lead.

Still, it took less than six months to harvest the wood, overlay some with gold, weave the fabrics, and so on. It was done by the end of the year, set up as spring rolled 'round again. Nahshon remembered. He remembered as his nephews – what fantastic nephews – washed and had themselves anointed with oil. As the nephews and their dad Aaron secluded themselves in the outer skirts of the tent for a week, Nahshon donated, on behalf of his tribe of Judah, a pair of oxen and a cart, to help with transporting this big tent when it was time to move. And then, for twelve days, each tribal leader gave gifts: a silver plate, silver basin, gold dish, fine flour, oil, incense, a bull, six rams, five goats, six lambs, two oxen. Nahshon felt privileged to make his presentation first, with all the ceremony he could muster. As he directed the tribesmen physically carrying the objects, as he surveyed the people of Judah looking to him for leadership, he couldn't help but remember Jacob's blessing on his ancestor: “Judah, your brothers shall praise you..., your father's sons shall bow down before you,” Jacob said. “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” Nahshon felt it. He felt like a king that day.

Then for the next eleven day, he watched as the other tribal chiefs, the princes, stepped forward for their own tribes and gave the same gifts – from Nethanel of Issachar through Ahira of Naphtali. Then, at the end, the altar was anointed by the newly minted priests as they were fully consecrated and installed. The glory of Yahweh shone out from the tent, Nahshon and his kin had fallen on their faces and shouted praise as the fire of Yahweh devoured their offerings on the newly dedicated altar. What a day!

But not the next day. The next day, Nahshon heard the awful news. Aaron's cousins Mishael and Elzaphan had been seen carting Nahshon's nephews – well, the eldest two, Nadab and Abihu, the ones who'd shared the meal on the mountain – carting them away by their clothes. Dead. They'd... Why had they died? Nahshon had a hard time wrapping his head around it. But they'd introduced coals from their private supply, mingled them in a way they weren't supposed to, tried out an inventive ritual at the altar, and God had struck them down. Dead. Nahshon could hardly believe his ears when he heard it. Nahshon's other nephews, Eleazar and Ithamar, and their dad were too terrified to even eat their portion of the offering. But they were forbidden to cry. Later that day, they struggled to hold back their tears as, with traumatized faces, they told Nahshon what they'd seen – how the fire had lashed out before their eyes, striking from Yahweh's holy tent, and consuming their brothers.

Nahshon was under no law not to weep. He wept, he wept profoundly for his wayward nephews who'd earned themselves such a fate. He wept for the pain of his brother-in-law and two living nephews, for the weight they had to carry, the terrible and awful and burdensome pain of priesthood and loss and grief. He wept for his people. He wept with God. A day or two later – it was all a blur of tears – was their first Passover in the desert. Nahshon's heart was heavier than most as they celebrated the anniversary of their freedom. Hadn't seen hide nor hair of an Egyptian since. Good riddance, Nahshon thought as he ate lamb and bitter herbs in the evening, readying himself for a week of eating unleavened bread after that. Most of Israel ate with them, though Mishael and Elzaphan, still just barely unclean from burying Nadab and Abihu, were told they'd eat theirs next month.

A couple weeks passed. Nahshon spent more time, when he could, with his surviving nephews, though priests were a busy lot, ministering daily on the same ground where their brothers had died, standing at the same spot. Nahshon couldn't fathom how they found the strength to do it. But God gave it to them. They were just very careful to be as meticulous and exact as they could be. Imprecision had no place in what they did. Nahshon was still wrestling with his emotions when, the day of the next full moon, the first day of Iyar again, Moses and Aaron came to visit him. He'd embraced Aaron in consolation as Moses explained Yahweh had given orders for every tribe to count all the adult men, twenty and up, anybody able to fight and defend against the other nomads and nations in this part of the world. Somebody from each tribe had to help – the tribal chiefs. Yahweh had handpicked Nahshon for the job. So as the entire tribe gathered, Nahshon went forth and organized them by clans and fathers' houses, and wrote down the name of each one, counting them off head by head. It was a long day – there were thousands of names to write! But by nightfall, a long and hungry day's work, Nahshon had final figures to report to Moses and Aaron.

Not quite three weeks went by. Nahshon greeted Mishael and Elzaphan as they ate their belated Passover lamb. And six days after that, it happened. He'd been waiting. Waiting for the day the cloud and fire that rose up from over the dwelling-tent of Yahweh would be on the move. Nahshon had been listening every morning for Eleazar or Ithamar to blast their newfangled silver trumpets. And now the day had come, the twentieth of Iyar, putting an end to just a week or so shy of a year spent at the foot of Mount Sinai. Nahshon, at the head of Judah which was at the head of the three tribal encampments eastward from the entrance of the tabernacle which the priests guarded, had the banner hoisted high – and, as we said before, marched energetically into the desert.

On that day, too, Nahshon felt like a king, just like Judah heard from Jacob. And rightly he did. Because we're told that from Nahshon and his son came a grandson, then a great-grandson, and so on, onward through the days and years and generations, to the family of Jesse in Bethlehem, and a youngest son named David, raised up as king of all Israel, and whose son Solomon reigned after him, and so on, and so on. By ancient prophecies that Nahshon knew, his blood would become royal blood. Every king of the Jews, from David down, looked back to Nahshon as their forefather in the wilderness, whose son or grandson lived to inherit the land of promise. And yet Nahshon's sister was the mother of every priest, starting from his nephews Eleazar and Ithamar, to his grandnephew Phinehas, down through generations – the good like Zadok and Jeshua, the bad like Annas and Caiaphas, all of 'em. Every one, thanks to Nahshon and his sister, a distant cousin of the royal line.

Generations of rabbis in Jewish history have waxed eloquent on how great Nahshon was, even though we don't know how far forward throughout Numbers his story continued. Rabbis said he was the leading Israelite of his day, that his spiritual merit exceeded all the other tribal chiefs, that he was already a king, that he was known as God's beloved. One medieval Spanish rabbi, Bahya ben Asher, was fascinated that “the tribe representing royalty and the tribe representing priesthood formed a liaison through marriage,” and he imagined that when Nahshon brought his gifts to dedicate the altar, he must surely have been thinking forward to his two greatest descendants: Solomon and the Messiah. Even one modern Jewish scholar, Nahum Sarna, marveled at how the marriage of Aaron to Nahshon's sister “betokens the interrelationship of the priesthood and royalty.”

This fascinated them, Jewish rabbis and scholars throughout the ages. And they were right to marvel, and so should we! But we have even greater reason to marvel. You see, we know that Nahshon was an ancestor to David, but not to David alone. Through him, Nahshon was an ancestor of Jesus Christ. Matthew tells us that, right there in the first chapter of his Gospel, the first page in our New Testaments today – tells us that Nahshon is part of Jesus' family story. As we enter the season of Advent, this is the time we traditionally think back to the centuries and decades and years leading up to that first Christmas, the birth of the Messiah, our Savior. But we can also think back to the generations leading up to his. And that got me thinking: What if Jesus had gotten a subscription to Ancestry.com? Popular family history research website – I'm on it pretty regularly, ferreting out stories, putting the pieces together, digging up names and records and connecting people with the swirl of history around them. What if Joseph and Mary could've given Jesus an Ancestry.com subscription for his birthday one year? What kind of names, places, stories would those little hint-leaves have unfolded?

Sure, we know some of the famous ones: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon. But what about the rest, the other leaves on Jesus' family tree? This Advent, I'd like to take us on a little journey, jumping down branch by branch through Jesus' family tree, hunting for the great stories he would've found and inherited – not the ones we already know, but the ones maybe we don't, the ones we have to ferret out. And as we leap from branch to branch down his family tree, as the gravity of God pulls us inexorably toward the Incarnation where his every promise is fulfilled, what this leaf, this Nahshon, tells us is that the family tree of Jesus binds kings and priests. We know that, because of tribal divisions, no one in the biblical history of Israel could really be both a Davidic king and a Levitical priest. But Nahshon's family ties foreshadow the stunning truth that the twin principles of kingship and priesthood couldn't keep their distance forever.

And they didn't. In Jesus, kingship and priesthood are finally united in a Divine Priest-King, who reigns as king and presides as priest forever (cf. Psalm 110:1-4). Like Gabriel told Mary, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32). Jesus is “King of kings” (1 Timothy 6:15). Yet, as we should expect from the foreshadowing of Nahshon and Elisheba, the prince and his nephews, Jesus the King is also Jesus the “high priest, one seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty of heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man” (Hebrews 8:1-2). A priest on a royal throne. A king in the heavenly tabernacle. Jesus, ruling and presiding for you. Right now. It would've made great sense to Nahshon. His curious life, perplexing story, paved the way for that beautiful gospel truth. Jesus grew up learning that perplexing story. We should know it too. Best of all, we should know the Jesus it pointed forward to – the Jesus who unites royalty and priesthood perfectly, who is always king over you and always priest for you, whose kingly rule is an act of ministerial service and whose priesthood is unhindered because he's enthroned on his Father's heavenly throne above the firmament. And that's what – and who – Nahshon was living for. Amen!

A Throne to Thank: Sermon on 1 Chronicles 16

It had been almost three hours since the big Macy's parade had come to an end in streets not too many blocks away. A man pulled his coats firmer around him as he walked hurriedly down Manhattan's East Eleventh Street through the crisp air of an autumn afternoon, pitying in his heart the denizens of the Hooverville in Central Park – but that wasn't where he was headed. The man – let's call him 'George' – rushed – he didn't want to be late, of course – rushed to Webster Hall, a tall, red-brick building fully restored after the fire eighteen months earlier. A notorious event venue alternating high society and radicals, that was Webster Hall.  George ducked in and grabbed a seat just in time before the special service started. But, that famous last Thursday in November, maybe not quite the kind of service you'd imagine or expect.

At the front of the hall stood Woolsey Teller, 41 years of age, not too tall – maybe an inch taller than me – and slender of frame. His brown hair sat neatly atop his head; blue eyes peered out through his glasses at the three hundred people gathered for the service he was to lead. His skin was a bit darker than George expected – the curious case of Woolsey Teller, the white supremacist with a Nicaraguan grandmother and a Cuban wife. But there he was. As he opened the event, it wasn't long before he bade George and the rest to sing together the opening number. A “Modern Doxology,” the program for the service touted. And the lyrics began like this: “Blame God from whom all cyclones blow, / blame him when rivers overflow, / blame him who swirls down house and steeple, / who sinks the ship and drowns the people. // Blame God when fell tornadoes spread / disaster, leaving maimed and dead; / when dread volcanoes vomit death, / destroying towns with liquid breath.”

It was a start to just the kind of service George had come for, that afternoon after the Macy's Parade – a service sponsored by “the 4As,” as they were popularly called: the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism. Woolsey Teller had been one of its co-founders six years before, alongside Charles Lee Smith and Freeman Hopwood. George was an atheist. Nearly everyone there was. He looked around, a smirk on his face as they sang their 'Modern Doxology,' and felt a sense of camaraderie in a lonely world and rough city. Nearly all the faces George saw were men, mostly about his age. He thought he spotted a teenager or two – perhaps members of the 4As' affiliate, the Junior Atheist League, a nationwide atheist youth network headquartered in a small Pennsylvania town called Gap. But few Junior Atheists were in Webster Hall that day; most were grown men.

The 'Modern Doxology' droned on: “Blame God for nature's brutal plan, / for jungle law of Kill, who can; / blame him for all the grief and pain / which hellish war brings in its train.” George thought back to the Great War.  Thirteen years and fifteen days had now passed since the signing of the armistice.  Now it was November 26, 1931 – with the Great War still in living memory for everyone, that was the day George and his fellow God-deniers gathered in frustration in Webster Hall. 

The plan had all started earlier that year, when the 4As held their annual convention in February in the Pythian Temple east of Broadway. There was little thought among the 4As to wage any sort of 'war' on Christmas. That wasn't the holiday that caught their ire – it was Thanksgiving they hated. (I get it.  You can be glad all on your own, but giving thanks requires a direct object, a Someone to receive the thanks – no wonder atheist activists of the era wanted to overthrow Thanksgiving.) And how dare the president issue proclamations asking American citizens to spend a day in worship? An offense against the separation of church and state! – that's how they saw it. Much worse still to give thanks when so many people were suffering in their Hoovervilles 'midst the Great Depression.

So in February 1931, like the year before, they resolved to call on the president to make a change. Later, they sent President Herbert Hoover an open letter, calling on him not to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation. But November rolled around, and as you'd expect, he'd ignored them. President Hoover said it had “become a hallowed tradition for the Chief Magistrate to proclaim annually a national day of thanksgiving,” a day “set apart to give thanks even amid hardships to Almighty God for our temporal and spiritual blessings.” So President Hoover, listing America's blessings, singled out November 26 as the day when he'd “recommend that our people rest from their daily labors and in their homes and accustomed places of worship give devout thanks for the blessings which a merciful Father has bestowed upon us.” It was almost more than the 4As could take. But they'd had a back-up plan. If President Hoover insisted on calling to give thanks to God, they'd hold a protest holiday committed to the opposite: not a Thanksgiving Day, but a Blamegiving Day – the same day.

And that's where George found himself singing the closing verses to their 'Modern Doxology': “For clergy who with hood and bell / demand your cash or threaten hell. / Blame God for earthquake shocks; and then / let all men cry aloud, 'Amen!'” And the long-winded service proceeded from there, organized as what the 4As had called a protest against divine negligence. They aimed to put God on trial, organizing a mock debate. Woolsey Teller, the 4As' vice-president, argued the prosecution against the God he denounced as “Public Enemy No. 1” (suspending, for the day, their disbelief in God's existence, of course).

Later, Woolsey ceded the stage for a while to the 4As' president, Charles Lee Smith. George had heard him a few times before – most recently in late October at Columbus Circle, where Charles had gotten himself arrested while advertising the Blamegiving Day service. Charles was a few years older than Woolsey, and not quite an inch taller, but over twenty pounds heavier – no mean feat, after a hunger strike three years ago while in prison on blasphemy charges. Similar pale blue eyes stared out through similar glasses, but Charles substituted a thin shock of white hair for Woolsey's brown. And as Charles spoke, George could instantly hear the telltale signs of his Arkansas birth and upbringing on a farm in Oklahoma. It was from there that Charles' parents had sent him to Epworth University to study for the Methodist ministry; but he'd only finished two years of college before his lost faith – haunted by his dad's death in 1909 – led him to drop out, study law, fight in Siberia during the Great War, return as a veteran to New York City, tour the country doing debates, and occasionally harass local pastors with dirty magazines in the mail. That was the notorious Charles Smith, pugnacious celebrity atheist of his day.

The service wound down – after the free-will offering, of course – with an invitation for the people to air their grievances. George thought about going up, but never got a chance. An intruding evangelist, John L. Mathews of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, briefly sermonized the crowd – calling most of their objections mere word-plays and trifles – “They are not important. What is important, brothers, is to be born again!,” he exclaimed. George was hardly won over, but he had to at least mildly applaud, in amusement, the evangelist's courage in boldly plunging into an atheists' den. 

And Rev. Mathews was, at any rate, more friendly and cordial than the other nuisance faction: the Communists, who'd been distributing handbills outside denouncing the 4As as “a lot of bourgeois” in the pay of capitalists.  Those Communists now used the opportunity afforded by grievance time to argue that all atheists should throw their allegiances to Soviet Russia and commit to converting America to atheism by exterminating the upper classes and by force, not by persuasion. And so, though some voiced their grievances and listed the things they weren't at all thankful for, the service rather degenerated around George, Woolsey, Charles, and the rest. Not that it was a pretty sight to begin with, I reckon, this whole Blamegiving Day affair in Webster Hall.

It really happened, that Manhattan autumn day. The day those particular zealous atheists assembled to make protest against God – on behalf, they said, of the poor. The same day, of course, when churches throughout New York City were working to mercifully provide turkey dinners for the poor, and when pastors preached a special emphasis on the need to do justice to the poor. Yes, that very day was, for a few hundred atheists in the city, not for thanking but for blaming. It really happened.

But nearly three thousand years earlier, another day really happened, far away from the future site of Manhattan and its Webster Hall. And I'd bid you picture that earlier day, too. A farm in the Judean countryside is a bustle of activity in the early hours of dawn. And then they set out. Leaving behind the farm of Obed-edom, a convert to the faith of Israel and a former neighbor of Goliath of Gath, the elders and priests and Levites march in a slow but steady parade. Asaph ben Berechiah, clad in a linen robe, clangs his cymbals joyously. He's a Levite, of the Gershonite line. With him, clanging their cymbals, too, are a representative from each other main Levite division. From the descendants of Merari, there's Ethan. And from the prestigious descendants of Kohath, next to Asaph stands Heman, clanging his cymbals. Heman only wished his grandfather Samuel, the great judge and prophet, were still alive to see this day.

Around these three percussionists, a few other Levites play strings – some on the harp, some on the lyre – while a few priests blow their trumpets. This band of holy musicians is next in the parade behind a set of six elite Levites, who grasp the poles. Between them – and Asaph and Heman can hardly believe it – rests the ark of the covenant. They can't see it – it's draped with a layer of goatskin and a blue cloth over that – but ever since their childhoods, they heard the stories from Exodus about how it was built, this holy wood box where the gifts of God rest, all overlaid with gold and topped with a pure gold cover flanked by gold cherubim, and over which the presence of God the King speaks to the high priest in the tabernacle.

Near the Levites who carry the ark by its poles – they dare not touch or even look at the holy thing – march two priests, Zadok and Abiathar, who pause the parade every six steps to sacrifice an ox.  Another six steps, another ox.  Another six steps, another ox. It's slow-going, to say the least. Asaph's not in a mood to mind, though. He's shouting and banging his cymbals. Out in front, he can see the back of the king – David, in a matching linen robe and linen apron, dancing his heart out with excitement. He can't contain his joy. Neither can the Levites and elders. It's infectious, a pandemic of Israelite delight. Not all the Macy's parades from first to last can compete with this.

The day wears on, but by afternoon, the parade of king and priest, elder and Levite, serving as an honor-guard for the God of all, approaches David's little citadel, the fortified city he captured on the lower part of an eastern hill. Mount Zion, they called it – not quite as tall yet as Mount Moriah, the higher peak where their forefather Isaac saw God provide Abraham with a ram to substitute for Isaac's life. But Mount Zion's slopes held the fortified city. There, near its top, was a grand cedar building, David's new palace. And not far away was a large tent he'd pitched. That was their destination. So as David's wife stared from the palace windows in disapproval and blamegiving, the thanksgiving parade made its way with loud hurrahs and hosannahs and hallelujahs into the city, and up to Zion's crest (1 Chronicles 15:1-29).

Once the priests and Levites had installed the ark in its tent, as the people gathered 'round, the priests began yet more sacrifices – burnt ascension-offerings and peace-offerings, olah and shelamim, by the dozens, as incense perfumed the air.  If you close your eyes and focus and imagine, can you see the bright colors of the procession, the gleam of the gold poles in the Levites' hands?  Can you hear their instruments and shouts?  Can you smell the fragrances mingling in the Jerusalem breeze?

King David pronounced a blessing on the crowd, and gave an order for each man and woman there to get a round loaf of bread, a raisin-cake, and a portion of meat from all the peace-offerings (1 Chronicles 16:1-3). Ascension offerings, or burnt offerings, rose as smoke entirely to God, entering his heavenly presence on the nation's behalf. Peace offerings (or fellowship offerings), meanwhile, were shared, the classic way of showing thanks.

But David had more in mind. He'd been consulting with Gad the seer and Nathan the prophet, and saw it was time to take Israel's worship to the next level. It was time to get musical. It started with the parade, but now that the ark was on Mount Zion, it was high time for a concert. And so we read that “then David appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the LORD, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel. Asaph was the chief, and second to him were Zechariah, Jeiel, Shemiramoth, Jehiel, Mattithiah, Eliab, Benaiah, Obed-edom, and Jeiel, who were to play harps and lyres; Asaph was to sound the cymbals, and Benaiah and Jahaziel the priests were to blow trumpets regularly before the ark of the covenant of God. Then on that day, David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the LORD by Asaph and his brothers” (1 Chronicles 16:4-7). Asaph and his colleagues were to stay there at Zion with the priests Benaiah and Jahaziel, while Zadok the priest were to return to Gibeon to the tabernacle and altar for sacrificial ministry; but with them, they were to take Heman and Jeduthun to extend musical ministry there, too (1 Chronicles 16:37-42).

It was all so new! So fresh! Until this surprising day, the introducing of God to Zion, the liturgical revolution of David and his booth, music hadn't been a big part of Israel's worship. But this was new, different. Asaph was thrilled. Centuries later, people would look back on this time as “the days of David and Asaph” (Nehemiah 12:46). For his music ministry, they'd remember him as “Asaph the seer” (2 Chronicles 29:30). But for now, he was lost in the momentous moment. So was Heman. So were the rest of the Levite musical team. And at the king's direction, they'd prepared a song for their choir. So with the grandest musical accompaniment, they sang their song of thanksgiving.

They celebrated, appealed to the people: “Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples!” (1 Chronicles 16:8). The choir called Israel to “remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles and the judgments he uttered” (1 Chronicles 16:12), and to likewise “remember his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations” (1 Chronicles 16:15). They called Israel back to those days of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the days when promises were made that they'd since seen fulfilled, the days when God made a covenant and protected the patriarchs, God's very own band of roving prophets and messiahs (1 Chronicles 16:16-22). They called on Israel to call on the rest of humanity to give up their idols and meet the LORD as their Creator, Redeemer, Master, and Friend (1 Chronicles 16:23-29), “for great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (1 Chronicles 16:25-26).

The song of the choir called on Israel to call on humanity to call on the whole creation to worship the LORD, the God of Israel: “Let the heavens be glad, and the earth rejoice, and let them say among the nations, 'The LORD reigns!' Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth” (1 Chronicles 16:31-33). Their song was living testimony that the LORD their God was and is on his throne, ruling and reigning over even a broken world, and would bring cosmic joy when he came down personally to set things right. “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his love endures forever!” (1 Chronicles 16:34).

And as they heard it, the whole city of Jerusalem, that fortified town built around the slopes of Zion where King David had built his house – this whole city, and all the people who swarmed in with the parade, they shouted and sang, “Amen!”, and they give praise and glory and honor and thanks to the LORD their God (1 Chronicles 16:36). From there, after singing and celebrating, the people took their food back to their houses, with a song in their hearts. Even the king retreated to his palace to bless his house (1 Chronicles 16:43). But Asaph stayed at the tent on Zion. Heman went back to the tabernacle at Gibeon. There to make music. There to minister.

Did you catch that job description David gave them? He appointed them, and other Levites under them, to this very kind of thing: “to bring to remembrance, to thank, and to praise the LORD” (1 Chronicles 16:4). That was their job! Thanksgiving was a professional task of theirs. And let me tell you, they never ran out of things to sing about. That's not to say that everything was roses. Heman, the thank-artist of the tabernacle, wrote the very darkest psalm in the whole Bible. Some of Asaph's works remember harsh times, times Israel found itself at odds with the God they claimed to worship. Asaph rehearsed the poverty of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked (Psalm 73:3). His songs wrestled with doubt, but then, he says, he “went into the sanctuary of God” (Psalm 73:17), and in that tent he came to realize, “For me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all your works” (Psalm 73:27-28); “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26). And one of Asaph's own psalms prophetically relays the voice of God saying, “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to the one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God!” (Psalm 50:23).

Asaph and Heman knew well that there's a time for lament. But not for blamegiving. Even in dark days, even when crying out with lament and doubt and fear, even when heart and flesh fail and everything else on earth falls away, still God is strength, still God is a saving God, still God is a desirable refuge, still it's good to be near God, still he wants to be our portion forever. Still he's glorified by thanksgiving. Because God is on his throne. And their songs started that day with the parade – the day Asaph was appointed to give thanks on Mount Zion. And I'd bet you just about anything, it was a beautiful day that day.

Two days. Two scenes. One in November 1931 in New York City. The other in ancient Jerusalem in the days of David and Asaph. I've tried to paint you two pictures. I've spent a long time doing it. And there's a reason, a question. Where are we? Right here, right now, where are we? Which scene sets our geography? Have we moved to Manhattan? Have we entered Webster Hall? Or are we destined to be somewhere else?

The last book of the Bible paints a picturesque portrait, and I'd like to read you a couple verses from there, from the visions of John. John tells us, “Then I looked, and behold! On Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters, like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne...” (Revelation 14:1-3a). That's the geography of the Lamb: Mount Zion, where those sealed with his name sing as harps play.

And in a spiritual way, we're there already. Listen to the author to the Hebrews: “But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:22-24) – and, I might add, speaks a better word than every ox offered along the parade route, a better word than every ascension-offering and peace-offering that was made that day in Jerusalem of old. In a better way than they, “you have come to Mount Zion” (Hebrews 12:22).

So we know where we are, what our geography of the soul is. It's Mount Zion. But given where we are, what are we building? Is it Webster Hall, brick on brick? Or are we pitching David's tent of praise? Which way of living is more beautiful to us, which holiday are we celebrating: Blamegiving Day, or Thanksgiving Day? The choice is ours. But only one choice fits our geography. It would be terrible to build Webster Hall atop Mount Zion, and hold a Blamegiving service there in the presence of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And it would go against our job. You see, the prophet Isaiah heard God promise to adopt foreigners into his service in the days of the new covenant – foreigners, God said, “I will take for priests and for Levites” (Isaiah 66:21). People adopted as new Zadoks, new Hemans, new Asaphs, enrolled in the service of great David's greater Son, Jesus Christ, in whose resurrection the tent of David is raised up again for good (cf. Acts 15:16).

And that means that, when we read the Chronicler talking about Asaph and Heman and the Levites, when their job description is given, that's for us. Thanksgiving is our job description. Because we stand where they stood, cast in their roles writ large, to call all humanity to call all creation to give thanks to God and to the Lamb, who reign from one throne. If we bear the name of Jesus in our lives, if we are the ones who've come to Mount Zion where the Lamb is, then ours is the call to sing before the throne, to give thanks and praise to the LORD. Jesus is on his throne. Tomorrow may be the eighty-seventh anniversary of the 4As' ridiculous Blamegiving Day service in Webster Hall. But today, in the bright shadow of Thanksgiving Day, is the Feast of Christ the King.

No matter what cyclones blow, no matter what rivers overflow, he is King. No matter what disaster tornadoes spread, no matter all earth's volcanoes dread, he is King. No matter the outworking of nature and its brutal plan, he is King. In days of war as in days of peace, he is King. He is not negligent. Even when heart and flesh may fail, even when gloom falls like arrows from the skies, he is King, the Good King, and all creation can and rightly should give him thanks. And leading the way is the job of us honorary Levites for the Lamb. For us it is good to be near God. And he has brought us near at his Zion. So don't live a Blamegiving life on Mount Zion. That's not who you are. We are the People of Thanksgiving, called to lead the way in remembering, thanking, and praising God from Mount Zion, where it's Thanksgiving – year-round – in Jesus' name. Amen.

When War is Done: Sermon on Isaiah 2:1-5 for Veterans Day

As the bullet pierced through his helmet, passed through his pack, and sank into the flesh of his back, Sgt. Myers knew it was not his day. This was hardly what he'd expected just two and a half months earlier when he'd left Camp Meade and set sail on the Agamemnon from Hoboken to France. Sgt. Myers served under Capt. Loane in Company L of the 316th Infantry Regiment. And that first month had been such a happy one. Everyone felt an optimistic hope. They enjoyed adventures, suffered no hardships, thought they'd be home so soon. Even into mid-September, they felt themselves in relative comfort – for what that was worth.

But then came the first real trial by fire. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive. And Sgt. Myers had his part to play. On the second day of battle, as noon neared, another regiment in his division managed to capture Montfaucon, a French commune, from the dreaded German army. That night, Sgt. Myers slept in the mud. He'd scarcely touched his rations. They each carried a two-day supply – a pound of corned beef and three boxes of hard biscuits – but in battle, who thinks to eat? The landscape all around him was ruined by war – trees become dead logs, towns become piles of stones, holes ripped into the earth, shreds of barbed wire everywhere.

Frightfully early the next morning, the 316th Infantry Regiment received their orders: they were to relieve the 313th at Montfaucon and, at seven hundred hours, attack southeast toward the Bois de Beuges, a dense forest, to press back the German lines. The 313th needed relief, alright; they'd had a rough day and rough night. One of their captains called those days “a lifetime in hell.” And the 316th and Sgt. Myers were about to get a taste of what that was like. Mere moments after beginning their advance from Montfaucon, they fell under intense artillery fire. One captain described how “big shells arrived with monstrous roars and crashes that tore holes in the earth as big as a house.” They didn't come as a surprise. The telltale sound rumbled through the air, raising the suspense of where it would land. And they were everywhere, dropping all around, sending shrapnel hurtling every which way. Sgt. Myers, as he advanced, was lacerated by shrapnel in his shoulder and right thigh – but he kept going. He ignored, best he could, the duller explosions that released puffs of mustard gas.

Soon, though, they came within range of the German machine guns, which spewed a prolific rain of bullets at them, the metal whizzing and whistling through the air. The advance was no longer an orderly affair: they crept onward, pressing, falling back, literally crawling through the dirt at times. The devastation was immense. Capt. Loane was hurt; many officers were wounded or killed. One captain in a nearby company watched in horror as one of his soldiers crawled to him with a macabre grin on his face. The soldier said the perplexing words, “I've lost a lamp,” before opening his right hand to reveal the secret in his palm: his own right eyeball, ripped out by a bullet. But Sgt. Myers wasn't there. The companies had gotten woefully separated in the general confusion, and the best efforts of runners to re-establish contact were mostly in vain. For his part, he continued his crawl through the dirt, past his comrades' corpses and the injured moaning in agony for first aid. He kept crawling toward the Bois de Beuge, the dense underbrush where the German gunners were positioned. He was hardly defenseless – he sporadically fired his own weapon, and thought he laid a few German soldiers low – but the closer he got, the fiercer the ghastliness of battle.

And finally, a German gunner swept his way. A bullet from the machine gun pierced the back of his helmet, deflected through his pack, and hit his back; it would surely have gone deeper if the intervening supplies hadn't slowed it. That was the injury Sgt. Myers felt, though a later medical exam would show his back pockmarked with holes. But that was the wound that convinced him he was done. He beat a hasty retreat back to a dressing station, got himself bandaged, and was taken by ambulance to a field hospital. After a few days of treatment there, he was loaded onto a French train where they hung his stretcher from a framework of pipes and taken over two hundred miles of rough riding to Base Hospital 48 at Mars-sur-Allier, safely away from the front lines. He was shot September 28; it was early October when he arrived at the base hospital. From both places, he wrote letters home. In both places, he wrestled with his “fierce grudge against those Germans.” And in both places, I'd bet, he did his share of praying.

Home for Sgt. Myers, you see, wasn't so far from here. Ralph Myers, just 22 when he enlisted and 23 when the bullet hit his back, had been a high-school math teacher in York County, but a graduate of Franklin & Marshall College. More than that, Ralph grew up on Main Street in Terre Hill. His dad William made cigars while his mom Lydia held fast the home, raising Ralph and his older sisters Clara and Mamie.

All three kids were raised in church – at our EC church in Terre Hill, in fact. Of course, it wasn't called 'EC' then yet; it was 'UE,' United Evangelical, since the year before Ralph was born. William Myers and his brother-in-law John Tish, Ralph's uncle, were deeply involved there. William spent much of his son's childhood as a steward, and John was again a trustee when Ralph shipped out. Clara and Mamie had both been baptized and joined as teenagers, but Ralph held back. It wasn't until 1915, already a college student, that Ralph took the step to give his life over to Jesus. Midway between Easter and Pentecost, Pastor William Rehrer admitted him and baptized him. A year later, he finished college and got hired as a teacher, like his sisters before him; a year after that, he registered for the draft. And it didn't take him long to be called to action. Later, when Ralph was in the field hospital, he wrote home to one of his sisters, “I do not enjoy the army and would be tickled to death to get out today, but I would not have missed it for the world. I have learned a lot and seen a lot too – some things I do not care to see again.”

But the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and its horrors didn't stop when Sgt. Ralph S. Myers was shot and crawled off the battlefield. It lasted for nearly two more weeks, becoming the deadliest battle in American history, which one British major-general nicknamed 'Armageddon.' While Sgt. Myers recuperated in an army hospital in France, his friends and family and neighbors back home were nearly sequestered by the epidemic of Spanish influenza. Scarcely had it receded when they got the news that Sgt. Myers had seen coming over a month before: a ceasefire, an armistice, had gone into effect. Early in the morning on Monday, November 11 – a hundred years ago this very day – German representatives met a French marshal on a train car in the woods to sign the armistice agreement. It was a little past five AM there – here, about midnight – and would go into effect just under six hours later, to give the news time to spread to all units.

Well, spread the news did. Fighting was done. Shooting was done. Shelling was done. The war, for all intents and purposes, was done. There, in France, it was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month when it took effect; here, it was the sixth hour. In New Holland and all the towns and countryside around, some people were already at work, and others not even up yet, when the church bells started ringing to announce the good news. Giving no thought to breakfast, people started pouring out of their homes with joy into every street, waving flags and cheering. The bells rang and clanged, whistles blew, people marched all around the town, too delighted, too relieved, to treat it as any ordinary day. It took 'til nine o'clock for people to get back to work.

That afternoon, thanks to a lot of last-minute planning by local civil leaders, chief marshal Isaac Snader led a parade around the town. The Red Cross was there, a-marchin' through the streets. Folks from New Holland Machine were there, a-marchin' through the streets. The silk mill employees, too, and the schoolkids. Nearly a hundred cars, plenty of floats, hundreds of people – there was even a contingent of Civil War vets a-marchin' through the streets, past all the houses draped in bunting with the stars and stripes waving in the November air. No quiet parade, bands played and the people sang and cheered. The joy in every human heart at peace bubbled over; it was uncontainable. The night ended with a post-supper meeting in Harner's Theatre to hear from local pastors and sing patriotic songs. The next day, many streamed to Lancaster for a parade, but up in East Earl, folks gathered a little parade of their own, as schoolchildren from Cedar Grove marched to the drumbeat, with flags from America and England and France all waving, and sang the national anthem house by house.

What a relief we remember today! Those jubilees of joy, those songs of security, those parades proclaiming peace at last! Can you imagine how they felt? For four years, the entire world, it seemed, had been embroiled in the Great War. America stood back as long as we could, until declaring war in April 1917. We mobilized over four million soldiers from every community in the country – including right around here. The economy of the whole country was redirected for the good of the cause; nearly everything was rationed; folks campaigned for the purchase of Liberty Bonds time and again to finance the fight. The Fourth Liberty Loan was issued the very same day Ralph Myers got shot. And then, to have all the ardors and fears and horrors of war – vanish! Oh, challenging news would still pour across the seas, but for families all around here to suddenly have the hope of seeing their sons again – to resume really living again.

Seven months after the armistice, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Sixteen days later, Ralph Myers boarded the Rotterdam in Brest, France, and set sail for the good ol' USA, where after a stint at Bethlehem Steel, he later returned to teaching and became a principal in western Pennsylvania. I wonder what he felt as he thought back to his service in the Great War. As it was going on, some proclaimed it “the war to end all wars.” Even in our denomination, some voices held out that hope. And no wonder – even many of our pastors sent sons to the front to fight, some to die. But the Great War wasn't really “the war to end all wars.”

Ralph Myers lived long enough to register for the draft in World War II. He lived long enough to see young neighbors go off to fight in the Korean War. And he lived two years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized the deployment of combat troops to Vietnam. Ralph Myers, a veteran of the Great War that was supposed to end all wars, lived nearly five decades after taking that bullet from the German machine gun – yet, when he died, his nation was again at war. When the parades marched through the streets a century ago today, it meant a war was done. But not war itself. Veterans would continue to be forged in combat. Any veterans here this morning, are veterans because World War I was not a “war to end all wars.”

Over two and a half thousand years earlier, when the ancestors of Ralph Myers and the ancestors of whatever German gunner shot him were probably both among the proto-Germanic tribes pressing southward into the northern European coast from Scandinavia, a prophet in the far-off land of Jerusalem had a vision that one day, no new veterans would be made. Isaiah saw a vision, and in that vision, he heard that the day would come when everyone would “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).

Imagine the parade through our streets when not just one war, but all war is done! Can you imagine it? Never again a soldier sent off to fight. Never again the shells, the bullets, the gas. Never again the bombs and missiles and tanks. Never again the lists of casualties. Never again the bereavement of a war widow, a lost son, lost grandson. Never again the hardness of battle or the fraying of nerves. No Agent Orange, no sarin gas, no PTSD – none of it. No nervous home front, no battle-weary warriors. Only parading and cheering and singing, only welcoming and embracing and rejoicing. When war becomes a distant memory, when all conflict is forgotten, when peace is all and in all, when happiness breaks through in gushing torrents of relief, and every field will give back its blood, and every bullet and bomb repent, and all that's gone wrong will come undone.

Not long after the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations was established to secure world peace. It didn't work. After World War II, it was replaced by a new body, the United Nations. Its headquarters is in New York City. Across First Avenue from the United Nations, there's a park, dedicated in 1948 during the construction process; and if you ever visit that park, you'll see a wall. It's called the Isaiah Wall. And chiseled into the stone, do you know what you'll read? “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” It's Isaiah 2:4. Eleven years later, the Soviet Union presented a bronze statue for the United Nations Headquarters' North Garden: it's a man beating a sword into a plowshare. In the decades since, we've seen museums dedicated to military hardware repurposed for peace; we've seen presidents like Nixon take their oath of office on Bibles open to Isaiah 2:4; we've heard presidents from Carter to Reagan and beyond appeal to the very same verse. But it still isn't here. What gives? But if you read the rest of what Isaiah says, it's clear what has to happen.

First, the world has to become centered on Jesus Christ. Isaiah starts his prophecy like this: “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills” (Isaiah 2:2). In Isaiah's Jerusalem, that mountain was the temple mount, the central site of Jewish worship of the God of the Bible. Other countries had mountains where they worshipped their gods, and even in Israel there were sometimes 'high places' on various hills for people to go worship this idol or that idol. But Isaiah dares imagine a world where the real temple, the real mountain, will loom undeniably higher than every rival – a world where the worship of the true God will be elevated over all. And in the New Testament, we see Jesus presenting himself as the true mountain, the true foundation of God's new temple, which is his body, the church. When war is done, it'll be because Jesus looms higher than every thing. It'll be because Jesus is lifted up – and he was lifted up... on the cross. For “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:15). “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself,” Jesus said (John 12:32).

And just the same, in Isaiah's vision, when “the mountain of the house of the LORD” is lifted up, it will draw all nations to itself. Isaiah continues by saying that “all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob'” (Isaiah 2:2-3). To get to the whole swords-into-plowshares part, here's what needs to happen: the nations have to be drawn to the mountain, to the temple, to Jesus and his church. Jesus and his church need to be attractive. Jesus promised he would be – and he has been. In being lifted up on the cross, he's been drawing people from every nation to himself, as the nations are discipled through being baptized and taught (cf. Matthew 28:19).

Speaking of teaching, Isaiah says that's why the nations come to the mountain. They say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (Isaiah 2:3). The nations go, because they need to be taught. Instead of learning war, they have to learn something else. They have to learn the ways, not of the petty gods of war and blood, of race and clan, of money and leisure and lust, of technology and identity and power, but the ways of the God of peace, the God of good news. And the nations are taught so that they can walk – they learn it in order to live it, to put the good news into practice. “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3). That's where the gospel got its start, and it's been spreading into the nations since the days of the apostles, and it's still going forth now through us. Our task is to have this gospel word keep going forth, because we go into our community and carry it there. That's how the word moves: we, gathered from the nations, penetrate the nations with the good news message, and we disciple others who hear it, leading them back to the mountain who is Christ.

As that happens, as the nations are discipled, they'll learn to refer their disputes to God and accept his verdicts. That's what Isaiah pictures: “He” – meaning, the LORD – “shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples” (Isaiah 2:4). That's a great fruit of discipleship: learning to let God settle arguments instead of trying to do it on our own. So often, even in the church, we fail to do that. We bicker and we feud, we fuss and we groan, we wrestle each other for power, instead of referring it to God and cultivating a heart that accepts his verdict. If Germany and Britain and France and America had all been discipled well enough to do that in the first place, would there have been a world war? If they'd been able to submit all concerns to God through his worldwide church, and accepted how God speaks to the whole church through his Holy Spirit – if that had happened, would the war have been fought? Would Sgt. Myers have been shot? Would his fellow soldiers have bled and died? Would any war since then need to have been fought?

See, in Isaiah's vision, it's only then – when God decides all these disputes, settles world wars and civil wars and culture wars – then we read that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” – tools of destruction, demolition, harm, into tools of creation, cultivation, nurture. Because there won't be a need for swords or spears – no use for machine guns and artillery shells – no function for nuclear missiles or mustard gas. Global disarmament as an act of faith in a God who so visibly judges the world that all can trust him to maintain peace among all nations. And on that day, Isaiah says, “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4). No more war. No more carnage. No more loss, no more grief, no more death. No more heated anger, suspenseful nerves, fearful unease.

In a day of “wars and rumors of wars” (cf. Mark 13:7), we rightly long for another day – a day, not of war, but of peace. A day when “they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken” (Micah 4:4). Today of all days, we remember the sacrifices of those who endured the hardships of war and lived to tell the tale. We remember it today because we also bring to mind, from a hundred years ago, the hour the fighting stopped, and families could breathe easy. As we remember the armistice, we long for a day when we can breathe easy for good – know that it will never start again, that the next generation will never be called to risk life and limb, terror and trauma, in combat; that the toll taken on veterans will never be repeated, that every soldier can lay down his arms, that the price paid will be refunded by a God who doeth all things well, and that parades of praise march every street, waving not the flag of a nation but the sign of the cross as the banner of the victorious love of God.

It seems like such a dream. It's easy to picture utopia. Even John Lennon could imagine his version. We know a billion utopias that really are 'no place.' Dreams are a dime a dozen. It's nice to toy with them. But can we really believe this one? Can we believe that a day will come when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”? And I declare to you this day, we can! “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you..., was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes, for all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:19-20)! All the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus Christ. And that means this promise of God – the promise of no more sword, no more war – finds its Yes in the same Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom I am here to proclaim among you, and whom we are here to proclaim among the nations of the world! “That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Corinthians 1:20). As surely as Jesus Christ is risen, as surely as death has no more dominion over him, just so surely will the day come when war, all war, is done. And “no one shall make [us] afraid” (Micah 4:4).

And the march toward that day starts here – starts with a people who ascend the mountain of Christ here, starts with the gospel word going forth here, starts as we come to God's teaching here, starts as we learn to walk in his ways of peace here, starts as we beat our own swords into plowshares here, starts as we disciple people of all conflicted and conflicting nations here, starts as we lift up Christ in word and deed here, starts as we go forth on gospel mission here. Right here. Right now.

This very day, this Armistice Day, this Veterans Day, we can seek that day by bringing the gospel word of peace from this place into the neighborhood around us, and bringing people back to “the mountain of the house of the LORD” which is Christ. And with as beautiful as that day will be, the day that will answer the hope of every veteran's service and every family's prayers with a Yes to Peace in Christ – we have every reason to do it. So, as Isaiah would tell us: “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD” – and march forward with the gospel until all war is done, in Jesus' name. Amen.