2025.11.16 | Waging Peace
“Waging Peace”
A sermon preached at Eden United Church of Christ
in Hayward, California,
on Sunday, November 16, 2025,
by the Rev. Brenda Loreman.
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Isaiah 65:17-25
Copyright © 2025 by Brenda Loreman
Whenever I read this passage from Isaiah I always think of the painter Edward Hicks. You might not have heard his name, but I bet you’ve seen one of his paintings. I want to share a bit about his life because his work and his faith are woven together with American history in an interesting way.
Edward Hicks was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1780—right towards the end of the Revolutionary War. His parents were Anglican, and unfortunately for his father they were British loyalists; they fought on the losing side of the American Revolution. Because of this, Edward’s family finances were pretty much upended by the war, and the family had a rough time when Edward was born. Additionally, Edward’s mother died when he was just eighteen months old, and, as was common in that time when a family was in financial difficulty, little Edward was sent to live with another family who could care for him. David and Elizabeth Twining were members of the Society of Friends, and Edward was raised in the Quaker faith.
When he was thirteen, Edward was apprenticed to a coach maker, and for seven years Edward learned the craft and also became quite talented at painting the carriages. When he was twenty, he struck out on his own, not in coachmaking, but in painting, specializing in decorative painting not just of carriages, but of signs and furniture and other household items. He was very good at it, and his business did well, but he began to feel deeply conflicted about his work. He had become an official member of the Society of Friends, had even begun to preach on Sundays, and his decorative painting was at odds with the Quaker faith, which valued simplicity and utility. Painting was considered a “worldly indulgence.” He gave up painting for a while and tried farming, but he was never really trained as a farmer and had no heart or skill for it.
Somehow, he managed to reconcile his passion for painting and his love for the Quaker faith. I’m not exactly sure how that happened, but he kept painting. And one of the scenes he painted, over and over, was what he called “The Peaceable Kingdom.” Throughout his lifetime, Edward Hicks painted this scene, with some variation but all with similar imagery, at least 62 times. This version is from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. You may have seen a reproduction of it, or of one of the many similar paintings Hicks completed over the years.
In every version, there is a gathering of animals who usually don’t get along with each other, but are so peaceful that a child can play among them. In every version there is also a vista in the background, but what’s in that vista varies. In many versions, including this one, the vista includes a scene that depicts William Penn, a Quaker and the founder of the Pennsylvania colony, negotiating with the indigenous Lenape people in the 1680s to purchase the land that would become Pennsylvania. For Hicks, this scene was a significant vision of the peace and equality that the Quaker faith espoused. William Penn envisioned this new colony as a haven for Quakers and others fleeing religious persecution, and for a time, at least, it was a place where immigrants of diverse cultures found refuge. (1)
With Isaiah’s vision in the foreground, and the Quaker vision in the background, Hicks was holding up, over and over, a dream of peace, as if to make it manifest by painting it into reality.
Although the image of the animals at peace are part of the text that Aisha read this morning, Hicks probably used an earlier passage from Isaiah as inspiration for his paintings. This is from Isaiah 11:6-9—as I read it, see how Hicks imagines these verses in his painting:
The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord. (2)
Biblical scholarship suggests that, although the book of Isaiah appears to be one unified work, it is probably the work of two or even three different authors, spanning a time period of nearly two hundred years. Our text today from Chapter 65 is the work of Third Isaiah, while Chapter 11 is that of First Isaiah, generations earlier.
In the first part of Chapter 11, First Isaiah foretells of a righteous leader that will rise up and rule the land with justice for the poor and oppressed, and offers the vision of a peaceful land where even small children are safe from wild beasts, who are as tame as sheep and oxen. In Chapter 65, Third Isaiah recalls the imagery of the earlier chapter and expands it, implying that the peace to come will be like a whole new world recreated, a new Garden of Eden. He paints a picture of people building homes and planting vineyards, raising children, and living long lives. He speaks of God being present among the people.
It’s a beautiful vision of peace, meant to encourage and comfort a people whose lives had been shattered and utterly destroyed by war and exile. The vision is not meant to be pie-in-the sky, but a vision of hope and inspiration for rebuilding devastated lives. But merely holding the vision is not enough; the people have to take action in order to make it a reality. One of the most famous images of peace from Isaiah is from Chapter 2: “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.” (3) In order to bring about peace, we have to take action; we have to stop waging war, and instead wage peace.
Imagining and holding a vision of a “peaceable kingdom” of our own is one way that we can clarify our desires for peace and be inspired to take the actions we can do to wage peace in our own lives and for our own communities.
What does your peaceable kingdom look like? For Isaiah, it was a restored earth where people built homes and planted gardens and raised children and lived long lives. For Hicks, it perhaps was living into the vision that William Penn had for Pennsylvania, where people of diverse cultures and faiths lived in harmony. What is your vision of a peaceable kingdom here in our own community, or state, or country? If you were to paint it like Edward Hicks did, what would it look like? Would it be a quiet street of homes where children play safely and where neighbors cross the street to greet each other or lend a helping hand? Would it be an orchard full of blossoms and busy with bees? Would it be a huge table laden with shared food and people sharing the meal and conversation?
I actually want you to take a moment here to imagine your peaceable kingdom. Close your eyes for a moment or have a soft gaze and dream up your vision of peace.
Some years ago, the artist Lee Mingwei was captivated by a version of “The Peaceable Kingdom” that he encountered in the Worcester Museum in Massachusetts. It inspired him to create a project that he called “Our Peaceable Kingdom,” where he invited artists to paint their own visions of peace inspired by Edward Hicks. Everywhere the exhibit travels, he invites additional local artists to contribute. It now includes 42 wide-ranging artworks.
What will we do to wage peace and bring about our visions of the peaceable kingdom? How can we step out of the fear and despair we may be feeling to make our vision a reality? Sometimes, it can be simple, ordinary actions, done with love, that keeps the vision alive. Bake bread. Light candles. Pray. Say yes. Write letters and make phone calls. Show up. Speak out. Paint. Pray.
As I have been doing lately, I’m going to close with a poem. This is poet Judyth Hill’s vision of creating the peaceable kingdom. She wrote this on September 11, 2001, in the wake of the devastation of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Like Isaiah’s vision, it is a vision of peace and a call to action for recreating a world of peace and hope.
“Wage Peace”
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of
red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and
freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out
lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing
sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds,
clothespins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank
you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and
precious:
Have a cup of tea … and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today. (4)
Amen.
—
1) I consulted several sources for information about Edward Hicks’s life, faith, and painting and background on the founding of Pennsylvania. See:
https://artandtheology.org/2016/12/06/the-peaceable-kingdoms-of-edward-hicks/
https://smarthistory.org/teaching-guide-hicks-the-peaceable-kingdom/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Experiment
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/subdivisions/quakers_1.shtml#:~:text=Quakers%20regard%20all%20human%20beings,in%20pacifism%20and%20non%2Dviolence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/16/arts/art-review-finding-endless-conflict-hidden-in-a-peaceable-kingdom.html
2) Isaiah 11:6-9, NRSVUE
3) Isaiah 2:4, NRSVUE
4) https://www.judythhill.com/wage-peace-poem