Deacon Susan Erickson

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling 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 as the waters cover the sea.  (Isaiah 11:6-9)

Dear Siblings in Christ,

What a vision of God’s kingdom! It will be initiated through a “shoot … from the stump of Jesse” —that is, a descendant of King David. Later readers and listeners of this text would read Isaiah’s prophecy “backwards” and see in it a proclamation of the coming Messiah, Jesus.

Isaiah’s vision foresees not only peace among humans but peace in God’s entire creation. In God’s kingdom on earth predators and prey will lie down together. Creatures like the adder that humans regard as dangerous will play harmlessly with little children.

The early American painter Edward Hicks, a Quaker, was apparently so enthralled with this vision that he created over sixty versions of “the peaceable kingdom,” one of which is reproduced below.

On the left of the painting you see small figures. They are Hicks’ depiction of a treaty between William Penn and members of the Lanape nation. Hicks encompasses different cultures as well as wild and domestic animals in a calm, autumnal landscape.

But I wonder about the gorge that separates the little child and his animal friends from the Native Americans and English settlers. What does it represent? In my mind, it is the chasm that still separates us, in history, from Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom. 

May the coming Christ child cast light into our dark divides, and show us all the ways we can live for the peaceable kingdom.

—Deacon Susan