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Edward Hicks was a carriage maker, living in the early 1800s, who converted to Christianity after years spent in wild living, hard drinking and bar room brawls. Troubled, he went to a Quaker meeting, and intrigued by the peace he found there, he gave up his drinking and fighting, to become, for awhile, a part-time preacher.
He found his final vocation as a folk artist. "The Peaceable Kingdom" is his most famous painting, one he painted more than 100 times. Each version is slightly different, but each contains a child, an ox and a lamb, living at peace with wild beasts - lions, tigers and bears.
His painting is more than folk art. It is a religious statement. William Penn appears in every painting, often in the distance, negotiating a peace treaty with American Indians. Hicks admired Penn's pacifism and religious tolerance, and he hoped that Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, would become the peaceable kingdom on earth.
Hicks' inspiration was Isaiah's prophecy of the peaceable kingdom, ruled by a righteous king, where the poor would be treated fairly and the wicked punished, and where peace would prevail between nations and throughout nature. Centuries later, John the Baptist, preached "the kingdom of heaven has come near," as he prepared the way of the Lord.
Contrary to the harsh reality of their present day, these visionaries proclaimed hope for a better future, a peaceful world and the leadership of a righteous person, filled with the Holy Sprit, obedient to the rule of God and consumed with a love for people and a passion for justice.
Violence and injustice, warfare and brutality are still with us. And we too look for hope. Advent is that time in the Christian year when we rekindle our hope, reassuring ourselves that something is happening in the world. It is being opened up, made new, by the arrival of the living God among us.
Our hope is not shallow optimism; it is not a utopian ideal unrelated to our present struggles; it is not unacquainted with brokenness. Instead it claims that suffering will not have the last word, and that God will redeem history, establish justice and bring peace.
During this promise-filled season, amid its many distractions, may we not lose sight of the hope we have: God has come and is coming in Jesus of Nazareth, the one we call the Christ.
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