Well I love this passage from Isaiah on the peaceable kingdom, what the world might look like some day, so different from what we see in so many places around the world today: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.”  Just picture your favorite politician or world leader sitting down with the politician or world leader you despise the most.  The wolf shall dwell with the lamb.  I like it.  I can’t wait.  I’m willing to work toward it.  My only problem with this passage is in that last line in the one verse where it tells us how this all is supposed to happen, it says, “and a little child shall lead them.”  A little child shall lead them.  I’m a little dubious frankly.  You wonder how Isaiah could have written such a thing.  Did he ever know any children personally?  Had he ever been around any children? 

We had a wonderful White Gifts service here in the church last Sunday afternoon.  It was the first time Brenda and I had experienced this.  All the children’s and youth choirs sang.  And everyone brought forward their gifts wrapped in white tissue paper for church mission projects and for those who are in need.  And there was even a little Christmas pageant, as some of the children acted out the birth of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem.           

But I heard about another Christmas pageant in another church that didn’t go quite so well.  Some of the children were given the assignment to hold up these huge, brightly colored signs, each with one letter on them that spelled out Christmas words.  The highlight of the pageant was when these four very young children, too young to read, walked out onto stage in the reverse order from what they were supposed to do, and instead of spelling S-T-A-R, they proudly held their letters up and spelled out R-A-T-S.

I was talking with one of the children in our church the other day.  We just happened to find ourselves together and I was asking him about himself.  I asked him how old he was, and he told me that he was five, and he held his whole hand up to show me how old he was.  And then with his hand still up he said, “My Mom says I’m a handful.”  And his mother was standing there, and she looked exhausted frankly, and she just barely had enough strength to nod her head in agreement. 

And then I read here in Isaiah, “And a little child shall lead them.”  Forgive me if I’m a little dubious.  I remember something Woody Allen said years ago.  Now, of course, a Woody Allen quote isn’t worth what it once was, but I remember Woody Allen saying something like, “Yes, the wolf will dwell with the lamb, but the lamb isn’t going to get very much sleep, the lamb is going to be pretty nervous,” especially if it’s a little child who is leading them.           

And yet I continue to be inspired and amazed by children.  I realize this is probably because we don’t have any, we don’t have any little handfuls running around.  But I continue to believe in children.  Don’t you?  Some of my best friends are children.  I hope I will always be like St. Francis of Assissi, the great monk during the Middle Ages, who was busy at work on so many things one day, so he told his personal assistant not to interrupt him for anybody.  “Don’t interrupt me for anybody,” he said.  But then he came out a couple of minutes later as kind of an afterthought, and he told his secretary, “Of course, if a child comes, if a child comes, interrupt me right away.”  I hope I’m a little like that.  There are some days when I shut myself up in my office to work on a sermon or to study or do some other work, and it’s important that I concentrate to the extent I can, but if I hear a child out in the hall, if I hear the voice of a child, I always open my door and come out and see what’s going on.           

Because children have a job description.  Did you know this?  Children have a job description.  The job description of a child is to look at the world in a way that is so vastly different from how an adult looks at the same world.  A child looks at the same thing we’ve all been looking at for years and sees something different, they see something new.           

I heard about a little boy who was getting into things, and he opened up the old family Bible.  He was fascinated looking through the old pages.  But then something fell out of the Bible, it fell out of the book of Genesis in the Bible.  He picked it up and looked at it.  It was an old leaf that had been pressed between the pages.  “Mommy, look what I found,” the little boy said.  “What have you got there?” his mother asked.  And the little boy answered, “Well I’m not sure, but I think it’s Adam’s underwear!”           

There was another little girl, about four years old, who often went with her mother to deliver Meals-on-Wheels, mostly to those who were older, and they might have walkers or canes or wheelchairs sitting around.  The girl was used to seeing this kind of stuff around, and she was always fascinated by seeing it all.  One day this little girl had to go to the bathroom in an older woman’s home, and she didn’t return right away from the bathroom, so her mother came in after her.  And she saw her daughter just standing there staring at this full set of false teeth that were soaking in a glass.  The little girl just looked up at her mother and said, “The tooth fairy will never believe this.”           

I can’t help but think that there is a little bit of this sense of childlike adventurousness in God, and that God wants us to be more childlike, too.  Now not childish, many of us adults have made a career out of being childish, not childish, but childlike, in our simplicity toward things, in our vulnerability, in our expecting that just about anything might be possible, in our awe and wonder over what God has created, and in what God continues to create in our lives.  I think God wants us to be more childlike in the way we place our trust in him.           

And if we begin to look at things like a child, if we begin to see that anything can be accomplished, anything might be possible, with God’s help, if we place our trust in God, if we have a childlike faith, the faith of a child, then why not tackle some of the most entrenched problems we face as human beings, why not try to accomplish something audacious with our faith, something we can only accomplish with faith, something we can only accomplish with God’s help.  Why not, for once, heed Isaiah’s call to action, which is really God’s call to action, to be at work in the world.  Why not pray for and work toward peace in the world.  Why not pray for and work toward something even more difficult, which is peace in the human heart.  There can be no real and lasting peace in the world unless peace first begins in the human heart.  I need to pray for and work toward peace in my heart, and you need to pray for and work toward peace in yours.

Someone has said that people want to change the world, but they don’t want to change themselves first in a way that might bring about change in the world.  We want everyone else to change.  People want to change the world, but they can’t stand the thought that they might have to change first in order to change the world.  It was Gandhi who said, “You be the change, you be the change, you want to see in the world.”           

I’m sure you’ve heard the name of Desmond Tutu.  He is now retired, but he was the Anglican Bishop in South Africa who fought to eliminate this evil practice of apartheid, racism.  He was here in Pittsburgh not long ago, speaking and receiving an award.  But he helped end apartheid in South Africa through nonviolence and civil disobedience, the kind of thing practiced by Gandhi, who I just mentioned, and Martin Luther King.  In effect, he loved his enemies into a change of heart that transformed the whole country.  But as a young man apparently he was headed in the wrong direction; he was headed toward violence.  But something happened that changed his perspective.  Of course, back in those days when he was just a young man, it was accepted practice for white people in South Africa to be rude to those who were black.  But one day, young Desmond Tutu was walking along with his mother, and they walked by a white Anglican priest.  And this white Anglican priest was not rude, rather he showed Desmond Tutu’s mother a simple act of courtesy unheard of at the time, he simply doffed his hat to her and showed her some respect.  It was just this simple little act, but for Desmond Tutu, he saw that his country could be different, the world could be different.  Here is a man who, with just the tip of his hat, changed the world, he changed the life of this young man, and he thereby changed the world.  It is possible.           

There is a quote by Mother Teresa that I like.  Someone once asked Mother Teresa what they could do to bring about world peace.  What can I do to bring about world peace?  And Mother Teresa’s answer was this: “Love your neighbor.”  Love your neighbor.  It sounds like something Mother Teresa might say.  It sounds like something a little child might say.           

You see this child, this little child who will lead us all into this peaceable kingdom where the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, this little child is Jesus.  There is something awesome and wonderful and vulnerable and invincible about a child that we dare not lose sight of as we grow up and as we grow older, but the real child that will lead us to growth and to change and to something transcendent in our lives, and who knows, maybe even to something transcendent in our world, the real child is this little child born in a manger, this little child born, if we allow him, into our hearts.           

I heard of a man who came to a Billy Graham crusade.  He came reluctantly and was vocal in his scorn.  There must have been some emptiness that he was experiencing, that he wouldn’t let on about, even to himself.  And when George Beverly Shea got up to sing, he made yet another wisecrack, he considered this whole thing a charade, and trite and simplistic.  But then George Beverly Shea began to sing, and the song was “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” and this man became very quiet and serious.  And as the words, “He’s got the tiny little baby in his hands,” were sung, this man bowed his head and tears streamed down his face.  When the invitation came, he came forward to give his life to Jesus.  He told a counselor later that he had a child at home who was very ill, and to think that no matter what might happen, no matter how it might turn out, there was a God who was caring for his child.           

And a little child shall lead them, this little child at home sick about whom this man was so concerned, and this little child about whom George Beverly Shea sang, who’s got the whole world in his hands, this little child Jesus.