Peace is the Fruit of Justice - A Sermon
Written and delivered by Hannah Shultz, at Atlanta Mennonite Church on September 7, 2025.
The year after I graduated from college, I served as a full-time volunteer with Brethren Volunteer Service, working in the Church of the Brethren’s denominational offices, planning service trips across the country for youth and young adults. One of the service trips I planned and led was in New Orleans, where I worked with an organization called Capstone in the Lower Ninth Ward. Capstone was founded in 2009 by David Young, who went to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to help rebuild houses. While spending time in the Lower Ninth, he realized that there was another need in the community as well. The Lower Ninth is considered a food desert, meaning that there is limited access to fresh and affordable foods. As David looked around at the vacant and abandoned lots in the Lower Ninth, he saw more than just concrete and weeds.
He saw an opportunity to transform these blighted and vacant plots into productive gardens and orchards.
When I volunteered with him in 2014, he owned five gardens in the neighborhood, provided food at no cost to those who needed it, and assisted others in starting their own gardens. David took an opportunity to right injustices in a part of the city that had long been neglected. Through pursuing justice, he transformed the space, literally carving gardens out of concrete, and brought food to a community that needed it. The transformation that happened in the lower ninth is the kind of transformation that Isaiah is describing in this passage.
The early chapters of Isaiah come from a time when the Assyrian empire loomed large, threatening Jerusalem. The leaders of Judah were anxious, complacent, and often unjust. When Isaiah looked around him, he saw ruin. Fortresses abandoned, cities deserted, places of power and protection left crumbling. He saw leaders failing and people suffering. This is not right. His words are both a commentary on the current state of affairs and an explicit warning of how much worse it might get if things don’t change.
Isaiah is clear about the cause of the desolation—because of corruption from leaders and grave injustice, the city lies in ruin. In the Old Testament, obligations toward the land and others stand at the center of God’s covenant with Israel. Social and ecological justice are intertwined in such a way that, when the agreement to care for those in need is broken, both people and the land suffer.
It is the same systems of oppression that harm both people and the earth. The systems and structures that perpetuate economic, racial, and social injustices also prioritize consumerism and production over sustainability.
This passage makes clear the destructive impact that human activities can have on the earth.
The images of desolation that Isaiah portrays feel uncomfortably familiar: forests cut down for timber, polluted rivers, once-thriving neighborhoods hollowed out and abandoned, landscapes stripped for profit, entire communities leveled by a hurricane—vacant lots where families once danced in the streets, communities left vulnerable in the wake of climate disaster.
And, we know that the impact of environmental degradation is not shared evenly across society. At GIPL, one of the big issues we work on is energy burden, which refers to the percentage of household income spent on utility costs. Every three years, we intervene in proceedings where the Public Service Commission makes decisions about where Georgia Power will source its energy, how much it invests in things like renewables, and what billpayers pay for their electricity. In the past two years, customers have seen six rate hikes to cover excess fuel expenses and the cost of completing two new units at Plant Vogtle.
We know that energy demand is only going to continue to soar in the next few years as an influx of massive data centers comes to Georgia. And, although the costs of renewable energy, like solar, continue to decrease, Georgia Power plans to meet this demand by investing in energy that is dirty and expensive.
The impact of these decisions will be felt most profoundly by low-income communities, who already face a significantly higher energy burden.
When faced with significant electricity bills, families are forced to make decisions about keeping their lights on or putting food on the table. These are not just environmental problems. They are justice problems. They are peace problems.
There is good news in this passage, though. Isaiah’s words are not just ones of lament. The prophet imagines something more for this world. He envisions a Spirit poured out, wilderness transformed into fruitful fields, justice dwelling in desolate places, and peace taking root. What was abandoned becomes a home. What was dry and barren becomes alive again.
Isaiah’s vision is not one of despair, but of renewal—a promise that peace is possible when justice is at the center.
That is exactly what this year’s Season of Creation calls us into: peace with creation. The Season of Creation is a global, ecumenical movement that began in 1989 when Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I declared Sept. 1 a Day of Prayer for Creation. This evolved into a month-long celebration, starting on Sept. 1 and ending on Oct. 4—the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology.
This month encourages Christians across the world to reflect on our responsibility to care for our common home and take action for environmental justice. This year’s theme, Peace with Creation, challenges us to prepare a path to peace in our world by addressing the injustices that cause ecological and societal harm.
In Hebrew, shalom—peace—is never just about the absence of conflict.
Shalom is about wholeness, flourishing, the right ordering of relationships between people, God, and the earth itself.
Isaiah tells us that peace does not come by accident; it is the fruit of righteousness and justice. Peace begins with the Spirit. Isaiah says that the world will continue on the path of destruction “until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high.”
In Hebrew, that word for Spirit is ruach—the same word used in Genesis when God’s breath hovers over the waters of chaos. The same Spirit that brings life where there is none and order where there is disorder, also brings renewal where there is ruin. This is a reminder of God’s healing and creative power and the ability for us, through the power of the Spirit, to create a flourishing world once again.
God’s first act in scripture is to create the heavens and the earth. The Spirit sweeps over the void and brings about light and life, declaring it very good. Out of the chaos, God forms order and beauty. Then, God creates first light, then sky, sea, dry ground, and vegetation in all forms.
God creates the sun and the moon, the stars, sea life and birds, and large and small animals. After everything, God says it is good. God blesses the goodness of the earth six times before he even creates humans. God spends the longest time with the rest of Creation. From the very beginning of scripture, we know that God loves the earth that God delicately creates.
The same Spirit that created the world perfectly also called us to care for it.
Made from the dust and dirt of the earth and filled with God’s breath of life, our first calling is to work in the Garden of Eden and to take care of it (Genesis 2:15). Helping the earth flourish was our first and only responsibility. But we have always done a poor job tending to the garden.
We so quickly traded in our hedge clippers and garden trowels for bulldozers and machines until God’s creation has become unrecognizable. We’ve contaminated the ground with our need for expansion, more electricity, quicker and faster food, and our obsession with consumerism and single-use products.
And so here we are, the prophets of our own day, looking at the world around us, saying, “This is not right. This is not right. This is not right!” More than ever, we need to hear these words from Isaiah. The warning of what our future will look like if we don’t change our ways AND the promise of what is possible through the Spirit.
So, what does this Spirit do?
It transforms wilderness into a fruitful field, and that field into a forest. Scarcity into abundance. Desolation into flourishing. It’s not just restoration; it’s transformation. I think this is really important when we think about peace-making. This work is not just about righting wrongs. It is about coming up with new ways of doing things—new ways of living in this world. We are not just trying to restore the same conditions that led to conflict in the first place.
Peace is one of our core values at GIPL. It is an important part of our mission and vision. We say that we facilitate and lead a community of action founded in our common call to care for the Sacred Earth. How we live in Creation should be rooted in sharing and sustainability. Ultimately, we believe that being in right relationship with each other and with the whole of the Sacred Earth is foundational to individual, community, and societal peace.
We can’t have peace if we are fighting over shared and finite resources, injustices prevail in our cities, and we are killing the earth that is meant to sustain us.
So, how do we achieve peace?
I think this comes through our other core values: stewardship, justice, community, and awe. Peace comes when we use our resources responsibly and see ourselves as part of an interconnected and interdependent ecosystem. It is only possible through communities that are well-connected, diverse, and rooted in action. It requires a reverence for the natural world—a deep love for the world and a desire to care for it.
We don’t spend nearly enough time paying attention to Creation. We have become so disconnected from the earth that we were once created from.
When was the last time you felt a blade of grass or considered the lilies of the field?
What would happen if we went for a walk in the woods and let ourselves feel the moss between our toes and listened for the sound of the wind between the leaves of the trees?
How much more intimately connected to the earth would we be?
How much more would we want to care for it?
We have lost our sense of awe for the world around us. Perhaps if we paid a little bit more attention, we would fall in love with the earth all over again. And who knows what could be birthed out of this love.
And, lastly, peace doesn’t just happen—it is the fruit of justice. This is at the core of Isaiah’s message. Peace is spirit-led work, but it cannot come from the spirit alone. It requires active participation. He says, “Justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.”
Peace requires us to roll up our sleeves, to plant seeds of justice, to stand with communities fighting for clean water and affordable energy, to join God’s Spirit already at work transforming wastelands into flourishing fields.
Jesus talks a lot about this kind of transformative peace. His life is a testament to a different way of living in the world. He preached about a reordering of the world—where the first are last and the meek come out on top. He flips social conventions—healing lepers, listening to outsiders, and challenging religious leaders.
He shows us that peace requires us to stand up for what we believe in—to use our voices in protest, to go against the grain, to defy social norms, to share light in the darkness.
Isaiah gives us a vision of what peace with Creation looks like. It looks like abandoned land turned into pasture and forest—places where life can flourish again. It looks like righteousness dwelling in the very places once written off as waste. It looks like communities living in secure dwellings, in quiet resting places, where children breathe clean air, where rivers run clear, where the land itself testifies to God’s goodness.
So, what does this mean for us today? How do we start working toward this kind of justice-centered transformation?
Our mission at GIPL is to inspire and equip communities of faith to organize, implement practical climate solutions, and advocate across Georgia on issues of climate change, environmental justice, and community resilience.
Over the last 20+ years, we have worked with over 600 congregations across the state and currently engage nearly 150 active green teams who are participating in the transformation of our world. This year alone, we have over 15 congregations that have, or plan to, install solar panels to bring clean energy and energy independence to their facility.
Some congregations, like the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, are also considering battery storage so that they can serve as resilience hubs—keeping their lights on and providing shelter, food, and water in the wake of natural disasters.
Other congregations are transforming their landscapes by removing invasive species, planting native plants, and putting in pollinator gardens to create more biodiverse and resilient ecosystems.
We are also working in disadvantaged communities to plant 2,000 trees over the next three years, particularly in neighborhoods that have been historically left out of climate investments, that are in the center of urban heat islands and lack green space.
The Atlanta Masjid and Mohammed Schools are planting 100 trees this fall on their campus. They plan to engage the kids at the school as part of their environmental education.
This fall, we are mobilizing congregations across the state to join us in our Get Out The Vote efforts to bring people to the polls in November to vote in the public service commission elections. Voting our values is one way of advocating for the change we want to see in energy policy.
This work is rooted in active hope—in the promise of a better world that is yet to come and in the understanding that we are to be participants in the inbreaking of God’s kingdom here on earth.
The Season of Creation reminds us that this work is ours to do—not just today, not just this month, but every single day. We are sowers of seeds, builders of peace, midwives of a New Creation. Even when we look at the world around us and see that all is not right—especially when we look at the world around us and see that all is not right. Isaiah’s message assures us that God’s spirit is at work and that we are to be part of the profound transformation of this world.
When I look at our world, I do see a planet in crisis—but I also see communities organizing, rivers being cleaned, forests being restored, people of faith rising up to say: another way is possible.
Isaiah’s vision ends with images of home—secure, restful, peaceful.
May we carefully consider his prophetic challenge to recognize the things that make for peace, for justice, for righteousness. May our work transform our world so that we all have fresh and healthy food to eat, lights on in our homes, food on our tables, and a world outside that is full and flourishing.
