We have the hope candle which we lit last week. And at the beginning of the Christian year as we remember Christ’s first advent and anticipate his second, we affirm the hope that we have in Christ, hope that is like a light and a beacon in the darkness. We are a people of hope and while there is much to despair in our world presently we cling to that hope more determinedly.
Today we lit the candle of peace. And we recall that Jesus is the prince of peace. That he said “blessed are the peacemakers”. We remember that the angels announced his birth with the words “peace on earth and goodwill to all”. We remember Jesus own words to his disciples, my peace I give you my peace I leave you. We are a people of peace and we try to live peacefully for our world.
The pink candle is the candle of joy. Jesus birth is a joyous occasion. Mary proclaimed “my spirit rejoices in God my saviour for he has looked with favour on hid lowly servant”. The Angels announced to the shepherds “I bring you news of great joy to all people” and the same shepherds after seeing the Christ child returned with joy “glorifying and praising God.” We are a people who know a joy deep within a joy that issue forth in praise to God and a desire to live for Christ in the world.
The fourth candle is the candle of love. “Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely love divine”. The best is kept to last, the tallest candle is the love candle for we know that “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son” And we know that “greater love has none that this that a man lay down his life for his friends” Christmas is about love the love of God for us expressed, fleshed out, made known. And in the centre is the Christ candle lit on Christmas day Christ the source and fulfilment of our hope, peace, joy and love.
But in contemplating these candles I thought of the text that Neil read last week from 1 Cor 13. These three remain faith hope and love and the greatest of these love. I wondered why it wasn’t these three virtues that were used as the advent themes. Why do we not have a faith candle and why instead do we have a peace candle and a joy candle?
And I wonder why Paul did not say “these things remain faith, hope, peace, joy and love – perhaps it was just too wordy for him!
Peace is a challenging concept to bring into our celebrations of Advent and Christmas. For at best the notion of peace in the gospel story is at ambiguous. The gospel account of Jesus birth are mixed with violence. King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents and the forced exile of Joseph and Mary into Egypt hardly paint a picture of peace. Today we read the beginning of the gospel of Mark, in which John the Baptist is introduced. This one who prepare the way for the Lord goes ahead of the Lord in facing a violent death at the hands of a brutal and unjust state. Like Jesus he escaped Herod the Greats plot to kill all boys under two in the region of Bethlehem, and like Jesus he meet his fate courtesy of that potentate’s evil son Herod Antipas.
The ambiguity surrounding ‘peace’ in the gospels is Jesus own proclamation “I came not to bring peace but a sword”.
Maybe this evokes some sense of relief. With the mad rush that is Christmas, the many demands of family and of work does and tightening budgets, peace is a luxury that barely get’s a look in. And when peace can’t be found we look for substitutes, some chemical to help you cope, some activity to express the pent up frustration or a self induced denial a sort of automatic pilot response to stress of the loopy season that shuts out the panic and pain but also shuts out the joy and celebration
How do we hold these notions of violence and injustice together with the peace that is also a key ingredient in the Christmas Story?
Today’s psalm speak of righteousness and peace kissing this is a very poetic and romantic notion but that one earth does it really mean?
It’s helpful if you have clear idea of what peace and righteousness are.
The Hebrew word for peace as you probably know is shalom; it involves far more than just the absence of conflict it is a positive concept that embraces all that is to do with total well-being. Physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and economic well-being are all aspects of the biblical concept of shalom/peace. Shalom symbolises the ideal life where we are at peace with ourselves our neighbour, our circumstances, our community and our God. It is akin to what Jesus called the abundant life and what we sometimes call the good-life.
Righteousness as I hope you also know is about right living. It is about living justly. Justice and righteousness come from the same root word in Greek and you cannot separate the two if you want to understand what either of them means.
Here then is the poets meaning when he writes that righteousness and peace kiss. He means that in the ideal world that he anticipates right living will result in the good life.
Evidently that is not true at the moment! It wasn’t true when the poet wrote it. It wasn’t true when Jesus was born. More often than not the righteous that is to use Micah definition those who act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God, pay a price for their right living, the price can vary from financial hardship, to mocking to persecution and martyrdom.
The poet writes with what Walter Bruegermann called prophetic imagination. He imagines a world where the righteous are reward for their good living, a world where
The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land willThe poet finishes his psalm with a phrase that resonates with our gospel and Old Testament reading
yield its harvest.
Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his stepsHe puts the two ideas in the right order good living must come first, the good life will follow. Until the end of all things when there is made a new heaven and a new earth, the good life cannot be guaranteed, but in the mean time we can be sure that the good life is not possible without good living.
The poet/prophet Isaiah was moved by the same spirit and his imagination was stirred in a similar way. He spoke comfort to the people of Jerusalem and Judah who had suffered long in captivity, he spoke of shalom of the good life being realise in their time. But for this to happen justice would have to lead the way. The valley shall be exalted, the hills shall be brought down, a highway through the wilderness would be built. The highway called the road of the righteous
An earlier poet writing before the exile also recorded in the book of Isaiah wrote of the holiness highway
And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The uncleanHere we have another image of good living resulting in the good life.
will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools
will not go about on it.
9 No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will
not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there,
10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will
enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and
joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away
The latter prophet sometimes called Second Isaiah is convinced that only God can bring about the shalom/peace that people long for but that God will only come when the way is prepared, the ay of righteousness, the way of justice the way of good living.
Move forward a few hundred years to the time of John the Baptist. A prophet a preachers a voice calling in the wilderness Prepare ye the way of the Lord. And how is one to prepare the way for the Lord, how is one to prepare a way for God to act in one’s life or one’s community. The message is the same as that of the earlier poet/prophets. Live good so that the good life may come.
This means repenting, changing the way ones live in Luke’s gospel John spells out what repentances involves in very practical terms, he gives examples of the kind of right living that prepares the way for the Lord.
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. ... The person with two tunics should share with the one who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.
This is the beginning of true shalom/peace. Where righteousness and peace kiss where right living meets the good life.
It’s simple stuff really. But it challenges us deeply cuts across our cultural norms and call for us to act in a way that custom and long ingrained practice work against. How do we find peace this Christmas amidst the mad rush around us, amidst the pain and panic, amidst the gross injustice and extreme deprivation that confronts us?
Peace comes as a gift, a gift from the Christ child and peace comes from within as we do what our conscience tells us is right as we find ways to share our tunic and our food with others. We can but do all we can to live rightly thus finding peace with ourselves and peace with God. This does not guarantee that w shall live long and prosper or that all shall be well around and about. But the inner peace that comes from doing our best and trusting God for the rest, is a great strength and can get us through the worst storms of life.
We are people of hope our hope is that the peace we experience now in part will one day be fully realised and we keep our prophetic imagination alive as we anticipate that day.
We are people with an inner joy a life giving effervescence that is the partner of the peace that passes all understanding
And we are people who are deeply loved and its our experience of that love in its many forms that settles our heart and the casts out all fear and lets us live and rest in peace.
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