I find it hard to preach about peace when it seems like there is no chance of peace in our world. it is also difficult to preach on peace because I am not sure what to tell people to do in response to the sermon. Can each of us do something to change the violent ways of the world? After worship, someone imagined what would happen if people from all over the world flew en masse to Aleppo and filled the city with people desiring peace. "surely, if everyone was there wanting peace, the horrors would stop!" she said. it sounds good, but how do we bring about peace in our world?
If ind the Hacksaw Ridge illustration powerful and challenging. What a great example Doss made of living out his religious belief against killing. If everyone made that choice, there would be no one left to go to war and kill the enemy. But, it can easily be argued that without the United States going to war in WWII, Hitler would have gone unchecked in his destruction of the Jews, and then the next group of people he would have chosen.
With all that being said, the coming of Christ clearly brings with it an expectation and desire of God to have peace in the world.
“Looking
for Chrismons: Peace” SAPC, December 18, 2016
Isaiah 11:
1-9; 4th Advent
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his
roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear
of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not
judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide
with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod
of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and
faithfulness the belt around his loins.
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.
Introduction:
As I look around our world, I doubt that Isaiah’s vision can ever come
true.
Isaiah
speaks of “The wolf living with the lamb.”
“The
leopard lying down with the kid.”
We see
horrific images of Aleppo, or nations flexing their muscles, or the
partisanship and divisions in our own country which suggest we are at war with each
other.
We can create
our dove Chrismon and reflect on peace, but we look around and do not see
peace.
Even our
texts this morning seem to be in conflict with one another: Isaiah prophesying about peace and Jesus
himself saying he comes not to bring peace, but to bring the sword.
Move 1: Peace tied directly to the
coming of Christ.
a. After the sermon, we will sing the
familiar Christmas hymn, “It came upon a Midnight Clear”
1.
You
will notice, that according to the hymn, the first words the angels sing from the
heavens are: “Peace on the earth, good will to men!”
2.
If
we were to turn to the Gospel of Luke, we know the first words spoken by an
angel to the shepherds announces Christ’s birth.
but when
the rest of the angels join in to tell of the implications of the birth of
Christ, they announce,” Glory to God” and then “Peace on earth and good will to
men”
3.
Peace
is central to who Christ is and what Christ’s mission is.
b.
Not
just a sense of peace we feel inside, but a call to be peacemakers in the
world.
1.
Admittedly, we would rather focus on the fun
of our children creating the nativity scene or the beauty of our candlelit
Christmas Eve worship than the sights of Aleppo.
2.
But
the Christ who comes in Bethlehem, comes not just to reside in our hearts and
make us feel good about ourselves.
3.
He
comes to redeem and save the world.
4.
He comes so peace would reign across the
world.
5.
Until
we find ourselves living in a world at peace, the Christ-child who greets us
from a manger in Bethlehem demands we work for peace.
Move 2: Jesus looks at peace a bit differently than
the world does.
a.
Harvey Cox, who taught religion and wrote
quite a bit about it describes the difference in the peace the Romans offered
and the peace Christ brought.
1.
“The Romans had mastered the art of talking
about peace while waging almost constant war, always – of course – in the
interest of serving their pax [peace]
They littered the landscape with temples to peace and inscriptions about peace
at the same moment their regiments were crushing rebellions and slashing their
way to more and more conquests.
2.
“Pax Romana” which we refer to as the peace of Rome was
peace forced on the people by violence and repression.
3.
But
the peace Rabbi Jesus was talking about and demonstrating was shalom, not pax. It was not the peace
that was brutally enforced in the emperor’s name, but a peace nurtured by a
loving God. It did not come from the top
down but from the bottom up. Harvey Cox,
When Jesus Went to Harvard (126)
b. The Gospel
of Matthew has some challenging words about peace.
1.
Jesus
comes not with peace, but with the sword.
2.
Does that negate what the angels announce about the
Christ-child arriving to bring peace to the world?
3.
It
actually speaks to the commitment Christ demands of his disciples.
4.
Are
his disciples, are we, ready to give up everything to follow the Prince of
Peace?
5.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who opposed Nazism and ultimately died in a
concentration camp, calls the cross God’s sword
(http://www.bobcornwall.com/2014/06/a-house-divided-lectionary-reflection.html)
6.
The cross, the sign of Christ giving up his
life for the redemption of the world.
7.
Christ,
who could have summoned the powers of the heavens to destroy all the roman
forces, instead chooses to give up his life on the cross in the name of peace.
Move 3: What are we willing to give up to follow the
Prince of Peace and be peacemakers in our world.
a. “hacksaw ridge” (Beware, this is a violent and
bloody movie) he’s going to save a few lives;
1. the movie tells the true story of Desmond
Doss, a soldier in WWII who decides he cannot carry a gun into battle because
he does not believe in killing other people.
Instead, he becomes a medic and will earn the Congressional Medal of
Honor.
2. He has to go to military court to be given the
right to not carry a gun.
3. He describes his request like this:
“With the world so set on tearing itself
apart, it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me to want to put a little bit
of it back together.”
4. No one seems to understand his commitment
to take lives.
5. but when they see him in action, as
he saves somewhere between 50 to 75 wounded soldiers in the battle for Hacksaw
ridge, they discover the power that comes from giving up the killing of your
enemies.
(There is
an interesting article in Christianity
Today, “Hacksaw Ridge: The Bloody, True Story of Faith in Action,” about
the movie and Desmond Doss, written by Brett McCracken. It can be found at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/november-web-only/hacksaw-ridge.html?start=1)
b.
Several months ago, I read
an article about a group of people from a Lutheran seminary who were on a trip
to Israel and Palestine.
1.
A couple of evenings ago on our trip we had a
presentation by the Parent’s Circle, a grassroots organization for Palestinians
and Israelis who have lost loved ones due to the conflict. The representatives
who spoke to us were two fathers, a Palestinian and an Israeli, who had both
lost daughters because of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.
We had a very honest discussion about the conflict
and about life before and after the Separation Wall. “No wall, not matter how
high, can stop two kinds of people, one determined suicide bomber and the one
determined peacemaker,” said one of the fathers. They each went through their
own moments of wondering how life could possibly carry on given the death of
their children due to such senseless, mindless fighting. They could have chosen
revenge to ease their pain but instead realized that the only way forward was
to talk to each other. (Karoline
Lewis, Associate
Professor of Preaching and the Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching,
Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, Minn. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4249) FPC, Troy, 1/31/16
c.
what are we
willing to give up to follow the Prince of Peace?
Move 3: We still read the prophet Isaiah’s
vision for what the world might can become because we want that image in front
of us, calling us to be peacemakers.
a.
There is a story I once heard about an old man
who lived in the center of a desolate and hopeless city. The man walked outside
of his house and onto the streets and yell "Love, peace,
righteousness!" The next day he would do the same thing, he would leave his
house, walk onto the street and yell at the top of his lungs "Love, peace
and righteousness!" He would do this every day, rain or shine, like
clockwork.
One day the man's next door neighbor who was
tired of the daily yelling, went out on the street and confronted him. He said
"Hey man, are you crazy?, what the heck do you think you are doing? Every
day you come out of your house and yell 'love, peace and righteousness!' Fool,
don't you know nobody is listening to you! This city is full of hate and crime
and hopelessness, there is no love of neighbor and there is no peace and
righteousness to be found, so give it a rest and save your breath! Don't you
know that you can't change the world?"
The old man said, "You are
right, my yelling and shouting about 'love, peace and righteousness' may not
change the world, but one thing it will do is to stop the world from changing
me." Mt. Sterling, FPC, Fall 1997; Troy, 2000
b.
One of my favorite Christmas songs is “Do You
Hear What I Hear”
1.
the familiar song was written by Noel Regney
and his wife Gloria Shayne.
2.
Regney knew about war. Regney was born in Strasbourg, France. His
training as a composer was interrupted by being forced to join the Nazi army,
but he left to join t!
he French Resistance. After the war he pursued a distinguished career as a writer composer.
he French Resistance. After the war he pursued a distinguished career as a writer composer.
3.
The
inspiration for "Do You Hear What I
Hear?" came in October, 1962, the middle of the Cuban missile crisis.
4.
As
Regney walked down the streets of New York, overwhelmed at the looming end of
the world brought on by the violence that was about to erupt between the United
States and the USSR, he passed by two babies smiling in their strollers as
their mothers pushed them along a New York sidewalk.
You will
recall that the final stanza has the words "Pray for peace, people
everywhere." In interviews, Regney would emphasize that the song was a
song for peace. (http://articles.latimes.com/2002/nov/30/local/me-regney30;
reported on 11/30/2002, the day of Regney’s death)
Conclusion: so we go again to Bethlehem to meet the Christ-child, to
follow the Prince of Peace into the world.
Amen.
