Mind-blowing Peace
Gate Pa – Year C 2nd Sunday in Advent 2021
The Sermon
1. Introduction:
What a week it has been. Traffic lights came into play and surprisingly we landed in orange. Not where I thought we would be.
And then the bishops sent out a pastoral letter detailing where their conversations had led them to. Not an easy place. I know from twitter that some were very reluctant to make that call. Vaccine passes have become the norm for most of our services. Once we have that set up that will make life much easier and safer. But it means that some in our small parish are no longer able to attend church or to be involved in our mission and ministry. And that is really hard. It’s kind of like it was, but it will be different because some people will not be involved.
And all of that while we have been leaving behind the old church year and embracing a new one, with a new gospel, and Christmas sitting on the horizon. We try to make sense of all this as we enter into advent. This time of expectantly preparing for, not Christmas! Despite the carols in shopping malls and supermarkets, despite the urgent need to organise gatherings, presents and trees, Advent is about so much more.
Advent is the time of expectantly preparing for the Christ of History (Jesus, born on Christmas day, who lived the presence of God among us) so that we might more fully experience the Christ of mystery (the ongoing work on the crucified and risen Christ among us today) in order to prepare for the coming of Christ in Majesty (when all God hopes for comes to be). Christmas is important. But if we stop there, we miss the point.
2. Wreaths
During these for Sundays of expectant preparation we are invited to reflect on God’s hope, (last week) peace (this week) joy (next week) and love (Sunday before Christmas).
Last week I assume Debbie helped you think about hope. I really like Jim Wallis’ description of Christian hope as “…believing in spite of the evidence, and watching the evidence change.”
I really like that this hope is grounded and involves us acting. Too often hope is little more than pie in the sky stuff. I hope to win Lotto and help my children buy a house. Little chance of that happening, mostly because I don’t buy many tickets. Let alone the really bad odds. I hope this virus goes away next year. Hope is too often about things I can dream about and not actually do much about..
Jim Wallis’ hope involves me working for what I hope for. Living what God hopes for. I hope to live in a land where all have a house and enough to flourish. So, what do I need to do to help make that real? How do I believe that and live that in spite of the evidence, and watch the evidence change?
3. Peace
Sometimes we reduce peace down to an absence of conflict. Sometimes we are willing to enforce our peace with the threat of violence. Rome enforced it’s peace with crucifixions and brutal violence. Peace was restored in Palestine with the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the enslavement of more, and the destruction of Jerusalem.
Today we have justified war as a means to peace. In recent year the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Is that really peace?
Throughout history empires have used violence to enforce their version of peace. America does it today. Britain enforced it’s peace with a military presence across its empire while it gathered the wealth back in the UK. Countries like India and across Africa do not look back on that time as a time of peace.
The Mongol empire offers another thought. Genghis Khan never had more than about 100,000 in his army. With that he established an empire that was to span from Europe, down through Asia and into the Middle East. 20% of the earth’s landmass was under Mongol control. They were unable to leave garrisons in the conquered cities. Instead, the sought to establish a system where everyone benefited from being part of the Empire. They build safe trade routes. They established the first currency exchange system. And for that they exacted a tax. If you interfered with this system, if you did not pay the tax, you were obliterated from the face of the earth. They did not need to do that every often. Their efficient trade routes brought black death from Asia into Europe, and collapsed those routes on the way. But that is beside the point.
Their peace was slightly different because all parties benefited. All grew wealthier. There reign was the only time the silk road was under the control of one entity. When Columbus crashed into the Americas, he was looking to re-establish that trade route with China. Everyone benefited.
So, what is peace?
4. Luke
God’s peace is about wholeness, when all is as it was created to be. Shalom.
Peace comes when all benefit and happens when the common good is held as supreme. Surely that is what the beatitudes are about. Surely that is what Luke 4 is about.
Luke knew that this peace is not found in the ways of the powerful. In this week’s section of his gospel he began with a litany of the powerful all of whom owed their place and power to Tiberius, Caesar and emperor of Rome.
Peace is found in a baby born to peasants among the animals in a stable, in a small village outside Jerusalem, Bethlehem.
Peace is found in the preaching of John the Baptiser, who was born into more privilege, but chose to live on edge, in the wilderness. A dangerous and rough place. A liminal place where God seemed more accessible.
The wilderness that echoed the exodus out of Egypt and where the people of God were stripped of all they knew of the ways of Egypt and offered a different way of life. The way of peace.
And in the wilderness John quotes from the scroll of Isaiah. These words are to those in exile. Their lives had been shredded and they lived far from home in a foreign land serving a foreign empire and their gods. And they are promised a way home. And they are promised that God would be with them on that journey home. But like the wilderness in the exodus, this time of return would be a time of letting go of old ways. Old ways leaned in Babylon. Old ways that had led to calamity in the first place. Like the exodus this was a time of formation and refining. Because peace is not found in the ways of the powerful
So, John offers a baptism of repentance and forgiveness.
A baptism of letting go, and of having our mind’s blown and seeing life in new ways.
5. Covid crisis
Normally you could say that Advent is a time of letting go. But this advent feels a little different.
After the last nearly 2 years, you could say we are also in a time of exile. Our lives have changed markedly in the last two years. We, like those in exile, long to go home and to go back to how things were.
Like those in exile this is a time of formation and of letting go.
So I wonder what we need to let go of so that we might experience glimpses of hope?
As we hear Zechariah’s prophetic words, and as we listen to his son John quote Isaiah, where do we see signs of God’s ongoing presence among us that point us to new ways of being in God with each other, offering peace and living God’s compassion for all?
How do we experience and live God’s peace this advent?
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