"The Three Dimensions of Peace"
Look to the manger to heal our broken world
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Text: Luke 2:15-20
A couple of weeks ago I was standing in Bayview Village Shopping Centre watching Santa Claus take his throne. There he sat, in the middle of the mall flanked by his two helpers. I stood there observing him, seeing how he was going to prepare himself for the onslaught of children. He stared back at me for what seemed like five minutes, but it was probably only 30 seconds. He looked deeply disturbed and I couldn't understand why - until I looked behind me and saw the line-up with all the children and their parents. He thought I was going to be the first one to sit on his lap! You can understand why he was petrified, can't you? He saw his whole day beginning in a terrible way and going downhill from there. His elves waved me quietly to one side and the parents were relieved that this big kid had gotten out of the way so their children could proceed.
Well, I wondered for a moment: What if I had sat on Santa's lap and he asked me the question, “What would you like for Christmas,” what would I have said? Without sounding like a contestant in a Miss Universe pageant, I think I would probably have said, “Peace on earth.” That's what I would really like for Christmas.
Indeed, the Christmas message and the Christmas hope is of that very reality. It is the very desire of God in coming in person to reveal and demonstrate the power of that peace. Unfortunately, however, for us to fully understand the importance of that peace, we have to make a number of minor adjustments and even major adjustments in the way that we think about God.
The writer Philip Yancey, who wrote a most telling book titled, The Jesus I Never Knew, speaks of his own passionate concern about God. His concern is that God does not deal with us with a sufficiently heavy hand. In other words, Yancey acknowledges that he is frustrated with God, that God seems to be too delicate, too gentle in the way that he treats human beings. The more I think about what Yancey says, the more I realize that that rings true for many of us.
We all like to think of God as omnipotent, all-powerful and sovereign, and we wonder if since He is those things, why does he not come down and crush the oppressors of the world? Why does not God intervene and eliminate the Saddam Husseins so we don't have to have wars? Why does he not punish those who pollute the environment willingly, without any thought to future generations? Why does not God step in and intervene when someone is about to be raped? Or why does not God simply put up his hand like Superman and stop the bullets that fly in our city, as they have done over the last few months? Why does not God deal with a heavy hand and crush the injustices, the oppressions, the inequities and the iniquities in this world?
So many of us ask those very questions with a clear conscience, and rightly so. The answer came to me some time ago when I read the writings of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard wrote the following, and in it he changed my whole attitude and approach towards God: “Omnipotence which can lay its hand so heavily upon the world can also make its touch so light that the creature receives independence.”
You see, my friends, we can't have it both ways. We can't desire an omnipotent God to use a heavy hand, intervene, crush, destroy, ameliorate all the problems that exist in the world, and at the same time give the creatures whom he has made independence. The light touch that God gives is the light touch of freedom; it is the light touch of giving us the independence to make decisions; it is the light touch that allows us to be persons.
You see, if God did not give us that independence, but simply intervened at every single moment along history, we would not be subjects, we would be objects. We would not be persons, we would not have choices. Our world would simply be controlled by a God who treats us as automatons.
The Christmas story is a story of God's light touch, the light touch of peace. When God decided to reveal Himself, he did so as a child in Bethlehem of Judea. God did not come with thunderous chariots or all-powerful armies, God came as a child into the midst of humanity to say to humanity, “This is how I want you to live. This is what I want you to be, and in my Son I am going to give you the power and the strength to see it and have it revealed to you. I will not come to smite, but I will come as a child.” And that is why the angels declared when Jesus came, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace.”
What does this really say? Well, the word peace in Greek is eirênê and when you translate eirênê back into Hebrew, you get the very famous Jewish word shalom. So what the angels were saying is that shalom will reign on earth. But what is shalom? It is more than the absence of conflict, it is more than the end of violence, it is a peace, it is a wholeness. It is in fact, a vision of God's desire for harmony amongst his people.
So when the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace,” they understood that in this child the very harmony that we desire is seen, but rather than impose it upon us where we have no free will to resist it, Christ is coming and requires us to make a decision: Are we going to accept this peace and are we then, as free human beings, responsible creatures, going to respond in kind? Well, I believe that is the challenge before all of us this Christmas.
It is the challenge every Christmas, for it is peace in three dimensions. The first dimension is peace with ourselves. One of the great characteristics of the Bible is that since humanity was given its freedom, as epitomized in the story of Adam and Eve, that freedom has had its consequences. One of the consequences is that sometimes in our sinfulness we cause conflict even in our own lives and our own souls. In fact, the greatest source of turmoil that we see as pastors is not just in interpersonal relationships but also in the relationship that we have with ourselves. Our very brokenness, our very sinfulness manifests itself in an inward reality of conflict. Trying to deal with that conflict when we are bereft, when we do not have the happiness that we enjoy, manifests itself in our trying every outward means possible to deal with it.
We try to deal with it through material accumulation; we try to deal with it through pleasure, through sex, through fun, through avoidance of obligations and responsibilities. We do it as a way of covering up for the very turmoil that we have within our hearts and souls. Indeed, peace really does begin in the relationship that we have with ourselves. Many of us are troubled and not at peace with ourselves. On the contrary, we are in a deep state of conflict. Often we feel guilty, often we feel unfulfilled, often we feel unforgiven, often we feel alienated from the person whom we ideally want to be, often we feel disappointed with ourselves. All of this is a manifestation of our own inner brokenness, a brokenness that goes right to the heart of our being. Well, this Christmas I want us to think about how the manger and how Christ can heal that brokenness.
One of our sextons, Terry Davis, has a young son called Jordan who is here every Sunday morning with him and who is quite a character. Jordan went to see Santa Claus on Wednesday. Terry took him as most parents do, with a certain degree of fear about what he was going to ask for. Jordan sat on Santa's lap and Santa said, “Now Jordan, what would you like for Christmas?”
Jordan looked him in the eye and boldly said, “Everything!” Isn't that great? “Everything.” Now, that kid is going to do well in business, let me tell you. So often my friends, we want everything, but if we want everything for our lives and our souls and ourselves it must include that one dimension, the dimension that only our creator can give us, and that is wholeness. And that wholeness we see as we look at our lives and reflect upon them in the light of Christ, for therein we find our forgiveness, therein we find our acceptance, therein we find the power to be the people that God wants us to be, therein we find the hope and the desires of our souls. And because we are always looking elsewhere trying to find that wholeness, trying to find that pleasure, somewhere else we miss this child who comes into our midst and says, “Follow me.”
Our brokenness is manifested also in the relationships that we have with others, and Christ came to bring that peace in our relationship with others. You know, there is no better time than Christmas Day to do an audit of our relationships, to discern honestly and sincerely where there are broken relationships, where there are divisions, where there is a need for healing in our relationships at home or at work, in community or in society, wherever they may be. This is the time when Christ calls us to do that. I love the phrase in the gospel that gives us a clue as to how this relationship should be mended. It starts off by saying, “Glory to God in the highest” and then “on earth peace.” Notice the language. In Latin it is “in excelsis deo altimisos,” “In the highest,” and it's as if heaven has come to earth in Jesus of Nazareth. My friends, if that is the case, if the glory of heaven has come to earth in the person of the Son, then earth itself must be by definition transformed, once heaven appears in an earthly form.
Throughout the Christmas period I like to read Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There is much great theology therein and there is this wonderful passage that speaks to our relationships:
I have always thought of Christmastime when it has come ”˜round as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys and therefore, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good and will do me good and I say, ”˜God bless it.'
Look at the phrase, “Fellow travellers to the grave,” rather than people who are on a separate journey. My friends, so often we treat one another as if we are on separate journeys rather than recognizing the fact that here we are on this earth together, living side-by-side, all with a common end - mortality - all of us vulnerable, all of us extremely fragile. And yet, the way we sometimes treat one another is as if somehow we are on separate tracks, going in different directions and therefore can break asunder and break apart. The birth of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the death and the resurrection of Jesus all show us the common theme that runs through our humanity. Heaven comes to earth and tries to show us the way we should live - to live our lives together. We share our birth and we share our death and in Christ may we share our eternal life, but when we see each other on this planet, on this earth, in this church, in our homes, fellow travellers following the way of Christ, then surely the conflicts that exist, the pettiness that separates should evaporate. When we look at the manger, we look at each other and when we look into the eyes of Christ we see each other. How can we then not be at peace?
There is a third and final dimension and that is our relationship with the world. This has not been a particularly good year for the world, starting immediately after Christmas Day last year with the tsunami on Boxing Day. We've had whole cities destroyed on different continents and in different countries. Nature has had a heavy hand. We have seen violence and death in wars. We've had bombings in London and many people killed. We've had gunshots and internecine conflicts within our own city. This hasn't been a great year, there has been a heavy hand at work, and the heavy hand is hard. It just seems so easy to despair, so easy to throw up our hands and say, “Where is this great God when there is so much heavy-handedness and why does he not intervene in the way that we see fit?” But He has intervened. He has come in a manger and said, “Follow me.”
A number of years ago just before Christmas, when I was studying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was walking along Brattle Street where I lived, not far from Harvard University. At 105 Brattle Street is a very famous house that belonged to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As I walked past Longfellow House I stopped and thought about it, because this was when the first Gulf War was about to begin and the bombs were just about to drop. I thought of Longfellow's magnificent poem, “Christmas Bells,” which was written during the Civil War in the United States when the guns were blazing and he as a Northerner was worried. He wrote these words that for me sum up the whole of our faith, the whole of our hope, the power of peace. Listen first for the sound of dejection and then hear the word of hope:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
Peace comes through faith. Peace comes through seeing and believing in the power of the light touch. Peace comes through seeing the brokenness in ourselves. Peace comes by seeing our brokenness with others. Peace comes in seeing brokenness in the world, then looking to the manger and saying, “God is not dead. Peace on earth, good will to men.” May we, this Christmas, look to the manger. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.