Sunday, December 10th, 2006
Advent 2C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 9:2, 6; Micah 4:3; Matthew 5:9
In her children’s book “In God’s Name”, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso relates an enchanting story of how we came up with all the names we use for God. The names are born out of our own experiences. For example, “to the lonely child, God is ‘friend’, to the man who tends sheep in the valley, God is ‘Shepherd’, to the artist who carved figures from the earth’s hard stone, God is ‘my rock’, to the farmer whose skin is dark like the rich brown earth from which all things grow, God is ‘source of life’, and to the tired soldier who fought too many wars, God is ‘maker of peace.’” (Jewish Light Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 1994)
It has weighed heavy these last 5 years, to approach this Sunday of each Advent Season, and try to come to terms with the fact that, like it or not, we are a nation at war. Even as we sit here today, there are young men and women donning combat gear and checking their weapons and preparing to move out and patrol an area, or a town, or a neighborhood, and the chance that one or two or three or more of them will not return alive is all too real.
This past Wednesday evening, we attempted to do a brief survey of how many times the word ‘peace’ or some variation thereof appears in the Bible. My NIV concordance listed 102 instances, from Leviticus through the Revelation to John, in other words, even more than last week’s concordance on Hope, with something over 80 instances.
It may seem like just a mathematical exercise, to find out how many times a word or a variation of a word appears in scripture, and it may well be, but it bears noting. It is worth considering what the meaning might be behind the fact that there ARE 102 places in scripture where the word ‘peace’ is used … and in what context.
How often is the word used in the context of speaking of the human-divine relationship – between us and God – and whether or not THAT brings peace? How often is it used in the context of relationships between us as humans, as nations, as tribes?
In the discussion Wednesday, we referenced one particular passage: Matthew 10:32-38, in which Christ himself seems to reject his ‘prince of peace’ title from the Isaiah passage we read a few minutes ago: the context is Christ’s sending out the disciples on their first ‘practice run’ for taking the Gospel message to the rest of the world—he is describing what they are to expect, how they are to act, what they are to take with them – actually more like the fact that they are supposed to take NOTHING with them – and as he comes towards the end of the ‘commissioning service’, more or less, he turns to the issue of who will accept the good news and who will reject it, and he speaks these TERRIFYNG words –
That passage has always bothered me. As a younger man, it seemed to be that Jesus was saying that, in order to TRULY be a follower of Christ, you had to be in opposition to your parents, or your family. On some level, there had to be something that made you uncomfortable to be in the company of others.
What I initially mistook for a call to brace for conflict has become for me a call to radical, ultimate allegiance. It is a call to prioritize exactly what we consider to be the most important thing in our life – and to be true to that.
You remember how Jesus responded to the question about paying tribute to Caesar? ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’
There’s continuity between the two ideas there. What Christ is telling his disciples is to know what and WHO they believe, because there will be a time in each of our lives where our ultimate allegiance will be tested.
The image from Isaiah resonates with all we read in the New Testament about Christ being the light of the world. In that light we find our reconciliation with God – the ultimate answer at the core of the world’s problems. Billy Graham puts it this way: "Our basic problem is not a race problem. Our basic problem is not a poverty problem. Our basic problem is not a war problem. Our basic problem is a heart problem. We need to get the heart changed, the heart transformed."
While I completely agree with Dr. Graham in the assessment of the basic world problem, understanding that the heart of every human being needs to be transformed in order for there to BE peace in the world, however overwhelming and inconceivably vast that responsibility seems, we cannot neglect the fact that we are also called, as we find in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, to be peacemakers. That is one of our many challenges as Christ followers.
We are called to engage the world and address the world’s needs, to fill the emptiness that sucks the joy out of life by introducing TRUE life to people in the person of Jesus. We are to do everything in our power and in our abilities to work out our differences in a manner that would honor the Prince of Peace. And that working out of differences MUST begin within our own communities, our own congregations.
The outgrowth of NOT having peace with God is sin, and sin manifests itself through selfishness, cruelty, compassionlessness, indifference, uncaring, ruthlessness ... there are many other words we can fill in here, but you get the picture.
On a personal level, I think we’ve all seen what that can look like. In our darkest moments, we fit the descriptives pretty well.
On a corporate, societal level, we have also seen what that can look like – ethnic hatred and fighting, societies crumbling under sectarian violence, the subjugation of the weak and powerless by an entrenched power-hungry minority that is not responsive to the needs of the population as a whole. Those phrases can all be summed up in a single word: injustice.
We’ve seen it in the Balkans in the early and mid 90’s, we’ve seen it in South Africa under the Apartheid regime, we saw it in Rwanda and Burundi, also in the mid-90’s, in the genocide between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes of those central African countries. We hear of it in the massacres that are happening even today in Sudan, in the region of Darfur, in East Africa. That injustice is not limited to the rest of the world. Here in the United States we’ve been guilty of institutionalizing injustice as well, in the form of Jim Crow laws here in the south, thankfully they have been removed from the books, but the quest for equality between the races continues, even today. We still see and hear of crimes motivated by hatred of people who are different almost every day.
The Micah passage is the goal – the image that we long to attain, that golden day when all of humanity will realize that there is no more need for war. Won’t that be a day to remember? Wouldn’t it be amazing if it came in our lifetime?
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
It means that it really DOES need to start in each of our hearts, but it can’t stop there. We need to be at peace with God individually before we move on to the rest of the world. And “the rest of the world” starts pretty quickly. It begins with an honest assessment of how many relationships there are in each of our lives in which we have done violence to someone else – whether by word or deed, or separation; whether through the act of speaking words in anger and not coming to a reconciliation once the argument was over, or whether by refusing to forgive or ask forgiveness from a brother or a sister when we come to realize that we were wrong or that the relationship is more important than any disagreement we might have between us.
It’s no less of a challenge to be peacemakers within these walls as it is to be one outside of these walls, but again, there is no room to neglect pursuing peace in either setting.
Our prayer, our goal, our hope to work towards is that Micah image, to beat our swords of bitterness into plowshares of gentleness, that will cultivate the loving relationships through which this body of believers will grow, to turn our spears of gossip and discontent into pruning hooks that will trim off the excess baggage that holds us back, that weighs and drags us down, keeping us from reaching and becoming more and more like Christ to each other, and then to the rest of the world.
Let’s pray.
Advent 2C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 9:2, 6; Micah 4:3; Matthew 5:9
Is. 9:2The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. 6For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Micah 4:3He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;
Matthew 5:9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
In her children’s book “In God’s Name”, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso relates an enchanting story of how we came up with all the names we use for God. The names are born out of our own experiences. For example, “to the lonely child, God is ‘friend’, to the man who tends sheep in the valley, God is ‘Shepherd’, to the artist who carved figures from the earth’s hard stone, God is ‘my rock’, to the farmer whose skin is dark like the rich brown earth from which all things grow, God is ‘source of life’, and to the tired soldier who fought too many wars, God is ‘maker of peace.’” (Jewish Light Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 1994)
It has weighed heavy these last 5 years, to approach this Sunday of each Advent Season, and try to come to terms with the fact that, like it or not, we are a nation at war. Even as we sit here today, there are young men and women donning combat gear and checking their weapons and preparing to move out and patrol an area, or a town, or a neighborhood, and the chance that one or two or three or more of them will not return alive is all too real.
This past Wednesday evening, we attempted to do a brief survey of how many times the word ‘peace’ or some variation thereof appears in the Bible. My NIV concordance listed 102 instances, from Leviticus through the Revelation to John, in other words, even more than last week’s concordance on Hope, with something over 80 instances.
It may seem like just a mathematical exercise, to find out how many times a word or a variation of a word appears in scripture, and it may well be, but it bears noting. It is worth considering what the meaning might be behind the fact that there ARE 102 places in scripture where the word ‘peace’ is used … and in what context.
How often is the word used in the context of speaking of the human-divine relationship – between us and God – and whether or not THAT brings peace? How often is it used in the context of relationships between us as humans, as nations, as tribes?
In the discussion Wednesday, we referenced one particular passage: Matthew 10:32-38, in which Christ himself seems to reject his ‘prince of peace’ title from the Isaiah passage we read a few minutes ago: the context is Christ’s sending out the disciples on their first ‘practice run’ for taking the Gospel message to the rest of the world—he is describing what they are to expect, how they are to act, what they are to take with them – actually more like the fact that they are supposed to take NOTHING with them – and as he comes towards the end of the ‘commissioning service’, more or less, he turns to the issue of who will accept the good news and who will reject it, and he speaks these TERRIFYNG words –
32“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. 34“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. 37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10)
That passage has always bothered me. As a younger man, it seemed to be that Jesus was saying that, in order to TRULY be a follower of Christ, you had to be in opposition to your parents, or your family. On some level, there had to be something that made you uncomfortable to be in the company of others.
What I initially mistook for a call to brace for conflict has become for me a call to radical, ultimate allegiance. It is a call to prioritize exactly what we consider to be the most important thing in our life – and to be true to that.
You remember how Jesus responded to the question about paying tribute to Caesar? ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’
There’s continuity between the two ideas there. What Christ is telling his disciples is to know what and WHO they believe, because there will be a time in each of our lives where our ultimate allegiance will be tested.
The image from Isaiah resonates with all we read in the New Testament about Christ being the light of the world. In that light we find our reconciliation with God – the ultimate answer at the core of the world’s problems. Billy Graham puts it this way: "Our basic problem is not a race problem. Our basic problem is not a poverty problem. Our basic problem is not a war problem. Our basic problem is a heart problem. We need to get the heart changed, the heart transformed."
While I completely agree with Dr. Graham in the assessment of the basic world problem, understanding that the heart of every human being needs to be transformed in order for there to BE peace in the world, however overwhelming and inconceivably vast that responsibility seems, we cannot neglect the fact that we are also called, as we find in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, to be peacemakers. That is one of our many challenges as Christ followers.
We are called to engage the world and address the world’s needs, to fill the emptiness that sucks the joy out of life by introducing TRUE life to people in the person of Jesus. We are to do everything in our power and in our abilities to work out our differences in a manner that would honor the Prince of Peace. And that working out of differences MUST begin within our own communities, our own congregations.
The outgrowth of NOT having peace with God is sin, and sin manifests itself through selfishness, cruelty, compassionlessness, indifference, uncaring, ruthlessness ... there are many other words we can fill in here, but you get the picture.
On a personal level, I think we’ve all seen what that can look like. In our darkest moments, we fit the descriptives pretty well.
On a corporate, societal level, we have also seen what that can look like – ethnic hatred and fighting, societies crumbling under sectarian violence, the subjugation of the weak and powerless by an entrenched power-hungry minority that is not responsive to the needs of the population as a whole. Those phrases can all be summed up in a single word: injustice.
We’ve seen it in the Balkans in the early and mid 90’s, we’ve seen it in South Africa under the Apartheid regime, we saw it in Rwanda and Burundi, also in the mid-90’s, in the genocide between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes of those central African countries. We hear of it in the massacres that are happening even today in Sudan, in the region of Darfur, in East Africa. That injustice is not limited to the rest of the world. Here in the United States we’ve been guilty of institutionalizing injustice as well, in the form of Jim Crow laws here in the south, thankfully they have been removed from the books, but the quest for equality between the races continues, even today. We still see and hear of crimes motivated by hatred of people who are different almost every day.
The Micah passage is the goal – the image that we long to attain, that golden day when all of humanity will realize that there is no more need for war. Won’t that be a day to remember? Wouldn’t it be amazing if it came in our lifetime?
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
It means that it really DOES need to start in each of our hearts, but it can’t stop there. We need to be at peace with God individually before we move on to the rest of the world. And “the rest of the world” starts pretty quickly. It begins with an honest assessment of how many relationships there are in each of our lives in which we have done violence to someone else – whether by word or deed, or separation; whether through the act of speaking words in anger and not coming to a reconciliation once the argument was over, or whether by refusing to forgive or ask forgiveness from a brother or a sister when we come to realize that we were wrong or that the relationship is more important than any disagreement we might have between us.
It’s no less of a challenge to be peacemakers within these walls as it is to be one outside of these walls, but again, there is no room to neglect pursuing peace in either setting.
Our prayer, our goal, our hope to work towards is that Micah image, to beat our swords of bitterness into plowshares of gentleness, that will cultivate the loving relationships through which this body of believers will grow, to turn our spears of gossip and discontent into pruning hooks that will trim off the excess baggage that holds us back, that weighs and drags us down, keeping us from reaching and becoming more and more like Christ to each other, and then to the rest of the world.
Let’s pray.
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