Bearing the Prince of Peace

Sermon, December 19, 1999

Texts: II Samuel 7:8-16; Psalm 89:1-4, 34-37, 46-49; Luke 1:26-38

Christmas is one holiday that is anything but subtle; there is simply no way to miss it. I have never, ever, heard anyone on December 25 say, "Oh, my gosh, I forgot about Christmas." The decorations are everywhere, and have been since Halloween. The catalogs have filled our mailboxes for months. On the roads these past weeks you've seen lots of Christmas trees strapped to luggage racks, and all of you have had cards to write, cookies to bake, parties to attend, and presents to buy. Now this is the part of the sermon where I'm supposed to say a big, righteous "Harrummph and humbug, that's not what Christmas is all about." But I just can't genuinely pull that off. I like the hubbub and hustle and the anticipation it brings with it. Sure, there are some excesses, but I just love it that the celebration of Christmas is so dominant that the holiday simply can't go by unnoticed. There may be (well, there are) excesses, but something of the genuine spirit of the holiday does break through. (As captured in my seven-year old's Christmas card she created on the computer just yesterday...the card read: "Do you know Christmas is a holiday about giving?" It then went on: "I want a lot. Did you get my present yet?" I will be speaking to her...) I hardly think that buying too many presents for people we love will be our worse offense of the year. And I like hearing Christian songs and carols in the stores. I like the decorations and all the hustling about as if something important is about to happen. Again, Christmas is one holiday that is anything but subtle. Nor should it be. Christmas commemorates that time when something momentously important happened in that country by the Mediterranean so many years ago; it was so important that a millenium of divine prophecies heralded its coming. The prophecies were of a Messiah to be born in Bethlehem who will come to bring peace. It was a wonderful vision! The throne of David will be established forever, a Savior is going to arrive, the Prince of Peace will come, and for centuries the people continued to wait.

Now, the biblical understanding of peace is quite different from our typical, contemporary understanding. We think of peace simply as the absence of conflict...which is why frequently in our homes, in our workplace, in our society, and in our church we often do anything we can to avoid conflict. However, simply avoiding conflict doesn't really create peace so much as it teaches us to ignore our problems until they erupt and become crises. The biblical notion of peace, which is much more proactive, is called "shalom." "Shalom" refers to making things right, to setting things straight, to making things whole and complete. Shalom implies the just ordering of creation, society, family, and, hardest of all, our own divided hearts to bring about wholeness, completeness, contentment, "right"ness. When Jesus was born, the expectation of those who worshiped his arrival was that He was the one who would establish shalom, He would set things right, He would bring peace, and enable God's people to live in shalom. When the angels are singing to the shepherds at Jesus' birth they proclaim, "Peace on earth," because this Savior, this Son of David, has been born in the City of David, Bethlehem. Notice, though, through the rest of the Gospels, exactly how this Prince of Peace brought peace. He didn't kick the occupying Romans out of Israel; He didn't rid the people of their hated enemies. He didn't magically protect everyone from being hurt. He healed only a relative handful of people. He raised only two, perhaps three, people from the dead. He certainly did not avoid conflict. Jesus was a great disappointment to just about everybody who had a dream for wholeness, health, prosperity, peace. That might be because the real peace from God often does not come by God simply giving us our dreams; the peace of God doesn't always come by God giving us what we think we want. More often than not we find shalom, we discover the peace of God, by losing our dreams as we go on to discover the divine dream.

It is important to remember that God's entry into the world came in the form of unanticipated pregnancy, which shattered the respectable, reasonable dreams of a young woman named Mary who was betrothed to a respectable young man named Joseph. We might think of the difficulty of the virgin birth as a theological or scientific difficulty. It was, however, first and foremost a personal difficulty, a difficulty of receiving something one had not planned on receiving. Mary certainly didn't plan to "receive Christ." This angelic visit carried an element of surprise, even unwanted surprise, which is typical of how God often works His peace. This new life conceived in Mary was going to change everything; it was going to radically upset Mary's dreams and plans. Which might be why Luke 1: 29 says, "Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be."

Just as an aside: In the Scriptures, encountering angels was always a frightening experience. Whenever a human being encountered an angel in the Scriptures, the angel always had to preface his message by "Don't be afraid." I recently read in a devotional by Dr. M. Craig Barnes (Grace and Peace; National Pres. Church, c. 1997, emphases mine -- slc) the following: "I am amazed at how much fear was associated with the birth of Jesus. Gabriel and the angels kept announcing they had great news from God, and everyone's response was to be filled with fear. It is striking that the arrival of the Savior brings people's anxieties to the surface. Before you can approach the Christ Child, you first have to tell the truth about your own fears. For it is not in outrunning our fears that we find hope. That just makes us compulsive and driven. Your fears can chase you like a demon through your whole life. But if you stop long enough to confront the soul's dark fear, then what once appeared demonic can actually become angelic. Our fears are the angels that bring God to us. It is always as we approach the thing we most dread, that we find the light of hope, and his name is Emmanuel, the God with us."

I don't have to tell you it has been a difficult year. And I know it has been a hard year for many of you, not just me; a number of you have experienced loss, disappointment, ill health or any number of other difficulties. The things we fear have caught up with many of us, but it is precisely as we turn to face those fears in faith that we encounter the living reality of God. Again, Christmas is one holiday that is anything but subtle, and that is how it should be. This is the season in which we let ourselves believe again in things like joy, love, hope. It is a season for singing with the angels and for remembering our great dream for peace on earth. The hard part of Christmas is not our aspiration; the hard part is our fear that our dreams for peace and contentment will not come true. At Christmas when the dreams are at their nostalgic high, so is our anxiety that the reality of our lives fall short of those dreams and desires. This is a tough time of the year to be recently unemployed, or divorced, or ill, or widowed. Of course, there is never a good time of the year for those things. But at Christmas, the relative lack of peace and wholeness which exists in our lives seems to stand in starker contrast when we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Shalom. However, it is an excellent time to face and confront our fears, and I think you'll find, as I have found, as Dr. Barnes has found, that our fears are the angels that bring God to us.

Friends, we like to think that things just won't "happen" to us. We like to think that the violence that tore apart the Balkans or Sudan or the Middle East can't happen in bucolic New England. We like to think that the alcoholism or sexual adventurism that tears apart other families can't ever happen to our families. Don't be so certain that you'll be magically spared having to spend time in the Intensive Care Unit or the unemployment line in the near future. Don't be so certain that next year you will not be hanging up one less Christmas stocking. God alone is whole and complete and perfect, lacking nothing. We creatures, by contrast, are always marked by incompleteness, imperfection and brokenness; in fact, it is an essential characteristic of being human. Only in relatively recent years have we assumed that our humanity is not supposed to have any chips, blemishes, or bruises on it. Nowadays we even think we have a right to have it all -- perfect health, perfect relationships, perfect job satisfaction, and grief-free living. But perfection is not the biblical depiction of creatures, shalom is not our lot in this fallen world. The Bible describes us as a people who need a savior, a restorer, a redeemer, a Prince who will bring Shalom, Wholeness. There is no time when that is more obvious than when our dreams for life break apart. Certainly, we are to pray for healing, for restoration, for wholeness, but that does not mean we will receive the life of our dreams. God's healing may have little to do with our need to get life all fixed up. Our broken places can actually become our best altars for worshiping God -- again, our fears can be the angels that bring God to us. In our heart of hearts, we know we live vulnerable lives, which is why we live with a low-grade of anxiety all the time, especially at Christmas. But the hope we find from God always comes in the midst of how it really is in life.

As it did with Mary. Gabriel reassures Mary in Luke 1:30, "Don't be afraid, Mary...you have found favor with God." Gabriel gives her the news...she is to be the one who will bear this Prince of Peace, this long awaited Child, this one who will be called the Son of the Most High, this Son of David whose kingdom will never end. Please note Mary's response in verse 38: "I am the Lord's servant, may it be to me as you have said." No matter how it may inconvenience her, no matter where it may take her, no matter how it may upset her dreams and plans, Mary quietly accepts the will of God for her life. Mary is responding in so many words, "If God intends to develop the life of His Son within me, if God intents to bring His Son into the world through me, then so be it. No matter how I may be inconvenienced, no matter how difficult it may be, no matter how it might change my plans, my dreams, my hopes, no matter how it may affect my relationship with my betrothed, my friends, my family...I am the Lord's servant." Indeed, this new Life conceived in Mary was going to change everything; eventually, she would even have to undergo the heart-wrenching trauma of watching this son die. However, by accepting the will of God, by her willingness to forego her dreams, she became a vital link in the fulfillment of the divine Dream, the drama of redemption.

Friends, the Christmas message is that we share something in common with Mary, if indeed the Holy Spirit of God has conceived the life of the Son of God in our lives. The grand mystery and privilege of being Christian is that we have the divinely-conceived life of Christ within us. We "bear" the Prince of Peace within our broken, incomplete, imperfect hearts and souls. Everything we do should take that Life into account; everything we do should be centered around, focused upon, geared toward catering to the development of this Life within...no matter where it might take us or how it might change us. And we are called to bring that Life within us into our worlds...we are the ones who bear the Prince of Peace into our needy, broken world; we are the vessels through which the life of Jesus Christ enters our world today. That new Life may change everything, as it did with Mary; that Life may indeed upset all our dreams, but that Life will bring the grand fulfillment and restoration of the divine Dream to completion.