A Way to Peace

Paul fully captures the miracle of Advent’s hope in this passage—that in the Incarnation, God fully combined past, present, and future in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises God made to Abraham forward through to Mary and now even to us. Jesus is the assurance that there is nothing that can separate us from God, i.e., we have nothing to fear in anything yet to come because in Christ, God has already reconciled the future to himself. Therefore, we can live here and now, knowing that God is with us, for that was the core of the ancient promise and is the root of our future hope. Only God can so unite past, present, and future, something Paul proclaims in this wondrous benediction.

Now for us to fully enjoy this hope, not only in Advent, but in all of our lives, we need to follow Paul’s counsel on how to be.

First, read the Bible. 

Here is the record of the promises of God. It is the story of how our faith came to be. It is the history of God’s interaction with humanity. As such, it reminds us always of where we came from as the community of Jesus. 

Nearly everybody has a Bible—it remains the single best seller of all time. Well, open it. Read it. Listen to the voices of the past—our past—as they share their experience of God with us.

It is also a sure way to really get into the spirit and reason for this joyous season of the year. As with some you, I sometimes struggle to maintain the right presence through the holidays. I get distracted, rushed, stressed, and, frankly, overwhelmed by it all. But as I return to the Christmas stories, reading through the beautiful promises found in Isaiah and then return to the stories of Mary and Joseph in Luke and Matthew, I reconnect. I find my place. I see again the warmth and light of God’s love given to us. 

That sets the tone and attitude from which to enter the here and now.

The main point of Jesus’ presence with us was to reveal the deepest essence of God to us. That essence is no more and no less than the completely other-centered, self-emptying love that is God. God eternally thinks only of those in God’s care with unwavering focus. God then empties everything that is God to redeem us from all that separates us from God and from each other (which if we make honest confession includes a plethora of things this year). 

Therefore, if we are to live fully and completely in this moment as God would have us to live, then we should meet the world with that same other-centered, self-emptying love. Paul makes this point almost absurdly simple to grasp—welcome one another. It is in our welcome that we reveal most directly our acceptance and commitment to Christ’s love.

Return to scripture—how did Jesus meet every human being along his way? With radical hospitality—he gave all that they might be with him, removing any and all obstacles, from a legion of demons to a fever to a harsh wall of prejudice to a crowd holding deadly stones. Therefore, we are so to welcome anyone and everyone. We then fill this very moment with nothing less than the embodied presence of God.

Which now begins to clear away the gloom and darkness of the days yet to come.

The more we are able to practice the love that welcomes anyone and everyone, the more deeply and assuredly we lay the foundation for peace. We remove the reasons and causes of enmity between us, for we have replaced them with the seeds of friendship. The more we are able to sow these seeds of connection, the more we remove all that causes fear and doubt as we look to the future. Most of that fear comes from insecurity and uncertainty. If we are surrounded by a company of friends, then those two demons diminish and fall silent within us. 

Think of that—by welcoming the stranger, we remove the fear of the unknown. By reaching across the aisle to someone who thinks differently from us, we remove the fear of conflict. By sharing with others of what we have, we remove the fear of someone else taking it. By seeing always the child of God in every face, we remove the fear that some human beings are so fundamentally other that there can never be peace between us. Fear can be overcome. Peace can reign. There can be real and lasting joy, flowing from hope. 

Paul saw all of this revealed in Jesus. He believed it so firmly that he oriented his entire life upon it, and as he did so, he was able to give the gift of the Christ child to generation upon generation of human being, right to this very moment within this very congregation. He did so because he read his Bible, lived by it daily, and held faith that the future was safely in the hands of God.

So can we.

But we will need to go and do likewise, as Jesus taught.