5 December 2010

“Peace”
2nd Sunday in Advent – cycle A
5 December 2010


Everyone wants it.
Yet no one seems to know how to get it.
Peace.
It’s become something of a joke … the contestants in a beauty pageant, when they’re asked about what they would most like to see in the world … with their standard – almost obligatory answer … “world peace.”
There are those bumper stickers … “visualize world peace” … and of course the inevitable humourous detractors … like “visualize whirled peas.”
Some of us use it to close our correspondence … emails … letters,
Peace.
The second Sunday in Advent brings us to our second word-theme for the season … last week’s Hope … hope in Jesus’ promised return … now, today, we move to a focus on peace.
World peace? Yes … we begin there, certainly last Sunday’s word from Isaiah … about “beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks” does. Though it might not be the most popular word for those who profit by what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” – or even for our own Seattle economy – today’s conventional wisdom from both sides of the political aisle is that the United States can no longer afford an unfettered military budget … and big cuts in defense spending are definitely in line for our future.
But do we get to world peace through the budget cutting axe?
No.
Neither can we negotiate our way to world peace. We’ve tried it before … history is littered with peace treaties, missile cutback agreements, Camp David accords, you name it, we’ve tried it. Of course, we shouldn’t stop trying … “blessed, indeed, are the peacemakers” … but for us to put our hope in our own efforts to achieve peace … well, we will all, eventually, be disappointed. We always have throughout human history … by those tyrants who view agreements of peace as nothing more than meaningless drivel written on scraps of paper.
So there must be something more, here, when the Bible speaks of “peace” than what we humans do, or try to do, to achieve it.
Through Isaiah’s words, we see a “peaceable kingdom” which is far greater, broader, deeper than just soldiers laying down their weapons of war.
Make no mistake – Isaiah knew war, the threat of war, the cost of war. The time of the first Isaiah/writer … the prophet who wrote the words before us today … was one of outside national threats to Jerusalem’s security and peace. New military alliances were being formed, to “buy off” peace … at the cost of the Israelites’ freedom.
But Isaiah saw the big picture. Peace … for him … came from more than just treaties and alliances, agreements, cutbacks, and the like.
“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them … the cow and the bear shall graze … they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
Isaiah saw a time of deep, abiding peace … one in which mortal enemies … genetically predetermined, if you will, to go after one another … in Isaiah’s peace, for Isaiah’s peace, even mortal enemies, human, animal … “that way of things” will be set aside, forever.
I think, if we polled people, and asked them what they mean when they “visualize world peace,” this would be the image which would come to mind.
So …if we want this kind of deep, abiding peace … for ourselves, for others, for all of God’s creation … but … we can’t get there on our own … what then?
May I introduce to you … John the Baptist?
Yeah, the hair shirted bug eater isn’t exactly the first person who comes to mind when we think of peace … most certainly, his message probably caused an end to peace for those of the “viper’s brood” … hear those words as the first century equivalent of calling those Pharisees and Sadducees SOBs … but it’s not his person, or his preaching style, or his salty speech which led, which leads his hearers of then and now to peace …
… no, for John … for us … for the world God made … the road to peace … starts with … repentance.
Yes, repentance.
Surprised?
I mean, we do spend a lot of time here, together, wrestling with that word. Most every week, we confess our sins together in corporate fashion … “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” When we sing the words of the Kyrie Eleison, what we are really saying is a confession of sorts … “Lord, have mercy.”
Some might even say that, for Lutherans, corporate and personal apology is part and parcel of who we are … “Hello, I’m Bob Lewis, and I’m sorry.”
Ah … but is that what John is talking about here? Is what he’s so riled up about cause him to question the parentage of the Pharisees and Sadducees?
Again, No.
Repentance … in its most basic form … the definition of Mattthew’s word - metanoia – it means, simply, “turning around.” Doing a 180. Not just “oops, excuse me, sorry” followed by a quick “oh, that’s OK” from the offended party … no, in this case the sin, the separation, between us and God is so great that nothing from our side … no apology, no bloodline … “we have Abraham as our father” … so what! …
… nothing from our side is going to make it right and good and OK. Ever.
The repentance … the metanoia … the turning around … being called for … is nothing less than the most extreme of makeovers, self-edition … not a one-shot deal, but a posture settled into, a lifetime lived into, of humility, of considering others before self, of how Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined discipleship … as you heard me speak the martyr’s words a couple of weeks ago, “When Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die.”
Discipleship means death. Death to our being first, last and always in the primary spot in our lives. It means pointing to Jesus and then getting out of the way. It means the end of place … in repentance, there is no place, no position, no one better than anyone else, in any human institution … government, business, religion.
Especially, religion.
For here the offense is the greatest.
Because, quite frankly, the religious ought to know better.
And yet … and yet … religion … and the realm of the religious … church … and the life of the churched … is just as big a snakepit as the rest of the world.
John certainly saw things this way … it was the churched of his time, after all … that he called, “You brood of vipers!”
And how we still see this played out today. There are the big public displays … that family/church that keeps going around the country disrupting military funerals … the abuse scandals in so many denominations, not just The Big One … the huge church fights and denominational splits … oh, yes, we all see those, perhaps we use them as some kind of marker, “There, those people, they really need to learn the meaning of repentance.”
And yes, they do. But I think, most often, it’s the smaller things, the quieter examples, which do the most damage.
One congregation where I served, the “older ladies of the church” – not an “age” designation necessarily but more a marker of how long they had served … they decided that they wanted to give up the hard-work duties of overseeing the sizeable church kitchen. So they informed the “younger ladies of the church” that they were “retiring” from “running things,” that they were now in charge, to put together the funeral lunches and the church suppers and so on.
The “younger ladies” were my age, by the way.
And so that’s what they did … those “younger ladies” set up their own calendars, schedules, and so on … and then they started to rearrange the kitchen to “make it work” for them.
And that’s when the “brood of vipers” got loosed.
You would have thought that infidels and heathens had come into the Holy of Holies and scattered the sacred priestly vessels. Such a row and a ruckus has not been heard, before or since, in that Minnesota church kitchen. “THAT DOESN’T GO THERE! YOU HANG THESE UP THERE! WHY DID YOU MOVE THAT? THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN HERE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING????”
You can guess the result.
Those “younger ladies,” some of whom were fairly new to church life, especially church kitchen life, and didn’t know the traditions … although some of us would question why the placement of the mixer on the counter or a spoon in a drawer would qualify as a ‘tradition’ … those “younger ladies” received these protestations as a word that their work, their presence … was useless … unwanted … unrespected … and wrong. Though some stayed on in the kitchen … helping the “older ladies of the church” who grudgingly re-assumed their duties … others slinked away, not willing to serve anymore. Some simply left and didn’t come back, period.
I shared this story with one of my more “John the Baptist”-like colleagues, who said of the row, “Geez! GET OVER IT! You expect newcomers to come and be and serve, you gotta be like John the Baptist … point to Jesus and then get out of the way. For Pete’s sake, it’s just the church, for crying out loud! Tell those women to get a life!”
She was right. Blunt, but right.
So much of what we make “church” out to be, to us, it may be the most lovely, the most wonderful, the most beautiful and Precious of our lives … but that very posture, that very word, that very lifestyle of ours, may be the very thing, the most ugly roadblock that stands in the way of others gaining, building, and living out their faith in Jesus Christ.
And so, back to Bonhoeffer … back to those Sadducees and Pharisees … back to John the Baptist. Repentance. Repentance. Repentance.
More than just, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
Indeed, a lifestyle, a posture, a living … where we get ourselves out of the way … clear the decks … and prepare the Royal Highway … for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords to rule, unopposed, unfettered, in and from and through our hearts.
John shows us this repentance, when he says of Jesus, “I am not worthy to carry his sandals.” He knows that this One, this Jesus, will not only carry his own sandals, but more, carry the sins of the entire world upon himself.
John preached repentance … confessing one’s sins, but more … living into a posture, a life, of being re-made in God’s own image. “Turning around” means just that … when we turn around, the light of the Son shines onto new areas of our existence … new parts of our lives, previously dark, are exposed to the light. Repentance … “turning around” … is thus a constant process … like our houseplants in the winter, craning toward the sun, we need to turn them around regularly so they don’t just grown one way, but are balanced, and straight, and healthy and strong.
That’s why corporate worship is at the heart of “turning around.” For here we are together … all with another … no one better than the other … no one closer to God than another … we come together with people with whom we totally disagree, politically, socially, economically … we come together and are washed clean: baptized once … and washed again and again every time we confess our sins. We hear the words of forgiveness. We eat and drink at this most holy Meal of our Lord, together. And we are sent out, together, with the word of forgiveness and peace on our lips and in our hearts.
If we want to “visualize world peace,” then, there is no other place to start than here … “I am a sinner” … “In the name of Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins” … “take and eat, take and drink, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, given and shed for you” … the “Peace of the Lord be with you always.”
We all need to repent. World-wide, nationally, regionally, countywide, citywide, neighborhood to neighborhood, neighbor to neighbor, within our own homes. We all need to repent.
But it’s not a one-shot deal. Not empty words followed up by inaction, or worse.
This is a living repentance … our posture, our lifestyle … repentance.
“When Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die.”
And then, and then, he calls them, calls us, the repentant, to rise, and live, live in this life, with the hope and peace that comes from assurance that Christ is with us, always with us, giving us abundant strength and hope and peace in and for this life, and into the next.
The Peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
And also with you.
Amen.