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Christmas Eve Meditation

12/28/2022

https://www.preaching.com/sermons/its-whats-inside-that-counts-an-object-lesson-using-gift-wrap-ribbon-bow/
https://www.stjamesedison.org/godhttps://catholic-link.org/matter-jesus-wrapped-swaddling-clothes/s-wrapping-paper-christmas-sermon-2018/
https://waterfromrock.org/2009/12/22/bands-of-cloth/
https://aleteia.org/2019/12/21/the-symbolism-of-swaddling-clothes-at-jesus-birth/
https://latterdaysaintmag.com/what-does-it-matter-that-the-lord-was-wrapped-in-swaddling-clothes/
https://www.calledtoshare.com/2018/12/20/why-swaddling-clothes-of-jesus-is-mentioned-three-times-in-the-nativity-story/

One of the most endearing, images I have of Christmas, deeply etched on my heart to this day, is the sight of a decorated tree surrounded by beautiful presents through my childhood eyes. What a magical, wondrous image. Who’s with me on this? Whether humble or grand, who couldn’t wait until the early morning hours, tearing down the stairs, shrieking with delight at the thrilling image of a twinkling tree, with presents waiting to be claimed, stockings whose contents ready to empty.

Now from decades of observations and opening countless gifts, I have noted two types of gift wrappers. There are those who carefully pick out beautifully colored paper, who lovingly select color-coordinated ribbon and bows. The wrapping paper is precisely, expertly folded with just the right amount and no more. Labels are carefully written in one’s best penmanship. The end result is a masterpiece – a work of art – that one laments having to tear to reach the gift contained within.
Then there are the other gift wrappers.   Paper is haphazardly taped on – patterns are crooked, different types of paper are used with no care to match. You’re lucky if a lonesome bow is affixed. Names are illegibly written, and a family guessing game ensures to figure out the proper recipient. There are those who use recycled gift bags year after year, with tissue paper crammed in to barely cover the gift. I must confess I fit in the later group. We get home after Christmas Eve services, usually by 11pm, we dump those gifts into bags along with last year’s tissue paper and viola! All presents wrapped in 10 minutes or less. On to the egg nog and Christmas cookies.
Down through the ages, God has proven to be an amazing gift wrapper.  Creation is but stunning wrapping paper that reveals the beauty of God – dazzling sunsets and sunrises, mighty snow-capped mountain peaks, the force of the wind that we are experiencing this weekend, the stunning diversity of creatures, fields, forests and flowers, to the vastness of the cosmos – amazing wrapping paper, isn’t it? To top it off, on Christmas, we remember that God, the master gift-wrapper, put on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. God could have shown up as an angel, some other spiritual creature or alien being. God could have chosen to skip the baby stage and gone straight to being a strong adult, a king, a warrior, as many actually believed the messiah would be. God could have revealed Godself in any manner feasible. But the piece de resistance of God’s wrapping abilities is in enveloping his love, his mercy, his redemptive saving power, in the human flesh of a helpless baby.
What a contradiction in terms: a baby savior. A baby is small, weak, helpless.   A baby is vulnerable to illness, fevers and diseases. A baby needs to be fed, burped, changed.  A baby needs to be kept warm, held for comfort, kept clean and safe. A baby we fall in love with at first sight. Talk about unexpected wrapping paper for God’s gift to the world! This wrapping paper is something we can touch, hold, embrace, kiss, hold closely to our heart. This wrapping paper stirs our emotions, aligning us with God’s purpose for our lives – all the while wiping away all sins that dim our abilities to love and connect to God and each other. Some wrapping paper, isn’t it?

If that wasn’t amazing enough, we hear of even more unexpected wrapping paper in Luke.  We read that Mary, Jesus’ mother, wrapped her new-born son in bands of cloth.
In my imagination, I see those bands of cloth as humble material, made not from super-soft silk but ordinary cloth, humbly homespun. Common and ordinary, something everyone would have. But there is more to this that meets the eye. In Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth, the angels tell the shepherds, “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger” -- an animal’s feeding trough. This phrase, at least in part, is repeated three times in the Nativity story (Luke 2:7, 12, 16), so this sign is significant. Pause and take this in: God chose to wrap the most precious gift to humankind, a gift thousands of years in the making, in ordinary human flesh, with ordinary household cloth, in a manger meant for animals, not human beings. What kind of gift-wrapper is this? But wait -- there is more to this story.

There is a tradition that the shepherds, who in the hillside were not too far from Jerusalem, provided the “lambs without blemish” for the temple sacrifice at Passover. That first new-born lamb, to protect it from blemish (as it was required to be by the Law), was wrapped in swaddling cloth and placed in a food trough apart from the other sheep. What again did the angels say? They would find the Savior, Christ the Lord, wrapped just like they wrapped the sacrificial lamb. This amazing, wrapped Baby was also the perfect lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

This wrapping paper, the bands of cloth, would point us to Jesus’ death. Recall that the Gospel of John tells us that the dead bodies of Lazarus, and the Lord Jesus were wrapped in “bands of cloth” (John 11:44; John 19:40; 20:5-6).  But wait, there is more. The Hebrew word, of which “swaddling” is the English translation, denotes cloths used in the binding of broken limbs (Ezekiel 30:21). This symbolically relates to Christ’s ministry of healing the spiritually broken (Ezekiel 34:15).

Thus, Christ our Lord begins and ends his life wrapped in bands of cloth. Throughout his earthly life he carried out a ministry of binding the sick in body and spirit. This is his reason for coming. To wrap up our salvation is ways our hearts could grasp, our eyes could, our minds comprehend, and ultimately so that our hands could receive such an amazing gift, beautifully wrapped only as God could do it.

Ambrose, the fourth- century bishop of Milan, put it this way: “He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, so that you may be freed from the snares of death. He was in a manger, so that you may be in the [temple]. He was on earth that you may be in the stars. He has no other place in the inn, so that you may have many mansions in the heavens. ‘He, being rich, became poor for your sakes, that through his poverty you might be rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9).”

That first Christmas is not the end of God using unexpected wrapping paper for gifts.  Remember that God the Eternal Gift Giver, has continued throughout history to use unexpected wrapping paper for divine gifts to humanity. God uses our human flesh to continue to convey the good news of salvation to all humankind.   God uses our lips to tell of Jesus, our arms to embrace the lonely and stranger, our hands to feed the hungry and house the homeless, our eyes to see injustice and oppression and to respond with right living. We are God’s every day, amazing wrapping paper to tell the tidings of great joy to all the earth.

This Christmas Eve, unwrap that precious gift God gave us in Jesus. God’s saving love wrapped in a baby-savior. Take up this present in your arms and hold it close to your heart. Look with childhood wonder on this amazing, beautiful gift. Tear that wrapping open with the glee of a child. Then let God’s glory shine in you and through you, and may it forever shine bright, bringing love and glad tidings of great joy this Christmas and every Christmas forevermore .  Amen.

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Leaning into Love

12/21/2022

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Matthew 1: 18-25

A few weeks ago, a Time Magazine readers poll named the women of Iran Heroes of the Year for leading the mass protests these past three months. Irani women are protesting the death of 22 year old Mahsa Amini. Last September, Amini died in the custody of the country's morality police. The police detained her for not wearing a headscarf. Situations like this are from unusual and highlight the state of women in the world:

Somewhere else in the world there is a brother who murdered his 16-year-old sister after he discovered she had been raped—by a family member.     Somewhere else, a 17-year-old ran over his 18-year-old, handicapped pregnant sister with his pickup truck, ignoring her pleas for mercy.   Someplace in Egypt, there is a father who displayed his dead daughter’s severed head before his neighbors and proudly announced, “at last my honor has been restored.”

In cultures where women are seen as little more than property, or less valuable than men, any hint of sexual misconduct, a refusal to accept an arranged marriage, a rape, or seeking a divorce, a desire to learn or to work or just take a walk alone outside the home can be seen as an affront to male honor and leaves a woman vulnerable to violence by her male relatives. The UN estimates the number of “Honor Killings,” the killings of women who allegedly break some moral code, at least about 5000 a year.

These are disturbing stories, they are not the kind of stories we want to hear a week before Christmas. But we have had an unusual Advent, have we not, with tales of judgment day and two weeks of the stark message of repentance from John the Baptizer, and here now we learn of Joseph’s plans to divorce Mary. The stories of these past four weeks have been fraught with tension. We live in tense times, harsh times, and Advent has plunged us further into these tough situations. Yet these stories, the stories of the Masha Aminis of the world, are what we need to hear to get at the horror and the scandal when Matthew writes, “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his other Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

This crisis is not just about how Joseph felt toward Mary. It is a crisis rooted in the kind of community Joseph and Mary lived, traditional communities that exist in our world today. The law was clear. A woman caught in adultery was to be stoned to death.
Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man. He decided he could not go on with the marriage. However, he felt a public handling of the situation would be distasteful. He resolved to divorce Mary in secret.   This way, he could preserve his family’s honor. He would avoid a public airing of the scandal. But it would not resolve the matter for Mary. In fact, it put Mary in even more jeopardy.   How would her father or uncles respond, or how would her brothers react when they learned of the divorce? When they learned of her pregnancy? Mary’s future looked bleak indeed.

This leads us to ask, what kind of God would choose to flaunt human, social convention in such a manner? What kind of God would operate outside the very law regulating marriage and the procreation of children established in God’s law in the scriptures? What kind of God would put a young vulnerable woman at such a risk?   What kind of God would cause a righteous man to face such a no-win situation?

Stunning, isn’t it? God chose an unmarried woman over a respectable matron. God chose the manger over a warm palace. God chose angels over theologians and shepherds over priests.   God pushed a respectable man to take a leap into the unknown. God chose the place where Joseph’s religious training and respectability had not prepared him to go. At that hard, hard place, where life no longer made sense and honor was lost, God’s love appeared and spoke to Joseph, as clear as it speaks to us today.

“Joseph, Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid, Take Mary as your wife, Be the father to this baby, and name him Jesus.” And one day, this Jesus will even follow Joseph’s example. He will keep a mob of angry men from stoning a woman caught in adultery. He will restore outcasts to community; He will bring God’s light to the world. He’s going to save us from our ignorance and sin. He will teach us how to love, to love as God loves: scandalously. Unconditionally.

When Joseph awoke from this dream, that confused place of his that didn’t understand, that wanted to play it safe, was changed into a place that could accept uncertainty, risk even the perhaps the ridicule of neighbors. He would go on to save Mary’s life, then the infant Jesus’ life from a murderous King Herod, because he was present to the workings of Divine Love.

Who is this Love who promises to love us at our worst? Who speaks words of daring beyond our wildest dreams? We need to know this, in these remaining days before Christmas, because we live in a world of war and where girls still hide from their families and they still stone them. Like Joseph, we lean to solutions that are traditional, that make sense. But God asks us to lean into Love.

This is where God chooses to find us. At those places where our righteousness fails and our best is no longer good enough, where our dreams become disturbing. In a tired and cranky moment when all the gaiety of the season and light-hearted Christmas carols cannot hold back the confusion in our hearts and the pain in the world. That’s when we are called to take a great leap of faith. To say “yes” like Mary did. To obey the angel’s voice like Joseph did. To incarnate love, like Jesus did.

What confusing times are we living in. Despite the message of joy, many of us are stressed, depressed, worried. The customs of our culture encourages us to spend more than we have, to eat more than we should, to extend ourselves beyond our human strength. No wonder we are confused, broken and exhausted and we dare not admit this to one another. Yet the message of this final week of Advent is still clear: the scandalous love of God still wants us. It speaks to us, through angels, in dreams, through each other. God’s love beckons us. It invites us to risk to love deeper, to jump further in faith, and embrace God’s scandalous love however it presents itself to us. In the conundrums of life. In the stretching of our spirit to believe the impossible, to dream the unimaginable, to partake in the newness of life and in the unlikely ways it shows its presence in our lives. To buck the trends. To love the unusual. To see God’s hand working outside the box. To lean fully into that kind of love.

In these final days leading us to Christmas, lean into love, and bring love’s scandalous presence wherever the angels call you to be. Be the voice of justice, mercy and compassion. Be heros, sheros of faith, shining the light of Christ in those dark and broken places on earth where through us and make God’s scandalous love bring justice, righteousness and peace to all women and men on earth. amen

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Leaning into Joy

12/14/2022

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        Hereeeeee’s Johneeeeeee!
Out of all the Biblical characters Advent lifts up for us as a guide, John the Baptist is the one perhaps we would least associate with joy, the theme of this third week.   Remember we talked about John last week: how his message of repentance is the procurer to peace in our lives. Today our gospel calls us to look more closely at John, whom Jesus calls as “Greater than any person ever born.” So, what does John have to teach us about following Jesus and having Joy?

        At first glance, John and joy seems an unlikely pairing. John is the prophet who recalls the fiery, colorful Hebrew prophets like Elijah or Jeremiah; who are bold, confrontational and passionate, but not necessarily joyful. John’s the wild one who lives in the desert of Judea, dressed in camel hair, a leather belt about his waist, and lives off locusts and wild honey. And there in the desert the word of God came to John. So, John began his work around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in order to prepare the way for the One who is to come who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

        John was not one to mince words. His comments from last week are still ringing in my ears: “You brood of vipers!” Remember how last he yelled at those coming to be baptized whom he felt were less than sincere. “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” Bam! Talk about a 1-2 punch.

        John taught that those with two tunics and extra food should share with those who had none. He instructed those who collected taxes that they take no more than required to. John advised soldiers not to take bribes or accuse people falsely, and to be content with their pay. When people began to contemplate that John was the messiah, or Elijah or great prophet returned, John denied it all, saying, "I baptize with water," John replied, "but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie."

        John did not hesitate to confront the politically powerful. He publicly rebuked King Herod for adultery, which led to his arrest, imprisonment and ultimate beheading. Other than Jesus, John is the only other New Testament prophet whose birth story is told. The angel Gabriel told his father Zechariah: “for he will be great in the sight of God. … he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth”

        But Gabriel also added this message about John: “He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.”   It is the John who jumps with joy in his mother’s womb when Mary, the mother of Jesus, enters the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. At the end of his career, as Jesus began his public ministry, and imprisonment and death around the corner for him, some of John’s disciples come to him complaining about Jesus; followers were leaving John and flocking over to Jesus. Shouldn’t John be jealous of this upstart? John dismisses it at once, explaining his relationship with Jesus “The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.”

        John’s is a life bookmarked by joy and infused with joy. Joy enabled him to live boldly and hold nothing back. As a result, John poured his life into his mission of setting the stage for Jesus. John knew who he was and he knew who Jesus was, before anyone else. Such knowledge can only come from beyond: it comes from realm of grace, the realm of joy.

        We more easily think of joy in the context of celebration, feasting, dancing, abundance and everything going right; not a monastic, severe, subsistence lifestyle like the one John led. Jesus differs from John in that regard; for Jesus is depicted as eating and drinking and enjoying the company of outcasts – so much that his detractors call him a “glutton and drunkard.” Yet both Jesus and John are examples of Joy-filled men. So, it is not the lifestyle as much that we should look at, but the life that is present in the actions. We have probably all been at parties or gatherings where there was plenty of celebration, but very little joy. We all probably know people or groups who are not afraid to denounce evil and oppression, who shun the consumer lifestyle (and will boast of it to your face), but who demonstrate little joy. And we also know people who seem to radiate goodness and joy not matter the circumstances of their life. My stepmother is such a person, who despite the loses in her life, including two children, is a joyful person. It is healing to be in her presence because she is able to let joy and peace flow freely.

        John is an example of someone who stands, like Jesus, for justice, righteousness and joy. Joy is just there, because God’s life is truly there in the depths of us. Joy is a fruit of the spirit, a byproduct of God’s indwelling life that would fill us and guide us, if we would just let go and let it. John had to be a joyful person, for why else would people flock to him, someone whose lifestyle was so different from theirs?   It was John’s joy, which radiated from him, and gave him the firmness of his convictions, that people responded to and hungered for. It was joy that gave John’s preaching its depth and power.

        Advent would have us consider John and joy together because too often, those who preach repentance, those who stand for social justice, often have a hard time communicating joy in their message or experiencing real joy in their lives. The task of confronting sin and oppression takes its toll. The statistics are staggering, and the work seems endless. As we have been stating for months, we live in troubled times, difficult times, lean times. Times where it is hard to lean into Joy. Yet without the cultivation of joy, the work John did, indeed the work we do, becomes unbearable, not just for ourselves for others.   Mahatma Gandhi observed that “Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant or the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service that is rendered in a spirit of joy.” Billy Sunday, the great evangelist, also observed, “The trouble with many men (people) is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.”

On the other hand, joy, without doing the prophetic tasks of hope building and peace making, without the context of unconditional love, becomes empty and trite. Advent teaches us we need to hold it all together, hope and peace, love, and joy. John is our witness; John is our model in this advent season of someone who was both joyful and prophetic.

        Joy is always there, available to us. Joy is not contingent on the circumstances of our lives. Joy is not contingent on how well or poorly we are doing. Joy is not contingent on our age, our intellect, or anything outside of you or me. Joy is there in the recesses. Joy is not to be contained but released. We can hold back joy, we can lock joy up so that it never is visible, and we can choose to access joy only when our moods are positive. The work ahead of us is to deliberately access joy and release joy in all we do. The task for us is to make joy more present in our lives. The best gift we can give ourselves, no matter what struggle we face, health, relationships, goals we set for ourselves, be it for career or for personal growth is to experience joy.   It is not surprising that Jesus, when he began his public ministry, deliberately selected the passage from Isaiah; a passage that integrates joy and justice: “I will bind up the broken-hearted, release the prisoners, proclaim good news to the oppressed; but I will also give them garlands instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit; everlasting joy shall be theirs.” Can we give ourselves both justice and joy?

        It is said both the Koran and the Talmud teach that we will be held accountable for every permissible pleasure life has offered us and that we have refused to enjoy during our earthly sojourn. So joy is a holy right, even an obligation. The Upanishads, writings sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, add:
That which is Whole is joy.
There is no joy in fractioned existence.
Only the Whole is joy. (VII. 23)

          John would point us, like Jesus, to the whole. God wants us whole, complete, filled with Joy.

So, this is our task at hand, as we draw closer to Christmas and as we plan for a new year, and as our church enters a new chapter of its life as a congregation. To be whole, like John was, like Jesus was – so that access to the depths of our being is not blocked by fear. To be whole, so joy can flow through our work, through our pleasures and through our words. So, joy can be released and proclaimed in us, as Jesus intended. Let us lean into Joy and may we gift our church and those we meet with joy this holiday season. Amen.

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Leaning into Peace

12/7/2022

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Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” What a welcome to our second week of Advent! Can you imagine such a greeting on a Christmas card? You brood of vipers! Merry Christmas! Yet this is the message Advent gives us today. Not to shop. Not to decorate. Not to sing carols. Our sole purpose today is repent. Like last week, when we discussed the message of the Second Coming of Christ, once more we have an in-your-face, no holds barred, message that seems to put a damper the holiday spirit. But there it is: the message of Advent peace says to us “repent.”

We are halfway to Bethlehem. But this morning we find ourselves in the wilderness of Judea with John the Baptist, covered with camel’s hair and a leather belt, dinning on locusts and wild honey. And we find ourselves confronted by this formable character. He rants and raves. He’s pushy. Call him rude. Call him a fanatic. He doesn’t care. He’s a man with a mission. He is the prophet, John the Baptizer, upon whom the spirit of the Lord has rested. John is our unlikely guide for this part of our Advent journey. If we want to make it to Bethlehem we need to listen to John. John doesn’t mince words. He tells it like it is. Repent, he says. Make your paths straight. Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

Repent you brood of vipers! The world would keep us busy trimming the tree, buying and wrapping presents, outdoing our neighbor with lights and decorations, humming the season’s oldies and goodies. From that warm and fuzzy cocoon, John the Baptizer calls us back to the basics of Advent, because John’s task is to bring us to Jesus. So, John wants us to get honest with ourselves. Get right with God. Repent and find peace.

        Instead of “Making a list, checking it twice,” John today invites us to think deeply on our lives. Are we living self-centered lives or are we truly other-centered as Jesus was? Is Jesus at the heart of our being, are we loving and giving sacrificially or we avoiding the needs of others? All these questions take time, and Advent invites us to take the time, undistracted by holiday busyness, to examine ourselves, see where we fall short, and turn our lives around, orient our hearts back to Jesus. This, Advent teaches us is the way to peace.

To repent, we need to lean in on the biblical concept of peace. Peace is an active, engaging experience, not some abstract concept. Achieving peace requires effort on our part. Who hasn’t sat quietly, trying to calm down, only to be plagued by interior drama? We have to consciously choose and work for peace. The Bible talks to us about three different kinds of peace: Peace with God which is the reassurance we receive through faith. The Peace of God - that calm center we develop through our faith in Christ, that we especially feel in the midst of life's storms. Then there’s Peace with Others. Peace with others is based on relationships that, despite differences, seek the best for each other, work for justice, right living, cooperation and forbearance. Peace with others can be peace in our family, peace with friends, peace in our community or peace among the nations of the world.

The Hebrew word translated as peace is the well-known word shalom, which means completeness, soundness, and welfare. The root of shalom means making amends or making whole or complete. Shalam is often used in terms of making restitution. Take Exodus 22:4, for example; if a man stole an ox or a sheep from his neighbor, he was to restore or shalam what he had taken under the law. This is a very important point about peace: peace -- especially peace from God -- is about healing. God’s peace is about restoration of what once was broken. Our relationship with God has been restored through Christ. That’s peace. We have a sense of wholeness inside us because of our faith in Jesus. In Jesus we have received restitution for our sins. That’s peace! Where there is peace in the world it is because of the power of God through Christ that works in us, around us and with us, bringing about just living conditions, a just relating, in all of God’s creation.

The word peace in the New Testament is from the Greek word eiréné . Eiréné means peace, quietness, and rest. It originates from the root word eirō, which means to join, or tie together into a whole.   To bring what is separated together again. Eiréné means unity; it is bringing multiple parts together to form a whole or set it as one again. For example, two friends who reconcile after a fight make eiréné; that is, they come back together, and their relationship is whole. So shalom and eirene describe the heart of biblical peace: to bring together in healing and harmony that which was once apart, divided.

      The peace of God is different from the peace of the world. The peace of the world is unstable, usually based on bank accounts and accumulation of resources. Worldly peace is driven by seeking security, which is elusive and changes with the times. There is a fake peace held together through by unequal power. There is a false interior peace that people seek through overindulging in pills, alcohol, and other things, like designer clothes, or fancy cars, that grabs our attention. Worldly peace comes and goes.

        Biblical peace, which comes from God, on the other hand, is different. Biblical peace is the “peace that passes all understanding” because it is rooted in an Eternal God who loves and seeks the best for all creation. Grounded in God, shalom and eirene seek out restoration. It is the state of the world before sin entered the picture, and it is the state of the world with Jesus at the center of the picture – because biblical peace redeems, saves, finds us in our brokenness and restores us to life with God.   Peace comes from repentance, when we turns our lives around, turn our hearts around, turn our world around – back to its primary focus: life in God through Christ.

Biblical peace is not something we can create on our own; it is a fruit of the Spirit. Ultimately God is the source of all peace, and one of God’s names is Yahweh Shalom (Judges 6:24), which means the LORD Is Peace. Jesus is the prince of peace (Isaiah 9:6) and calls us to be peacemakers who are children of God (Matt. 5:6). Peacemakers actively forgive, seek reconciliation, act as repairers of the breach (Isa. 58:12). So, Peace always seeks out what’s needed to be complete, balanced, whole.   The prophet Isaiah gives us a profound image of peace when he describes:

6The 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. 7The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.”

Isaiah’s image is of the powerful not being predators. It is an image of the weak and defenseless knowing security where once danger lurked. The experience of biblical peace, Isaiah demonstrates for us, is found in the restoration of loving relationships where once enmity and exploitation existed. Only the grace of God can bring about such change. God’s grace for Peace is available to us for the asking.

      The truth is, if we are honest with ourselves, we are not a peaceful people, our hearts are pulled in thousands of directions, and we do not live in a culture that knows peace. We are more polarized politically and economically than ever. We live in lean times, uncertain times, broken times. We are in so many conflicts, conflicts with other nations, adverse policies with the homeless, the poor, and the stranger and alien. Problems ferment in our faith communities. We have deep conflicts in our hearts. We want to do what is good, but we fail.

        Our advent message this week is that we seek peace and make peace. The scriptures tell us repeatedly how to find peace. The Psalmist records: “Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it” ( Psalm 34:14). Paul exhorts us repeatedly in Romans: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18) and “… let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14:19); “Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

        What fruit of repentance will we bear over the next few weeks? What peace-making tasks will we do to draw close to the Prince of Peace? How about this:

Apologize to someone whom we have hurt and mend a relationship. End a quarrel or a resentment. Forgive someone who has hurt us. Give an encouraging word. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Manifest loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge.   Will we read the scriptures and pray for our church and world. Think of someone else first. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh. Express gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Visit the sick. What else will you do to foster peace? The Peace of God. Peace in God. Peace with Others because God is present to all who call upon God’s name.

What will we do? We are half-way through Advent. We are in the wilderness. It is time to get ready. Let us listen to John. Repent. Bear fruit. Make the path straight. Find peace: with God, inside our hearts and in our world. Draw near to Jesus. Peace, the signpost that the Kingdom of God is near. And Bethlehem is closer than you think. Amen
https://www.wordsoffaithhopelove.com/what-is-peace-in-the-bible/

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Christmas Eve Meditation

Leaning into Love

Leaning into Joy

Leaning into Peace

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