2nd Sunday of Advent, 2021 - Peace

 “And there shall be endless peace” … so the prophet said (Isaiah 9:7) … peace of such nature that it permeates all of creation. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lied down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). Peace that displaces our default pattern of domination, destruction, and war (Isaiah 2:2-5).

Yet, it seems to me that the better adjective to describe peace is elusive rather than the prophet’s word endless.

Peace is the theme commonly associated with the second Sunday of Advent. In the face of peace that seems to be elusive, the season of Advent calls us to look forward in faith and hope to when the LORD’s promise of endless peace is fulfilled.

The prophetic vision of endless peace is always associated with the messiah – the long-awaited Davidic king who would rule with righteousness and justice. Peace would be the end result of this one’s reign. He (the king was always a man in that patriarchal culture) would establish a society and culture patterned after the LORD’s ways of righteousness and justice. To practice justice was to use power on behalf of the powerless — the widow, the orphan, the stranger or immigrant (Isaiah 1:17). (See Leviticus 19:33-34 along with 19:18b.) Justice was to provide for, advocate for, and empower these that Jesus called “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40, 45). Righteousness was the practice of justice. It was to live in faithful covenant relationship, i.e., rightly, with the most vulnerable. It was to be aware of them and to act on their behalf, including provide for them. The LORD’s ways of righteousness and justice stood in opposition to the normal human pattern of exploiting the powerless for personal gain.

Righteousness and justice are not the world’s way of seeking to establish peace. In contrast to the LORD’s way of using power on behalf of others, we use our power for our own benefit, including using power to protect ourselves from those we view as “the other” — the enemy. We seek to control the chaos that erupts when differences — differences of opinion, of practices, of outlook, of culture — collide. We establish laws and norms that identify the one acceptable way of doing things. When “the other” violates those norms, we use our power to control them and punish them. If necessary, we use our power to dominate and destroy those we view as enemies. War and violence are the end expression of how we humans commonly use power. We do all of this in the pursuit of peace. Yet this way of using power never produces peace. At best, it produces stability that benefits those who have the power, but always at the expense of the powerless. Peace remains elusive.

The Advent season reminds us that the promise of endless peace is linked to the birth of Jesus. In announcing his birth to the shepherds, the angelic chorus sang “on earth, peace” (Luke 2:14).

Jesus understood the prophetic understanding of the path that leads to peace. He wept over Jerusalem because the nation did not recognize “the things that make for peace” (Luke 19:42). He foresaw the destruction of the nation that lay ahead because they rejected the ways of God in order to follow the way the world uses power (Luke 19:43-44).

In addition to this endless peace in the world, Jesus also taught his disciples about a personal peace. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). Jesus spoke of an inner peace that stilled the turmoil that lives in the human heart/psyche. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27b). His words speak to our normal experience of fear — the anxiety driven turmoil of the human heart. Anxiety is an inherent part of our emotional DNA. It underlies and drives everything we do … until we recognize it and learn to manage it. Jesus’s words in the original mean “stop living with a troubled heart, stop being afraid.” The peace Jesus gives is a peace we can experience in the face of that which stirs anxiety and fear — the chaos of the world. It is a peace that displaces the fear and anxiety.

It seems to me these two different experiences of peace — endless peace in the world and personal peace deep within — are interrelated and inseparable. Learning to live out of the inner peace Jesus gives contributes to peace in our society, culture, and world. When we fail to live out of this inner peace … that is, when we live out of our anxiety and fear, we contribute to the chaos of our world. Our anxiety and fear become the lens through which we view life and others. They determine our perception of life’s events and others. They govern how we react to life’s events and others. When we live out of anxiety and fear, we naturally use our power for our own benefit, often against others. The unresolved inner pain with which we live — the pain we fail to face, name, address, and resolve — gets dumped onto others, sabotaging our relationships and creating chaos. This pattern is reflected in Jesus’s command about not judging. “Do not judge … Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the long in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1, 3). Judging others — a critical, faultfinding spirit — is evidence of our own unresolved stuff and the anxiety that surrounds it. Our lack of inner peace contributes to the external chaos with which we live. The opposite is also true. When we live out of inner peace — the peace Jesus gives through the Spirit — we contribute to the healing of relationships and, thereby, to the healing of the world. The peace Jesus gives enables us to live as peacemakers in the world (Matthew 5:9). The peace Jesus gives is the key to a world of endless peace.

Each Advent season, we look yet again beyond what is — the elusive peace — to what will be — a time of endless peace. As we do, we are reminded that the promise of endless peace was made by the prophets in the face of international turmoil and war … when peace was seemingly as elusive for them as it is for us. And we are reminded of the peace the Jesus gives — that personal, inner peace that enables us to live as peacemakers in a world in which peace seems so elusive.