PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

I Thessalonians 5:16-24                                                                                 "Peace on EARTH"

Advent III Sermon Dec. 14, 2008:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            "… God, who gives peace…."  That's a beautiful clause that Paul wrote in this letter to the Christians in Thessalonica:  and by the way, Thessalonica is the modern Greek city of Thessaloniki, where they had such terrible riots last week—certainly not "peace."  The students went on a rampage after police in Athens shot and killed a fifteen-year-old boy named Alexandros Grigoropoulos last Sunday.  34 people were injured including 24 police, 25 cars were damaged, ten people were arrested.  The interior minister offered to resign.  The prime minister expressed his sorrow to the boy's parents.[1]  It's a week later, and students in Athens are still rioting.  Thessaloniki would be on any tour of Paul's missionary journeys.  Paul wrote to them and included the phrase "… God, who gives peace…."  It sounds a bit idealistic, doesn't it. 

            As we follow the ecumenical three-year lectionary—the list of Bible readings for Sundays—we are in the second year, the year of the Gospel of Mark; but Mark doesn't have a nativity story—no Bethlehem stable, no shepherds, no wise men, no Herod.  That's why I read the Epistle today instead of the Gospel.  And today we light the third candle on the Advent Wreath, the Candle of Peace, the pink one; and our theme is peace:  "…God, who gives peace…."  But what kind of peace is there, two thousand years after the first Christmas? 

            The story in Luke tells about "heavenly hosts" appearing to Bethlehem shepherds and singing,

 

 

The word "hosts" means "battalions"—battalions of angels.  If the birth of Jesus established "peace on earth," then why did God send the army?  Evidently the "peace" didn't arrive with the baby.  So when we Christians talk about "peace on earth," or "world peace," or "the healing of the nations," we must be talking about something other than the hope that we human beings can establish world peace. 

            This is the Sunday when many churches will have the Magnificat sung—the song of Mary in Luke chapter one.  Part of what Mary sang goes like this:[2]

 

 

This is the message of the upside-down gospel:  the world is turned on its head.  Is that "peace"?  Jesus himself said,

 

"Don't think that I came to bring peace to the

earth!  I came to bring trouble, not peace."[3]

 

The peace doesn't come with the baby on Christmas morning.  So how can Jesus say to his disciples in the upper room:[4]

 

                                   

 

            Now I want our troops home as much as anybody.  I feel like the stated objectives for Iraq have been met, we've already been victorious.  Afghanistan is more complicated.  But one thing is certain:  this kind of peace didn't arrive with the baby on Christmas morning.  So what is "peace on earth"? 

 

            Change of scene:  our home thirty years ago, and fifteen years ago—with our two children, Bill and Beth, staring at each other across the kitchen table.  They never did get along, from the time Beth was able to talk.  But you never had that kind of thing going on in your family, did you!  Everything was always hunky-dorey—right?  Yeah, sure.  You know exactly how un-peaceful a family can be sometimes, because you've been there when it happened.  Here are some people who belong together, a home originally established on love and mutual regard; but things happen when people are together—especially sisters and sisters, or brothers and brothers.  Everybody has to grow up before some of these feelings can fade away and peace can finally shine through.  But even that kind of peace is not what Paul wrote to the Thessalonian Christians about:  "… God, who gives peace…."

 

            I once knew a man named Jack who had every reason to be at peace within his soul.  He had risen to the challenges of the Great Depression, pulled himself and his little family up by the boot-straps, and found a career where he could make good money.  He gave a lot of it away.  He married young, but love carried them through; and they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary surrounded by family and friends.  His family lived in a fine home on a hill.  His children grew up and married and had children of their own; and they would all get together on Thanksgiving and Christmas and enjoy each other.  At church he sang a good strong tenor, and he served as a deacon.  As a layman he could offer a public prayer as powerful and devotional as any ordained minister. 

            Through the years Jack had some medical problems.  He had high blood pressure, but the doctor controlled it with medication.  He had allergies, but the doctor controlled them with medication.  He was hospitalized once for gall-bladder, and they operated, and he came home doing fine.  He once fell down a flight of concrete steps, and they rushed him to the hospital; but he was fine.  As far as his actual health was concerned, he was well; but Jack wasn't completely well.  He had no peace.  He was a driven man.  He couldn't always control his temper.  He had a sharp tongue and he used it.  Jack was not at peace—not in his young manhood, not in the full strength of his adult life, not in his maturity, and not in old age: he was a man at war with himself; and that made him a man at war with the world. 

            Where could Jack have found the healing for his inner lack of peace?  his lack of balance?  his drivenness?  Do Paul's words speak to Jack's need:  "… God, who gives peace…."  Words like that from the Bible did move him closer to inner healing, but his heart was still troubled. 

 

            "… God, who gives peace…."  The peace that God's battalions sang about on Christmas morning, the peace Jesus passed along to his apostles, the peace that our creaking old world always seems to miss, the peace some other family seems to have—that peace is not of our doing:  it's something God has promised.  When all creation gives "glory to God in the highest," then there will be "peace on earth to people of good will." 

            Where there is ego in rulers, there will be war.  Where there is flooding, or encroaching desert, there will be war.  Where there is grinding poverty, or hunger, or plague or any of the dozen other disturbances of the world's balance, there will be war.  Where ethnic hatreds grow over centuries there will be war.  And even between wars there will be conspiracies; and where there are no conspiracies there will be people who are driven and know no peace.  This seems to be the human condition.  And the heavenly battalions on Christmas must have been singing about all these predicaments.  They were telling us that when we celebrate "peace on earth," we are looking forward to the fulfillment of God's new heaven and new earth, the peaceable kingdom:  about what God will do, and this baby about to be born "in a manger, no crib for his bed"—he is the turning-point.  "… God, who gives peace..." gives us peace as a promise, and as a call to action. 

            Our ethical mandate in such a world as this is to address human pride with humility.  Our ethical mandate is to address famine with food.  Our mandate is to address ecological disaster with responsibility, to address poverty with a just economy, to address sickness with healing both the physical body and the human spirit, and to address malice and prejudice with that Christian AGAPE that is more than a pleasant feeling but love as deed.  And even when we have done all that we can do, we will look at our world and know that peace is not yet.  Because it will be as the angels sang: 

 

When in the End all glory is given to God, then there will be peace on earth.  It will be God's pleasure to fulfill the promise. 

 

            This is "the healing of the nations."  This is the healing of the heart so completely broken.  This is the healing of relationships, and the beating of swords into plow-blades.  This is "peace on earth."  And this is why we're getting ready for Christmas—ready for Christ to be born in us anew.  The road to Bethlehem brings us to "… God, who gives peace…." 

AMEN