A Word from Pastor Lisa: The Things That Make for Peace
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom [God] favors!”
–Luke 2:13-14 (NRSV)
When our daughter was about two years old, she entered the “Mine!” phase, grabbing toys and art supplies away from other children at daycare. In addition to correcting her, we read to her Todd Parr’s The Peace Book, a brightly illustrated children’s book with lovely thoughts about peace: “Peace is saying you’re sorry when you hurt someone. Peace is helping your neighbor. Peace is thinking about someone you love.” We talked about what it meant to be a peacemaker with her friends at school.
Soon after I asked her on the way to daycare, “Are you going to be a peacemaker today?” She responded, “No, I’m going to be a waffle maker!”
After I stopped laughing, I thought how true that was for most of us. It’s a lot more fun to be a waffle maker than a peacemaker. Peacemaking is hard work, and yet it’s an essential invitation to us as we embark on the second week of Advent. The second candle of Advent is typically described as the peace candle, and it harkens back to the moment when the angels proclaimed to the shepherds “peace on earth” at the birth of Jesus.
“Peace comes from heaven down to earth, but it is always and ever a heavenly gift of God,” write John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg in The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Birth. In the time of Jesus, the Roman vision for peace provided by the allegedly divine Caesar Augustus was peace through military might and violent victory. In contrast, the Christian vision through the divine Jesus was peace through justice and love.
Crossan and Borg remind us that the world has never established peace through victory. Victory creates a temporary peace, to be sure, but more of a lull in violence. Soon after, violence returns and worse than before. We get caught up in the myth of redemptive violence. At the end of Luke’s Gospel, before his crucifixion, Jesus laments for the city of Jerusalem. He weeps over it and cries, “If you, even you, had only recognized the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:41-42, NRSV). The irony is that the people did not recognize him – the Prince of Peace – even as he dwelled among them.
We face a similar dilemma in this Advent and Christmas season. Will we choose the hard path that makes for peace?
Will we choose to welcome the Prince of Peace in how we treat our family? While a Zoom Christmas may mask our dysfunction, it won’t address the underlying brokenness in our family systems. We have difficult reconciliation work to do around past hurts, political divisions, and ongoing conflicts.
Will we choose the path of peace in how we respond to those on the margins of Bloomington? The economic gap is growing wider in this pandemic. How will we build peace through our generosity?
Will we embody shalom, wholeness, in our response to the pandemic? Will we care not just for our own selves to secure a vaccine, but for those who are often overlooked and vulnerable?
Do we believe that peace on earth comes through Caesar or Christ? Will we put our trust in the next political or economic leader? Does peace come through violent victory or nonviolent justice?
Advent is about the different paths before us. Peacemaking is a difficult one to trod. That’s why most of us would rather stick with making waffles. (Although if you offered waffles to an enemy or someone in need, that could be an act of peace.) Peacemaking will change how we live personally, with our families, in Bloomington, and in the broader world. Christmas is not about trees, gifts, or decorations, but “about what means we will use toward the end of a peace from heaven upon our earth,” say Borg and Crossan. May “peace on earth” not simply be a Hallmark greeting sent each year, but our way of life in the world.