rich’s blog

I think this is worth reading; I was first introduced to it through the audiobook podcast “The Classic Tales.” It’s a Public Domain work, and I know for a fact you can find it online…because I cut & pasted it from the webs…

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk-that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh-a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

An electric bell rang.

The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.

“I suppose I must see who it is”, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.

“Who is it?” she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.

But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:

“Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes-for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on “Music during the Australian Period”.”

She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness.

“Be quick!” She called, her irritation returning. “Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.”

But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her.

“Kuno, how slow you are.”

He smiled gravely.

“I really believe you enjoy dawdling.”

“I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say.”

“What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?”

“Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want—-”

“Well?”

“I want you to come and see me.”

Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.

“But I can see you!” she exclaimed. “What more do you want?”

“I want to see you not through the Machine,” said Kuno. “I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.”

“Oh, hush!” said his mother, vaguely shocked. “You mustn”t say anything against the Machine.”

“Why not?”

“One mustn”t.”

“You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other.

“I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.”

She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit.

“The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you.”

“I dislike air-ships.”

“Why?”

“I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air- ship.”

“I do not get them anywhere else.”

“What kind of ideas can the air give you?”

He paused for an instant.

So what I’d suggest is that you try on a tiny incarnation.

It is a little tiny incarnation; a little tiny taking on the experience of reality that others have, in order to relate to them, to stand next to them, and meet their needs not as an outsider, but as a conspirator. You know the meaning of conspirator, right? “One who breathes with another?”

And the church must be a place of conspirators in this. God chose to conspire with us; to breathe in life as we breathe it in. We are called to do the same, with one another, and with strangers, because humanity is so important to God that God decided to enter into it.

It seems to me that if we could step back far enough, and diagnose the largest disorder of our time & place, it would be that we are a people overexposed: We are too constantly public, and too rarely private, and our movement from solitude to community, then back to solitude has been interrupted. Our solitude is never truly private (our cell phones go off, or we’re by ourselves, but checking e-mail)–and thus our community can never truly be whole, either.

If, of course, it’s the case that being in community fully & well demands that we also are able to be alone, safely & at rest.

We are half people, unable to be all of the one thing or all of the other that we need to be, and so we can never be fully human, or never fully ourselves; we have lost the ability to know what that is.

So, maybe humanity is changing. What it means to be human is changing?  If being truly human is at all defined by being in community & being alone, in a world where “community” and “solitude” are being slowly re-defined, then to be human in a human context isn’t what it was a 100 years ago.

I could be completely out there, of course, and I’m not sure what or if it would matter anyway.  But if we are never really “by ourselves,” and never fully present to the people we are physically near, we hold less power to deeply affect the world for good–and, I think, for God. Thoughts?

Sermon Advent Four Joy:

Preface:
Today we are talking about Joy.

It’s the theme of the fourth week of Advent. And it is what it is because we are so close to celebrating Jesus’ birth, and if Joy is tied to anything it’s tied to celebration.

We’ve already talked about hope and peace and love, and I hope that we’ve been able to think more about these things, these great virtues–what we think they are, where in our lives we’ve experienced them and promoted them.

I hope that we’ve been thinking about the fact that Jesus is coming back, remembering that we live in a particular time: in-between his first advent and his second, which we look forward too. And living with hope and peace and love and Joy until he does–promoting them in this world, resting in them when we’re blessed with them–it’s maybe most of what we’re called to in this life.

Introduction:
But we’re talking about Joy today. And, as we’ve been doing, today may not revolutionize your entire outlook on the world, but I think that it will at least remind us that Joy is a gift, that it’s something we should grab tightly to whenever it blooms up around us, and that it is our destiny. I’ll share a few of my thoughts about it, and, since of course it’s our goal to become more like Jesus, whose birth we’re so close to rejoicing in, we’ll talk about his Joy, too.

But first–drum roll, please, Chad–let’s pray.

Prayer:

Jesus:

Selfless:
In some ways Joy is selfless. A person overwhelmed with joy acts like Adam & Eve before the fall, they’ve got no sense of shame or embarassment at all. They will do crazy things. Shout, yell, run awkwardly toward someone.

They’ll hug when they aren’t really “into” touching people. They’ll sing it on the mountain, you know. If you’re full of joy, for any reason, you forget yourself for a moment. The ways some of us protect ourselves–being proper and quiet and deliberate–they’re out the window. Joy is not self-conscious, it’s selfless.

Plenty & Cheap:
When we’re young Joy is plentiful; it happens a lot, I think. But like a lot of things, we don’t value it so much. We’re Israel, surrounded by Manna, and complaining. As we get older, and become far more aware of how hard life can be, how much mourning is going on in the world that we can mourn with, I think we do experience Joy first-hand far less frequently.

But we can rejoice with others far more deeply when we realize just how precious Joy is. This is why kids running all over the place is good, and healthy. When we say that kids keep us young, in some ways we’re just saying that they remind us the world is a place where Joy can happen.

Agents:
And children can remind us that we are agents of Joy sometimes. We can lead other people into experiencing Joy. When I was younger–two or three months ago–if you surprised me with candy, oh man. All the pain of the world faded to the background of that surprise. Gifts, good surprises, miracles, promises made and kept: all these things are sources of Joy for us.

And I’ve grown up a little; I’m not as quickly overjoyed, you know. But I can still be led into joy by others, and I am all the time. We can lead one another into Joy, right?

Relational:
In fact, it’s probably the case that like so many other things real Joy only happens in relationship, we are only ever really joyful because of something another person has done with our Joy as their goal. God does this all the time, acts with our Joy in mind when He acts on our behalf.

Maybe we can be contented, pleased, or happy by ourselves out in the woods looking at a mountain; but Joy seems to be something that happens especially when people gather together, even if those people are real sometimes only in our memories.

Contagious:
But even if we can experience Joy apart from other people–which I doubt, really–Joy still best happens in relationships with others, because there’s something about Joy that is contagious. If we are close to or close with anyone who is experiencing joy, it’s really hard not to catch some of it.

In fact, we usually have to work to stay dour and not smile when someone’s joyful and turned our way, and of course, Paul reminds us that we are to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Which is easier said than done, for all sorts of reasons.

Funny how it’s easy to rejoice with kids, right? I think it’s honestly because very few of us want to be kids or want what kids rejoice in and over.

Jealousy:
And this points out what seems to me to be the real problem we can have when it comes to rejoicing with someone: Jealousy. If you are rejoicing, just caught up in joy because of some great thing that’s happened to you–but I want whatever you just got, it takes training in our souls to keep us from jealousy and instead keep us in Joy.

We train for Joy. The same way we train for hope or for peace or especially for love. We train for Joy. We do things that make us more likely than unlikely to catch Joy from someone else.

Sadness:
Of course, some of us have been training for or been trained by the world to expect only sadness. We can feel like Joy and even Joy’s more common cousins–pleasure, happiness, contentment–that these things just don’t have the force that sorrow has in the world or in our lives.

And there is a bit of realism in this, right? Because the world is hard, and sadness and trouble seem to be a common denominator for us people.

But we forget or have never been taught that Joy can cut through darkness like a light. It is a power and a miracle, and the devil hates it. And if there is one thing that we Christians could do to anger evil it would be to provide more opportunities for people to experience Joy.

I mean, really, this is the driving force behind Operation Christmas-child, right? You give these kids a moment of Joy, and hope that the Lord can work through it. And we should be ashamed when we discount the power or the worth of a moment of Joy in this life.
And while there are few things more complex than sadness, and few things more straightforward than Joy, it is at least partially Joy’s simplicity that gives it the power to banish sadness for a little while in this world.

Impermanent:
So of course Joy cannot last, not here. The world is just set against it, you know. But anytime there is Joy we should rejoice with it, we should drink it in. It’s a rare thing; a miracle and a blessing.

But you know what I do, too often: I put it out. Carolyn will often get really excited about some thing, joyful about something that happens, or some news she hears, or some surprise gift that comes her way. And I’ll, selfishly, introduce a note of caution, a word of wisdom, or make an “I’m not sold on this” sort of face.

I’ll steal the miracle that Joy is in this world–for helpful, reasonable reasons, you know. I’m not trying to be a grinch: whether or not I’m trying, though, I become one.

Joy does many of the things hope & peace & love do: it’s part of this group of things that can sometimes make no sense. We can experience them for no real good reason at all, they last and carry us when they shouldn’t. These are intrusions of good into a dark world, and we should protect them, and not discount the power or the worth of a moment of Joy in this life.

Reminder:
But we live this life in a world that is imperfect, broken, and breaking us down with sin and trouble. This world is not as the world was meant to be. And we are in this season of Advent–so close to Christmas, right–remembering all this stuff.

And what we need more than anything is to drink deeply from whatever moments of Joy come our way, because Joy, when it passes into some other thing, reminds us when it fades that life is not the way it should be, and that we look forward to a life where Joy is permanent, and lasting.

Joy is our destiny. Joy that is entirely relational, because God will be with us and we will be with one another without shame and embarrassment and sorrow. Our momentary experiences of Joy in this world, which fade, can become year-long advent reminders that what we see around us not all there is, and the world will also fade and be replaced with something better.

And this is all because of Jesus, right?

Jesus:
The author of Hebrews writes this long recitation of people of great faith in God and the troubles they have to endure. If we shouted out Old Testament folks that we could remember, we’d probably be shouting out names from this list the writer gives us: Abraham, Jacob, Moses. The famous ones, famous for their faith in God. Chapter 11 of the book.

It ends like this:

 “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

And the write continues on in Chapter 12:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Listen to me, to Hebrews, again:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

The pragmatists are right, you know. We live in a world where Joy is not universal, and whenever it comes to us we fail if we hide it under a basket or put it out wherever we find it. But Jesus– Jesus who is on his way, whose first arrival we celebrate joyfully because it was a surprise and is a gift better than all the candy in the world–Jesus knew sorrow and pain and terrible trouble.

He was a stranger in the world, strange because he wasn’t stained by the world’s sin and the world’s brokenness, and strange because in spite of that he experienced sorrow and terror and shame.

But Jesus knew the Joy set before him, and because of it could take up all the terrible things the cross symbolizes. Jesus knew that death would not speak a final word over him, but he would triumph over it. And his resurrection, which vindicated everything he had done, also transformed every sorrow of his life with Joy.

It’s the same Joy that we’ve been promised we’ll experience, too. And I don’t know if our resurrected bodies will be able to handle more joy than the ones we’ve got now do–I think about living joyfully all the time and it exhausts me, you know–but I do know that Joy thrives in the peace and pleasure and closeness that we’ll have when God is fully with us.

First Advent:
But we don’t need to wait until Jesus returns to experience Joy: and that is a miracle. If Joy will mark Jesus’ return, his second advent, it just as fully marked his first. If it’s true that Joy is what happens when we are surprised with a wonderful thing, then there was no greater surprise than Jesus’ arrival in the world.

And everything we know about the first Christmas is that it was one of Joy. When Mary, Jesus’ mother, goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant in her great old age with a son, John the Baptist, Elizabeth tells Mary “As soon as I heard the sound your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for Joy.” Mary sings “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” An Angel declares to shepherds “I bring good news of great joy for all the people.” And we could describe the way all those in the Christmas Story respond to Jesus with Joy.

Conclusion:
Look; the world is filled with surprises, and not all of them are wonderful. But if we rest in the presence of God we can be people who fully receive with Joy whatever good thing comes our way.

We can be people who give Joy to one another, and act as agents and ambassadors of God’s delight, doing what we can to position those around us to rejoice.

We can nurture the personal relationships that Joy thrives and blooms in, and we can gather up memories of Joy for one another, and remind each other of them so that sorrow does not win in it’s battle for our hearts.

We can reject all the urge that’s in us to kill joy when it comes up around us, and instead, allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit who is in us, and rejoice with those who rejoice.

In this world Joy is a gift, and we are Christ’s gift-givers. This in-between time in which we live? For God’s people it is one that started with Joy at Jesus’ arrival, and will end in the same if we just hold the course in our faith. So rejoice! Rejoice! The Lord is come. And if Joy comes your way, hold tight to it, drink deeply of it, it is special and you are blessed.

Advent Love:
Introduction:
Today we’re talking about love. It’s the traditional theme of the third Sunday of Advent. We are continuing to pause in our survey of Revelation, and I promise that we will come back to it with far more depth than is really comfortable.

But today we’re talking about Love. I don’t know if anything I share will be surprising to us, but I think it will be good, and an important reminder that as we live in between Jesus’ first advent and his second, if we are anything less than loving, then we are also probably less like Jesus than we should be.

Let’s pray.

Prayer:
God who is love. Be with us now; gather our hearts into your greater heart, our loving into your greater loving. And still us, for a moment, inside your persistent, forgiving, knowing love for us. Don’t let me mislead us, and be with my preparation here, and now. In Jesus’ name.

Love’s Far Horizon:
So, we are talking about love.

And in some real way, I think I am just too young to talk about it. I don’t know if I’ve lived long enough, really, to talk about love well.

Because love has a far horizon. Love has a far horizon. In some real way love is proved in the long accumulation of choices that we make, a tally that’s just honestly longer than the 29 years I’ve lived–most of which, you know, I just sort of bobbled through life like a weeble-wobble.

But the truth is that we people rarely think of what decades down the road will bring, and rarely take the opportunities life brings us to summarize our lives and consider whether they are ones set apart with love or simply are not.

Of course, Advent gives us a chance to look at our lives more closely than we might otherwise do.

An Accumulation of Choices:
But the fact that we often live in the near moments instead of thinking far ahead of ourselves points out starkly that a loving life is an accumulation of choices; that we move from choice to choice, action to reaction, and it’s all these things together that gather up over time into a heavy record, a thing with force that either witnesses to the love that filled our lives or to and have a force, a presence, that’s other loving or something less than that.

When Paul says that Love is patient, that love is kind, that love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, that it doesn’t insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but in truth, that it bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things: he’s pointing out the way these things of love, these ways of love, they happen in our moments, in our immediate right nows. The all things that love endures, and hopes through and bears through: these are things that go on in “right nows,” aren’t they?

And the reason I think that to say a person is loving, is marked by love, we must look at the total sum of their choices, the accumulation of their lives, is because we are very good at holding our breath. We are good at short sprints. Any one of us can, for a little while, act loving. We can suck it up and be patient or not boast or avoid rudeness for short stretches–during life group, or on Sunday morning, or at a funeral or a wedding or a family reunion–but to consistently pursue a life stained through with love…well, it takes more work.

It just takes more work. Because, as we know, everything in the world around us set against love. Which is why God had to figure out a way to sneak into the world around us, and break it’s rules from the inside out, and give us the power to be loving the way Paul describes love here.

Love just takes work, right? It takes work to love well.

Sorry: An Interlude
And I’m going to just skip the part of this sermon where we talk about how “love” is more than an emotion, and discuss what it means to “be in love,” because I’m basically sure we’ve heard that spiel before. Being “in love,” is a fine thing, a good thing, a miraculous thing: but it’s focus is narrow, it’s emphasis is usually self-centered, and the emotional high that comes with it is simply unsustainable over 80 or 90 years. There’s nothing like a crush to make us high, but coming down’s terrible.

Practice:
But Love takes effort, accumulating a lifetime of loving choices takes work. And it’s built on a conscious decision to turn away from impatience, from boasting, from jealousy, rudeness, and arrogance. It requires a conscious decision to reject impatience and choose patience, to keep a thick skin, and stay centered in the Lord so that we’re not irritable, irritated, or resentful. Love takes work.

What it takes, really, is practice.

When we talk of patient people, we’re talking about people who have practiced patience so much that patience has entered into them and sets them apart. We mean the same thing when we talk about humble people, or kind people, or hopeful people. These are people who have, for some reason or another, practiced hope and kindness and humility for such a long time that they really have become hope or kindness or humility embodied, right?

Do you know people like this? They are heros, aren’t they? But life isn’t like the movies; we don’t become heroes by being in the right place at the right time; we become heroes by doing the right thing the same way we have done the right thing for days and months and years. It just so happens that the spotlight shines us in the moment when we’re just being ourselves–kind, patient, humble, or hopeful.

Love Becomes Natural:
This intentional practice of the virtues that are part of love does a sort of thing to us. It turns, slowly, into habit, into gut-response. And habit solidifies, over time, into nature, into who we really are: loving, or something else.

Like a bodyguard trained to automatically dive into a bullet, we find that, over time, we become trained to automatically love: to automatically give the benefit of the doubt, to automatically turn toward forgiveness instead of bitterness, to automatically deny ourselves the pleasure of criticism, and grudge-holding, and distrust, and instead, automatically act with grace toward another, automatically endure whatever thing comes our way, hope through whatever loss faces us, bear through whatever problem we’re presented with.

Because this is just who we are, you know? While we were busy living our lives, making a hundred choices a day, our nature firmed up like concrete. We became people others would say are loving without even noticing it.

Mechanics:
Do you see the mechanics I’m talking about here? If we practice love long enough, it becomes a habit and enters into us, defining us. We become loving people.

Over time, love can become natural to us if we use the supernatural resources God gives us to choose love in the middle of the opportunities life gives us to choose something less than love.

And it seems to me that the older we get as people, the less we’re able to act loving when we really have not been making loving a habit of ours. Our nature starts showing, you know: we aren’t able to sprint through a whole life group or Sunday morning or a funeral and keep acting out of love, because it’s not what’s firmed up in our souls. We’ve been practicing other things: resentment, irritability, thoughtless & impatient speech.

I guess I mention this as a warning, and I might be wrong, but it seems like daily we are making choices that over time will determine if we’re seen by others as loving, or cantankerous. One of God’s miracles for us, of course, is that he can soften the cement of our nature and change us more into people like Jesus at any point in our lives, if we try to make habits

Jesus:
And Paul’s list of what love is: it’s Jesus, right? Patience, kindness, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, not irritable or resentful, bearing & hoping & enduring all things: this is Jesus. Jesus is the embodiment of love.

And as I’ve thought of it this week–and I have thought a lot about it, because for some reason this little message on love has been a difficult one to prepare. Because I just haven’t lived long enough, right?–but as I’ve thought of it this week, a passage that we don’t often turn to when we talk about love, and about Jesus as a model of God’s love, perfect love, has come to my mind again and again.

It’s from Philippians:
Paul is writing to the house church in the city of Phillipi, and quotes a well-known hymn:

1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

And we’ll pull this passage out when we want to talk about humility; which is fitting, because it’s talking about humility, Jesus’ humility, which we’re supposed to emulate.

But basic to this passage is the way Jesus ultimately is turned not toward himself, but toward us, toward “the other.” And the way we’re supposed to mimic him, model our behavior after his.

And it really seems to me that in the final analysis “love” is being turned toward others instead of turned toward ourselves. All those things Paul talks about–patience and kindness and all the rest–they’re things that happen when we no longer allow our needs to become the biggest, most important things in the room. We no longer dismiss the stuff of the people around us, but instead, value that stuff, their stuff, as much as–or more than, sometimes–our own. Love is being as concerned for whoever is in front of us, alive in their mess, as we are concerned for ourselves.

It’s the habit of every great saint, and it’s the life of Jesus: to consider the needs of those in front of us, and to seek to meet them as best as we can.

Work, Still:
And of course, of course, this takes work, right? Because everything about the world, and our lives, teaches us to think about ourselves, our needs, our wants, and not those of the people around us, especially people who aren’t actively trying to meet our needs.

But every forward movement we make in becoming like Jesus as people, and as a church, depends on us reorienting ourselves to others. Think of any of our core values: Intentional Christian Hospitality–a mouthful that just means that we intentionally act toward others as Jesus acted and acts toward us–with patience, enduring all things, oriented toward truth. What is that but acting with love?

Prophectic multiculturalism? That we will be a place known for the weird bone we won’t stop gnawing, the weird commitment we have toward caring for people who are not like us, and receiving their care when, in fact, we need it. What is that but love, and receiving love?

If we held as a church only one goal. If we got rid of every core value we’re holding onto, and asked of everything we do, instead, “Is it loving?” because our only goal is to be more loving, what would be different about us? About our speech, our actions, our anything?

All you need?
And if we say that “love is all you need,” I think in some ways it’s right on. As long as we remember that love is not just feeling good, it’s working good out the same way God who is love worked out good for us, and love is living God’s life, Jesus’ life, as best as we’re able to live it. It’s being concerned for the other person in front of us as much as we’re concerned about ourselves, if not more. And beyond this, it’s working toward what’s best for them–which may not always be what’s best for us, or what’s best from our perspective. And it takes work to figure out the difference between “what’s best,” and “what I think is best.” But even if “love is all you need,”–love that’s defined by Christ–it sounds idealistic, right? A little cheesy. But I love cheese. And if Christian’s are called to anything, it’s to living out ideals in a world that needs to see them lived out as much as possible.

“This is a test…”:
And most of us don’t need reminded that we could be more loving; except that we really do, because it’s the reminders, over and over, that get us moving, you know?

So we should want to look at ourselves, in this advent season. We should see if we’re bothered when someone interrupts us. See how angry we get if someone doesn’t do what we think they should do. See how frustrated we are when people don’t pick up after themselves, or say things that we find embarrassing, or they smell bad, or they act funny or they are just plain wrong. And we’ll be able to measure just how loving we are.

What we do:
See, we people are in some real ways, what we do.

A famous person, caught philandering, said recently that he hadn’t been true to his values. But values aren’t “held,” like stocks or bonds we can cash in when the going gets tough. If values are not lived, they’re nothing but advertising copy, a coat of cheap paint on some rusty thing that is still going to crumble.

We are what we do. If you want to know a person’s values, watch them. But we forget sometimes to watch ourselves, and we can say to ourselves, “I’m a loving person,” I just happen to be impatient all the time, or “I’m a loving person,” I just happen to give up on people as lost causes really quickly.

But a patient person, we know what they value, right? patience. A kind person values kindness; and kindness has entered into them. And a loving person, values love, values other people, values hoping all things, enduring all things, bearing all things so that the people around them can experience love. They have become love, because they have opened their hearts to love, and practiced its habits, until their nature has changed.

And we Christians are without excuse when it comes to being loving, because we know that Love has made it’s home among us, and in us through the Spirit. We know that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And we have drawn close to Jesus, the source of love, the one who turns to us and makes us children of God through his attention, and gives us the power to love as he loves, so that through habit and practice, we become love, loving people like he is loving.

Or, at least, ideally we know this. Ideally we do this. This is just an ideal, right? We shouldn’t really expect to become loving people, because the world’s broken, you know. When Jesus says “love one another as I have loved you,” he’s just trying to motivate us, cause he knows we’ll not even get close. He’s just a motivational speaker, really. Don’t worry about it.

That’s defeatist, right? Geeze. But we live that way, or at least: sometimes our lives seem to say that what we value is not loving, but is whatever is best for us. We trade patience for irritability, kindness for vindictiveness, humility for boasting, and contentedness for longing, we rejoice in deception because its so easy and effective, and give up in all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons–sometimes, sometimes.

Another Legacy:
But Smoky Row, we don’t have to have a legacy like this. We have the power of God among us, and in each of us, and where two or three of us meet to catch up, the presence of the Loving God is right there. Every one of us and everyone one of the neighbors and strangers we meet is a chance for us to choose loving actions, to choose things that are for their good, even if it works against our good and our comfort, and in doing this, we know that we are firming up our character, we are proving our nature, and if we just stay the course, mimicking the Lord, we can stand on life’s far horizon, and look backwards at the accumulation of my choices, and hear the Lord say that you were loving, you were loving, and in that way at least you were faithful. And again, of course, we serve a God who is loving enough to allow us to choose love no matter where we are in life, how young or old we happen to be.

We wait for the renewal of all things, for Jesus’ return. But in our waiting, we must live like him, mimicking him and doing what we know he would do. And what he did was live for us, so that we might have the power of God to live like him, and love like him, because it’s through these things that we prepare ourselves and the world for his return. We are witnesses to a loving God.

Conclusion:
But our daily choices shape us, they change us, and in some ways maybe we are becoming either more loving or less loving every day. I hope that we can be people who spend time on our knees–in prayer for others, ourselves, in cleaning out someone else’s dirty manger, because that’s what they need, and it’s the best thing for them.

If we’re not a church, or people, who are known as loving, then something isn’t right with us, and we need to toss away whatever file drawers of wrongs we hold, we need to shed our thin skin, and trade our strong sensibility of what’s right and wrong for the stronger flexibility that comes from knowing God loves everyone, and the very least we can do is choose to show it, no matter what it costs us.

Prayer:
Smoky Row, through God’s strength and grace, you are the protectors of and witnesses to the world, and your power is love, choosing it, and embodying it, becoming love in and through all things.

Let’s hold the course until Christ returns, and we can rest from the hard work of standing against the flood of self-interest, and indifference that’s coursing through the world.

Prayer:
Lord: Thank You.

Richard

Introduction:
So, this week, and for the rest of our Sundays up until Christmas, we’ll be celebrating the really ancient Christian season of Advent.

Advent means “arriving,” or “coming” in Latin, and it’s an old season that the church has used to help people to spiritually sort of prepare for Christmas and what the holiday means for us, and to also prepare for Jesus’ return, which God has promised us.

So its a season of preparation, really. And each week in Advent we’ll look at another topic: Hope today, soon Peace, Love, Joy.

Today:
This morning we’ll remember some of the promises that God’s people were looking forward to, and the ways they were asked to prepare themselves for the day God would make good on those promises.

And we’ll also remember the hopes we have as Christians, the promises we still long for, and one particular way we can prepare for the coming of the Lord.

Promises:
But God did make so many promises to his people, Israel; there were so many things that God told them to expect. Some we heard this morning, but there so many others.

Promises about the ways God would restore their fortunes, about the ways God would save them from their terrors, about the ways God would validate them for worshiping Him, in the face of all the people around them who worship all sorts of gods apart from the true God. Promises were made about the way God would bring peace for them, provide for them–food, shelter, safety–and would even bring non-Israelites into his people, into the people of God.

Amazing promises, God set amazing hopes for his people. And so many of these promises can be summed up in the hope that God would be with his people, with them as he’d been at the start of creation, closer than when the Temple was down the street, closer than when a Spirit-filled prophet speaks to them.

Immanuel:
And it was an expectation that came true, right? In Jesus?

Joseph, Mary’s husband-to-be, finds out that Mary, Jesus’ mother is pregnant–and not by him; so he decides to divorce her, quietly, saving her honor. But the angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream, and says:

“Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.” (Matt 1:20-23, NIV)

Mary realizes that in her son the promises of history are about to come true. She sings a song of praise, of remembrance:

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their
inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.”
(luke 1:46b-55)

Matthew, Mary, & so many others saw in the birth of Jesus the realization of the hopes of Israel, saw God coming through, “even as he said he would,” showing up and being with and for them.

And Jesus showed up, and lived, and died, and rose back to life, and changed the course of history for everyone, for all creation. We talk about this stuff all the time; but we can’t forget that Immanuel, God with us; Jesus–he came after generations and generations of waiting, and praying, and hoping…and preparing.

Called to Prepare:
God’s people were always being called to prepare themselves for the day when he would come through. Every passage in the Old Testament that talks about the day when we God would come through for His people is preceded by so many calls for repentance, for preparation and a return to the Lord.

And the arrival of Jesus, his entrance into ministry; it was prepared for, too.

Remember?

It is written in Isaiah the prophet:
“I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’ ”
And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
(Mark 1:2-11 niv)

Now, John was a crotchety fella; he’s a fire & brimstone sort of guy. But he had an important role to play in the fulfillment of God’s promises; he was a preparer of people.

Jesus speaks incredibly highly of him, calling him the greatest of all the people born before his arrival, because of the way he prepared people for Jesus, calling them to make a way for him.

In Between:
And we need to to make way for the Lord in our lives, among us, don’t we, because in many ways we’re in the same place as God’s people were in right before Jesus showed up.

Of course, there are some pretty big differences between us & them: we’re God’s People not because we were born into some particular ethnicity, but because we’ve been reborn into one particular Spirit, into one particular life, the life of Jesus, right?

But there are hopes that God’s People had before Jesus first showed up that we still have, we’re still looking forward to swords and spears being turned into the honest tools of work, we’re still looking forward to a time when “Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

And in this way, advent, this season we’re in, both remembers what’s happened–Jesus’ first coming, the first arrival of God. And Jesus’ next coming; the second advent of God, when God’s promises will fully and utterly come true.

As we move forward in Advent we’ll look especially at the hope of the last chapters of Revelation, hopes for the world the way we know deep within in us it is supposed to be. Hopes that echo all the Old Testament promises of God, but go beyond them in even better ways.

And Jesus didn’t leave us alone in this middle time; we’ve got the Holy Spirit, a promise God made to his people long before Jesus arrived, the Holy Spirit who can help us in a thousand ways to prepare for his return. God gave us the Spirit for us to live in between the time he left and the time he would come again.

The Spirit who brings in our lives, as we rest in him, virtues like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

A Habit?
And while having a season once a year, and a communion or two to remind us to prepare ourselves for the return of Jesus may help us, may be really important, we could take the opportunity advent provides us to think more deeply about one particular way we talk about hope.

Because we have created for ourselves an unhelpful habit. The habit of “putting our hope” in things, in people, in events.

As Christians, our ultimate hope is that God will come through, right? That Jesus will return and bring with him–whatever the mechanics of it are–a renewed world, where life is as it should be. Our hope is directed toward this goal: that Christ will return and bring the restoration of all things with him. That’s the thing we’re watching for.

But we get distracted, and our watch gets a little haphazard, and our far horizon gets a little boring, so we start looking at nearer ones, things closer by, and over time, the hope that God has been holding, the hope that we have placed in God’s hands to come through and to make things right:

We take it back, and we start placing it other places, we put it other places. And of course, we cheapen hope in the process.

We “put our hope” in lesser places. That desire that we all have for everything to be wonderful the way we know everything is supposed to be: we take a watered down version–the simple feeling that things are going to be fine, just fine, or good or wonderful–we attach it to things, to people. We associate the promise of a good future with some thing or some person.

We do this with people all the time: How many people do we know who think that if they just get a girlfriend or a boyfriend, if they just have a child, if they just had one more friend, or if that one relationship would just improve, then life would be okay, then they could look forward to the future with optimism. We do this with careers, we do this with talents, we do this with achievements, and with stuff.

When we’re talking about “putting our hope in things,” “when” is the key word we need to pay attention to. If we’re using the word “when,” and some mention of our happiness in the same sentence, we should take some time to examine our hearts.

Tired of Looking:
But sometimes, we get so tired of looking far out toward the future, to the far horizon, patiently waiting and preparing for Jesus’ return come high water or what feels like hell, we just give up. We stop looking out and ahead all together, and we begin to look at what we’ve got in our hands right now. We don’t even talk about “when,” we talk about what we’ve got.

The real hope of all things being made new transforms into the weak pleasure of the moment, and whatever thing we are touching, or tasting, or talking to. We trade away “good enough,” for “the very best,” forgetting that the very best is something greater than we could imagine or ask for, and the stuff of life we do have isn’t for us alone. We trade preparing ourselves for the return of the Lord for preparing ourselves to have a good evening. Instead of gathering up good deeds, we gather up pleasure.

We give a little ground, and a little more ground, and a little more ground, and the things we need to keep us going until the day of the Lord arrives–food and drink and friends–they get left behind with the Hope of Jesus’ soon arrival. And instead we pant after stuff of the world. We forget that “finer things” are not permanent, and when Jesus returns, they’ll be lost.

We trade the heavenly bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem of Revelation, where there will be enough–enough food, enough medicine, enough light, more good, full friendship of God and one another than we can imagine–and turn instead to the stuff of Rome’s merchants.

The Merchants:
Remember the passage we read today? The merchants realize, too late, that all their fine luxurious goods, all the stuff that we turn to when we stop hoping for Jesus’ return–it’s done, and empty.

11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.

14 “They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your luxury and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’ 15 The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn 16 and cry out:
” ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city,
dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet,
and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls!

17 In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!’

In Preparation, Hope:
Listen.

I may be far too dramatic here. We may be all sorts of gourmet, love all sorts of finer things–we may be piling up stuff just so we can climb on the piles and look out with a better view for Jesus’ return. I may be over-rhetorical, and not one of us has shifted our view from the coming of the Lord to the stuff going into our houses and our stomachs.

But if we find we are putting our hope in the things of this world only, or even too much, we must change our ways. If the hope for some new shiny Christmas present has replaced the hope of the return of Christmas’ star, then we are in dangerous ground that could give out beneath us at any moment.

The season of Advent is our opportunity to right now reject the impermanent things of this world and prepare ourselves for the good enough of the world to come. And the good enough of that world is far better than whatever name brand luxury we have or whatever delicious treat we could consume.

It’s shopping season, you know? It’s buying season, and feasting season. But John saw all Rome’s wealth laid waste; all the preoccupation of purchasing and hoarding amounted to nothing in this vision of John’s.

As we go about our nearly-Christmas business, live in this time in between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, we can’t forget that we are living in a time between Jesus’ first arrival and his second. And we have to ask ourselves: Where is my hope?

We have to seriously, frankly, assess ourselves: What do you put your hope in?

And has the hope of a restored, reconciled, resurrected world been traded away, one thoughtless purchase or unhealthy pleasure at a time, for the measly high that comes from some thing of this life?

Remembering that Jesus is coming prioritizes things for us. If it doesn’t, we have not taken seriously the promises wrapped up in Jesus’ return. Meanwhile, the world is today training us to live for an everpresent now, live always for the pleasure of this moment, and to suck and consume as much pleasure out of this moment as we can.

But this moment will give way, permanently, to a world where our greatest needs will be met more completely than every child together could daydream up.

Let the Hope of Advent re-prioritize your life, and let’s take seriously the opportunity to ask ourselves if we even look forward to Jesus’ return anymore, or if we’ve given in to the constant attention-cry of this moment and the destined-to-decay stuff in it.

Prayer:
Lord, help us to say, with the psalm-writer, “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

We know that you are coming, and you bring with you a new morning, a dawn in a world that will be good as you are good, without qualification, without hurt, without sorrow or fear.

But we live in this world, and it is sneaky, and it distracts us from you and asks for all our commitments. Return our eyes to your advent, and in this Advent season, help us to live in the light of Jesus’ return, and not in the artificial shininess that the toys, and achievements, and food, and other things of this world give off.

Advent Week Two: 2009: Peace
Introduction:
So, we’re continuing to celebrate the really ancient Christian season of Advent.

Again; Advent means “coming” or “arriving” in Latin, and it’s an old season that the church has used to help people to spiritually sort of prepare for Christmas and what the holiday means for us, and also to prepare for Jesus’ return, which God has promised us.

So it’s a season of preparation, and during Advent, we’re taking a time out from talking deeply about Revelation–we’ll come back to it’s last chapters–and instead focusing instead on Advent topics like Hope last week; Peace today, Love & Joy soon.

And if you want to take the opportunity Advent gives us a little more seriously, there are a bunch of neat devotional materials out in the lobby; Carolyn and I are working through a couple of them and it’s been good. So.

Today:
And this Sunday, all over the place, churches are talking about peace, peace, peace, peace. It’s the theme of the second week of Advent.

So I have gathered a very few thoughts about peace, a very few things that are, I think, worth talking about more. I’ll make some reference to the texts that have been read to us.

Homily:
But today, really, is a homily sort of day. I’m giving a homily; not a sermon.

Not a hominy sort of day; a homily sort of day. Sorry. Corny joke.

What I mean by homily is simply that today’s message is shorter than normal–because of course we’re doing more together than we usual do in a typical Sunday service. And we may not make any amazing theological discoveries this morning, so much as be reminded of things we would all say we knew if we really thought about it.

We’re just going to talk about peace, briefly…and with alliteration.

That’s right. Alliteration. We’re going to talk about the way peace is provisional in this life; about the way peace is polyvalent–yes, polyvalent–the way peace is promised to us, the way we perpetuate peace, and–I really worked hard at this, you know?–and the way we position ourselves for peace.

But before we talk about peace, let’s pray for it.

Prayer:
Lord, we do pray for peace; and we also pray for your presence with us, knowing that these two things are so tightly tied together. Be with us now, draw our attention to you, give us your wisdom, and let us give you thankful hearts.

A Provisional Peace:
We read, today, a very small passage from Revelation–again, we’ll be finishing the series we’ve been working through on that book on the other side of the New Year: But today there was that awesome statement, right?

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev 21:1-4 tniv)

I want that. I want it. And we talked about hope; but isn’t this what we’re hoping for? The content of our hope is a life of peace. A life of peace, in every way. The statement that “there was no longer any sea” points out how uncontrollable chaos will be finished some day–I think I’ve mentioned before how the sea in Israelite thought was a place of chaos and fear; they weren’t shipping people, they didn’t go out on the Mediterranean, and fisherman were unclean by virtue of their jobs. So.

Again, though: listen & close your eyes and imagine every good thing you can imagine:

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

But of course, we have to open our eyes. We don’t live in new heaven and new earth, right? This is why we have advent, to remember what we’re looking forward to, and redirect what we’re living for until it comes.

And here’s my point:

Peace, in this life, is provisional. It’s provisional, which simply means it’s not finished, it’s not complete. We get peace only partially in this life.

I’d bet I’m not surprising any of us with this insightful tidbit, but, man, if you tallied up my reactions to life, you’d think that I believe that peace has finally and fully come.

There are so many things that life brings me that I react to as if they have no right to exist. I shouldn’t need to wait behind a slow car or in a slow check-out lane. I shouldn’t need to deal with people who have problems with me. I shouldn’t need to avoid this or that pleasure, because I like it just a little too much than is healthy.

I shouldn’t experience anything that feels like it interrupts my peace. Except that this life is not new heaven, new earth life. We are not on the other side of the resurrection. Bodies ache & dreams break, and we are fools in the worst way sometimes, because we seem to expect lives that have nothing frustrating in them–whether that thing is an event that frustrates our goals in the moment, or a person that frustrates our easy living.

Peace, until the world comes, is provisional. It’s partial and incomplete. And this shouldn’t be a downer, really, because if we’re expecting anything else we really just need to reset our expectations.

Peace is Promised:
But, but, we are promised peace in some measure.

We really are promised, in this life, peace in some measure. Peace that makes no reference at all to our situation, peace that just doesn’t care at all what we’re going through, because we’re going to get it no matter what. It may not be complete, may not be final: but it is powerful and wonderful, and I pray that we have each experienced it.

I’m talking about that sense of peace that Paul reminds the Christians at Phillipi about before he ends his letter to them:

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

The peace that transcends all understanding, that makes no sense, it becomes a guardian for us–around our hearts and minds, if only–and this is the clause, the caveat–if only we take our distractions and frustrations to God through prayer.

“no anxiety yoke thing?” “fruit of the spirit thing”

We really are promised peace in this life. It is one of the things that the Holy Spirit gives to us as we just do Jesus stuff, you know.

And the sense of peace that we can have in this life will someday become permanent. It will no longer “transcend understanding” because it will make perfect sense. God’s home will be on earth with us, no more evil or chaos–we are promised a day when permanent peace will be as reasonable as the impermanence of peace is reasonable in our lives right now.

The highest goal is not to seek peace, but to accept it; because there are some things that make no sense in this world, and one of them is that we can ever feel any sense of peace at all here. We each of us are infected by the Spirit of God; and peace is just a symptom of this thing that’s caught us, you know?

But this whole little section has been oriented toward a sense of peace, right? The absence of anxieties and worries and frustrations that insert themselves into our lives. But peace is polyvalent.

Peace is Polyvalent:
Look. Seriously. Are you going to forget a word like “polyvalent?” No, right? Polyvalent, Polyvalent, Polyvalent.

And the way we’re using the word is simply to talk about how peace takes many different forms, has many different facets, and it is not always easy to talk about them well.

Brenda talked about this some time ago, but we can discuss the peace we have with God, the peace we have with others, we can talk about the peace we have internally–that sense of peace–and we can talk about political peace.

“Peace” has a wide semantic domain; we use the word to imply all sorts of things, and describe all sorts of very different scenarios.

We use the word, sometimes, to to talk about the absence of emotion; which is utterly faulty. Peace isn’t the absence of emotion, it’s fullness of emotion–good emotion: trust and hope and joy and contentment and pleasure that flows out of us and into everything we do. Peace is the absent of external and internal conflicts, which come in many shapes and sizes.

But we have a sort of hang-up with peace, and tend to think about it only in emotional terms–not being upset–or we water peace down to mean something like simply “things being quiet.” (And that’s not terrible, because for some of us, that’s a very rare gift.)

But peace is polyvalent. There will come a day when all conflict ceases, when nation doesn’t war against nation, when interpersonal conflict is traded for the presence of God, when anxiety & worry give way to a permanent sense of pleasure and happiness, and no chaos touches any thing or group or institution that exists in the world we look forward to knowing well.

Perpetuating Peace:
So. Peace can mean so many things; it’s a word with so many meanings, even if we focus on only one. It’s promised to us, but we’ll only ever experience it partially in this life, while we wait for it fully.

And these truths stand behind a more important truth, which is that we are called to perpetuate peace. The last will & testimony of a Christian should be peace. We should be leaving a trail of peace behind us, on purpose and on accident, so that if a person could step back far enough, they could see every place we have gone–every job we have worked, every thing we have touched, every relationship we have had.

We should think about the legacy we leave, and it should be a legacy of peace.

This is true for all sorts of reasons.

This is true because we know that our future life will be one of peace, a life without conflict and war, outside us and inside us. This is our promised, guaranteed future. And let’s just look at life for a second, right? When something is guaranteed to happen, will definitely happen, one of the things we do is prepare ourselves for it by acting as if it has already happened. If you were going to inherit your family business, you’d act right now like you already have. If you knew you were going to become a police-officer, you’d act right now like police officers act. If you knew you were going to be a clown, you’d start making people laugh. (Or freaking them out, depending on where you land with clowns, I guess. Apologies to any professional clowns.) You get what I’m saying, though, right? I need to start acting like a father now, because I am going to be a father way before I know it. We are going to live lives of permanent peace sooner than anyone of us realizes; we need to start acting out those lives we’ll lead now. And even if there are all sorts of obstacles against us, no one can take the power of God from us, the Holy Spirit that we have, that can help us to lead those peaceful lives.

This is true because we know that Jesus was a man who created peace. The Prince of Peace; he created the opportunity for people to have lasting peace with God, he gives us the power to live lives that promote interpersonal peace. And for Christians, all our own personal goals in this life are second to the goal we have of becoming like Jesus in every way, being agents of the reconciliation that brings peace, of the forgiveness that brings peace, of the wisdom that leads to peace.

And Jesus tells us “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God,” someone has pointed out that Jesus never mentions that “peace-lovers” are blessed, but the “peace-makers.”

Positioning Ourselves to Make Peace:
But it is hard to make peace in this world, right? In the same way that the peace we experience is only partial, provisional, the peace we make in this world–the peace we perpetuate in our workplaces, and our homes, in our church and among our enemies–it’s work. It’s not easy, and it more often lacks the fullness of peace that we want it to.

Peace is more difficult to sustain than war and anger, it is easier to build walls in this world than bridges, and easier to reject than accept. War, anger, walls & rejection are the natural things of this world; Peace, Bridges, and Acceptance are miracles whenever they happen, but we are miracle makers, or used by God, at least, to make some now and then.

Being a peace-maker is a difficult task, when David tells us in psalm 34 to “seek peace and pursue it,”he’s asking us to do difficult work. And because it’s work, we have to position ourselves to become makes of peace, modelers of Jesus, and acters-out of the world to come.

So how can we position ourselves, right now during advent, to make peace?

Some simple things:

Notice the lack of peace around you. All this takes is asking ourselves some questions, shaking ourselves out of our self-centeredness, and noticing the world going on around us. Where is there conflict, things that feel like war, in our lives, or the lives around us? We know what “lack of peace” looks like, right?

Consider what you can do about it. Consider if there is anything you can do about the lack of peace the Lord has brought to your mind. Is there anything you can do about the conflicts–because there will be more than one, if we think about the world around us with any depth–is there anything we can do about them? Make a list, you know? Pray for insight from the Lord; but remember this: we can always do something, even if it feels very small and ineffectual. We can always at least pray, even if it is sometimes a desperate weak prayer. It isn’t of course; no prayer is. But it is an option never taken away from us.

Seek counsel. And if we’ve noticed an absence of peace, and considered what we could do about it, we need to then seek counsel. We need to invite others into the things we have noticed, share with them our thoughts, and seek their Spirit-guided insights.

Act. And then we need to act. We need to act. We need to become makers of peace; it isn’t an option for us, unfortunately. And I would never dictate how we create peace in the world, but it seems to be the case that for Christians we must create it, must perpetuate the peace that Jesus brought with him. And we do this with the support of each other, or others who love us, we act with the power of the Holy Spirit, who loves us and is for us, not against us. And we do this knowing that we will be rewarded for our acts of peace. Jesus comes with rewards for us.

This is all straightforward, right?

Notice the lack of peace around you.
Consider what you can do about it.
Seek counsel.
Act.

Postlogue on Peace:
But even if it’s straightforward, it’s not easy. Advent reminds us that the things of this world–even the peace we struggle to bring into the world–they will pass away when Jesus comes back bringing new heaven and new earth with him. Advent gives us the chance to be honest about the fact that life is not easy, and the things we’re called to do here, as Christians, take great effort sometimes.

Which is why we must hold tightly to Jesus, our Prince of Peace, our source of peace, the peace of God covered over with skin & bones. We’ve got to hang tightly to him, rely on his strength and tactics when ours run out, and remember that peace is not optional for us, making it is not something we can opt out of. It’s not easy, but it’s Jesus, you know?

So: let’s notice the lack of peace around us, consider what we can do about it, seek counsel, and act, knowing that our peace making sets us apart as blessed, sets apart the Lord as holy, and is a small foreshadowing and reminder of the way the world will one day be.