A Reflection on Peace

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A Sermon for IV Advent All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern Shores, NC December 23, 2012 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Micah 5:2-5a Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

 The Visitation by Mariotto Albertinelli,1503

Today we light the last candle in our Advent Wreath to remind us that we need to follow the four disciplines of Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace in order for Christ to be born in our lives. Christ is born in the crèche of our being when we are able to prepare a place for Christ. Hope needs to replace despair as a habit of life, for when we are looking down in lament, we cannot raise our eyes in expectation. Anger and resentment need to be replaced by the discipline of love, for love cannot grow and take root when the soil is rocky and hard. Our sense of entitlement needs to be replaced by thanksgiving, for only when we see all things as a gift are we able to have joy. Peace is not the absence of conflict but the discipline of union with God so that peace flows like a river uniting you and me.

In the lessons for today Peace is not easily evident. The prophet Micah, living in the Hill Country of Judah in the 8^th century BC, looks north to see the beginnings of the collapse of the capital of Samaria of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and knows that his kin will be enslaved by the Assyrian Empire. The Northern Kingdom trusted in their own power and in the cleverness of their alliances with the Syrians. Well, that did not work out the way they planned. Now, Micah knows that aggressors have no way to stop their own greed, and there is no other nation strong enough to stop the Assyrians. He suggests that it is only in uniting with the strength of God and not relying on our own strength and cleverness that we are able to find peace. Peace is not the absence of conflict but it is the union of mind, body, and spirit with God

In the section from the Book of Hebrews, the writer looks at the destruction of the Temple by the Romans as punishment for an uprising in 70 AD. Their whole sacrificial system, the way they made peace with God, was in ruins. The way it worked was, when you did something that was displeasing to God, you needed to make a sacrifice in the Temple in order to have an “at-one-ment”, an atonement, a peace with God. Their understanding was that, because of our sins, God was displeased with us, and we could only get right by getting God off our back. If it was a minor sin then only a minor sacrifice was necessary, like a handful of grains thrown on the fire. BUT if it was a big sin, then the sacrifice would be much bigger, like a whole oxen thrown on the fire to be totally consumed, a Holocaust. God was seen as awesome and all that, but sometimes God could tend to get on your back something awful.

Years ago there was this television series called Maude, and whenever Maude was upset with something that her husband had done, she would squint her eyes at him and say: “God will get you for that, Walter.” Maude believed in sic-ing God on people who misbehaved. However, the writer of Hebrews reflects on the whole sacrificial system and suggests that we don't need to define “peace” as having God off our back, but “Peace” comes when we allow God to stand at our side, to be with us, living within us in this mortal life. Peace is not the absence of conflict but it is the union of mind, body, and spirit with God.

In the Gospel story from Luke, Mary does not have a peaceful life. She lives in an occupied nation ruled by a tyrant. Yet in the Galilee region of Nazareth, far from political turmoil, everything seemed to be going fine with her, until an Angel came and disrupted her planned life. Here Mary was, a nice young girl, betrothed to a nice young man, suddenly given an opportunity to be united with God in mind, body, and spirit - to have God live within her. She becomes pregnant, and people start to talk. As from time immemorial, young pregnant girls are sent by their parents to live with relatives outside of town before they start to show. 

Her cousin Elizabeth, who has had her own life disrupted by an unexpected pregnancy, greets and affirms Mary's call by viewing her disruption as a blessing: “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Mary responds by singing her own song, a variation of Hannah's song in the book of 1^st Samuel, where everything is turned upside down. I use Eugene Peterson's translation from The Message:

I’m bursting with God-news;
I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.
God took one good look at me, and look what happened—
I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!
What God has done for me will never be forgotten,
the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.
God's mercy flows in wave after wave
on those who are in awe before God.
God bared God's arm and showed God's strength,
scattered the bluffing braggarts.
God knocked tyrants off their high horses,
pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold.

The song says that Mary is at peace in the middle of turmoil because she is “bursting with God-news”. Mary becomes our icon of finding peace, for peace is not the absence of conflict but it is the union of mind, body, and spirit with God, or as Mary says “bursting with God-news; dancing the song of my Savior God”. Today, learn how to dance with God in the middle of conflict and find peace. May we practice the disciplines of Hope, Love, Joy and Peace and allow ourselves to be bursting with God-news.