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Peace, it is something we pray for. Peace, a word that often appears on our Christmas cards. Peace, one of names for the Messiah from Isaiah—“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6).
The word peace is not mentioned in either of our readings for today. In our gospel lesson, “the coming of the Son of Man,” does not seem to be a peaceful image—with one taken, and one left—with the admonition to “Stay awake, and watch.” Neither does our reading from the prophet Isaiah use the word peace, although Isaiah has a vision of a world where weapons with find other uses and the world “will learn war no more.”
Isn’t that what peace is? If you look the word, peace, up in the dictionary—the definition is 1) quiet and tranquility, freedom from disturbance, or 2) freedom from or the cessation of war or violence. See, Isaiah was talking about peace. The end to war.
But when we call Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is that what we mean? Is that what the ancients meant? What is this thing called “peace?”
Frederick Buechner writes, “for Jesus, peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle, but the presence of love.”
And Martin Luther King Jr. declared: “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.”
Both these quotes point to peace being something beyond the opposite of war.
And we do have to remember that actual peace would have been a very strange concept for the Hebrew people (when Isaiah was having his vision), or even for those around Jesus. The land we call Israel is on the isthmus connecting Africa and Asia (what we now call the Middle East). The powers from one way or another kept trampling through Israel on their way to fight with other big nations. And everyone wanted to control that territory. War was a constant.
But one can always dream, of a different way, of a different world. Peace in Hebrew is Shalom, and in Arabic is Salaam (notice the same three root letters S-L-M in both Semitic languages). And those words go way beyond an absence of war. They speak of wholeness, completeness, wellbeing—not just for the human race, but for all of creation.
So this peace we are talking about, this peace of which Jesus is Prince, this peace for which we pray, is wider and broader and higher and deeper than we could ever imagine. And something that doesn’t just get sprinkled from above, or pop up when the Son of Man appears.
This peace is something we have to work at—like Buechner’s call to peace as love, and King’s call to peace as justice. So how do we work for peace? How do we become part of the Shalom community?
From Matthew I hear that we have to be vigilant. We have to stay wake and watch. We cannot expect it just to appear. We are part of the process. We are meant to be “in the fields working, or grinding the corn.”
From Isaiah I hear “work” words as well. All that “streaming toward the mountain,” and “beating of swords and spearing” and “learning war no more.” That sounds like more than a lifetime’s work! It sounds so daunting. How could we ever contribute to that?
Seasons of the Spirit has some suggestions—
--For instance, watching the language we use… and trying to correct the violence in it.
Idioms like “killing two birds with one stone”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat”
--“we really nailed it”
“take a stab at it”
“I was blown away”
“fight an uphill battle”
Peace calls us to stay awake and watch what we say!
Another suggestion is to make a concerted effort to pray for peace this season—to construct actual pathways for peace with stones—or to light candles—or make a collage from newspapers or magazines.
Still another possibility is choosing a justice issue and making some steps toward bringing a little light into whatever shadows are lying on your heart.
And yes, maybe the most painful and difficult task is to look at our own lives and find the unpeaceful places in it—and find a way to work on those.
In case you are now thoroughly overwhelmed with how peace might disrupt your life—I have one more illustration. It is a story of two people who are not the same. But what they focus on is what they do share in common. It is a beautiful reminder that there are small things we each can do in this Advent time, a time of waiting for our Prince of Peace, and for God’s peace to fully come.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PQhjTM9lvY
(Amazon’s Christmas Ad 2016)
May we be so inspired to do the hard work of walking the paths of peace as well. Alleluia, Amen.
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