PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Luke 3:1-6                                                                     Peace Requires Something of Us
Sermon December 6, 2009:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

            This Second Sunday of Advent is Peace Sunday:  we light the Peace Candle on the Advent Wreath and express the sentiment of peace.  But I have to tell you, it’s hard to preach peace on the day before Pearl Harbor Day, and when the President has just announced an increase in American military personnel in Afghanistan—where our country made its first response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.  The context of Peace Sunday doesn’t support the sermon, however biblical the theme may be.  But even if we moved Peace Sunday to another Advent Sunday, there would still be this season of selling, traffic, credit card skyrocketing, and silly new songs on the radio—“I want a hippopotamus”?  And maybe your family is in turmoil with the economic crisis, the job crisis, the increased difficulty in traveling by air or rail, or maybe illness.  What we need on Peace Sunday is a practical answer to our stresses, not sappy sentimentality. 

            Our world in 2009 is like the little boy who got upset and threw a tantrum.  His father gave him a time-out and said, “Go to my room.”  After the little guy left the kitchen the mother said, “Since when do we do time outs in our bedroom?”  Her husband said, “Have you seen his  room lately?  He has an iPod, a TV, a computer with X-box, and a cell phone with text-messaging:  that won’t calm him down!”[1]  And that is our predicament, too, as we seek “peace” during the season of Advent. 

            So we realize that we’re going to have to do something to find a  peace that’s real and sustaining to the human spirit.  And that’s my point today:  Peace requires something of us. 

            This Gospel Lesson I just read is familiar to us—early in Advent we touch again the preaching of John the Baptist and his preparation for the appearance of the Messiah.  What we miss is that the people to whom John was preaching felt pretty much the same way we do about this “peace” thing.  The Roman emperor, Tiberius Caesar had put into place a policy of pacification all over the empire, called the “pax romana.”  Another term for it would be “military occupation.”  About this policy it has been said:  “Rome created a desert and called it peace.”  The Gospel Lesson names the rulers who were expected to pacify Palestine:  Pontius Pilate, and the brothers who were so jealous of each other Herod Antipas and Herod Philip, and over in the Bekka Valley[2] Lysannius.  They all had to deal with politics, military occupation, taxation, and terrorism.  When John the Baptist was preaching repentance in the Jordan Valley, everybody who came out to hear him knew about all this; and they also knew that God had been silent in Israel for a very long time.  The high priesthood had become more political than religious, a family war among the descendants of Aaron, and both sides had appealed to the Romans who had been more than happy to come in and establish “peace.”  The priests  were supposed to speak for God, and God was silent. 

            The Gospel Lesson says that it was during this anxious time that John the Baptist showed up.  The message thunders on the page:  “the word of God came to John”—God is speaking again after centuries of silence, the silence of our long rainy autumn, the silence of years, of family distance, of illness without relief, of uncertainty, of pain and loss.  In a single human voice out in the wilderness God’s silence is broken.  It’s like a wind blowing a promise of hope, the fresh scent of poinsettia, a light in this darkness of the day, which is so much darker than the darkness of the night.[3] 

            John appeared “preaching a baptism of change for the forgiveness of sins.”  And the people streamed out into the countryside to hear him.  And when they heard him they came forward weeping for their sins and weeping for joy; and John baptized them in the Jordan River, a symbol of their renewal, their refreshing in this desert of their lives.  Here is peace. 

            Anthony de Mello tells a parable about a stockbroker who had lost a fortune, who went to a monastery in search of peace; but he was too caught up in his own personal crisis to be able to meditate, and so he gave up and left.  The master of the monastery spoke a single sentence in comment:  “Those who sleep on the floor never fall from their beds.”[4]  “Those who sleep on the floor”—not the high-flyers, not the savvy planners of our age, but people who, in spite of all our stresses, find the humility to acknowledge that we don’t have the answer—that we’re willing to come to God. 

            The Gospel Lesson says that John the Baptist received “the word of God” in the “desert” of life—his life and our lives; and he preached a call to change and get ready for the advent of God’s new thing.  Peace requires something of us.  God a’mighty’s commin’, but we’ve got some getting’ ready to do.  This is how we may seek peace.

            Do you want “the peace surpassing understanding”?[5]  Do you desire to welcome anew the promised Prince of Peace?  Does your heart cry out for that deeper peace we expect to find only in “saints”?  How do we get there?  I want to suggest four steps to peace, drawn from this story of John the Baptist:  to see, to hear, to speak, and to touch.  This is what peace requires of us. 

            First peace requires us to see what is before our eyes and call it by its right name. Bernie Madoff defrauded millions of dollars from investors over a period of two decades.  He said his original intention was to make sure that the people who trusted him received some benefit, but like an avalanche the damage grew as things continued; and he didn’t know how to stop it.  He says he wishes the SEC inspectors had caught him years ago.  So do the inspectors.  And there were companies who took people’s investment money and re-invested it with Madoff.  The prosecutors are saying that the leaders of those middle-man companies should have read the annual reports and should have seen that the numbers didn’t match up; but they didn’t want to see; and as a result their investors lost out, too.  Sometimes life would be a lot simpler if we were just to see what’s right in front of our eyes and call it by its right name. 

            Personally, when your check book balance dips into the minus numbers, do you stop writing checks?  When your child keeps getting severe ear aches week after week, do you continue with the home remedies?  For the common-sense things in our lives we already know we have to see what’s in front of us and call it by its right name.  It’s the same for the life of the spirit.  There is no peace without seeing and naming.  We might take the stories of Jesus’ casting out demons as an example of this:  he often asked the demon its name, and that gave him a handle—power over it.  Peace requires that we see what is in front of us and call it by its right name.

            Second peace invites us to hear—to listen for that still small voice which transforms us.  At the center of your soul there is a little door of the human spirit through which God reaches to touch you—if you let it happen!  This is “the pearl of great price,” and “the treasure hidden in a field,” in Jesus’ parables.[6]  Paul wrote:  “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”[7]  But we must be receptive:  there is no peace if a person is not seeking peace.  So the second requirement is that we hear that transforming voice.

            First, see; second, hear.  The third requirement, following this story of John the Baptist, is that we learn to speak to others out of that well of transforming stillness of the Spirit.  You can’t have peace by yourself—you have to share it.  So one of Jesus’ Beatitudes is:  “Blessed are the peace-makers.”  True peace is not just a feeling inside somewhere, like heartburn:  true peace is good news shared.  Our culture is not a place of peace; so if you want to take possession of peace you have to do what most people don’t do—you have to do peace:  this is the third requirement.

            And fourth, I have to touch another person with peace even though I myself still may not yet possess peace fully.  Touch has power and grace, as this poem by two teen-age young men says:[8]

            No, I don’t fully possess this peace; and those who do don’t brag about it; but you and I both can be on our way toward peace.  John the Baptist, out in the wilderness, invites us. 

            So I say:  peace requires something of us.  In our own deserts, facing what we are facing, during Advent, John invites us to the Jordan—to do something:  to see what is before our eyes and call it by its right name; to hear that still small voice which can transform us; to speak to others out of that transforming stillness; and to touch another person with the peace we don’t yet fully possess.

            When I was a child, Christmas just dropped into my lap:  the tree, the gifts, the candy, the gathering of family.  But Advent is not like that.  Today, the day before Pearl Harbor Day, preparing the way for the Prince of Peace is a call, an invitation, a moment to choose:  yes or no, Jesus.  Peace requires something of us. 

AMEN