December 7, 2008 - "Re-Gifting Peace"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
December 7, 2008
Advent II
Jason W. Crosby

Re-Gifting Peace

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; II Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

Just beneath the comfortable trappings of this season lurks a vexing problem. Distractions abound to keep us occupied these days. Lights which bring a sensation of warmth to cold dark nights. Trees with smells that quickly flood our minds with good memories of the past. Songs like Jingle Bells make us smile. Profound, poignant, inspiring worship services. Enough diversions exist to entrance us, so that we do not have to deal with our problem. For us to discuss peace and regifting peace, however, we must wrestle this conundrum.

Not that we don’t anticipate problems this time of year. The holidays put our lives and our relationships under a microscope. Inner tensions and familial rifts are magnified greatly at Christmas, so much so that many people find themselves depressed and families find themselves fighting with one another.

What followers of Christ may not expect this time of year is having to deal with a problem rooted in the birth of Christ. The apostle Paul wrote, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). Christ’s death and resurrection presents those who are religious and those who are not with a whole slew of problematic questions. Why would a good God put Christ to death on a cross is one such question circulating at Easter. “He could as well have written,” according to Frederick Buechner, “We preach Christ born’ or ‘We preach Christmas,’ because the birth presents no fewer problems than the death does.” [1]

One problem, of many, that stems from Christmas is that now we live in an in-between time. God incarnate came, continues to dwell with us, but is not yet fully manifest. With the birth came a “foretaste of God’s glory divine” says Fanny J. Crosby in her hymn “Blessed Assurance.” Still, we only caught a glimpse of what we hope is to come. Christ’s birth put us on a bridge between two great chasms. Behind us, on one side sits the world as it was prior to the birth of Christ. Those touched by Christ’s love and grace cannot return to that place. We are different now. Yet, we can’t see what lies ahead. We hope we possess an idea as to what that promised land will be like. Our vision of that place, however, is murky at best. So, here we are, on a bridge, where we possess hearts of generosity and greediness, where we love one another and hate one another, care for one another and kill one another. The double lives we lead during this in-between time, lives both beautiful and repulsive, can lead us into frustration and uneasiness. Here is our Chistmas problem – When will we move beyond the foretaste of God’s glory given to us at Christ birth and be able to sit down for the full meal? How much longer will we have to live with the greed, hate, and killing around us?

The author of 2 Peter provides a response to these very questions. The community to whom this epistle was written lived a few generations after Christ. Some believed that the Savior who came, would have already returned by their time. As they contemplated their in-between existence, discontentment began to swell within them. When, they wondered, would the God who came once, come again?

I imagine the author’s answer was unsatisfactory to many then. It certainly is not likely to be kindly received these days. The writer tells those living on the bridge to wait.

Most people don’t like waiting. Especially these days, when we live in an immediate gratification world. The internet enables us to communicate with people on the other side of the globe instantaneously. All we have to do is turn on the television and the 24 hour a day, seven day a week, 365 day a year news channels tell us what happening in any place at that very moment. Consequently, many of us become agitated when we have to wait for an appointment, in traffic, or for our food to arrive at a restaurant. These are relatively petty issues compared to the serious injustices around us. The author’s plea to wait seems particularly unsettling and anachronistic when people live in a world where families find themselves on the streets because of others greed, where addiction suffocates hopes and dreams, where betrayal breaks the bonds of relationship, where the deaths of innocent children are explained away as collateral damage.

During advent, however, we wait. Consciously waiting is what sets advent apart from others times of the year. Like a lot of children, Christmas morning was my promised land. I wanted it to arrive as soon as possible. No matter how much I wished December 25th would come more quickly, I lacked the ability to alter the flow of time. Instead of wallowing in my frustration, each advent season I would make a chain of loops of red and green construction paper. Each day, as Christmas drew closer, I would remove a loop from the chain, and wait. I wasn’t just sitting around my room with my chain made of construction paper waiting, however. In retrospect, I realize that in waiting something happened to me. Rather that existing in a state of high anxiety, my advent chain gave me a greater sense of contentment. I say a greater sense of contentment because I’m sure that my mother, who is here today, will readily attest to the fact that I was still very anxious in the days leading up to Christmas. But, waiting with that chain settled me, at least somewhat.

Each year, when we wait during advent, we wait in the expectation that something more will happen. As we wait to mark the birthday of Jesus, don’t we do so expecting that we will reencounter the gifts given to us when God became incarnate? Advent waiting is good practice for us, since 52 weeks of the year we are waiting on that bridge in-between what was and what will be. Just as when we consciously wait during advent we expect something more to happen, perhaps we should expect something more to happen when consciously waiting the remaining days of the year.

What is that something more that might happen to us if we engage in conscious waiting year round? For one, a commitment to waiting will breed greater attentiveness. Waiting for the new heaven and the new earth is not like waiting for a casserole to bake. Waiting for a casserole demands passive waiting. Once the dish is in the oven, there is not much more a person can do to change that composition of that casserole. You can clean up the kitchen or work on another dish, but as for the casserole, all you can do is wait. Waiting while we journey to the other side of the great divide is a very different act. We’re not sure what the outcome will be. We’re not sure how we will get there. We don’t have a recipe to follow. So, we must listen very carefully while waiting. We must be very attune to the present moment in which we find ourselves. Henri Nouwen wrote, “Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her. Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were very present to the moment. That is why they could hear the angel. They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention.” [2] If we are attentive, we may sense that God is doing something to us while we wait. We may also become more adventurous. Active, attentive waiting leads us to places we never imagined we go. The Magi practiced active, attentive waiting and they ended up at the manager. This congregation has practiced active, attentive waiting that has repeatedly set it on a course impossible to predict.

Actively waiting for God, which enables us to better hear God when God speaks, and better move when God says go, might just be the best path to peace available for us amid the duality of these in between times. Waiting in this fashion brings us closer to God’s peace. The community to whom Isaiah 40 addressed found themselves waiting in exile in Babylon. Waiting in oppression to return home. Yet, in waiting God’s comfort and God’s peace was revealed. It’s waiting, actively and attentively, for God’s peace that may very well be our only hope of survival in this time. Without it, our greed may overcome our generosity, our hate may overtake our love.

This idea that the path to peace follows the way of waiting may sound absurd to some. The final poem written by Dietrich Bonheoffer suggests that at least for him, this notion that waiting for God might bring about peace has traction. Bonheoffer, the German Christian minister who plotted to bring down Hitler’s Nazi regime, was put in prison in November of 1943. 1944 proved to be his last Christmas. In the cellar of a Nazi prison on December 19, 1944 with death creeping near, he wrote a letter to his fiancé. He closed that letter with his final poem, which in part, reads:

By kindly powers surrounded, peaceful and true,
Wonderfully protected with consolation dear,
Safely, I dwell with you this whole day through
And surely into another year.

Though from the old our hearts are still in pain,
While evil days oppress with burdens still,
Lord, give to our frightened souls again,
Salvation, and thy promises fulfill.

And should thou offer us the bitter cup, resembling
Sorrow, filled to the brim and overflowing,
We will receive it thankfully, without trembling,
From thy hand so good and ever-loving.

But, if it be thy will again to give
Joy of this world and bright sunshine,
Then in our minds we will past times relive
And all our days be wholly thine.

When we are wrapped in silence most profound,
May we hear that song most fully raised
From all the unseen world that lies around
And thou art by all thy children praised.

By kindly powers protected wonderfully,
Confident, we wait for come what may,
Night and morning, God is by us, faithfully
And surely at each new born day. [3]

He was killed April 9, 1945. Bonhoeffer lived in the worst conditions this in-between time has arguably ever seen. Yet, in his waiting, he had little else to do in his Nazi prison cell; he found a gift, of peace, that only God can offer.

Those who know peace, naturally will re-gift it. Peace is not something that belongs to us that we own or possess. Peace is not something we can manufacture for ourselves. It is not a tool, a building, or even a career. It is a gift that we can prepare ourselves to receive or reject. Really, it is impossible to hoard peace. If we keep peace to ourselves like wealth, we will lose it. That is because there is a communal element to knowing inner-peace while waiting in these in-between times. Isaiah and the epistle were written to communities. Living in community and loving others while attentively waiting is another ingredient necessary for us to know peace. Those we know peace, naturally, will regift it as a way of demonstrating love to others with whom we wait.

“Indian giver” is considered to be a pejorative term. It shouldn’t be. It is customary in Native American cultures that whenever a gift is given to someone, that gift is shared with the entire community. Peace knowers will be Indian givers.

We may regift peace by heeding Isaiah’s words, “preparing the way, by making straight a highway in the desert for our Lord.” In others words, by using our voices to stand non-violently in opposition to violence, or by using our feet to march in protest to injustice in any form, we regift peace. Today let us also remember, those who know peace, may give it away, by being instruments of peace, who make sweet, warm melodies - melodies that call others to wait with them, in between what was and what, by God’s grace, will be.

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1. Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, HarperCollins, 90.
2. Henri Nouwen, Watch for the Light: Reading for Advent and Christmas, Plough, 2001, 32.
3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons, edited and translated by Edwin Robertson, Zondervan, 2005, 180-181.