Second Sunday in Advent, 12/09/2007

Sermon on Matthew 3:1-12, by James Stockton

THE NATURE OF GOD'S PEACE

J.M. Barrie, who's life is now the subject of a new film, is most famous as the author of The Adventures of Peter Pan, but my favorite work by him, and one I recommend to your reading, is one his several books on Scottish village life; it's called The Little Minister. On a small desk calendar I have there is a quote of his. The calendar itself was a gift. and comes form an organization called Pax Christi USA, Pax Christi being Latin for the ‘Peace of Christ.' The quotation from J. M. Barrie says: "God gives us memory so that we may have roses in December."

The second Sunday of the Advent season sees us lighting a candle on the Advent wreath known as the candle of Peace. An Advent theme, along with Hope, as well as Joy and Love, Peace is a theme of the Christ who was and is to come. Peace is the second of the two Advent gifts of the coming of Christ that have to do with anticipating his arrival. There is first the Hope that opens the mind and heart and soul to the possibility. Then, the notion of God coming in person changes from a possibility, an ‘if,' to being only a matter of time, a ‘when.' And there is this hint of Peace that can come in, a gift from God to His people, and God's gift to the world through the Church, through the memory and vision of the Church.

As the Church today recalls the first Advent of Christ and the original forecasts of his coming, I cannot help but wonder: Is it the case that the gift of Peace, has proven in human history, to be an elusive one to hold on to because it a quiet thing, often defined not so much by what it is, but by what it isn't? Peace and peacefulness typically are not intrusive and urgent, loud and boisterous. Peace is not demanding; it isn't insistent on anyone's attention. And so I wonder if this humanity has a difficulty in tending to so quiet a gift.

A story I read tells of two small birds. The sparrow asks the dove, "What do you think is the weight of a snowflake?" The dove answers, "Well that's silly; a snowflake, I suppose, weighs nothing more than nothing." "In fact, I agree with you," says the sparrow, so I really must tell you a marvelous thing I have seen. I sat on the branch of fir tree, low down near the trunk, when it began to snow. It was no raging blizzard, there was no sound of wind rushing by, no shaking of the tree. Instead, in the stillness, each snowflake drifted down floating silently, quiet as a dream."

It's a quiet dream in its own right that the prophet forecasts for his people. It's a quiet gift that God promises humanity through the prophet's vision; but it is also more. In our Old Testament reading, the prophet Isaiah tells of seeing a Peace that combines both wisdom and might, both understanding and strength. This one from the root and family of Jesse, the family of the great King David, is a harbinger of peace. But he turns no blind eye to the errors and sins of humanity. To the contrary, his gaze upon the world is one of such clarity that, as the prophet puts it, ‘it strikes the earth; it slays the wicked.'

This no quick and easy Peace has its origin in heaven. The Peace that comes, is to be more than a temporary smoothing of the surface in order to disguise for awhile that collision of forces hidden from view that rob humanity of true serenity. Biblical scholar and author Derek Kidner points out that this Peace is a hard-earned, hard-won prize. And more that this, I would add that God must be the author of this peace, for no human effort can, in fact, win it, engineer it, or create it into being.

For this reason, it is a vision based on a memory still alive among the people. It recalls a home, a garden, where wolf and lamb lived side-by-side, where there lived leopard and goat, lion and calf. It predicts a time when there is neither predator nor prey. Painting the portrait of a mythical future, using the memories of their legendary past, a visionary speaker speaks for a visionary God. And this is what makes it a true and lasting Peace that passes all understanding.

For as God knows, and as history teaches us, any peace that we can understand, is a peace that we can undo.

For this reason, the Peace that comes with the coming of Christ is a peace that confronts, challenges, even condemns, as much as it consoles and comforts. And the funny thing about it may be, that it does the latter better and more truly precisely because it does the former just as well.

The coming of John the Baptist precedes the first Advent of Christ into the world. His preaching is different, to say the least, from that of Jesus. He dresses oddly; his diet is absurd, something out of a reality show these days, a round of Fear Factor; and his manner is less one that soothes his followers with promises of Peace, than one that threatens his skeptics with the warning of it. His gaze is clear and steady upon the wicked, the bogus, the phony. Until John the Baptist, the voice of the prophets had been silent for 400 years. The vacuum has been filled, but only poorly so, by the experts in the letter, if not the spirit, of God's word. The continuing presence of the Romans speaks to their failure to appeal successfully to God. Some would claim that the blessing of God is found in Pharisaic expertise in ritual; others that it comes through a Sadducaic knowledge of text and commentary. It is the illusion of godly comfort rooted in the worship of a god created in their own image. As long as they hold to this or any other such cheap imitation of the true gift of God's Peace, the one who enters in bringing the true article cannot help but be that wrath that is to come. And yet even it this, and maybe precisely in this, the child of the Peace of God finds reason and just cause to believe that true and heavenly Peace is not only possible, but on the way.

The sparrow continued her story. "In the stillness, I watched as each snowflake drifted down floating silently, quietly. With nothing else to do, I counted the snowflakes as they landed, settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Little by little, each little ‘nothing less than nothing, added up until they were all something. I watched until I'd counted 3,741,952 snowflakes had fallen on my branch. I watched as the next one fell; and at 3,741,953 snowflakes, my branch broke out from beneath me, and fell to the ground, covered by 3,741,953 nothings less than nothing."

Peace is coming, dreadfully to its enemies, true enough, but to its children, it comes and it comes back again. And here is the gift within the gift: it always comes quietly. So that just in order to receive and welcome the gift, we must become quiet enough to notice it drifting down upon us. The memory of God's Peace in those ways that you or I have known it, will, I suspect, not allow us to settle for long for a comfortable illusion or a poor substitute. And, I suspect, the promise of the Peace that God is bringing in will move us onward to a more genuine holy discontent. When you or I take refuge in the busy-ness of this or any season, when we and the people around us turn again and again to that list of oh so-important things to do that never ends of its own accord, and look for comfort in our knowledge of just the right way to do them, we distract ourselves, and we allow others to be distracted, from noticing that serenity is missing.

But that heavenly challenge comes again, and from that primal memory somewhere down deep inside, that originates from somewhere up above, it calls us to turn again to a vision of how it all is meant to be, and one day will. When we let it, when we become quiet enough to let it come, we remember again the promise of God's Peace on God's Earth.

This week, this season, remember. And for you, for me, like roses alive in our December memory, we will know God's Peace. And through your memory, your hope, your vision, and mine, gently gathering as something not quite nothing, know that God's Peace drifts down upon the world.

And now may Almighty God, who has shown us that in turning to rest in Him we shall find the gift of our salvation, grant that by His grace towards all, all may draw near to Him, as, in His Son our Lord, He draws near to us; through the same Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and for ever. Amen.

Reverent James Stockton
Episcopal Church of the Resurrection
Austin, Texas

E-Mail: jstockton@sbc.global.net

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