When Peace Broke Out...

Just one hundred years ago, an astounding event took place in the trenches of the First World War. Quite simply, both German and British troops refused to continue to fight. They laid down their weapons and celebrated Christmas Day together. If you have never heard this story, here it is -- my Christmas gift to you!

It was just 100 years ago that it happened – 100 years ago this very night! In some places on that night, men slept in their warm beds amid dreams of beautifully decorated trees and gaily wrapped gifts. But things were very different in central Europe; for on this night 100 years ago, a conflict was raging. Today we call it the First World War.

On this very night in 1914, men in central Europe awaited not the voices of loved ones calling “Merry Christmas,” but the explosions of hand grenades and artillery shells. Two great armies faced each other across a front that extended along the French-Belgian border. The troops lived in soggy trenches that were filled with mud. British and German alike were cold, wet, and miserable. Between the two lines of trenches was 50 to 100 yards of “No Man’s Land.” Snipers had orders to shoot anything that moved in No Man’s Land. In preparation for Christmas, the British troops had received cigarettes, plum puddings, chocolates, and a greeting card from King George V. German troops had received a pipe and tobacco, sausages, beer, and a card containing the profile of Crown Prince Frederick Wilhelm. In some places along the line, they had even received bundles of Christmas trees! But no one on either side expected to be able to celebrate the holiday.

On Christmas Eve, the shooting slowed down, and finally stopped altogether. No one ordered that cease fire; the troops simply stopped shooting. The silence was almost eerie. Men tensed, awaiting an attack. And then, somewhere along the German lines, a lone voice began to sing. “Stille nacht, heilige nacht…” Others joined in. When the song was over, silence fell again; but it didn’t last long. From the British lines, the song resumed – in English, this time: “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…” Soon British and German had joined together in singing, up and down the lines. A German voice cried out, “Here comes a gift!” The British dove for cover, expecting a grenade; but what fell into their trench was a boot filled with sausages. The British responded in kind by sending back a plum pudding and chocolates.

When Christmas Day dawned, a white flag appeared over the German trenches. The British suspected a trap; but a German voice called out, “We good. We no shoot.” Men from both sides climbed nervously out into No Man’s Land, leaving their weapons behind. German and British met and exchanged handshakes and greetings. They swapped pipes, tobacco and cigarettes, sausages and plum puddings, and even personal items that they had with them. One German soldier cut a button off his uniform and gave it to a Brit. In some places, soccer games broke out. In other places, soldiers from opposing armies sat down in middle of the mud and worshipped together.

When the military commanders heard of such scandalous behavior, they ordered the troops to resume hostilities immediately; and, after a few days, the shooting resumed. But for one brief moment – on Christmas Eve just 100 years ago tonight – the power of love defeated the world’s violence at its worst. John Buchanan writes, “The Christmas truce is almost too good to be true; and yet, it is no more unrealistic than an angel announcing that a newborn baby is the Savior.” His birth means that peace is always possible, even in the midst of the worst that we can do to one another. God’s light still shines in the darkness… and the darkness has not overcome it. Thanks be to God!

What Child Is This? Prince of Peace

The Christmas story proclaims that the Christ will bring peace on earth. Oh, really? Where is it, anyway? This sermon might help you think about the answer.

Of all the names that we give to the Messiah, surely the one that strikes a chord closest to our hearts is the Prince of Peace. Peace is what we yearn for most deeply; and peace always seems to be in the shortest supply. Violence, not peace, is what usually surrounds us. I subscribe to a periodical titled The Week. It is a summary of recent news events in the opinions of a wide variety of columnists. Reports of violence can be found on nearly every page. In a recent issue, the cover story highlighted the riots in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer. The issue also mentioned a Japanese woman who has allegedly poisoned four husbands; 28 bus passengers who were slaughtered in Kenya by an Islamic extremist group; and 43 student teachers in Mexico who disappeared and are presumed dead following their participation in a demonstration against drug cartels. And we delude ourselves if we think that this kind of violence will stay away from our own back yards. You may have heard about the military veteran who recently murdered his ex-wife and five members of her family in small towns just north of Philadelphia. My husband’s sister and brother-in-law live in a home just a block away from one of those murders.

Yes, we long for peace, but it eludes us. We read Isaiah’s description of the peaceful kingdom in which the lion and the lamb lie down together, and we shake our heads in dismay, because that’s not the world in which we live. Woody Allen once quipped, “The lion might lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep!” We frequently don’t get much sleep, either. Like the lamb, we lie down with one ear listening for the tones of the smoke detector, the weather alert, or the security alarm. We don’t have much of that peace that the Messiah promises us. Where is it, anyway?

A part of the answer to that question is that the peaceful kingdom of the Messiah is on the way, but it hasn’t arrived in its fullness yet. Every now and then, if we pay attention, we might catch a glimpse of it peeping through the violence of our world. We see it when, for example, Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jew become friends, and work together for peace in their little corner of that troubled part of the world. But those glimpses of the kingdom are usually obscured by the violence and suffering around them. No, the peaceful kingdom of the Messiah that God has promised isn’t here yet, although we pray every day for its arrival.

But the delay of the peaceful kingdom isn’t the whole picture when we talk about God’s peace. The very definition of “peace” itself is a problem. We mostly define “peace” as political peace – the absence of war. If that’s the case, then Jesus’ lifetime during the height of the Roman Empire was one of the most peaceful eras in human history. That peace was called the Pax Romana, the “Roman peace.” It was enjoyed everywhere the Romans governed, throughout the whole civilized world. And it is true that few wars broke out during that time in history. But if we dig deeper, we find that the Romans maintained that peace through a system of violent punishments. Lawbreakers were subject to whipping, imprisonment in a dungeon, or even crucifixion. Oh, the Roman Empire may have been at peace, but that peace was a thin veneer over a system of legal violence. The Romans claimed that they had established “peace on earth,” but it certainly wasn’t peaceful for everyone! Surely this isn’t the kind of peace that the Messiah offers us!

So let’s suppose for a moment that political peace isn’t the only kind of peace around. What if the Messiah offers us a peace that is deeper and more profound than a peace that any government could supply? What if the peace that the Messiah promises us isn’t outside us, but inside us – inside our hearts and minds and souls? What if the peace that can carry us through all the difficulties of our daily living is an inner peace? What would that kind of peace look like? For that answer, we don’t need to look any farther than a newborn baby cradled in its mother’s arms. That newborn child is the very picture of God’s peace. His head rests comfortably on his mother’s shoulder, and his sleep is undisturbed. He isn’t worried about a thing! He rests safe and secure in the embrace of his loving mother. Now, that child won’t always be happy. Sometimes he will be cold, hungry, or in pain. But through all those things, his mother will be right there next to him, nourishing and protecting him when she can, and holding his hand when she can’t. That child can be absolutely certain that his mother will never leave him, not even for a second; and because of that certainty, he is filled with peace.

That peace can be ours, too, when we realize that because God was born to us in the person of Jesus Christ, God will never abandon us! God’s peace can be ours when we realize that all the names of the Messiah are true. He is the Dayspring, the One who floods us with the light of truth, and lights our path wherever it might lead us. He is the Key of David, the One who liberates us from all the chains that we wind around ourselves. He is Emmanuel, God with us, the One who has promised to be with us forever, both in this life and in the next. And when we are filled with the peace of the Prince of Peace, nothing in this world can threaten us! Trouble can’t disturb us. Neither can hardship or persecution or hunger or nakedness or danger or even war. That’s how Paul describes the peace that he found in Christ in his letter to the Romans (8:35). Nothing can take God’s peace away from us once it has filled our lives. Oh, we’ll still be frustrated and angry and upset now and then. We’ll still weep and mourn and suffer, because that’s part of life until God’s kingdom comes in fullness. But that foundation of peace assures us of God’s loving presence – a presence that we’ll never lose. In the end, God’s peace is what allows us to stand against all the evil that disturbs the peace of the world. The certainty that God is with us is what enables us to state “This is wrong!” when we witness injustice around us. The peace that the Prince of Peace offers us gives us the courage to resist violence of every kind. We can reject greed and prejudice and hatred when we are filled with peace. Peace leads to peace. You can rely on it.

Where is the peace that the Prince of Peace gives us? First it must be in us, and then it can be around us; and Christ offers it to every one of us, free of charge. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.” This is the gift of Christmas – the peace that passes all understanding and the Savior who gives it to us. Thanks be to God!

What Child Is This? Key of David

The Messiah will free the prisoners and loose the captives, says the scripture. As we read that, we are grateful that we are not prisoners... or are we? My sermon for this week in Advent explores the kinds of prisons that Christ will open. Maybe one of them sounds familiar to you.

I have never been inside a jail. I haven’t been in a federal penitentiary, a state prison, or a county jail – not even to visit. What I know about prisons I know from watching crime shows on TV. But those shows tell me all I need to know about life inside “the big house.” I’ve watched scenes of handcuffed felons shuffle down hallways between burly guards, and heard the sound of a cell door swinging shut with a loud metal clang. I know that if I was in prison, I couldn’t go where I wanted to go, do what I wanted to do, even eat when I wanted to eat. If I were in prison, a 10 p.m. attack of the munchies would just have to wait until 7 a.m. breakfast. Someone else would tell me when to eat, when to sleep, and when to exercise – if I could exercise at all. Prisoners can only do what someone else tells them to do. A prisoner’s life is lonely, frustrating, and humiliating. Prisoners have no control over their own lives; never mind the ever-present threat of violence from guards and from other prisoners. Prison is a living nightmare. And it’s even more so for those who shouldn’t be there at all – those men and women who have been wrongly convicted, or who are political prisoners, held captive because of the whims of tyrants. No wonder that scripture often mentions prisons with the same horror that it mentions illness and death.

It is the Messiah, proclaims that same scripture, whose job it will be to loose the captive and set the prisoner free. When we sing about the Key of David in our songs of Advent, that’s the Messiah. He is the one who holds the key to every lock that keeps us imprisoned. And there are many kinds of prisons. Not all of them are made of stone and steel, like Alcatraz or Leavenworth. Some of them are conditions that people are forced to endure. Some people are imprisoned by physical disability or mental limitation. They rely on wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, and medical devices. Others are prisoners of their own experiences – military veterans suffering from PTSD, for example. Still others are prisoners of the economy. If you don’t believe that being unemployed is a prison, ask anyone who is seeking a job and can’t find one. None of these folks have done anything to deserve the prisons in which they are held. But they are nevertheless dependent on others for food, clothing, and shelter. Their lives are as limited as if they were behind bars. But through the grace of God, these prisons are being knocked down brick by brick. Physical limitations are constantly being addressed through medical research. Lost limbs can now be replaced with prosthetic ones; and medication can keep many chronic illnesses under control. Emotional conditions like PTSD are being treated by long-term therapy. And certainly we are all trying to create a society in which everyone who wants a job has one! We differ in our opinions as to how best to do that; but the health of our economy is on everyone’s mind. Yes, these prisons may yet disappear – not in our lifetimes, perhaps, but with God’s help and our own hard work.

These are dreadful kinds of prisons – physical prisons of stone and bars, and those we must endure because life’s lottery has put us there. But we can be freed from those. Most prison sentences have a completion date when the prisoner will leave his cell and rejoin society. And as we join together to address physical and mental limitations, we will freed from those conditions, as well. But there is another kind of prison that is just as bad as the ones that I have already mentioned – the prisons that we build for ourselves. If you’re familiar with the story A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, you’ll also be familiar with the ghost of Jacob Marley. Marley’s ghost was in a prison of his own making. As he climbed the staircase to visit Ebenezer Scrooge in his sitting room, he dragged a heavy chain behind him. Dickens described it this way. “[The chain] was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made… of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.” When Scrooge asked him, “You are fettered. Tell me why?” the ghost replied, “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was as full and heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!” Indeed, a ponderous chain. Marley had focused on nothing but his own financial gain; and that focus had imprisoned him in a cell of greed, blinding him to the cares and needs of the world around him. Scrooge was in the very same prison, and headed for the very same fate.

Now, most of us don’t drag Marley’s chain behind us. Oh, sure, we worry about paying the bills; that’s just part of life. But the generosity in this congregation tells me that we’re not in the prison of selfishness and greed. But we may very well be imprisoned in another way. Well, here – let me describe some common prisons to you; and you can judge for yourselves if any of them are a little too familiar. Some people are caught in a web. Oh, it’s not a spider’s web. It’s much stronger than a spider’s web; and they have spun it with their own hands. These folks have paid way too much attention to the expectations that others have for them; and they are tied hand and foot by those expectations that pull them this way and that. Dad expects him to carry on the family business, although he really wants to be a forest ranger. Mom expects her to go to medical school, even though she’d rather try her luck as a Broadway actress. The neighbors expect elaborate landscaping around the house – after all, they live in a nice neighborhood – and so they spend countless hours every summer mowing the grass and weeding the flower beds. The boss expects lots of overtime; and how important is the preschool Christmas pageant, anyway? With every additional expectation, that web holds tighter and tighter, until you can’t move without offending someone or other. But the good news is that Christ has not only the Key of David, he also has a very large pair of scissors. He can cut us out of our web of expectations if only we will allow him to do it. After all, his expectations are the only ones that count. He expects us to live as free people, answering to no one but God.

If that web of expectations doesn’t sound familiar, try this one on for size. It’s the prison of appointments. Now, all of us have commitments that sometimes get in the way of other things that we would like to be doing. That’s just life. But when we build a prison of appointments, we trap ourselves inside a cell that doesn’t allow us any time for activities that enrich our souls. The walls of this prison are built of calendars, Post-It notes, clocks, and appointment books. There is no soothing music inside this prison, only the ring of alarms and reminders. If we consider even for a moment taking time to just relax and be, a telephone rings with another request for help. Pretty soon, the walls are so high that we can’t even see the possibility of anything else. But the good news is that Christ has not only the Key of David, he also has a very efficient paper shredder. He will eliminate all those calendar pages and appointment books if we’ll only allow him to do it. He can free us from the tyranny of obligations.

The last prison is one of the most powerful; and I think that we all suffer from it in one way or another. It is the prison of the past. Now, we all have had experiences that we’d like to forget. We have all made bad choices, done foolish things, and generally behaved badly. Who hasn’t? But some people are trapped by their experiences. They carry deep wounds of anger or resentment that have never healed properly. Instead of putting that anger behind them and moving ahead, they revisit those wounds over and over. Pretty soon, those wounds of yesterday are dictating what they do today. They are crippled by grudges, trapped by feelings of worthlessness, or unable to form close relationships. They are covered with so much emotional scar tissue that they can hardly move! But the good news is that Christ has not only the Key of David, he also has a very good first aid kit. He will tenderly bandage our open wounds, carefully cut away the scar tissue, and allow us the freedom to heal.

Freedom, after all, is what the Messiah offers us. And like a beautiful diamond, it has many facets. God shows us the way out of the prisons that keep us trapped in old ways of living. God invites us to be open to new ways of doing things – to change, grow, and develop in healthy ways. God’s freedom is a path away from death and towards life. Because the Messiah has come among us, the way to freedom is open to us. The Key of David has unlocked the door, now and forever. Thanks be to God!

What Child Is This? Dayspring

Who is this Child whose coming we are awaiting with such anticipation? One of his ancient names is "Dayspring," the name for the day's dawn when night is pushed back by the first rays of the sun. This sermon considers what significance that name might have for us.

In every home, there are a few corners that never seem to get cleaned! You know the places that I’m talking about. Some are under the stove. Others are behind the refrigerator. The really nasty ones are in the garage behind a pile of boxes that you set aside months ago – or maybe even years ago – and you just never got around to doing anything with them. It’s easy to overlook those corners. They were clean once upon a time! But then they got dusty, and all kinds of dirt built up in them. Spiders found out that they were safe back there, and they built their webs over top of all that dirt. The dirtier the corners got, the less we wanted to clean them. Pretty soon, those corners were completely buried under dust and dirt and spider webs. And then, it was easier to ignore them altogether than to try to scrape out all that crud!

Now, if we decide to clean out those dirty corners, we know what we need. We need a strong light to help us see what’s really in there; we need an assortment of cleaning tools; and we need lots and lots of motivation to get into those corners and dig out the crud. When we find that motivation, first we head over to Home Depot and buy a high-intensity light so that we can see what we’re doing. Then we put on old clothes, roll up our sleeves, pick up a broom, a mop, a bucket, and a bunch of rags, and we get to work.

But we have dirty corners in our lives, too; and those aren’t nearly as easy to clean out. Some of those dirty corners contain memories that we’ve hidden away. We throw our secrets into the farthest corners of our lives so that no one can see them; and we’re secretly relieved when spiders spin their webs over top of them and hide the dirt underneath. Other corners of our lives don’t have any secrets in them; they’re just stuck just in out of the way places where we don’t go very often. We don’t clean those corners out much, either. The problem is that sometimes those corners give us trouble. One day, we realize that something is nagging at us. Sometimes, it turns out to be the dirt in one of those corners that we never got around to cleaning out. Now, we can’t just run over to Lowe’s and buy a high-intensity light to help clean out a corner of our life. It takes a different kind of light to do that – the kind of light that only God can give us.

One of the names for the Child whose birth we are awaiting is the Dayspring. We sang that in the introit this morning. “Dayspring” is a very old term for the dawn, that time of the day when light appears and darkness vanishes. That’s an appropriate name for God’s Messiah. After all, God has been associated with light since the most ancient times. Light was God’s very first creation, beams of beauty into the dark, chaotic mess that once was the cosmos – way back before God organized it into galaxies and stars and planets. In Psalm 104, the psalmist describes God as “wrapped in light as in a garment.” Wherever God goes, light goes with him. You remember what John said in his first letter: “God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.” And in the text of Isaiah that we heard this morning, the prophet promises that “the Lord will rise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.” God doesn’t keep that light to himself. He shares it with all of us. This child that will be born to us comes to bring God’s light into a world of darkness. “Light and life to all he brings…” That’s what Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Light and life comes from Christ. And that’s the only kind of light that will help us when we want to clean out the dark corners of our lives – the light that God offers us in the life of his Messiah.

We need the light of Christ when we decide to poke around in those dark corners of our lives. After all, the dirt in there can be mighty deep and caked in. And we all know what that dirt is made of. It’s made of anger… resentment… grudges… fear... Sometimes, we don’t even realize what’s in there! The remains of an old argument might be buried way down deep – so deep that we’ve forgotten all about it. But that dirt is still hanging around, influencing our decisions and our actions in ways that we don’t want at all. The only way to get rid of that dirt is to shine the light of Christ into that corner so that we can see what’s there and get rid of it. Now, that’s a frightening prospect to some people. None of us want other people to see our dark corners, do we? We’re afraid of what might happen if we let anybody see the dirt that’s in there. We feel like Pig Pen in the old Peanuts comic strip, grimy with dirt and surrounded by clouds of dust. We even worry that God might not love us. But God loves us no matter how deep the crud is in our dark corners. Christ doesn’t shine his light into our lives to condemn us. He brings God’s light to us so that he can heal us! The gospel of John talks about light and darkness all the time; and it claims that “God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” Salvation, not blame, is what God is all about.

And that’s a good thing, because we’re not the only people who have cruddy corners to be cleaned out! The world is full of them, each one caked with dirt of one kind or another. Our public programs are full of them, even though those programs were set up with the noblest of goals and the best of intentions. All of them have a corner somewhere that’s full of corruption and greed. Our judicial system certainly has some cruddy corners. Although we say that justice is impartial, the reality is that it is riddled with bias and prejudice. And do I need to say anything about government? There are so many dirty corners in government – ours or any other – that I hardly know where to begin. The world is so full of dirty corners that it is easy to cry in despair, “Where is the Dayspring? Where is the Messiah? Where is the Light that God promised to send us?” Hang in there. He’s coming! When all seems lost… when the darkness is the deepest… when there seems to be no light around us at all… he will appear.

Author Mary Winifred tells a story about realizing the power of God’s light. “I was tired,” she writes, “after working long hours on a project that seemed as though it would never come to fruition. A friend had invited me to spend a few days at her home on the New Jersey shore; and one morning, after much encouragement on her part, we got up early to see the sunrise over the ocean. The morning was dark and the misty breeze that hit our faces was uncomfortably chilly. As we watched in silence, suddenly from the edge of the water’s horizon came the huge golden roundness of the sun… My tiredness and depression [were lifted]. …It is in just this, often unexpected, surprising way that Christ the Dayspring enlightens our souls and spirits.” [Hasten the Kingdom, 1966, Liturgical Press, p. 32] “O Dayspring,” she prays, “…bright clearness of the light…, I watch for your coming to unravel the darkness, to [reveal] the unknown, to unmask the shapes and shadows of the night, and… to discover the secrets of righteousness and justice….” [Hasten the Kingdom, pp. 32-33] During this time of Advent anticipation, that is our prayer, too.