Focusing on the Wrong Peace
Luke 2:13-14
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: 14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
Colossians 1:17-23
17 He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions. 22 But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him— 23 if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven
How to Lose Christmas During Advent
I: Focusing on the Wrong Peace
The real Christmas when truly believed brings the greatest consolation, peace, joy, and hope that surpasses all understanding. That is what the birth of Christ does.
The problem is Satan is constantly distracting us from the real Christmas. We can even forget what Christmas is all about, as millions do. Tonight, and the next two Wednesdays during Advent, we will be looking at several ways which the devil, the world, and our own sinful nature can distract us from the real Christmas, leading us to forget or even deny it. But then to bring us back to the real Christmas for our comfort, joy, peace, and hope so that we can use this Advent season to prepare us for the celebration of the incarnation of Christ.
This evening we will look at what is the most popular distraction and distortion of the Christmas event. It centers on the words we just read from Luke, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
I came across a website this week that expresses an extreme distortion of Christmas peace on earth:
… The nonviolent Jesus was born two thousand years ago into abject poverty to homeless refugees on the outskirts of a brutal empire… That child grew up to become, in Gandhi’s words, “the greatest nonviolent resister in the history of the world.” Jesus taught peace, lived peace and blessed peacemakers. … He took action to end systemic injustice, and he did it in a nonviolent way…
Two thousand years later, the world continues to reject “the things that make for peace.” It remains stuck in the old cycle of war, militarism, empire, poverty and injustice.
… But that’s not … the meaning of Christmas… Indeed, support for war, weapons or killing in any form is a complete betrayal of the nonviolent Jesus. It mocks his life, Christmas and the God of peace.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/christmas-peace-on-earth_b_2360429
That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that no one can claim to be an authentic Christian anymore if they support warfare and weapons. You cannot seriously call yourself a follower of the nonviolent, peacemaking Jesus, whom we celebrate and honor at Christmas, if you own guns, support our wars, defend our nuclear weapons arsenal, tolerate executions and catastrophic climate change…
As I said, this is an extreme and very faulty understanding of Christmas. There are milder versions that are not so political. What we see, however, is most people buy into one of these milder distortions, believing that Christmas would or should somehow bring about an earthly peace so there will be or could be much less war, hatred, fighting, greed, lust for power, struggles between the haves and the have nots, and the need for large armies and weapons. That’s what many buy into: peace on earth means an earth that can get better and better.
Is this what the angels were talking about? An earthly peace? We can understand why people in this war-torn world want to interpret “Peace on earth” in this earthly peace way.
The problem is that we are no closer to an earthly peace today than we were 2,000 years ago. You could make the case that we are more violent today than back then. So either the coming of Jesus Christ was and is a complete failure or the Christian religion is a lie since there is no more earthly peace today than back then.
Sometimes, though, we think, well maybe… Here’s a classic example that gave some hope. During WWI, there was this event that became known as the “Christmas Truce” taking place on Christmas Eve and Day of 2014: “On a crisp, clear morning 100 years ago, thousands of British, Belgian and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of their trenches and spent Christmas mingling with their German enemies along the Western front.”
Amazing! Peace on earth! It worked! For a day and a half. They then went back to fighting and killing each other (http://time.com/3643889/christmas-truce-1914/). It lasted briefly. Millions died, even killing those who professed the same faith.
Jesus himself has told us very clearly that wars will continue throughout time and will even increase. Not to mention that many wars are just wars that Christians can engage in.
And even though, as Paul says, we are to seek “to live at peace with everyone”, and even though Christians are clearly told we are never to seek to spread Christianity by war or force, this world will never be without war. And those who think so and would like to use Jesus and Christmas to that end, are blind to a very important reality.
All the wars we hear about, all the fighting we see taking place internationally between nations, and within nations, all the hatred and greed and power grabbing, and fighting we have observed even within our families, and within ourselves – all these things are a reflection and a result of a much more serious war where the hatred is very real: all the wars and conflicts between human beings are a reflection and result of the war we human beings have declared on God. Our Colossian lesson talks about how “Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds” toward God. Paul reminds us in Romans: “there is … no one who seeks God. All have turned away, … there is no one who does good, not even one… and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom. 3:11ff.).
This war is much more devastating, uglier, than any war between men, and it has lasted throughout human history. This war (up and down) results in these wars (back and forth). Every time we sin, we are expressing that war with God and rejecting his benevolent rule. If you could look beneath every sin you commit, no matter how innocent it may seem, you would see it is a hatred directed against God himself. This is why King David, who had committed adultery and murder, in repentance said, “Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”
We declared war on God. And you know what? He would oblige us. He had to. It was his rule, his honor, his name that were at stake. God would wage war against us and our sin.
But his war against us and our sin was infused and permeated with and directed by his love and mercy for us. He waged war against us by waging war against just one of us. He chose just one of us to fight against and defeat: “My Son, go there and become one of them. And the war they have declared on me I will win by slaying and defeating you, in their place.”
And he did.
This was a real war, a between God and man. The Son of God comes to earth as a man, like us, yet without sin. He came as our substitute. And the all-powerful God led his only begotten Son from the manger to the cross. God put him there and placed on him all our sins, all our hatred of God. And then God took careful aim at Christ, and killed him as if he were the enemy, as if he were us.
The result was, at the expense of Christ, peace between God and man. Listen again to Colossians 1: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself … by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated and hostile … But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him — if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel [of peace with God] has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven.”
This is the peace the angels sang about. So don’t get confused, don’t get caught up in the wrong peace when you hear the words of the angels, “And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Do not get distracted from the fact that Jesus came to be the solution for your sins and to bring you peace with God through the cross.
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).
And as Christ has loved us, we now love others, even our enemies. We help them, we have mercy on them, we do them good whenever we can. And as we do, perhaps we are able to create a little earthly peace while we wait for Christ to come the last time. And like Christ, if people hate us, slander us, and harm us, we turn the other cheek and if we are able we tell them about Christ, who died for their peace with God as well. We tell them, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and they can too.
Amen.
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