"Peace is a Way" (Second Sunday of Advent)

Luke 1:68-79

68 "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. 69 He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, 70 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71 that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. 72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. 78 By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

You ever get “a wild hair?” Do you know what I’m talking about? Now, in my extended family, there’s a bit more to that saying, but it means you get a random, out-of-nowhere desire to do something, a hankering for something, a sudden urge…you get the idea. Well, about a year ago, I got a “wild hair.”

The kitchen in our house is relatively small (especially by HGTV standards; I mean it isn’t “open-concept” or anything). There’s not a whole lot of counter space, but there’s very little space for storage, especially pantry goods. Now, Sallie had hinted at this more than once, so on a Monday (my usual off-day) when I was caught up on my reading, and the weather was relatively nice, I got in my truck, drove to Lowe’s and bought some lumber, some hinges, screws, and a couple of cabinet handles, and a couple of tubes of painter’s caulk, and I set about to build a pantry in our garage. The plan was to surprise Sallie when she got home, and eventually we’d chose a color, paint it, and move it into our kitchen in the very near future. Well, Sallie was surprised, and we started talking about painting it, but then we started talking about painting the kitchen cabinets…then we started talking about replacing the countertops…then we started talking about the flooring. Well, I’m happy to tell you I finished the pantry, and I think it turned out halfway decent for my first shot at building something like that. You can come by and see it sometime if you’d like: it’s still sitting in the garage, unpainted, and our kitchen is still exactly the same as it was a year ago (there may be a few more stickers on the refrigerator and a new stain or two on the wall about a two-year-old high).

You have anything like that around your place? You know, something you’ve received, something you’ve bought, maybe something you’ve built, and maybe it was something you really wanted, felt you needed, but here it is a year later, two years later, a decade later, and it’s still in the box, stuck somewhere in a closet, forgotten in the attic, sitting on a tarp in the garage. Maybe there’s something like that on your Christmas list this year and you just don’t know it yet (I mean, are all those people really going to use an air fryer?). I think everybody’s got that thing—something they once longed for, but once they got it, they just sort of let it sit, didn’t put it to the use for which it was intended. I think, for a lot of Christians, their faith in Christ can get that way, gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, not being put to the use for which it was intended.

Sure, there are countless folks who’ll sing the song right along with Zechariah this morning, a song about God raising up a savior, a redeemer, one who will save God’s people from their enemies and the ones who hate them: that’s a carol we want to sing, a song we’ll hum along to in the grocery store checkout line: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham.” Redemption. Savior. Deliverance from enemies. Now, I can get behind that, but what good is it if it’s just for me? Seriously? What good is all that if I just receive it, unwrap it, and put it on a high shelf so the kids can’t knock it over? What good is redemption if all I ever do is put it in a nice case and display it on the mantel every year next to the nativity scene? What good is deliverance if I frame it and hang it on the wall next to that picture of that one time at that one place with that one friend? What good is a savior if I cast him in plaster and set him in the curio next to grandma’s knickknacks? I mean, if it’s just about getting something for myself that I’m never going to use, something that I’m never going to employ in the use of making this world better, what’s the point, right?

Zechariah is singing this song about Jesus, the coming child who’s going to bring all this to God’s people—redemption, salvation, mercy—but he’s singing this after being struck mute at the announcement of the birth of his own son, John (the future Baptist). This isn’t a song Zechariah sings about himself or just about the people of God. It’s not a song that spikes the spiritual football, bragging about all that is about the break into the earth for him and his people. You see, the song goes on: “to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”

Now, you can miss that if you’re just reading this text as a psalm for the Second Sunday of Advent (which it is). You can focus on Zechariah singing about John’s birth, about the coming news of Jesus’ birth. You can hear this song as another Christmas carol, heralding the “reason for the season.” But my ear hears it a bit differently today: I cannot help but hear it as a call to action, as a reason for being, a disruption in the midst of my own coming Christmas comfort.

You see, this Second Sunday of Advent is the Sunday we mark with the theme of “peace,” a rather elusive thing in this world where name-calling, ignorance, violence, hatred, and bigotry are treated as non-issues or held up even as exemplary by folks in some circles. I’m afraid we’ve misunderstood peace. You see, I think we’re given to this notion that peace is about peace for me, that if I’m at peace, that’s all that matters. I think about the first months of our marriage, when Sallie and I were living in an apartment in Waco—an apartment we assumed was in a relatively safe place. One night (or rather, early one morning) we had grown tired of hearing footsteps running back and forth in the apartment above us. We figured it may have been children, though we heard adults talking too. We were concerned the kids were up too late on a school night (at least that’s how I remember it), so we called the police, just someone to help with the noise. I’m not sure what happened next, but I know the police took someone out of the apartment who began shouting obscenities at whoever called the police. When I told some friends about the incident, one of them said, “you should get some earplugs,” but he missed the point. For us it wasn’t just about the noise and how it affected our sleep, It was about the kids in that apartment, about shouting that was coming from right above our heads. We were concerned about them, not just about us.

Peace isn’t just about peace for us. Redemption isn’t just about redemption for us. Salvation isn’t just about salvation for us. Mercy isn’t just about mercy shown to us. For we are “being rescued from the hands of our enemies,” so that we “might serve” God and one another “without fear, in holiness and righteousness before [God] all our days.” Peace is about seeking peace for everyone—including our enemies, and that’s hard work, work that requires putting some miles on our salvation, some dents and dings in our redemption. It’s work that calls us to stretch out our mercy, to show that the love we have from God isn’t just a nice centerpiece on the table at Christmas dinner, but an active, wild, relentless thing that drives us to do fearless things for total strangers.

Maybe in our Advent waiting, this waiting for the arrival of the Christ-child, we are delivered from our enemies, shown mercy, and redeemed by the Christ who has arrived, is arriving, and is always arriving, and perhaps we are so delivered, redeemed, and shown such mercy so that we may recklessly pursue it for others—for all, even our enemies, even those who hate us, those who don’t understand us, and even those whom we ourselves don’t understand. When we do that—when we put to use these miraculous, undeserved gifts from God, then Christ is born once again within us; the advent of God becomes real for us and for those with whom we share this life. When we take down our faith, our salvation, redemption and mercy from the shelf and start using it, then “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Peace is a way. Isn’t that something? You know, I guess I’ve never thought of it that way. I thought it was something to achieve, something to grasp and hold on to. But “the dawn from on high will break upon us…to guide our feet in the way of peace.” Peace is a way. How about that? Amen.

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