PEACE: Living the Permanent in the Temporary

ADVENT 2 

2 Peter 3:8-15a

Sometimes the drama of some of our scripture writers can feel like a bit much, especially in the genre known as apocalyptic literature – something we don’t recognize readily in our time.  Both Jewish and Greek apocalyptic imagery is used in this letter - chaos, destruction, fire and earth-shaking power and upheaval that we find hard to stomach but would have been familiar to those receiving this letter. (I like to imagine a first century person trying to make sense of our sarcastic banter-filled romcom genre).
 
When we struggle with how to read something in the bible, it helps to come back to our question, Who is God and what is God up to?
 
God is bringing about a future, this letter tells its recipients, in which there is a definitive and dramatic end to evil. 
 
Apocalypse in the Greek means to “uncover, reveal, lay bare, or disclose.”  Apocalyptic literature often paints scenes and stories of destruction that tears open the status quo to bring God’s justice and peace by first exposing and revealing all that is for what it really is.
This is good news if you’ve got nothing to hide.
 
Everything done on this earth will be disclosed, we’re told – no powerful secrets, no profiting on the back of the weak, no back room deals, no human degradation, systemic injustice, no abuse or destruction will prevail, all arrogance and greed and cruelty will be revealed for what it really is. 
 
And God is generous and patient with us.  God’s preference is that that everyone let their life and heart be put back in alignment to God’s way of love and connection, so that none have to face the condemnation of judgment. But the bottom line message is that evil will not go on forever, there is an end to it, and what will remain is the very essence of God in Christ – love and belonging goodness, and connection that is stronger, deeper, wider, eternal, and cannot be broken.
That’s what God is up to.
 
Like many people before us, in many times before this, we, now, are in apocalyptic times.  There is a great upheaval and change, things are being revealed, laid open for all to see, and through the chaos and struggle something is coming on the other side of this that we are not yet in.  It’s painful, confusing, and the ground beneath us feels very unstable.
 
And one paradox in apocalyptic times is that when people don’t feel peace, we tend to work against it. In our desperation for security we scramble for footing and we end up pushing away the very thing we long for most.  These times are ripe for conspiracy theories – they’re a way to feel powerful and know “the truth,” so predictably, right now we can see them everywhere. And these times are also filled with invitations to demonize each other, demands to pick sides and pass judgment, to define battle lines and destroy enemies. 
 
Friday on the PBS NewsHour Mark Shields said, “…the first thing I learned when I came to Washington [is] that you don't question the motives of somebody on the other side, that they love their country and their children as much as you do. And they may be mistaken, they may be ill-informed, they may be illogical, but you don't start off with, ‘they're evil.’”
Now we start off calling each other evil.  And when we don’t even hesitate to label each other as evil, we open the door for evil. We downplay evil and open our hearts to welcome in wider division, deeper hatred, greater revulsion toward our human siblings – we make it ok to threaten others with violence and destruction.  We cease to live in our true identity as those who belong to each other and to God. And when we stop seeing others’ humanity we begin to lose our own humanity. 
 
If this is our starting point, how can we ever find peace?  
 
This brings us to our second question. This letter is written to a community struggling to figure out - what is a good life and how do we live it? They were dealing with dissention and strife on top of persecution and suffering, and while people were peddling conspiracy theories among them, they were wondering how to tell what’s true.
 
“Scoffers are going to scoff” the letter says earlier, exposing with colorful language those whose greed and deception are on full display as they manipulate and lie and take advantage of others for their own gain, undermining the message of Christ. But, when we are stirred up, divided and afraid, exposing lies for what they are just entrenches us further in our division.
 
So, what do we do? How should we live? Peter answers: We should live like God’s reality is really real. Live in peace.  Anticipate God’s future with our lives.
 
Remember last week we said: Hope is trust in the future that doesn’t come later.  And it comes not from within us but from outside us- from God. And that we get to hope through contagious patience, through acknowledging our need, naming the despair and waiting for God’s arrival there. 
Hope is what fuels peace.
 
But while hope meets us from outside us, peace is something we can make. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peace-makers.” Peace is the experience of life as God intended - everyone belonging to God and belonging to each other. It is Shalom, completion wholeness – of you and me, of creation, of society, of life. So blessed are the wholeness bearers, the rift-menders and pain-sharers, the unity-rememberers and future-forecasters.
 
Peace-making is not weakness, capitulation, burying your head in the sand.  Peace is the strongest, truest form of life –that God created us for and is leading us to. Peace outlasts all conflict and chaos. 
So the most powerful thing we can do in these times is to be peace-makers. 
 
But that means we must first be grounded in peace. 
In challenging and uncertain times, without peace ourselves, we will feel threatened and overpowered by chaos and fear, easily persuaded that we should rise up and fight dirty.  The way of fear convinces us we are in an urgent, constant, competitive battle - for the soul of our nation, for the future of our church, for the honor of our family, for the integrity of our position, for our own well-being and survival, whatever it is, the stakes, we’re told, are life and death.  So we are justified in contributing to the division and pandemonium, because we tell ourselves that if we don’t, then evil –evil ideology, evil decisions, evil policies, evil practices, let’s face it, evil people will win.  
 
But, there’s another way.  If we fueled by hope we can be rooted in peace. And hope tells us that nothing is hidden that won’t be revealed, that evil will not stand, that love is stronger and permanent, that all brokenness will be healed and all injustice and wrong will be made right, and the future that doesn’t come later consists of peace, God’s wholeness, and we can right now live from that place. 
The Holy Spirit is here, now, already doing that work. It will not end.
 
We are made free. We need just to let go our crazy tight grip and trust that.  We can see each other through eyes washed by grace, hear each other with hearts humbled by belonging, reach out to each other with compassion stirred by recognizing the powerful motivator fear wreaking havoc, that needs love to cast it out. 
 
We can embody that love by sharing each other’s suffering, standing with one another where Jesus is - in our shared vulnerability and weakness. We can live our unity, even in disagreement and disappointment. We can sink into our own forgiveness and walk around forgiving excessively.  We can welcome, and welcome, and welcome each other, all others, welcome this whole wide world in all its pain and beauty and let it break us open to welcome it some more, without end, and without fear of losing anything, because we are already found in Christ. We can be people who contribute to wholeness and home, calm and solidarity, people who invest in cooperation, and highlight goodness, and attend to wonder, and celebrate joy, and add harmony whenever, and wherever, and however we can.  We can be at-peace peace-makers.
 
Making us into this is also what God is up to.
 
Heads up, though: When we live that way in this climate, we will get pushback.  
It might look to some like we’re not on “the right side.” 
 
We’re not. 
There are no sides. That’s fear talking. 
 
So look past the rhetoric and the noise. See the tender, fearful hearts of our human family members. See the longing of the tired earth and the anxiety of shaky governments and uneasiness of the apocalyptic moment of revealing that we are standing in and, hear this promise today, children of God: 
 
Evil will not prevail. God’s peace will one day be all in all.  
 
So pay attention. God is doing this in the world. And we get to be part of it.  
By the Spirit of God moving through our own words and actions, you and I can actually help bring that peace into this life now from the future that is coming. May it be so.  Come, Lord Jesus.
Amen.

The Way of Hope

Isaiah 40:1-11


Horrible things are happening.

 They’re happening all the time, really, in every place. But sometimes, a people sits up and takes notice of the horrible things and says, no more. And that is happening here right now.  Sometimes the horrible things that are happening get the attention of many people at once, and get under our collective skin – past the worries and the habits and the routines of our day, they get all of our attention at once and we take notice and we say, no more.

And that can be a powerful moment – an important and clarifying moment, when a people takes notice of the horrible things and says together, no more.

And for a moment, when that happens, the veil is lifted and the way of fear is exposed. The way of fear tells me that there are good guys and bad guys and life is a struggle between the two.  The way of fear teaches me that suspicion, distrust, cynicism and tribalism are the best way to deal with those different than myself. 

These years the way of fear tells me that life should be lived in a state of emergency, urgency and threat.  And in this state, it’s ok to react instead of think, it’s ok to dismiss instead of engage, and everyone else is most likely a risk to your own security in some way or another and it’s ok to do whatever it takes to protect yourself. Security, by the way, is what matters most. Security – of my future, my home, our nation, status, property, bank accounts, identity, and reputation.  Achieve and maintain security, no matter the cost. And it costs some way more than others.  The way of fear is usually an airtight status quo that keeps enough of us just content enough, and just scared enough, to stay put and leave everything as is.

But suddenly, in our nation, the false security is punctured, the light is blasting in, and a people is saying, no more, to some of the horrible things.

Nowadays when something important happens, we plug ourselves into the screens and put the sound bites in our ears and feed ourselves on a steady diet of passion and politics and a never-ending stream of input, because we feel like if we are not paying constant, vigilant attention, if we turn our focus away, even for a moment, we are letting down those who are grieving, or missing out on something vital, or somehow not doing our part.  And the urgency is like a drug we can’t get off of, and before we know it we have absorbed the moment of clarity and self-awareness right into way of fear.

Because when we’re giving constant vigilant attention like this, things just seem to get louder and faster and some people get sharper and smarter but more of us eventually get meaner and judgier and more divided and desperate, and confused and hopeless until we weary ourselves of the whole mess and stumble off the merry go round and try to steady ourselves in normal life and feel a little ashamed and also a little relieved because, who can sustain that intensity?

And still, horrible things are happening.

And we’re not seeing a lot of them. We can only look one place at a time, for crying outloud.  So the refugees streaming from war-torn countries or the still-missing kidnapped girls, or the multiplying ebola victims or the heartbreaking poverty in our own city have their turn as the blip front and center and then fade away again or never even get noticed because it is not possible to hold it all at once. We are simply not capable. How can we be responsible for it all?

And right now, so many people are noticing something that has gone unacknowledged or avoided for a long time, and they’re saying, no more.  And it is so important to take notice.  And praise God for a people saying, no more!

But the truth is, there will be more.  

If not this, something else.  There is always more.

And that is heartbreaking to me.

I wish I could turn on a different channel and soak it in for a few days.  One that tells me the truth.  About the horrible things, yes, but also past the pontificating and solutions– I want to turn on the station that tells me in no uncertain terms, Here is your God!"

That God is here. In the middle of it all. That we are not alone.

That God holds onto the pain and the suffering that I cannot bear, is with those we are not watching, and no one is lost.  I want the channel that reminds me that the people are like grass, you and me, fickle and forgetful, and all that we’ve built up as though it is vital will crumble and blow away.

But that love, connection, shared humanity, and a strong and sure God who, like a nurturing shepherd, carries us in her bosom, remains forever.  Tell me about the Kingdom of God, the Big Picture, the real reality under our fake reality, the truth that every single human life matters, each person is deeply valued and loved and delighted in, where the gifts of each person contribute to the whole and there is nobody overlooked or underfoot – all belong and all are meant to be part of the big picture.

Tell me about how we need each other and how we’re meant to trust each other and how we will help each other and receive help whenever we need it. I want to watch the channel where the stories are about strangers reaching out to others until no one is stranger, about building life together, looking out for the weak and parentless, where nobody is hungry because we all share with each other, and nobody hordes or stockpiles money, or weapons or power or food or the high opinions of others because we all share so freely that it’s is not necessary to vigilantly protect ourselves from others, or at others’ expense.

Tell me about that kind of world. 

Is it coming, God? Is it here?

I catch glimpses of it in the longing of protesters and the rage of rioters  - the need for solidarity, the yearning for your justice and your rightness in the world- we have a deep sense within ourselves of how things are meant to be, how they should be!

But we’re full up with pain and anger and weariness, and opinions of whose fault it is that we’re so far off from that, or who should be the one to get us to it and what kind of steps that would take, and frustration that others don’t share our aim or our agenda or our strategy, or are always telling us what to think or believe or crave or do. 

So we’re either drowning ourselves in consumerism and the false cheer of another chipper Christmas season or we’re drowning ourselves in sorrow and anger and despair over our brokenness.  And right now the passion to change is at a fever pitch, but what happens when it wanes? Oh God! Let’s not let it wane! so we stoke the fires of anger and sadness in order to keep on caring intensely so that change might actually happen.

And either way we’re drowning. 

Either way we are still immersed in the way of fear.  It can feel so hopeless.

And there will be more.

Our text today is the word of God to a people in exile. Their homeland has been destroyed by the Babylonians and they are displaced and disoriented.  Fifty years now, give or take, they’ve either made do scattered who knows where, suffering and struggling, or settled into lives in Babylon. Some are in despair and suffering.  Others are getting comfortable in the empire- while Babylon isn’t their choice, and it isn’t their home, it is where they are living.  And if we’re comfortably living in exile, buying into the security the empire provides, perhaps we’ve lost the pining for the homeland – which is to say, if the kingdom of security and power and self-protection, keeps us just comfortable enough, and just scared enough, that we may stop longing for the upheaval of the Kingdom of God.

So as terrible as it is, when horrible things happening come to our collective attention and we sit up and take notice and say no more, we are at least recognizing things as they truly are, and telling the truth about them, and refusing, momentarily, to be lulled into placated acceptance that this is as good as it gets.

I feel hopeful when I see people saying no more – when I see outcries for justice. Not because I have any faith in people’s good intentions, or collective voice, or any other human-centered strategy to fix what is so broken within and around us.

I feel hopeful because it is points to real reality, where we all belong to each other and we will stand side by side and not let others be dehumanized. 

I feel hopeful because it is people briefly wanting to be who we were created to be, living out of our true image-of-God-ness.

And while I know we’re definitely going to blow it a few minutes later and make an enemy out of someone else or ourselves, in this moment, I am reminded that justice will prevail, that death doesn’t win, that love is stronger than evil, and that God is at work, in and through you and me and ordinary people everywhere. God, who comes with might and draws us in gently, is the real sovereign, the real authority, the maker of the Big Picture, and the rest of it will fade and wither like grass. 

I once asked a Benedictine Monk about evil. Real, terrible evil that afflicts people and causes genuine suffering and terror.  What is the best way to fight it? I wondered. 

He looked at me and said simply, there are two ways to fight evil. One is go directly after evil. Study it, pursue it, go after it, become adept at recognizing it and dedicate yourself to eradicating it. That is one way to fight evil.  The other way is to go directly after God. Immerse yourself in love and kindness, prayer and gratitude, search for points of connection and glimpses of redemption and opportunities to forgive and spend time with our maker. 

Seek first the Kingdom of God.  The Big Picture.  Be drawn into God’s way of life.  The way of hope, and draw others along with you.

Comfort my defeated people, God says. Tell them I see them.  And they’ve paid way more in suffering than they ever deserved for whatever they’ve done. Speak tenderly, though, they’ve been through a lot.  And they’re pretty hard on themselves. Gently, let them know they are free. Lead them into the way of hope.

With all the glaring non-stop light of our televisions and smart phones and breaking news and speeding traffic and artificial trees and neon sales and florescent malls, Advent speaks tenderly and offers Comfort. Truth. Honesty. Hope. 

Advent is the time of sitting in the darkness.  Sitting in the darkness but not in the fear.  Sitting in the honesty of what’s really within us and between us and around us, and trusting that God is with us here in this darkness. And when Advent begins like it did for us this year, when a floodlight is shone onto our streets and into our souls and reveals ugliness and pain, suffering and struggle, the darkness of Advent is a gift.

Advent is the night shift nurse after the painful surgery, the quiet, turned-down sheets of healing sleep.  There is nothing here in the darkness that isn’t out there in the light – the wounds remain and the recovery continues.  But here, in the shelter of Advent, waiting for God, we can talk about the hard things and the sad things and the confusing and frustrating things, and we don’t have to be afraid.  And where fear is put to rest, hope is born.

In this text, the comforted ones, those who needs tenderness and care and a gentle word of hope, are also the ones told to get to the highest mountain and declare that God is here.  The broken ones are called the herald of good news. 

Our only security is in the promise of God.  Everything else will crumble and disappear.  

The future that is coming, even now breaking in, it’s God’s future. It is not our own.

It is not our job to make it come; it is our privilege to welcome it each day.

It is not our responsibility to bring it about; it is our invitation to join in as it unfolds.

There will be more.

Horrible things will happen.  There will be more evil and pain and suffering than we can bear. And God sees and holds it all. More than we ever could.

But there will also be more love and peace and joy than we can begin to fathom.  And we are called to live fully and joyfully, to weep with those who weep, and dance with those who dance, and to live in the real reality, trusting in and pining for the Kingdom of God, and inviting each other, even now, to live into the day when the way of fear will be no more, and God’s way of hope will be all in all.  

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
 and all people shall see it together. 

So get you up to a high mountain, 

O herald of good tidings; 

lift up your voice with strength, 

O herald of good tidings, 

lift it up, do not fear; 

say to a weary and wary world, 

"Here is your God!"

Amen.

Peace, Enduring and Unafraid (Waiting in Wonder, Week 2)

Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom

 Isaiah 11:1-10

This week I saw a heartwrenching video that began like a typical nature show, a cheetah hunting in the wild, stalking its prey, finally dashing out and snatching a baboon by the throat and dragging it off.  When she drops it, blood on her mouth, she suddenly notices there is an infant clinging to the dead baboon mother.  

The cheetah approaches it, teeth bared, mouth open and sniffs the tiny creature.  Then she picks it up in her mouth and eventually takes it into a tree.  She sets it carefully down on a limb and lays down next to it. The baby slips, and she tries to snatch it back up with her paw, finally climbing down and boosting it back up from below. 

For five minutes this minute attention goes on, and all the while, you are aware that the cheetah could eat this miniature animal with one gulp.  That, in fact, she had already hunted and killed its mother, and left that meal behind to focus on this tiny creature. Here she is, with a defenseless and weak prey in her giant paws.  All laws of nature say she should kill it, she is its predator, she is hungry, there is nothing at all to stop her.  But instead, she licks its head an face, and then she curves her paw around it cradling it against her chest, and lays down to sleep holding this the baby of her prey, and the clip ends.

I watched this whole thing with my heart pounding, scarcely daring to breathe. 

Everything about it was wrong. It was terrifying – any second things could go wrong – or right? – again. 

And there is no reason to think this would, or even could last. 

How would the cheetah feed the baby baboon? 

What would happen if it grew bigger?  

That kind of order is not sustainable on this side of eternity – predators need to be predators to survive; prey will never be safe sleeping in the arms of predators.  Babies can’t go sticking their arms in snakes’ holes, and nursing infants can’t be laid down right next to serpents.  Wolves can’t live in dens with lambs, lions and calves can’t lie down together and sleep, and little children don’t lead us all.  Not yet anyway.

And it is foolish, dangerous, even, to act as if these things are possible.

We are raised to fear.  Fear things; fear each other. Fear keeps us safe; it keeps us from driving too fast, ingesting things that could kill us, balancing on high narrow ledges, leaving our baby in harm’s way unattended. Fear keeps us alive. 

Our bodies are wired for fight or flight, we knew how to react when the saber tooth tiger approached, and we’ve honed that reaction in every traffic jam, frozen computer screen incident, infuriating argument, and long line at the grocery store, not to mention things like undergoing surgery, sending your kids away from home when they’re supposedly “grown up,” losing your job or wrapping your head around a terminal diagnosis. 

Our lives are lived in a perpetual state of constant alert and carefully subdued terror, exhaustingly cued in to whatever disaster may be looming just ahead.

Our text tonight is written to people living in exile, who see no other way of life than captivity. Their fight or flight is honed in, they know the enemies and the predators, and they’ve learned the ways of self-protection. Aware of their own participation in bringing themselves to this point, the prophets warnings had come to pass, and any hope for the future has been obliterated.  Now they would live under the oppressive rule indefinitely, and they were adjusting their lives and expectations to that reality.  No point in wasting energy on foolish hope; today has enough worries of its own.  There is no reason for God to intervene, we’ve turned away from God and God has turned away from us. The end.

Into this malaise comes this message from Isaiah, a message of strange, unafraid peace, brave, heart-stopping hope. 

The third graders down at the Elementary School have just started a unit on poetry.  This week they tromped up the hill three blocks in the - 4 degree weather to the neighborhood library to hear about poetry and pick out a poem book for the month.  They’ll spend the month learning and reading and sharing about it.  I kind of wish I could be a fly on the wall.

I don’t really get poetry. Until recently, I’ve assumed that means I don’t like it. But those delightful times when I do get it, it’s only because it gives me pictures. It makes me feel things by describing scenes, and while I may not get what the poet is trying to say, I can feel what the pictures evoke in me.

Isaiah’s picture-filled, poetic message to a people in exile imagines a new beginning, it opens up hope, like a tender green shoot from the dead edges from what had seemed over.  The rule of David’s line was wiped out and the story ended.  And yet, there’s more. 

A whisper, a stirring movement, an unfolding seedling, and a savior comes. 

And this savior brings God’s true justice, not swayed by the things that sway the rest of us, what we can see and hear, the natural order of things, but in wisdom and gentleness, with the Spirit of the Holy upon him, he will uphold the weak and strike down the wicked. 

And this new beginning, ushered in by this savior, becomes a vivid scene of fearless, even contented, total creation harmony –radical, status-quo obliterating peace.

The "natural order" that demands we distrust one another, that we live in constant fear of predators, disease, disaster and death, will be so upset by the coming of Jesus that we will have nothing to fear.  

Literally nothing.  

No need to hunt and hide, to defend and protect. No need to educate about and arm against.  No danger, no threat, no need to compete and struggle, to hoard and hunker.

Instead of division and striving, self-protection and fear, peace is right relationship with God and one another – the whole world and all its inhabitants is connection, interdependence, fully and trustingly living out their authentic purpose alongside all else doing the same. 

In the reign of God, all people, all creatures in all the world will live freely, fully, unafraid, in Peace.

They will not hurt or destroy
   

on all my holy mountain;


for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   

as the waters cover the sea.

Last week Advent began byzooming us way way out, to the big picture.  We looked at the prophet’s vision of hope, and the warning/promise that it could come at any moment –interrupting ordinary life with justice and rightness that would be shared by all; it’s coming, we said. And hope pointed us to the future and told us to live like that’s true.

Hope points us to God’s future. Peace IS God’s future.

Hope is what propels us forward; Peace is where we arrive. 

Hope is temporary, a vehicle from here to there, perhaps even no longer needed when the reign of God comes in all its fullness. 

Peace is the reign of God in all its fullness.

And again, now, we are invited to sit in Advent with the picture the prophet give us. 

The peace the vision promises, the longing it evokes. 

And also to know what he didn’t know at the time: that it has begun.  The savior who comes, who shares life with us, invites us to live in hope, to anticipate peace.  And while it is temporary, fleeting, felt now in glimpses and gasps, it nevertheless participates in the reign of God that is unfolding and one day will be all in all.

So, the times when things go against the “natural order”, when a lion does lay down with a lamb (or the cheetah with the baby baboon), when our courage rises past apprehension, when strangers reach out to help each other, when enemies sit down to a meal, when people stand up for each other and see each other and choose to share one another's place, the times we feel in sync with the beauty of the world and at rest, when we taste briefly that all is well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well, we get a glimpse of what is coming, and we share in what is coming.  

Those moments we refuse to adjust our lives and expectations to the captivity of perpetual fear, we join in the course-altering power of God’s peace. We're oriented to God's future again and told to live like it's true.  And it is foolish, dangerous, even, to act as if these things are possible.  

O come, green shoot of Jesse, free

            Your people from despair and apathy;

                        Forge justice for the poor and the meek,

                        Grant safety for the young ones and the weak.

 Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,

God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.

                          (Verse for O Come O Come Emmanual by Barbara Lundblad, shared on Working Preacher).

Amen.