Advent 2 - Peace

Sermon – Advent II – Peace in the Storm – December 9, 2018

Have you seen those Facebook relationship settings. You can say you’re: In a relationship, single, divorced, or it’s complicated.

It’s interesting how social media has become a relationship tool. You may have seen things like this: (screenshots from actual Facebook posts) Robert breaks up with Sally by changing his relationship status from “in a relationship“ to “Single”. Sally is sad.

Molly changes her relationship status from “it’s complicated“ to “single“. Billy says “What?“. Molly says “Sorry dude!“.

But the truth is, no matter what your relationship status is, you are complicated. I am complicated.

Humans are complex creatures, aren’t we? Those we love we tend to hurt. We love God and yet we sin against God. We have goals and aspirations that are noble and strong, and yet we can get tripped up by our own weakness along the way to fulfilling our goals.

Today in our second celebration of Advent, we are encouraged to consider a big and bold and challenging and encouraging idea that’s wrapped up in a five-letter word: Peace.

We’re going to look at both of today’s passages, both to understand what they meant to the first hearers of them, and then to understand how it relates to us.

One way to think of the Isaiah 40 passage is to understand that Valleys are places of humiliation, from which the humbled will be lifted.

Mountains, the high places where the proud who exult in themselves, will be leveled off.

Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel in exile. They lived in hardship. They suffered under the rule of foreign powers.

They had been brought low because of their disobedience to God, because of their tendency to forsake God and follow false gods.

They had been warned very clearly much earlier in their history that if they did that, they would experience such suffering, such humiliation and hardship as a consequence of turning from God

And it came to pass, although never near as severely as they had been warned. But it was rough. Very rough.

But God had not forsaken them. He had never bailed on them or withdrawn His love. But He also did not want them to live in bondage to false gods, to foreign oppressors.

The purpose of their exile had been to refine them, to cause them to understand what living without God really means.

And so they needed to learn that. They needed to learn that God is the source of life, the source of every good thing, every blessing.

The only true freedom is living in relationship with God, learning to follow His way and His will. That it the way of peace, the way of experiencing the shalom of God.

And so, in this profoundly hopeful passage, God says:

Isaiah 40:3 A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

So something is coming. Something GREAT is coming. This present darkness that we are experiencing is not the final word. God has the final word, and God’s Word is a good word!

Now our Luke 1:26-38 passage (Show, don’t reread)

This is a very comforting passage, I find. I also find it disturbing that this is a comforting passage, because however familiar it is it really proclaims something shocking. Very shocking.

Now most of us in this room believe in God.

If you’re like me you were raised to not believe in God, only to discover along the way that you were raised with a delusion, a theory that could not be proven and which closes the door on the best explanation for the mysteries of life.

Mysteries like love.

Like self-sacrifice. Like the “coincidences” that occur constantly in our lives that, when our eyes open, point artfully to a Divine reality.

So we may believe in God and in Christ and truly trusting in Him may well be part of who we are, part of our identity.

And yet, we should consider, are we really expecting God to break into our lives, our reality?

I think that often we don’t expect God, and I think that’s part of the human condition.

For sure the people alive around the time of the Incarnation, the time that Jesus was born, they weren’t expecting God to break in to their lives.

That’s not completely accurate.

Some of them were expecting Messiah. Some had in mind that God would break into history by sending a mighty warrior who would vanquish the enemies of the Jews.