8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they [the shepherds] were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christa the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men [those] on whom his favor rests.”
And on earth… peace.
Peace must be one of the most already-but-not-yet parts of our faith.
You know what I mean… these parts of our faith that we understand to be complete and secure, but aren’t fully part of our experience now.
The season of Advent has a great deal of already-but-not-yet associated with it. With Advent we celebrate the already coming of Jesus Christ our Savior… but there is a not yet too.
We celebrate that first Advent in that little town of Bethlehem, and we look to His Second Advent when He will return, inaugurating His ultimate rule and reign for eternity.
There’s also this not yet part of Advent that helps us to realize that there is always more of God’s gift available for us to receive. We serve an eternal God who has eternal possibilities in store for us. Part of the longing of Advent is our longing to receive more of Him. We want to welcome more of Jesus into our lives, and hearts, and motives, and actions.
There is certainly a kind of more-more-more that may commonly come with Christmas… an insatiable consumerism that has little to do with our Savior. The rightful more that comes with Advent is opening our hearts and inviting more of Jesus into our lives.
Already but not yet…
Peace must be like that too, since there is so much around us that is not peace –
• War – Every newscast reminds us that we are waging war on a number of fronts
• Poverty – There is no peace when children are starving to death
• Danger – Peace isn’t even a reasonable fantasy when you are treated like a commodity and sold into slavery
These are the biggies; we need not even mention the little things that invade our peace every day… the bickering, and confusion, and selfishness, and uncertainty, and political debate and traffic.
Already-but-not-yet. Lord, we have faith for peace, but often times it is hard to see much peace around us today.
So what is the already part of our peace? What is the peace we have now that the Bible describes as the peace that passes all understanding? What do we mean by peace?
When announcing the birth of Jesus, the angels proclaimed “peace on earth,” as if Jesus would bring peace. We ought to be able to go to the red-letter passages, these words of Jesus, to understand peace.
But when we go to the words of Jesus, we find, more often I’m afraid, that Jesus confronted our common notions of peace. Listen to what Jesus said about peace in Matthew 10:
34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn
“‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’e
37 “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
We’d like to think that Jesus, ruling and reigning as Prince of Peace, would make all the bad things go away and bring us peace. We’d like simple answers… or maybe a genie or fairy god mother to grant our wishes. But Jesus doesn’t allow us this selfish peace; he won’t allow this sort of secular, humanist, self-centered, consumerist view of peace.
At the end of John 16, the passage that Pat read this morning, Jesus gives us another one of those great Bible promises:
“In this world you will have trouble.” Thanks for that promise!
Can we agree that this promise was more descriptive than prescriptive? We know that we’ll have trouble, and Jesus acknowledges the trouble.
Thank God that the promise doesn’t end there!
In this world you will have trouble.
But take heart! I have overcome the world.
Now that’s a promise!
This promise is really the exclamation point on a couple of pages of monologue, from Jesus, to encourage His followers. Starting in chapter 14, Jesus tells his followers:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in Goda; trust also in me.
Jesus then tells His friends about heaven, and that He is the way, the truth, and the life.
He tells them that it won’t be long before He leaves them, at least in the flesh-and-blood way that they’ve known Him… but they will not be alone because Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would be with them, this empowering presence of God to lead them, comfort them, and empower them for God’s work.
He told His followers that they would bear fruit. They would be productive for God, but it wouldn’t be easy.
He told them to love one another, and He told them that even though the world would hate them, God would love them.
He said that He told His followers all these things so that they would have peace:
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.
All these things… the good and the bad.
“You’ll have trouble,” said Jesus. And you’ll be pruned and persecuted and probably even killed. You’ll mourn.
But, you’ll have one another, and the Holy Spirit, and the love of the Father… and “in me,” Jesus said, “you may have peace.”
Peace.
Sometimes it helps me understand what I do mean by identifying what I don’t mean.
What is the opposite of peace?
War? Poverty? Danger?
I think the announcement by the angels gives us the best answer. When they announced the birth of our Savior saying peace on earth, they also announced what the antonym to peace really is. Before they said “peace on earth” they said “do not fear.”
Fear is the opposite of peace, and today we can let this peace wipe away fear.
I suppose there are all sorts of things that we can be afraid of… but the thing we ought to fear most is that we would actually get what we deserve when presented to a Holy God.
I wonder if that is what was going through the minds of the shepherds in the field that night.
What was the first thing that the angel said?
“Do not be afraid.”
What were they afraid of? It was an angel.
Come on! I’ve seen angels. We have some right here on the walls in the chapel; they are not all that scary.
What were they afraid of?
Wouldn’t seeing an angel be an exciting thing?
But the text indicated they were afraid… terrified really.
When the glory of the Lord shone around them, the shepherds first response was that something bad was about to happen. That was a reasonable reaction because throughout the Bible angels bring bad news, judgment, and destruction.
They were afraid because they understood they were faced with God’s glory -- God’s holiness -- and they were undone. They understood that sin separated them from God.
There was no peace. There was fear.
War isn’t the antonym of peace… fear is the antonym of peace.
When we find ourselves face to face with a genuine expression of God’s glory, if left to our own merits and righteousness, our natural response is fear.
Fear because we don’t measure up.
Fear because we deserve punishment.
In the Bible, when you see an angel it often means it is time for God’s judgment – a perfect and utterly impartial standard of justice applied to everyone who declares war on God. So no wonder the shepherds were terrified! They know that they, like all of us, deserve to be punished by God.
But what did the angel actually say to them? Let’s look again at verse 10 in Luke 2:
Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy…
This angel isn’t bringing bad news about God’s judgment. The real surprise is that this angel is bringing good news! And the good news is what Christmas is all about. The good news is all about Jesus. “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you;” said the angel, “he is Christ the Lord.”
Good news! A savior has been born.
I’ve made the point before that it seems really easy for our culture to embrace Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year!
The religious ideas are pretty easy to take… that a baby was born to do good things. Angels, and stars, and wisemen… nativity scenes… it is all marvelous.
But it isn’t just Baby Jesus… not just the Jesus of Christmas.
He who saves us is the Jesus of Easter… the crucified and resurrected Jesus.
When he died on the cross, he took the punishment that we deserve from God, so that we don’t have to. He saved us by dying in our place. This little baby in the manger was pure and innocent. And he remained pure and innocent his whole life. He didn’t rebel against God or deserve God’s judgment. And yet he was nailed to a cross - killed like a common criminal – to take all the punishment that we deserve from God.
He was judged and condemned so that we can be free – free to have a relationship with God without fear. Free to enjoy peace with God.
Jesus didn’t come to merely end war… to broker a peace treaty.
Jesus didn’t come merely to preach, teach or talk about peace.
He came to be peace.
I suppose sermons need titles, so you’ll see there printed in the liturgy that I’ve a called this Sacred Peace.
We need to be reminded that the peace offered by Jesus, this peace that we celebrate in Advent, is something different than what we might naturally think.
I mean “sacred” to be distinct from “secular.” I think that when we think in a secular way about peace, we think of peace being the absence of things: wars, fights, discomfort, noise, demands…
We might even go so far as to think of peace being emptiness.
But the peace of Christmas is about presence (not presents). The peace of Advent is about adding to our lives. In the face of the trouble that this world inevitably brings, the peace of Advent is to align ourselves with the One who overcomes the world.
The peace we can fully enjoy today is peace with God. Because of the gift of a Savior, announced by the angel to the shepherds, and now celebrated by us in this great season, we stand at peace with God. This Christ child would not only show the way, or make the way; he would be the way for us to enjoy peace with God through all eternity.
So in this season of peace, let us receive and fully embrace this gift of peace.
Lord, help us to let peace rule in our hearts, as your Word proclaims.
Do you know what it is like to be reconciled to God? Do you know what it is like to be saved from God’s judgment and to be able to relate to him without fear?
Are you experiencing, today, any of this Sacred Peace?
Are you embracing all of this Sacred Peace?
If we turn to Jesus and ask him to be our Savior this Christmas, we can be forgiven by God and have the slate wiped clean.
Most, if not all, of us experience this peace. Have you shared this peace?
Christmas is a great time to share your testimony of peace. It is a great time to introduce people to Jesus. Go ahead and start with Baby Jesus… but be sure to introduce them to the Savior too!
Christians rejoice every year as we remember the birth of Jesus. We celebrate the coming of our savior, the one who rescued us from God’s judgment and reconciled us to him. That’s what Christmas is really all about: not a temporary truce on the battlefields of the world or a superficial calm over Christmas dinner, but real peace between us and God.
But you may have missed out on this kind of Christmas in the past. If so, don’t let another Christmas slip by without asking Jesus to be your savior, and to give you this peace.
Father – Thank You for peace. We are grateful for Your gifts of peace in every form… but we are most grateful for your gift of peace in the person of Jesus. This great gift that allows us to face You, our Holy God, with peace. Fill us with your peace we pray.
