Peace-making

Luke 3:1-6

Advent 2, December 8, 2024

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“Peacemaking”

What we call the Middle East is one part of our world that continues to be torn apart by ongoing wars.  In this Advent season Christian people pray anew for the Prince of Peace to come and bring an end to our human conflicts.  Even though God came to earth in Jesus so that all may know salvation, the peace-making mission is not over yet.  What happened in one specific time and place, however, makes possible a way that anyone may follow towards a new way of peace.

John the Baptist was not the first prophet to try and convince people that they needed to make a change and return to God’s way.  He follows in a long line of those who dared speak truth to the powers of their age.  But John is not speaking of something that will happen sometime vaguely in the future.  He is talking about the Lord entering the here and now.  The Holy Land had always been a complicated piece of geography on the Mediterranean sea.  But it is not very big.  Think of Vancouver Island.  Most of the places mentioned in Luke chapter 3 would fit inside that area.  The gospeller mentions Judea and Galilee, with some other ancient territories.  Idumea is in the south proximate to Egypt, and Abilene and Trachonitis are in the north near Syria.  Iturea is the mountain area near Lebanon.  So you get a sketch of a smallish area that has been and still is disputed by different governments, rulers, and groups.  But amongst all the powers fighting for control through time, something new happens.  The Lord is coming to lay claim.  God doesn’t choose the Emperor to work through, or one of the Roman governors.  God doesn’t rely on the Jewish aristocracy or the Temple authorities.  God chooses John to prepare the people for a personal appearance.  Get ready for the tour of a lifetime, because this is the era when the Messiah comes to a town near them!

John prepares the way for the one who will come by inviting people into a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Baptism was a ritual way for Jews to acknowledge that they had broken one of the purity laws of Judaism.  But in and of itself, the cleansing does not make a person right with God.  The baptism that John offers is a sacramental act that starts on God’s end.  God shows divine forgiveness for the individual who wants to turn back to the path of righteousness.  The word repentance, or “metanoia”, describes a radical change of heart and being.  It literally means a turning back or correction to get on track again. 

This happens in our heart when we acknowledge our shortcomings.  It also happens in the heart of God, as God forgives us and releases us from our sins.  This act sets the possibility for reconciliation.  As the gospel sees it, God makes the first move.  The quote from the prophet Isaiah makes sense when you imagine the way of the Lord reaching towards us, rather than us trying to fix every pothole in our lives by our own works.  “Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places made smooth”.  No obstacle can stand in the way of God’s love.  Not geology, not politics, not religion. All flesh shall see the salvation of God.  The Lord is coming, whether we are ready or not. 

How do we respond?  We could be cynical, given that a couple of thousand years and many thousand kilometres separate us from John the Baptist’s call to repentance.  Old wrongs are difficult to forget or forgive.  There are many who do not see a difference between the conflicts in the first century and those that still envelope our planet today.  Yet I want to hold up the hope of an ongoing peacemaking that is active in our world.  Peace, after all, is not a passive state.  It doesn’t mean being content with living quietly while others suffer elsewhere.  Peace-making is active.  We are daily called to be engaged by practicing repentance and forgiveness.

There are three parts to peace.  The first is repentance. We have to acknowledge the ways that we have fallen short of what God created us to be.  We recognize that others have hurt us.  And we trust that God accepts the honesty of our hearts as we turn back towards divine love.

The second part is forgiveness.  There are things we have to let go from our past in order forgive ourselves.  There is the process of letting go of what others have done- not in the sense of forgetting, but of not letting them have a grip on how we react.  And there is a necessary acceptance that if God says we are forgiven, we can believe that to be true. 

The third part to peace-making is then to practice these changes.  This will lead us into new territory, because we won’t be operating on the same ground with the same rules as before.  The prophets describe it as the wilderness- a place where the landmarks are unfamiliar and the possesions that we thought we needed have been left behind.  In the wilderness, the only thing we can trust is the path that the Lord has marked out for us to follow.  Those that join us in walking that way are those whom God gives us to be companions.  We may not have very much in common, but if we seek peace together, the Lord is near. 

You can think of your own life as small or large.  Small in that you live in certain place at a certain time in history.  You have friends and neighbours and people who are difficult to get along with.  God can help you with peace-making in those relationships.  And your life is large because it is connected to the rest of humanity.  You hear about what is happening in all parts of our global community, and you can pray and help out in different ways.  God can help tune your heart to respond in ways that bring about peace and reconciliation.  We each can hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness “Prepare the way of the Lord”.  Amen.