SCRIPTURE Luke 3:1-6
3 In the fifteenth year of the rule of the emperor Tiberius—when Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea and Herod was ruler[a] over Galilee, his brother Philip was ruler[b] over Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was ruler[c] over Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas—God’s word came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 John went throughout the region of the Jordan River, calling for people to be baptized to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. 4 This is just as it was written in the scroll of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
A voice crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley will be filled,
and every mountain and hill will be leveled.
The crooked will be made straight
and the rough places made smooth.
6 All humanity will see God’s salvation.”[d]
Part I: Rev. Marta Fioriti
Shalom. Peace.
The peace found in Jesus.
Peace found in me.
The peace found in you.
This scripture is a proclamation that involves something of great importance, and John has something vital that he wishes to announce: the coming of the one who is much greater than him.
This text is about preparing for Jesus; It is also about preparing for each of us to be who God calls us to be. Jesus is peace. I am the peace. You are the peace.
Madeleine L’Engle defines, “Peace. A peace that is not passive but active. A peace that is not just the cessation of violence but is through and beyond violence. Real peace.”
Many people work for peace, and many who work for peace are not at peace. We are angry, self-righteous, frustrated with the world. To find peace, we must be at peace with the world, our community, and our families.
Do you know what peace is for me? It’s when someone gets me?
When I truly feel seen. Especially in the depths of despair and anger.
I want to feel understood.
Peace is when I read something, and it makes sense, and peace rushes over me. I want to exclaim, Yes! That is what I am talking about.
Peace feels impossible. Most of us know that there was another act of gun violence in a high school just this week. That was one of the gifts the pandemic brought us. School shootings stopped. We often think of peace as the absence of guns and war. If only all of this can come to an end, we will have peace. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “but if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our minds- our prejudices, fears, and ignorance. Even if we transported all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the reasons for bombs would still be here, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later, we would make new bombs.” We pray that the families and students of that Michigan school can be seen this week and understood in their anger, shock, and grief. We pray that America figures out how to protect our children.
Peace means facing our rage, anger, and grief and not turning away from the horror. Peace is getting low to the ground, being humble at the manger, and standing for a new way to see another’s pain and act in the face of it- when everything is telling you to turn away and ignore it. That’s peace.
The great words of St Francis are, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace. It’s not easy to be an instrument of peace. We get caught up in our interests and agendas. And, every time we do that, it creates divisions rather than peace. Jesus’ birth reminds us not to get caught up and preoccupied with our interests but to consider others. Be an instrument of peace.
Last week, I invited you to practice living in unpredictable and unanticipated this Advent. I asked you to practice being surprised and shocked by what life brings this Advent season. This week, I invite you to another Advent practice (I will call it): pay attention to others. Try to understand. Maybe they will exclaim, yes! That is what I am talking about. Practice being instruments of peace.
Part II: Levi Murray
If it was your job to introduce Jesus and you could only say one thing about the Messiah, what
would you say?
One of the things Isaiah says is that the salvation of the LORD will be revealed to all people in the
raising of the valleys, in the flattening of the hills and mountains, in the leveling of the rough
ground, and in the rugged places being made smooth. Of all the messianic passages from the
Hebrew Bible, this is the one that is used to characterize John the Baptist’s introduction of the
Messiah.
Why?
Perhaps because it shows the heart of God’s redemptive work.
The leveling of discrepancy.
The smoothing of irregularity.
The flattening of hierarchy.
And John is saying that this great equalization is manifest in Jesus.
Through the work and person of Jesus, God, Humanity, and Creation are being brought back
into a state of harmony and peaceful interrelatedness. Paul explains it this way: For God in all
his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
That’s the Good News!
That’s the Gospel!
That’s why Jesus is the Prince of Peace.
Because through Him God has made peace with everything and everyone in heaven and on
earth.
And Jesus has entrusted this mission of peace making, this ministry of reconciliation, to us!
We are the Body of Christ.
We are the Church.
So even when we recognize the hierarchy in this world and we feel the discrimination in our
culture and we experience the inequitable brokenness of the landscape, we can have peace.
And even when we realize and lament that we have unintentionally and ignorantly been
complicit in making things harder for our fellow sojourners on earth, we can have peace.
And as we practice our vocation of smoothing here and now, working for equity and
reconciliation, we can have peace.
Because the work of Jesus is done, and the smoothing of this world into a sea of glass is
ultimately unavoidable and irreversible.
Peace be with you.
Part III: Corina Hurst
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
By whom, I wonder?
I grew up with role models who valued personal security and safety above all else. While it is clear that the root of our need for self preservation is fear, I have learned that fear is the near opposite of peace. It causes our hills to become higher and makes our mountains nearly unapproachable.
My childhood was filled with hills - they were made of guns and canned food and medical supplies stashed in case of an apocalypse. It sounds a little sad, but my family believed a time would come when we would stand high on these mountains of supplies we’d collected and pity our neighbors in the valleys who would be swept away with the oncoming flood. And that fear inside me would feast on those hills of protection and preparedness.
When humans desire a garden, a road, or a place for building something new, to prepare the land, we bulldoze it. We fill in the valleys and we make the hills low. Usually, one begets the other.
Peacemaking requires sacrifice. Our own highest hills (of ego, of physical and financial resources) must be made low so that the valleys of another can be filled in and smoothed out. To have human peace, one must first have access to food and clothing, safety and understanding. While our needs are sometimes impossible to fill on our own, in walking with empathy and generosity, we can provide for eachother easily. In the process of making our own bumps and edges smooth, we can repair cracks for another.
To have otherworldly peace, one must let God move into the places of our own discomfort or fear, and settle there, further filling in those deep valleys with enough. Peacemaking, I think, requires humbleness. When we worship something greater than our own comforts, we can climb down from our hilltop to walk that straight path.
To prepare the way for the coming Lord, may we be compelled, not to stockpile weapons, (literal or figurative), but to make peace in the meantime. With our shovels and plows, may we push the excess of our sweet-smelling and ripe earth into the low places of our communities.
That is what peace means to me, to let our own hands be calloused over from laboring hard in a garden of generosity, even when it scares us, so that others can also rise up.