Peace

Last week, we heard from Paul about the hope we have in our lives. About how Christ’s breaking into the world is a reality into which we must live our lives now. I hope you, as I have been, keeping your “Christmas list.” If you weren’t able to be here last week, I would love to talk to you about how to make your own Christmas list, or you can find someone who was here last week who would love to share it with you.
Our hopes are rooted in the hope that Christ brings…so what do you hope for this Christmas?

This week, we hear from John the Baptist. I’ll be honest with you, the worst sermon I ever preached was on John the Baptist. Hopefully, that history won’t repeat itself this morning. But I think one of the reasons that sermon was so bad was because I don’t feel like I’ve ever quite understood John or his role in all of this. He is a prophet, in the same manner as Elijah, quoting Isaiah, and preparing us for Christ. Yet he is a prophet on the outside who shouts things at the religious and political establishment that would never be said in polite company. He is extremely important, but dresses as someone extremely poor, and lives on whatever the land gives to him.

I don’t really know anybody like that. With the courage to stand up against the powers of this world…but also with authority given to him that people listen. I would compare him to a “street preacher,” but his words are not ignored by those passing by. And yet, he also steps aside when people begin to give him more authority than his purpose, showing a tremendous amount of humility.

So this week, while I was working on this sermon I became engaged in a conversation with a good friend of mine who is a brilliant religious skeptic. He is in a master’s program for creative writing and is getting some essays published soon in a journal and was asking for some help forming some sentences and syntax. While I had him on the phone and sharing google documents, I decided to jump on the opportunity to ask him about John, to which he replied to me with a poem by Byron Herbert Reece.

I really enjoy poetry. There is something that a poem can say that just cannot be said in other ways, and I particularly enjoyed this one.

Byron Herbert Reece is a fascinating person in his own right. A son of farmers in the Choestoe community near Blairsville, Georgia. He went to Young Harris, but never graduated because he began getting published. He constantly fluxed between unsuccessfully managing his family’s farm, and successfully teaching and writing at UGA, Young Harris, and Emory. His books and poems had widespread fame, but he had just as equally widespread trouble managing his money, and died in obscurity. He wrote a poem about John that my friend shared with me, and I want to share with you because it tells the whole story of John. The poem is a little lengthy, but I wanted to share just the first and sixth stanza with you as it talks about our text this morning. Its titled: John: A New Testament Ballad.

O, who is that with raven tress
And fire-face, crying in the wilderness?

It’s John

Who is it shouts so loud and rude,
Who speaks so sharp to the multitude?

It’s John

His words seem dark to mate his hair,
The way of Christ the Lord prepare,
Does John

What else are those that come advised?

Repent, repent and be baptized,
Says John.

Though water has no power to save,
And I baptize in Jordan’s wave,

Another cometh after me,
With heaven’s fire baptizes He!
Says John, John, John.


VI
Well, Herod long at rest has been,
Lying the grave’s stark width within.

The good thing out of Nazareth
Has rendered up His mortal breath,

And John the Baptist looked of late
With dead eye from Salome’s plate;

All in time are drowned and dim-
Have we not heard the last of them?

Not so, for Herod lives again
The million lives of sinful men,

And Christ the Lord on Easter morn
Held death’s dominion up to scorn;

And though betimes his rest is deep
John may not always silence keep.

He quiet lies and does not cry
As long as men put evil by,

Keeps silence will men bow to sin
And then we wakes and cries again,
Does John, John, John!


John has a role…one that we should try so hard to emulate, and that role is to prepare the world for Jesus. But before we can prepare the world, we have to make sure we are prepared for Jesus. That is why we come to church, we come to Sunday school, and why we are gathering at the table this morning…to prepare for Jesus.

And in preparation, we need to talk about peace. That is the candle we lit this morning on the advent wreath in our anticipation of Christmas. Peace.

So many times, we confuse the spellings of the word peace. We replace the “A” in the world with an “I”. so in trying to establish P-E-A-C-E, we push each other aside to grab our P-I-E-C-E.

Since we began to establish our own territory, people have fought. Look back to the Garden of Eden. Everything was at peace, until Adam and Eve wanted a piece of what God said was His.

Think back to your history classes, what was the reason a majority of wars are fought? Territory. Someone wanting to add to his or her piece, by taking it from someone else. That’s one of the main problems in every conflict right now in the world…people taking pieces from one another. And by taking each others pieces, we take each other’s peace.

I’ve been in a fight one time in my life. I don’t know why it happened. It was in the fifth grade. A guy named Bryce punched me at soccer practice, and I punched him back. I think it was over a girl. We both cried, which didn’t impress the girl. Then, in talking to the coach, he asked us, “did that make you feel better?” No, we sobbed. And I didn’t. I didn’t have peace. Because as Ghandi said, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

And it was the same problem that John was facing. All the religious and political establishments of the time were trying to assert their authority so that their piece of the pie would remain intact. It says both Sadducees and Pharisees were there at the time John was preaching. Those two groups are NEVER together because they are at odds religiously. They believe different things, yet they both come to hear John because what he has to say applies to all of us. The political establishment feared John, because the pieces they had worked so hard to get suddenly would become obsolete if what John was saying were true. Get ready, because Christ is coming. And all of our little pieces that we have carved out for ourselves, will be consumed into the P-E-A-C-E of Christ.

And so he says “repent, repent and be baptized.” In another way of saying it, give your piece back to God, and God will establish peace in your life. Trade your pieces, for peace.

We have all of these ideas of ownership and territory, especially at Christmas. I don’t know about your family, but ours runs into it. We each have our own things that we bring to the table, and we each have our own priorities, and it is when we bump into each other, that we have conflict.

Meredith and I love the show “Parenthood.” It is a wonderful show, and we both love watching it because we both come from big families with all kinds of family dynamics and subtleties and we are all trying to figure it out together. And two weeks ago, they had a thanksgiving episode. One of the major points of conflict in their thanksgiving dinner was that a guest of the family brought pie. It was the guest’s family tradition. And one of the sisters in the family is the one who made the pie. They infringed on each others territory, so there was conflict.

The same thing happens at Christmas. There is competition in who gets what gifts for who, and how much time is spent with family, and to make sure it is equal and fair. That is one of the hardest adjustments people have to make when they get married. Becoming absorbed in each others traditions. Because there will be conflict. Like does spending two days with one family during the month of December equal spending Christmas Eve with the other? These are the kinds of bartering conversations that happen around the holidays.

And John is telling us this morning…all of those things are human constructs and restrictions you have put on yourselves. Trade those broken pieces of yourself in. Repent, repent and be baptized. Trade those pieces, for peace.

Peace is what we need to offer the world through this church. Where we share what we have because it’s not our piece anyway, it’s God’s. Where in committee meetings and program areas we don’t fight with one another because someone is infringing on our territory, but that we trust one another and work with one another. Our committee meetings should be something that people are excited to be a part of because they are being given an opportunity to serve…not something that is dreaded because people feel ownership over things.

We don’t own this church. God does. We don’t own this world. God does. And God can offer peace when we just turn in the broken pieces of ourselves.

Where do you find your peace? Is it in your family? Is it in reading? Is it in athletics? Is it in the quiet, or is it in the cacophony of noise? Where do you find peace?

Because peace is what is coming. John tells us so. John is like the stagehand who builds the set for the play. He doesn’t get a lot of recognition for the magic of the play, the main character does. But without the set…where is the main character going to stand?

The main character in our lives is Jesus. And Jesus is bringing peace. John tells us how to prepare the place for Jesus to stand.

Personally, I find a tremendous amount of peace in the sacrament of holy communion. Where we gather together, all as one family, none more important than another. Whether you have been here for 30 years or thirty minutes you are welcome at this table. You get the same bread and the same grape juice that everyone else gets. And we are all offered the same nourishment of God’s tremendous grace. There are no restrictions on it. It doesn’t matter what you have done in your life that makes you feel unworthy. It doesn’t matter if you are scared of what people might think of you. We all share it together.

Let this Christmas season be a time of peace for you. Prepare for it. Prepare for Jesus coming into your life. Let go of all those tiny pieces you hold most dear, and give them to God in exchange for peace.