This season of Advent, our texts have never hit me quite like this year. And they way they’ve hit me is that they’ve pointed me more than ever towards peace. Usually this time of the year, I’ve thought mostly about action, during this season of preparation and heightened awareness. I’ve never really contemplated peace during Advent. And with the cultural pressures all around us, about getting the perfect gift for everyone, travel and family dynamics, budget constraints, economy and a general state of crisis in the news and all around us it seems – most of us are probably running a muck thinking anything and everything but peace. But these readings today direct us very clearly, I believe, to see being at peace as preparation…even John the Baptist.
I’ve always just imagined John the Baptist or John the Pointer (the Big Dipper) to just be too emblazoned, too fired up about justice and righteousness to direct me toward peace. He’s always seemed more about changing your life, repenting, turning around by means of action. It’s all previously been about what you’re doing or not doing for that camel-hair-wearing, locust-eating, prophetic voice crying out in the wilderness. Too crazy to teach me about peace! [pause] But I’m hearing him differently this year, especially when we read this text from Mark with the others…
Isaiah – “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says your God -- speaking tenderly, feeding his flock like a shepherd, gathering the lambs in his arms, carrying them, gently leading them. Doesn’t get much more peaceful than a pastoral scene of shepherd and sheep. Lots of time out there in the field, watching the clouds drift. Time to write poetry, sing, pray for the world. What a contrasting image to what most of us are probably experiencing now.
Handel’s Messiah and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech both draw their inspiration from this passage from Isaiah. “Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places [pause] plain. Then the glory of Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of YHWH has spoken.” We are invited today to turn around in a new way and listen these texts in the key of PEACE.
And the second lesson from 2nd Peter directs us toward peace, perhaps the most clearly and realistically. Acknowledging the pain and suffering that is so prevalent in our world, 2nd Peter makes it clear that we are in a state of WAITING. [in Chicago on Friday—waiting in the cold for the shuttle and the train]
Even as we wait in the cold, so often it seems, for a new heaven and a new earth, let us together, “beloved, strive to be found by him at peace.” That is the most direct and helpful instruction of our readings: While we long for a better world, a world where God’s justice reigns down—where all are truly welcome, and fed, and loved, where mercury no longer contaminates our water, carbons clog our airways—while we long for a world where all know that they are forgiven and loved by God, who enters into our daily experience and pain—while we wait for a new heaven and a new earth, let us together (because we need each other’s help at this), let us together...as 2nd Peter says...be found by God at peace.
Jesus arrives, no matter what. But if Jesus came back in human form tomorrow, as one single person, tomorrow—if Jesus walked into your home or into your workplace tomorrow—would he find you expecting him peacefully?
The repentance, the metanoia, the 180 that John the Baptist is crying out for is very dynamic. It is a reorientation of how we live our lives. Most of us I imagine, and some of us I know, don’t live lives of peace. We live lives of busyness and chaos, and even violence, flying across the surface.
But what do you sink down into? What is the womb in which you find peace and nourishment and salvation?
I think in terms of pictures:
And during this crazy season, I imagine a precarious ice skater. Not a graceful figure skater, I mean a precarious beginning ice skater, flying by recklessly over the surface of Christmas, wobbly knees, missing so much in the frenzy of busyness. Just skimming the surface. If you blink you miss it. Falling, and getting up and sliding all over. Centered only on self and getting banged up just the same. Unmoored. Slipping. Even dangerous with blades that cut. Blasting over the surface of this season in a mad slide is fun, but only in the way that ice skating is “fun” when you’re a beginner on rented skates. These days of frenzy and fatigue are kind of fun, but at the end we can be a little (or a lot) bruised up, with blisters on our feet from wearing some stiff rented ice skates…and bruises and scratches on our body…from crashing. These days of frenzy and fatigue.
But now I see something different. Now I’m doing a 180. I see that same person, shedding the skates, and instead sinking down into calm waters, not ice water (not melted ice), cool, calm waters, summer pool water. Sinking down under the surface of Christmas, into the deep blues of Advent. Holding your breath. Waiting.
Deep breath, hold it, and drop down under the water. Suspended under water. Have you ever gone under and just let bobbed down there peacefully for a time?
The Baptist points us under the surface, into the deep blues, to do our preparing. The Baptist points us to peace…even now. And there, under the surface, will we be found. And brought back up.
Advent is submergence—sinking down under the waters for a bit. Advent is blue. Advent is peace. AMEN.
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