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“A Clear Path for Peace in Person”
Malachi 3:1-4;
Luke 3:1-6;
Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11
Rev. Sandy Nuernberg
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
Second Sunday of Advent - Human
Rights Day
December 10, 2006
Our themes of joy, peace, love,
and hope this Advent season are shown by our Advent candles. We are hearing in
our texts of the marvelous peace of God in this second Sunday of the Christmas
season. We’ve heard the comment, ‘Peace at all costs’, or ‘Peace at any price,
please’ haven’t we? In this respect it means a kind of relinquishing for any
purpose, a kind of passion to make peace in any way, shape, or form. ‘Whatever’
or ‘What ever it takes’ seems like giving in, or an attitude of letting go,
doesn’t it? But what it seems we are hearing in today’s texts are two things; a
kind of comfort in the peace of God that passes all understanding, and a
presence of peace to include a power to help us go forth in our preparation in
the coming of Christ. As John the Baptist was the messenger for God’s Word to
these believers, it was a kind of a wake-up call to them for their life; in
baptism, repentance, and in preparation for the Lord, the good news was then and
is for us now; a clear path for peace in the person of Christ.
As they were in Jesus’ early days,
we are getting ready to welcome him into the world, and this is John the
Baptist’ proclamation in ministry (Ch. 3).
To know in all four Gospels the life of John the Baptist, is to know of Jesus,
for John baptized and initiated Jesus’ ministry. And John said to the crowds
coming to him to be baptized, ‘Bear fruits worthy of repentance
(Luke 3:7).’ If we remember on the night
Jesus was betrayed and arrested, he said to his disciples at their last meal
together, ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you
as the world gives to you (John 14:27).’
Also, peace, or shalom, the Hebrew word Jesus used as the first word
spoken to his disciples on Easter night as he said, ‘Peace. As the Father has
sent me, so I send you’ (John 20:21).
The Word of God came to
John.....in the wilderness. In pondering this text it is interesting Luke’s
attention to geographical detail is common through-out his book, and rightly so.
After all, Luke, a physician, was accustomed to detail. He describes here the
Roman, Jewish, and church authorities initially, before he tells of Zechariah’s
son, John in the wilderness. But what’s interesting too, is that God’s Word,
what John the Baptist is telling them, seems to have escaped the hierarchy with
its emphasis upon leader’s, titles, and locations. Last in geographics, John is
in the wilderness, the desert where there is no power, and yet perhaps a whole
lot of promise from his standpoint. For there is a preparation time, patience,
a pathway being built in order to experience the salvation of God, ‘a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins.’ John subscribes to repentance, a kind
of wake-up call to turn from our own personal self and come closer to God and
God’s ways. This is done in prayer and solitude in the wilderness as he tastes
the locusts and wild honey–the promise! Luke states in his book, the Acts of he
Apostles, ‘they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with
repentance (Acts 26:20).’
A day or so ago I read of a young
college student who said he received an ‘ultimate wake-up call’ this last
spring-semester year as he became a father, being on his own for the first time,
and as he became academically ineligible in school. He could not participate in
his dream of playing Big Ten basketball at the University of Wisconsin. Yes,
Marcus Landry, commuting from Milwaukee to school in Madison, said, “It was a
big learning experience for me. It made me more of a man and I thought, ‘If I
don’t get this done if I end up getting kicked out of school (from his
scholarship), what am I going to do for my children? What am I going to do to
keep food on the table, keep clothes on their backs? I had to get my stuff
together and say, ‘Hey, if I really love them as much as I say I love them, and
also my wife, I have to get business done here (WSJ, Sports, “Motion
Offense”, Dec. 9, 2006).’” He woke up and changed his classroom focus on a major
in school, worked on his game in the summer, and earned a 3.8 grade-point
average for the semester. He said, ‘I feel like I can get it all done and be a
success. I need to make it work.’ A grandson of a minister who married him,
Landry also admitted that ‘I believe that God sets things up for a reason; the
foundation is our (his wife too) belief and faith in God; everything is about
having a purpose.’
This young student’s actions speak
loudly about his faith and life, it seems. There is a familiar phrase by Ralph
Waldo Emerson, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say,”?
We can ask in our texts today, “Does God’s voice resound in our actions?” or is
it our own agendas we are driving to accomplish? “Do others hear God’s word in
what we do?” Zechariah the prophet, John’s father, was filled with the Holy
Spirit and said what is familiarly called the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-70); John
would be a prophet of the Most High. In a way, John was concerned about these
early believer’s inner peace, and in their actions, a peace that passes all
understanding; if they could embrace this peace, this well-being, they would be
encouraged, empowered to carry on in their faith life, to be strengthened in all
that they did. John the Baptist was telling them from the wilderness, the good
news of the gospel of Christ.
I’ve been privileged to be a part
of our adult education classes this year since mid-September, about 8-10 of us,
each Sunday before worship. We are reading and discussing a book chosen before I
arrived with you, ‘Enter By the Gate’ by UCC minister and teacher Flora Slosson
Wuellner (Upper Rooms, 2004). It’s actually a close encounter with the tenth
chapter of the Gospel of John, about God the Shepherd and we as God’s flock of
sheep; but I am amazed at how many of our discussions are similar to the
preached lectionary word. Our discussions are about recognizing (taking the time
to) God’s guidance in our lives; last week we tackled peace, specifically peace
at our center. Wuellner writes that peace is a word we hear in Christian
circles, but don’t often understand. She says peace is ‘risky polarity....when
we are under God’s guidance we experience a center core of peace.’
In a biblical sense it is ‘a wholeness and inner well-being’, implying ‘a
specific empowering gift and blessing from God
(p. 98-99).’ And these symbols, she states, biblically represent an inner
centeredness; a shining steady light, a deep, clear pool, a spring of water
coming from a strong powerful source.
For me, these all imply and
represent a peace of comfort and power to go forth, but not in the sense of
comfortable, ‘whatever’, being withdrawn or giving in, but in receiving courage,
strength and initiative for what is to come. A peace of repentance in calling us
forth in a pathway towards the person of Christ. It is comfort in the presence,
the light, the flow of the Incarnate One, Christ Jesus in our daily lives. The
good news of the gospel from John the Baptist is that of baptism in the waters
of the Spirit, our repentance or turning closer towards God, and our waking up
to take notice of what God wants of us. ‘Get ready, prepare the way’ says, John
from the wilderness, and by the tender mercy and marvelous peace of our God. As
Christ is in us, in person, ‘the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give
light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet
into the way of peace.’ AMEN.
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