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PEACE ON EARTH? Where is it?
Are the angels lying? You know that I am impatient with people
who say that the Bible means something other than what it says.
So what’s the answer?
I’m not getting into academic
questions here, though I might forget myself and throw in a bit
of Greek or Hebrew. I’m not interested in solving the problem
of interpreting this passage and then solving the Herald crossword.
These are important issues, not intellectual exercises. We need
to know today what it is all about.
You know I work part time for a market research company. We are
very near Town Hall Station. I notice that, since the Bali Bombing,
they have increased security at Town Hall station. The rubbish
bins are gone, there are more police around, there are warnings
about suspicious parcels.
I don’t know how to tell if a parcel is suspicious looking.
I've seen photos of patches of melting snow or enchilladas that
look just like a picture of Jesus from certain angles. Do you
call station staff if you find a parcel that looks like Usama
bin Laden in the right light?
All this kerfuffle has had me thinking like an Islamic terrorist.
If I wanted to strike at the heart of the Western Capitalist
Christian conspiracy with the Zionists, I think I’d look
pretty hard at a few targets.
I’d target a Myers store at Christmas. That way you’d
get at a Jewish business, you’d get at capitalism and you’d
get at Christians celebrating Christmas.
Or I’d target one of the underground railway stations like
the Japanese Aum Supreme Truth cult did. Hundreds of people trapped
underground — a great target!
Or I’d bomb a church at Christmas. St Marys or St Andrews
might be too–well watched. But I could go after something
a bit less prominent. Maybe not 22 people in Silver Street, but
St Brigid’s would make a suitable target.
Still, I want to commend you
all on your faith in coming here this morning. You’d have
to know that the risks have moved up several notches since John
Howard said he would go all the way with LB... sorry, that was
another Prime Minister. John Howard was going to go all the way
with George W into Iraq.
Basically, what I’m saying is that we live in a pretty scary
world, whether we like it or not; and “scary” and “peace”
don’t go together!
So are the angels pulling our
legs when they say,
LK 2:14 “Glory to God in
the highest,
ub'arets shalom — and on earth peace to men on whom
his favour rests.”?
A CONVENTIONAL GREETING
On the Sunday evening of his resurrection, Jesus appeared to
his disciples. His first words were,
“Shalom
lkem — peace to you.” (Lk 24: 36)
When Jesus commanded his disciples
to go out and preach the gospel in all the villages, he told
them,
LK 10:5 “When you enter
a house, first say, `Shalom labeit — Peace to this house.’
6 If a man of peace is
there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to
you...”
There’s a pattern here.
It’s a Christian greeting: “Shalom, peace.”
During World War II, it was a mark of loyalty among Germans to
say, “Heil, Hitler!” In Roman times, people sometimes
said, “Ave Caesar!” as a greeting. We say, “Hello!”
or “G'day!”
When the Angels said,
LK 2:14 “Glory to God in
the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests.”
basically they were greeting
the shepherds with the same greeting believing people often used.
In other words, the angels were
polite.
But you can have a polite greeting from that recorded voice which
says, “Good morning, we want to assure you that your
call is important to us. You have been placed in a queue and
will be attended to by the first available operator. Press 2
to leave a voicemail message, or hang up and try again. Have
a good day!”
Or you can have a polite greeting from a friend who says, “Good
morning, Peter! It’s really great to see you again!”
It’s a bit different, isn’t it?
I’m sure that the angels meant it! But our question is,
what did they really mean by their conventional greeting?
NO MAGIC
The first thing we can say is that there is no magic in this
greeting. If someone says, “I hope your swollen knee gets
better soon,” you don’t get angry with that person
if the knee doesn’t improve. If your friend says, “Knee,
get better!” then you can say, “You told my knee to
get better, and it didn’t.”
If an angel says, “Peace on earth” you can’t really
blame the angel if it hasn’t happened. It’s a wish,
but not a promise; it’s a blessing, but not a magical formula
which turns you into a toad if you don’t get peaceful right
away.
PASSIVE PEACE
But there is more to what the angels are saying.
If someone says, “Peace to you,” you assume they don’t
aim to harm you. I imagine it would be pretty scary to see angels.
I’d like to know that an angel came in peace!
Only the angels had to broaden the message a little. They weren’t
merely coming to the shepherds in peace. Their brief was much
broader. They had come to the whole world in peace. What I mean
is, they hadn’t come to tell the shepherds, “The Lord
of Heavenly Armies has sent us to warn you to get away before
he destroys everything and everyone else.”
To that extent at least, their message is to the whole world,
and it has been fulfilled, because God has not used heavenly
armies to destroy the world yet.
Of course, even the meaning of
the word, shalom, shows us that the angels must have meant
much more than just absence of strife.
Even in English, peace means more than absence of war. And, for
the Jews, shalom means far, far more. For example, what
klind of peace would it be if you were at war, and then there
was peace, but when you got home, you returned to famine? Shalom
includes fruitfulness, absence of strife, good relationships
all round, justice and righteousness. It's a very powerful word,
a very full word.
So the angels were not attack angels, and they meant far more
than just no fighting.
INNER PEACE
I saw Christmas gift you could give someone to put in his office.
It was a pad of nice thoughts which you can shuffle each day
to find another new nice thought.
One of them said, “Peace is not the absence of strife and
conflict; it is the ability to live in the midst of strife and
conflict without losing your own inner calm.”
Jesus said,
Peace I leave
with you; my peace I give you.
You know how Jesus kept his own
inner peace when there were storms and strife all around him.
And the angels are definitely saying you can have that kind of
peace, regardless of what happens around you. But they are saying
more than even that.
PEACE... TO WHOM?
The King James version translation says, “Peace on earth,
goodwill to men.” It seems to suggest that everyone will
share in peace and goodwill.
The Greek is not easy to translate. I won't go into all the intricacies,
but it's along the lines of trying to decide where punctuation
goes when there's no punctuation.
It would be more normal for what the angels said to mean, “Peace
on earth to men of goodwill.” But we can’t say that
the old translation is necessarily wrong.
You have to look at the whole passage to really understand why
we shouldn’t go with the King James version here.
The angel told the shepherds,
“Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you...”
A Saviour means that there is
something to save you from. A Saviour means that you live under
threat, and that threat will be lifted.
You can’t have salvation without conflict, and conflict
that needs a Saviour is conflict in which some people will not
have peace and should not have peace, either!
So it’s clear that the angels are not offering universal
peace. It has to be peace for people of good will. Those who
oppose the Christ can’t have peace, and God will not be
at peace with them — not ever!
THE TRUE SOURCE OF PEACE
One basic message that the Bible repeats over and over is that
you get nothing of any real worth apart from God or outside his
plan.
The Angel declares to the shepherds,
“Do not
be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for
all the people. 11 Today in the town of
David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord...”
It is only after he makes this
basic declaration of the gospel that the crowd of the heavenly
host comes and joins him to talk about peace on earth.
Peace on earth can’t even come near you until you begin
with a Saviour, until you begin with the Messiah of God, until
you begin with the incarnate Lord.
Peace is a condition of God’s
kingdom. We can experience it here and now, but not fully, not
in all its richness, not in totallity.
This is the problem with people
who expect God to put everything down and get to work on peace
so that they will feel more comfortable. They will never find
any glimpse of peace in this life until they begin in the right
place, at the feet of Jesus, under his kingly rule.
Jesus was a man of peace, who promised peace to those who follow
him. But he also said,
I come to bring
not peace but a sword.
He warned of times when our own
family members will deliver us believers to the courts and to
certain death on account of the gospel.
So we can hope only for glimpses of true peace, glimpses of the
fruitfulness and abundance that come in full bloom on the day
when the Kingdom comes in power.
Yet we can have it in our hearts, we can maintain our own peace
even when all around us is collapsing, if we keep our focus clearly
on Jesus as he walks through the storm towards us and takes our
hand and leads us on to the end.
WHAT WE MUST DO
The message of the angels is a message calling for action.
First, it calls for a response to Jesus; second, it calls for
us to take action for peace.
If you have never yet come to Jesus, the Saviour, who is Christ
and Lord, then you haven’t begun on the road to true peace.
I am involved in the movement
to resist sending our soldiers into war against Iraq. I have
many reasons for my belief that the US action is wrong, regardless
of how evil Saddam Hussain is.
I respect the commitment of the
other members of our local group. But I suspect that some of
the anti-war movement hope to find peace by that involvement
rather than share peace through that involvement. It makes a
great difference to how you are involved!
When Jesus is at the core, when you want peace for others because
you have begun finding it for yourself in Jesus, then a lot of
other things will fall into place.
This new life in Jesus, the one
which begins experiencing peace regardless of circumstances,
begins with surrender to Jesus the Saviour, allegiance to Jesus
the Messiah, and obedience to Jesus the Lord.
Until you recognise that you
are a rebel against the rule of God, until you discover that
your attitudes are part of the problem the world has, you will
never find the salvation which is freely available to repentant
sinners like most of us here are.
Jesus the Lord, the one born as a weak little baby a bit over
2000 years ago, looks for people who will cut off all loyalty
to the fallen, strife–torn world and submit to his rule,
obediently following where he leads.
These people will discover that true peace comes from Jesus who
says,
Peace I leave
with you; my peace I give you.
But I should say something to
those who have begun the walk with Jesus.
You and I have a responsibility before God to work for peace.
When Jesus said,
Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God
he didn’t intend us to take
that as one of many options. If we want to be followers of Jesus,
we are obliged to be merciful, obliged to be peacemakers, obliged
to hunger and thirst after righteousness, obliged to become poor
in spirit, and so on.
I urge us all, on this Christmas
when strife and disharmony is stronger than it has been for many
years, I urge us all to make peace a high priority, to become
involved in peace movements as Christians. Don’t just be
a participant: change the world in Jesus name! Work for peace
and reconciliation in our own land and around the world. Make
the Christ of Christmas, and his peace, known.
And may God bless all our works
for him throughout this year,
AMEN |
