As we enter into this final advent week, I want to spend some time focusing on that which is promised at Christmas but seems so elusive, "Peace on earth, good will to men (and women.)
For all the Christmas programs that are on TV, there is one old carol, that never gets sung: “I heard the bells on Christmas day”.
That’s the kind of carol that often gets forgotten in TV specials and even in most homes and churches. Yes, it starts innocently enough, with the expected idea of someone hearing Christmas church bells and humming along to the sentiments of the season.
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
But then, this old carol takes on an unexpected Christmas turn. A wide-eyed, bluntly realistic Christmas turn. We realize that the singer isn’t a Hollywood performer on a sound stage, but a mother in south central LA, a soldier in Baghdad, or a child who is spending another holiday listening to his drunk father fight with his scared mother.
And in despair I bowed my head:
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said
‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.’
We probably don’t sing this carol much because it reminds us of two brutal realities. Two things that we experience far too often every Christmas, but we’d just assume put out of our minds.
First, that all of us long for a world that has been lost. We really miss and yearn for the world that God intended: Where lions and lambs played together. Where humans lived joyfully at ease with each other and in intimacy with God. Where the world was garden full of all we needed to be happy and safe. Where the primary command was to “be fruitful and multiply.” Where everything in the world is “good”. “Very good.” Where there was “peace on earth”.
Yes, this carol reminds us that we long for the world we have lost. And it doesn’t take the evening news to remind us, we experience it within our own homes, within our own souls. Don’t we? This is why the holiday season for all its high expectations of joy, family love and hopes for a better world, is also the time where people report the highest amount of depression, sadness and grief. We really do long for a world we have lost.
The second painful reality that this carol points to is that good intentions, good attitudes and even Christmas cheer is not enough to get it back. You can’t make yourself have a merry Christmas any more than you can will the terrorists of the world would all lay down their c-4 explosives and go back to their homes.
The first lesson of Christmas peace: The Peace you want doesn’t come from within.
This is the pervasive message of the Bible: God intend us to live in peace.
We lost that peace with each other when we rebelled against God.
Nothing we can do by ourselves can get it back.
You can’t will it, you can’t work for it, you can’t buy it and wrap it and put it under the tree. You can’t make yourself have a peaceful attitude, you can’t generate it peaceful self-affirmations.
The peace that you and I want does not come from anything within us.
The peace that you and I want does not come from anything in this world.
The peace that you and I want only comes from outside of ourselves and outside of this world. Because, peace on earth begins with peace with God. And only God can bring us peace with God.
And that is the first lesson of Christmas Peace:
The Babe in the manger who became the man on the Cross was not the messenger of peace. He did not say, “Find peace” or “Seek peace” or “Have peace” or “Get peace”. He said, “My peace I give to you.” (John 14:27).
He was not God’s messenger of peace, he was the message itself.
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