An Ear for Peace--December 10, 2021

An Ear for Peace--December 10, 2021

You can't rightly celebrate Mothers Day by making mom cook and clean and scrub the bathrooms.  That just violates the spirit of what the holiday is about.

Similarly, it would be a mockery to barge into a Teacher Appreciation Day event while berating public education and destroying the books they taught us to love and learn from.  And it would hardly be a loving way of honoring your friend by cooking all the foods they hate or are allergic to at their birthday dinner.  Please don't do any of those things.  Just don't.

Along the same lines, the preparations we go through every year to commemorate Jesus' birth beg a really important question: how well do our Christmas celebrations fit with the character of the Christ we worship?  How much of our Yuletide feast is Jesus allergic to, so to speak, and once we realize it, will we change the menu accordingly?

As a case in point, I want to ask how we can use this season to become more peaceable people, rather than more hostile, antagonistic, or belligerent.  Jesus, after all, is the One the prophets envisioned as "the Prince of Peace," and they looked forward in hope to the Messiah bringing in God's Reign of endless "shalom"--not merely peace as the absence of conflict, but the presence of wholeness for all.  Those ancient words of the prophet Isaiah have been shouting from the page for thousands of years to us: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given... and he shall be called... "Prince of peace."  The prophets envisioned the Messiah's coming as a time when all the old weapons and trappings of war and military might were done away with, burned "as fuel for the fire" because humanity has no more need of them. They dared to envision the coming of the Messiah as good news for all nations, who would come streaming to his throne to learn the ways of peace and justice.  

And yet--I wonder how well any of us actually use this season celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace actually practicing peacemaking.  And I say this to my own shame as well--it is just so much easier to be angry, dismissive, and bellicose, especially with folks we know we have disagreements with.  It is easier to assume the worst about what they think or why they believe what they do.  It is easier to frame their thinking or actions in the worst possible light than to give them the benefit of the doubt.  It is easier to settle for caricatures of what "they" must think rather than to ask someone else how they come to the conclusions they do.  And it is also easier to try and provoke someone else into an argument because we are spoiling for a fight than to offer in good will to listen as well as to be open to changing your own mind, or at least to revising your assumptions about the other person. 

Honestly, that is the beginning of peacemaking.  It's the willingness to see another person, even when you know you are starting from very different perspectives, as a human being made in the image of God, and to honor and respect that in the other even if there's little else you find admirable in them.  It's the willingness to listen, even to those with whom you disagree strongly.  And it's the willingness where you actually are in the right to work for the other person's transformation, not their destruction. 

Along with all of that, practical peacemaking also means the refusal to make everything into a battle to be won or lost, and the refusal to intimidate, threaten, or manipulate as your way of projecting strength.  For Christians, it means we don't get suckered into seeing things as a "culture war" and casting ourselves as noble victims or valiant crusaders in such a war.  It means we don't try and intimidate others or put others who do not share our faith beneath us.  It means we don't assume we have all the answers, and that we acknowledge there are probably places in each of our thinking and believing where we are wrong.  It means the willingness to let someone else help us to rethink, re-examine, re-consider, and--to use a word Lutherans should like--to "re-form," rather than lashing out every time someone presents an idea or a thought or a fact that makes us squirm with discomfort.

There's today's challenge then: that we would be people who take the first immediate step of genuine peacemaking by deliberately and openly listening to someone we know we disagree with, to find out where they are coming from, how they have arrived at their current thinking, and to see the humanity in them that forums like social media have a way of masking.  Take the step of offering an ear for peace--the willingness to hear someone else's perspective rather than shouting them down as the first step.  Disarm those who have been antagonistic by being willing to hear how they see the world and why they do, and remove from them the ammunition of accusing you of "never listening."  It may not change someone else's mind to take that step, but you will have changed the lay of the land by refusing to make something into a battle that was meant to remain a conversation.  Seeing those we most struggle to love as people for whom Jesus still came (and knowing they may be having just as big an epiphany realizing that Jesus came for you, too!) has a way of changing things.  That's where the work of peacemaking begins in our actual lives.

Look, we've got to be honest: every time some firebrand demagogue takes a photo with everyone in the family packing their assault rifles and slaps a "Merry Christmas" greeting on it, the watching world thinks that's what Christians believe their faith in Jesus is about.  And it's an outright mockery of the One the Scriptures proclaim as "Prince of Peace."  Our calling is to be different--our calling is to celebrate Christ by becoming peaceable people ourselves.  And that will mean we come unarmed and empty-handed to listen to others, with open ears and open minds. That's how to honor the coming of the Prince of Peace.

O Christ, help us to rightly honor your coming among us by letting our lives be shaped by your peace.