“Sleep in Heavenly Peace” So many of our Christmas Eve services will end with that beautiful refrain of peace from “Silent Night.” Heavenly peace is a longing for all of our hearts, not only at Christmas, but throughout out year. But all too often, Heavenly Peace seems so distant in a world fractured by violence, poverty, hunger, and disease. It is all too easy to go about our lives…consuming, celebrating, and filling our appetites for more, pretending as if all is right with the world. But, Christmas is not a time to pretend. It is not a time to ignore those around us who are struggling to keep a roof over their head, warmth from the furnace, and food to simply survive. It is not a time to pretend that everything is right with the world. Not only that, but it is certainly not what we are taught as Christians.
So what should we do? Well, for one thing, maybe we should allow Christmas to increase our longing for the presence of our Lord and Savior. So many of us live in a shallow, self-satisfied stupor, accepting the brokenness of our world as the new norm, rather than as something in need of divine mending. The very theme of Heavenly Peace on earth…Shalom…should increase our longing… our ache,…for peace on earth. It should stir us to total dissatisfaction with violence and injustice. We should use our Christian heritage to shout to all our God given hope for the future, allowing it to move us to be peacemakers whenever and wherever we can in the brokenness of this society.
As we go about celebrating Christmas in our broken world, we need to take a moment to simply marvel at the reality of the birth of Christ. John writes in his gospel: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." In the very first verse of the first Chapter of John’s Gospel we read that “The Word of God, who was with God, and, indeed, who was God,” became human in the baby Jesus.
Think of that picture! Rather than standing back from our broken world,… rather than fixing it from the glory and majesty of Heaven,…God chose to enter this world as an innocent and vulnerable baby…a baby not different from any other human child born into this broken world. And, as this baby grew, He would come to know pain, and grief, and confusion, and loss, and everything else that is common to human beings…except for sin. However, ultimately He would know even know the pain that is the result of our sin, as He "became sin" for our sake on the cross.
For the one who hurts at Christmas, or at any other time for that matter, part of the good news is that God has drawn near in the birth of Christ, and He still draws near today. Our God is not simply watching us from a distance. Rather, God has entered into the reality of our broken world in Jesus Christ. And, this God is always with us (Immanuel!) in our pain, and suffering, and hurts.
You see, there indeed is the promise of Heavenly Peace on earth…Shalom…the world of peace as God created it to be…the promise of the broken world made whole. The time will come when heaven and nature will indeed sing the song they were intended to sing by their Creator. We will once again be the people God created us to be. That which God did through the Incarnation is the beginning of true peace on earth, even though it's not yet fully here. The brokenness of our world, and, indeed the brokenness of our own lives, drives us to the only One who can and will bring wholeness through His marvelous grace. And, this is the One whose humble birth we celebrate at Christmas.
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