Luke 1:67-80; 3:1-6[1]
This is the season
when we look forward to “peace on earth.” But peace doesn’t come easily, and
when it does, it can be fragile. If the price of freedom is eternal vigilance,
then the price of peace is eternal sacrifice. There is a cost to peace, and that
cost is our pride. In order to maintain peace, we have to be willing to humble
ourselves. We have to be willing to admit that we may be wrong. We have to be
willing to recognize that whatever resentment we’re holding may be a direct
result of what we’re thinking or doing. Peace doesn’t come easily, and when it
does, it takes work to maintain it.
Throughout history,
“God’s people” have looked to God to make things right, to establish his peace
and justice, and to bless them with salvation. But time and time again, God’s
answer to his own people has been “the way of peace they do not know” (Is.
59:8). Even those of us who make it our intention to learn God’s ways, to
follow God’s will, and to serve God’s purpose in this world find ourselves
struggling with peace. We take things personally that we have no business
doing. We get our feelings hurt when someone makes a comment or does something
that we take the wrong way. If we are going to live our lives in “the way of
peace” it means we constantly keep learning what it means to choose peace over bitterness.
According to
Zechariah, that was precisely the role John the Baptist would fulfill: he would
guide people back to the way of peace. Zechariah was a man who was looking for
the fulfillment of God’s promise. He lived his life in faith and hope—faith in
the promises made to the ancestors and hope that God would be faithful to
fulfill them. And when his son was born and his tongue was loosed, Zechariah
sang a song of praise to God for fulfilling those promises. The specific way in
which Zachariah saw this promise fulfilled was in the birth of his son John as
a messenger to “prepare the way for the Lord.”
By fulfilling the
promise to give him a son, Zechariah saw God as fulfilling the promise to redeem Israel. He calls it “the oath
that God swore to our ancestor Abraham” (Lk 1:73). As you may remember that
oath included blessing “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3). In
Zechariah’s song, he foresaw John serving as the messenger of the coming Lord by
bringing the people “knowledge of salvation … by the forgiveness of their sins”
(Lk. 1:77). He would effect “the dawn from on high” through the “tender mercy
of our God” that would bring light to those who are in darkness as well as
“straightening their feet” into the way of peace (Lk. 1:78-79).
John’s mission was to
prepare a people for the Lord to come and bring peace to them. His
“preparation” for them was to call them to repentance. Luke’s Gospel tells us
elsewhere that when John saw the crowds coming to be baptized by him, he turned
them away, calling them a “brood of vipers” (Luke 3:7)! In order for them to
experience the salvation of the Lord they would have to “Bear fruits worthy of
repentance” (Lk. 3:8). In the words Luke quotes from the prophet Isaiah in our
gospel lesson, for the people to experience God’s salvation, that which was
crooked must first be made straight (Lk 3:5-6).
John was reminding
them and us that repentance is more than just feeling sad or sorry for the fact
that we may have done something we regret. Real, heartfelt, life-changing
repentance is like trying to break a bad habit. As we all know, that rarely
happens overnight. In some cases, it takes months and years of concerted effort
to change our behaviors. What makes repentance so hard for us is that we have
to take a hard look at ourselves: our self-indulgence, our need to control
others, and our tendency to harbor bitterness and resentment.
But the “way of peace”
goes further than just recognizing our shortcomings. It takes us to the point
of being willing to do something about them. We have to choose to change in
order to return to the way of peace. And then, in order to preserve peace, we
have to put forth the effort—sometimes again and again—to maintain peace. The
“way of peace” is not an easy road! It’s a hard road that takes humility, the
will to change, and the strength to continue to make the necessary sacrifices.
But if we would live in the “way of peace,” that’s where we start.
The way of peace is especially
hard this year because so many of us are filled with fear and even anger over
all the tumult and uncertainty going on. But the way of peace is a way of
bearing the burdens of others rather than throwing stones. The way of peace calls
us to stand for God’s justice against all the wrongs in this world. There are
times when that means calling out those who are taking advantage of others, as
John the Baptist did. There are other times when that means being willing to
yield even when we know we’re right, as Jesus did. The thing about both of
these paths to peace is that it cost John and Jesus their lives. That’s the
sacrifice it takes to follow the “way of peace”: being willing to give up our
lives for others.
During Advent, we look
forward to the day when “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Lk 3:6),
the new life promised to all. We look for the promise that “the glory of the
Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together” (Isa 40:5). As we
trust in those promises and continue to hope that God will be faithful to
fulfill them, our faith and hope lead us to repentance. As the prophet said so
long ago, we must “make straight” all that is not right in our lives and in our
world in order to live in the “way of peace.” That way is a hard one, because
the price of peace is the willingness to sacrifice ourselves for others. But
that hard “way of peace” leads us to life.
[1] ©
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 12/5/2021 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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