The Sermon . . .

Rev'd Gregory Seach

I wonder if any of you have, like me, spent the past week watching the year in review on the 7.30 Report? It has made pretty grim viewing. The events of this year, as in so many other years throughout human history, make the words we sing in carols, and hear in the Christmas story, sound rather like some kind of sick joke, don't they? Is it possible to read of the coming of the child who will be called Prince of Peace, to hear "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom [God] favours", and not feel, at best, a little embarrassed and, at worst, distinctly uncomfortable?

Such feelings seem inescapable as we look at such things as the continuing violence in so many parts of our world, especially the Middle East, at the unresolved conflict in Iraq (notwithstanding President Bush's announcement months ago of the end of hostilities or the recent capture of Saddam Hussein), at the ruthless repression of political or religious opposition in Zimbabwe or Sudan, or (closer to home) to hear the increasing number of drive-by shootings in what our media describes as a gangland war, or the violent incarceration of asylum-seekers, especially children. When all of these horrors are set beside the words we hear, say and sing tonight, there is a sense, isn't there, that we who come here tonight must be deluding ourselves just a little, that (as the apostle Paul says in another context) we are of all people most to be pitied? All this talk about a "Prince of Peace", as Isaiah puts it, is, surely just a little hard to take in our current context. It sounds, all too much, like a form of "false comfort" we offer ourselves.

As we look at our world, we are confronted by the harsh fact that we (in the West, at any rate) have so driven God out of the world, that we are like lost souls, wandering in a maze, and will grasp at any thread that will lead us out. So, we turn to comforting and familiar stories and carols about mangers, angels and little babies wrapped in swaddling clothes and God being with us, and we use them, perhaps, to evade the true seriousness of our situation, to provide a little "light" amidst the darkness that seems to surround us. But to do this, to pretend that things are not what they are, to gloss over the truth by claiming that God will lend a kindly hand without any price to be paid, like a kind of benign Father Christmas patting us on the head, is false comfort indeed.

It seems, doesn't it, that the one carol that gets it right is the one we've just sung:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man at war with man, hears not
The love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing!

(And I have to say, I think this is one instance where the exclusive language ought to stand - Margaret Thatcher and Private Jessica Lynch aside, I don't think women can bear much, if any, of the responsibility for the instigation or conduct of war.)

But, if we're honest, we have to realise, "'Twas ever thus!" And so, given that the 'peace' the Christ child is to bring can't (obviously) have been peace among the nations, nor peace among the peoples of the world, some people in the modern world have tried to explain it as a sort of "existential" peace, an inner peace we come to have because, in that expression that occurs so often, we are "at peace with ourselves". But the Christian faith has always been rather sceptical of this kind of 'existential', individual peace, that derives from a sense which, if we're honest, is really 'feeling good about ourselves' rather than any real 'peace'.

So, what are we left with? Does this mean it is a hopeless case, that all this talk of and hope for peace are ultimately delusional? Well, a look at the background to that part of the book of Isaiah we've just heard, that part in which those words about a Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God and Prince of Peace occur, we might get some surprising new insights to what is meant by 'Peace' as our faith understands it. The part of Isaiah was written at a time when the Jewish people themselves were experiencing turmoil and upheaval, war and rumours of wars, and, ultimately, capture and exile. Likewise, at the very time this "Prince of Peace" was born, so Matthew tells us, King Herod began a reign of terror, a form, not so much of ethnic as of 'chronological' cleansing, conveyed graphically in the ancient words of the Coventry Carol:

Herod the King,
In his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might,
In his own sight
All children young to slay.

Herein, I think, in an extraordinary paradox, lies the true hope, the true "Good news" of Christmas. Christmas is not simply God's assurance that God is present, that really, all is well with the world in some vague, undefined way! On the contrary, the whole life and death of Jesus makes clear that Christmas is about God's determined presence in a world that not only is indifferent to God, but actually resists, despises and ultimately rejects God. Christmas affirms that God is present in the middle of the horrors of human violence and cruelty.

And if it is in the midst of all this that the "Prince of Peace" is born, then clearly, a different understanding of 'peace' is at work in the minds of these writers than in our usual understanding. The peace the church has always spoken of is the peace that comes from God's future: it is a peace that is looked for as the gift of the One who, our Advent celebrations have reminded us, is to come. The child has been born, the son given, Isaiah says. But the peace is to come - 'the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.' So, like the Jewish people living in Isaiah's time, and like those first Christians living in fear of persecution and death, we must understand the 'peace' that Jesus brings as being a peace to be looked for in God's coming future, a peace that breaks into this present darkness in hope.

And Christian faith finds a way of living in this peace through its reflection on the life of the One who was born in Bethlehem. And here come the "demands" on us. The Christian faith requires me to live life like Jesus, to "surrender all security" in complete openness to the future. Faith requires that I give up my attained view and understanding of myself - even, perhaps, giving up that sense of "being at peace with myself" - in order to receive myself from the Coming One, who just as such undoes all security. Jesus challenges us to live, not from the past, but from the future, from God's future and so in Godself. The gospel challenge is to live life, not from the past, but from the future, because of the word of forgiveness that means the past no longer controls me.

And so I live, we live, from the future, the future that is Jesus' peace, a peace that 'the world cannot give' and that 'passes all understanding'. That future is shown in his life, as one who was utterly obedient, who, as a babe in Bethlehem, shows an utter 'surrender of all security', who is utterly open to the call of God, obedient to the one he calls Father, ready for that future. And, that future is seen most clearly when, having trusted entirely to his Father and been handed over to death by humans, still trusting his Father, he is raised from the dead, into the new and eternal life that is God's future for all who trust in him.

This peace, the peace that the world cannot give, stands in sharp contrast to the world's peace. For the world understands peace as something that is 'won' through dominance and power: through defeating Saddam and the Iraqui regime and then "imposing" our vision of what a "peaceful" Iraq should look like. Or it is a "peace with myself" that I attain by attending all sorts of meditation classes or inner tranquility workshops! In themselves, perhaps, there is nothing especially wrong with these things - some would even argue that they are quite good things. But the Christian must never be fooled into believing these are the same as "the peace of God that passeth all understanding". God's 'power', revealed in the child in the manger, is a power of radically new kind - not of the vague, 'false' comfort that comes from some woolly divine presence. No, this is a divine presence in the reality of a radical act of recreation - a recreation seen in death and resurrection.

So, Christmas tells us, God is with the world, God's peace is declared for the world, in the one whose birth, death, resurrection and return in glory we celebrate around this table. And that is why the Christmas mysteries we celebrate tonight always culminate in a sacrament that recalls a saving death and resurrection, rather than a birth, and that therefore offers a peace that is real - because it is the one that comes from God's future, rather than being worked for by dominance or power. This does not mean, of course, that we don't go on working for peace - but we do that from the understanding that we won't achieve it! We go on working for peace because we know that that, ultimately, is God's will for the world. And, like our Lord, we continue weeping and grieving with the world in all its woes, violence and turmoil. But in Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, we are given a foretaste of God's radical reworking and recreation. When we look at that Babe's death and resurrection, we see God's future, and the dawning of a peace that only God can give.