Prepare the Way for Peace

Advent 2 – Peace

Today's Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

In this second week of Advent, we light both the candle of hope and the candle of peace.

Let us pray,

We come to know you, Holy One, as Wisdom Incarnate, as Flickering Flame, as Spirit of Life, as Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, Enfleshed. You come to us as the Stranger, and the Strange. Often we do not recognize you. Often we turn away from your gifts and your demands. Yet you come to us in Wilderness, in the Impossible Made Possible, in Silence and Singing and Sighs Too Deep for Words. You abhor dominance, mastery, fear, and control. You are made known to us in

Vulnerability, and Courage, and Divesting from the Powers of Empire. We come to you this Advent in need, with longing, in pain, captive to fear, desiring a more just world, a more livable life for all of us, for the earth, for every living thing caught and held in this inescapable network of mutual interdependence we call this one wild and precious Life. We long for you. We long for healing. We long for liberation. We long for different systems and patterns of relating. And so, this Advent, we pause. We breathe. We pray. We dig deep. We reach out. We rise up. We remember. We vision. We sit with the pain. We stay with the

trouble. We wait, expectant. We light candles. We labor. We open to You, and to one another, and to the Sacred Mystery that is Emmanuel, God-With-Us, Love Incarnate, Divinity Enfleshed. Amen.

Lighting the candle of peace,

The Peace of God-With-Us does not come as law and order, or enforcement and control. Peace cannot be imposed from on high. Peace cannot be commanded. The Peace of God-With-Us is chaotic, wild, unruly, unpredictable. The Peace of God-With-Us is collective, liberating us from deadly complicity. Peace is gestating in darkness; it comes unexpectedly. Peace invites our expectation, and demands our participation. Prepare the way, for peace with justice. May Peace be birthed among, within, and through us, this Advent.

(Advent liturgy © Enfleshed: 2018, Rev. Anna Blaedel)

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This Advent sure feels different.. this Advent, we may need to hold onto the hope and peace of Christ a little bit tighter than normal. Perhaps this Advent, we collectively, as a people, identify with the Israelites more than we ever have before. My absolute favorite hymn of the season is O Come O Come Emmanuel, the very one we sang this morning. I want to bring to light that first verse, “O come, o come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, who mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.”

God’s people sing, “Come, God-With-Us, COME. Come and ransom us from captivity! We are mourning in lonely exile until you come and set us free. We shall rejoice because we KNOW that you ARE coming to us!” The Israelites were in exile, strangers and slaves in a foreign land, oppressed under the Babylonian Empire. They longed for the freedom only God could provide. They waited expectantly for the true king to come and reign. In our first reading we heard the prophet Isaiah as he spoke to God’s people, Israel, to tell them their time of captivity is over and now is the time to prepare the way of the Lord, who comes as true ruler, both mighty and full of tender love (Isaiah 40:1-2 & 11). In a sense he is declaring, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel SHALL come to you, O Israel!” As a messenger of God, he was confident in this truth and told others to be as well, so confident that they should shout it out, go tell it on the mountain, that “HERE is God!” (Isaiah 40:9)

We have always rejoiced in the coming of our Lord. We have always found great comfort and joy in the Christmas story.. but perhaps we have never before put ourselves in the shoes of our Hebrew Ancestors. God’s people were mourning.. they were in pain.. they were far from the comforts of home and the luxuries many of us experience in the American lifestyle. They knew suffering all too well and they longed for the better world they knew was possible because they knew God. God who (as we were reminded in our opening Advent liturgy) despises dominance, mastery, fear and control. God who instead is revealed to us in vulnerability, courage and divesting from the powers of empire.

Here now in 2020 we may find ourselves feeling captive by this pandemic, which is out of our control. We, like Israel, come to God longing for freedom from captivity, pain, fear and suffering. We, like Israel, come to God longing for a more just world, a more livable life for all, a healthy earth, and for all to lean into our interconnectedness, the “inescapable network of mutual interdependence we call this one wild and precious life!” And friends the good news is that God comes to US IN the midst of captivity, suffering and the dark wilderness of life. God comes to us in the wilderness.. in the silence.. in the sighs to deep for words.

Emmanuel, God is revealed as wisdom, hope, peace, joy and love ENFLESHED. We will continue to add verses to our opening hymn O Come O Come Emmanuel as we continue through Advent and in our upcoming verses we will hear the Israelites longing for God to come and unite them, refresh their hearts, restore the broken and make all things new. They knew, as well as we know, that it IS God who comes, even to the depths of hell, to save us and give us victory over all that wields death.

This Advent, God’s peace shall come to us indeed.. but it shall come to us in wild and unpredictable ways and it shall liberate us from deadly complicity. 2020 may feel as though it is holding us captive, but it has certainly FREED us from our captivity to complicity. This is unsettling to our hearts which long for the comforts of routine and sense of stability, but it is also liberating. We are free to be made new; to prepare the way of the Lord. As Isaiah tells us, the way of the Lord does not look like empire, nor does it look like a hidden path or tunnel.. rather it looks like mountains being laid low and valleys lifted high.. but make no mistake this is not a grand reversal, but rather the great equalizer (Isaiah 40:4-5).

We break the bonds of love and unity when we rule humanity with hierarchy, with fear and control. Our God who creates all things, provides for and sustains all things, cares for us as a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering us tenderly into his arms to carry us and gently lead us on. The ONLY hierarchy that exists is between God and creation. When we know this, we will finally know peace. The Israelites knew this and that is why they cried out for God to come and make things right – level the field – correct the corruption, so that ALL may live the life God intended, in the world God intended.

This is the God which has been revealed to us. This is the God in which we can confidently put our hope. This is the King, Lord of ALL creation, who is born in a manger that we all may know peace. And so, this Advent, we prepare the way of the Lord. We do not turn away from the chaos, upheaval and suffering of 2020 by longing for things to go “back to normal.” For “normal” was not perfect, but in many ways, captivity. This is an opportunity for change, for new life, for unity and refreshment, for dreaming of the better world we know is possible because we know who God is.

Prepare the way of the Lord. Prepare the way for peace and justice. May peace be birthed among, within, and through us this Advent. Amen.