The Peace of God

 

Sunday 6^th December – Advent 2

Our first live services for a month and I will be presiding at Holy Communion at 9.30am at All saints East Budleigh, John Archibald will be presiding at Morning prayer at St. Michael’s Otterton, and Rev. Karen Young will be presiding at the 8am and 10am at St. Peter’s Budleigh Salterton.

Isaiah 40: 1-11. This piece of Isaiah was written while the Jews were in exile in Babylon (587 – 540 BC) so is, as it says a note of “comfort” which is much stronger in Hebrew than in English and conveys a promise of action and hope in the future. The future messianic aspect, that Christians applied to Jesus, was of the promise of a future leader (God himself) “who would feed his flock like a shepherd: he will gather the lambs in his arms” That the imagery from this piece about making straight paths in the desert is used in the opening chapter of Mark’s gospel reading today has ensured it is one of the best known pieces of prophetic writing.

2 Peter 3: 8-15a. Peter addresses the fact that the “return” of Jesus is not happening as expected by combatting the scepticism and moral laxity by maintaining the “Day of the Lord” will happen but not according to our limited perspectives and timeframe. When the end comes it will be sudden, not according to any timetable so we should live lives marked by holiness and godliness and peace and righteousness until that time.  Those qualities characterize the mood of the Advent season 

Mark 1: 1-8. The role of “making straight the way of the Lord” is ascribed to John the Baptist by the Christian church. There is continuity and obvious discontinuity between the Jewish religion and the new “way of Jesus” but here great effort is made to portray John as a wild and woolly Old Testament prophet in the wilderness here. The text is saying that however new and unique Jesus may seem, he was no bolt from the blue – he was foretold and expected and in line with Old Testament prophesy.

 

That the Christian way ushered in a radically new way of being and seeing and understanding the relationship between God and creation is beyond question. So radical is it that we measure the passage of time itself from that point when we estimate the time of birth of the man we came to know as the Christ.

In that way you can say that Jesus marks a complete break with what went before, a kind of discontinuity with Judaism.

What the opening chapter of Mark does is proffer the scenario that however different Jesus might seem, there is also continuity with the Jewish revelation and prophesy.

Mark does this skilfully by drawing on Old Testament prophesy and marking out John the Baptist as the Herald prophesied by Isaiah and deliberately describing John as the quintessential Old Testament prophet – the wild man in the wilderness, breathing fire and judgement dressed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey.

However radical Jesus’ message might be, Mark wants to make clear that He is understood as being prophesied and therefore of God and the Jewish religion.

Jesus’ life and death and resurrection were momentous things in themselves but as Christians meditated on these events the full import of what became known as the incarnation began to be fully appreciated and understood and this new understanding bore fruit both within the pages of the New Testament and in the further and ongoing revelations through the church Fathers, a process that has never stopped down to the present day.

The revealing of the full meaning and import of Emmanuel – God with us – is never ending. The Spirit of God reveals the mind of God to those receptive to his prompting continually, and what the gospel means for us all has to be continually re-interpreted for each age and context.

A favourite question we were invited to ponder at college was “What does salvation look like to a single mum on benefits living in a flat on the 19^th floor.”

What can our faith give her? What does good news look like in concrete terms? 

Conversely, what does salvation look like to a successful happily married businessman living in a detached house in the home counties surrounded by adoring children.

What can the gospel of Jesus give to that man?

That second scenario I have personal insight on because there was such a wonderful well-dressed handsome man with a beautiful wife and lovely children attached to my first church where I attended in Kent. I can still picture him in a casual white suit on our Sunday school picnic playing with the children. I remember admiring him as having a perfect life.

I also remember that he threw himself under the Eurostar train on Christmas Eve. Wracked by anxiety, he just couldn’t face the future.

In the concrete details of their lives, salvation will perhaps look very differently to the two different people but whether you are poor or well off, all of us share basic human needs.

I am sure we could all reel off a few basic needs, but one of them that is common to all people in all situations is also one that seems to elude us and that is peace. Peace in our hearts, minds and souls. 

Not just peace as in “an absence of conflict” - a peace of mind more akin to the Hebrew concept of Shalom – that speaks of wholeness, contentedness, an inner stillness.

This is the peace of God that transcends all human understanding I speak about during the final blessing. God is here within you and he loves you eternally.

This elusive peace can be glimpsed in moments when we realise that God is in all things, including us, and he loves us no matter what and will forgive us when we turn from what we know to be wrong.

It is easy to say the words but it takes much longer to absorb those words and they become a reality in your life. Even if you don’t feel much peace in your life right now – keep saying and believing those words for they are the words of truth and the truth will set you free.