December 23rd:
To Plant Peace
December 23, 2012
Potsdam
Scripture: Micah 5: 2-5a
Read:
To Plant Peace
Today is the fourth and the final Sunday in the season we call Advent.
For us this year,
the season began with Jeremiah relaying God's words,
"The days are surely coming ...
When I will fulfill the promise I made
For I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David
He shall execute justice and righteousness to the land."
And thus the season began on December 2, 2012
With our recognition
That those words were a reassuring commitment from God
To keep and fulfill the promise made earlier
Despite the disobedience and drifting of God's people
Having faith that the days were indeed surely coming,
You and I joined hands
And started off on a journey together.
We were guided each week of that journey
by the words of a different OT prophet
We have taken those words
And as we have journeyed,
We have held them out in front of us like a banner,
Thus far that banner has proclaimed
That we have been preparing the way of the Lord
The Lord who would come
To do justice and righteousness
The Lord who would come
To refine and strengthen our relationship with God
and The Lord who would come
To embrace the outcast whom we - admittedly - so often ignore
Each week we lit a new candle in our wreath
To signify and mark an additional leg of the journey.
And now today, that banner and that wreath have been completed
For a fourth prophet has spoken to us
This time the prophet is Micah
Micah told us that
The great ruler of Israel would come forth from Bethlehem
The small tribe and city from which David had come
And Micah told us that
like his shepherd ancestor
This new great ruler would stand and feed his flock
in the strength of the Lord.
But as fascinated by what those words from Micah meant
What really reached out of the pages of my Bible
grabbed me by my collar,
and shook me to get my attention,
Was the last thing Micah said in our text
"he shall be the one of peace."
Among the people of his day, there was much talk of the coming of a great warrior
But Micah says, that in fulfilling the promise
What God will send is a man of peace.
When I read those words my mind jumped immediately to the similar words of Micah's contemporary, Isaiah,
Who, in talking about the birth of a child
to establish and uphold the throne and kingdom of David
And to do so with justice and righteousness
Said the child would be called among other things
The 'Prince of Peace.'"
And I could not escape the conclusion
That this ruler was indeed
the very one about whom God had spoken through Jeremiah
in the words that sent us off on our Advent journey
and so as we add the final line to our banner, it now proclaims
that we have been preparing the way of the Lord
who would come not only to do justice and righteousness
not only to refine and strengthen our relationship with God
and not only to embrace the outcast whom we so often ignore
But also to plant God's peace among God's people.
[pause] Once we added those words to our banner,
I should have been happy
I was - sort of
And the fact that I was not,
says more about me than it does the banner
For I am a person of order
I like my files to be alphabetical,
I like my pictures and decorations to be symmetrical,
and I like my stories to be chronological
And so I found myself struggling with the fact that
While Micah was chronologically the earliest of our four prophets
We did not hear God's words through him until the last of our Advent Sundays.
But that same characteristic (my desire for order)
Caused me to dig deeper to find some order
In the lectionary decision to have Micah bat cleanup.
That digging caused me to conclude that if we are to take seriously
that God's promise would be fulfilled by a man "of peace"
We have to first come to the understanding
that we must commit ourselves
to living lives of justice and righteousness
and we have to come to the understanding
that leading lives of justice and righteousness is not easy
for it is like we are the metal exposed to the refiner's fire
and we can we get through it
only because we know we will be stronger and better if we do;
and then we have to understand that this fire is not a physical fire
but rather something even more terrifying to many:
accepting and embracing that to do so
requires from us justice and righteousness
not only for people who seem like us
but even more importantly to those who don't
In other words, we must be just and we must be righteous
To the poor, the different, the challenged
In short, to the outcasts
Only if we can do that
Only if we can do that
will we obtain the peace that God wants for us
Only if we can do that
Will we truly accept that the one who is our ruler
Is a man of peace
And expects us to be men and women of peace
In our actions as well as our words
That is why we hear God's words through Micah
On the fourth and final Sunday of the season
And so as we conclude Advent we have to ask:
Have you and I really meant what our banner proclaims?
Are we really committed to justice and righteousness?
Are we so committed to that, that we are willing to experience the refiner's fire?
Are we so committed even when we realize that that fire requires us to be just and righteous to the outcasts?
Do we understand that only if we meet these prerequisites, can we call ourselves followers of this man of peace?
In short, have we really prepared to celebrate this birth?
If not, we had better hurry
Our celebration begins in about 32 hours.