Sermons

"Hoping for Peace"

North Korea’s ruling party newspaper fired a verbal missile at the United States on Friday, using the following words: "The army and people of the DPRK with burning hatred for the Yankees are in full readiness to fight a death-defying battle."[i] These are terrifying words that none of us can ignore. On the same day, Washington announced that Iran is actively working on a nuclear weapons program. As you know, North Korea and Iran, along with Iraq, comprise President Bush’s so called “Axis of Evil.” All three have a seeming hatred for the United States of America. All three actively are engaged in the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. All three have the potential to take this world down a dark and terrifying path. What are we to do in a world that seems so full of darkness and despair?

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”[ii] John came to testify to the light. The light, of course, is Jesus Christ, come into this world to reconcile us to God and to give us hope. During the season of Advent, we proclaim a message of hope in a seemingly hopeless world, a message that regardless of the circumstances that surround us, God is with us.

The author of Isaiah 65 expresses the hope of Advent wonderfully and poetically. God speaks these words through the prophet: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain.”[iii] This is God’s vision of the world as it will one day be.

On this third Sunday of Advent, we need to hear these words of hope. We need to hear about this new heaven and new earth about which the prophet speaks. We need to hear about the inextinguishable light that we proclaim during this season. There is much darkness around us. The events of our world could easily take us to places of despair. Yet, in the midst of the darkness, we give testimony today to the light, the light of Jesus Christ.

As possessors of the light, as people charged with testifying to the light, how do we respond to the darkness that seemingly surrounds us? What do we proclaim? What do we hold to be sacred in the face of violent threats? These are difficult questions.

I have been thinking this week about two people who, like John the Baptist, have given testimony to the light. Both happen to be Nobel laureates. The first is Martin Luther King, Jr. His famous “I have a Dream” speech testified to the light by pointing to a world characterized by godly principles of justice, equality and peace. King echoed the words of the prophet Isaiah that we have already heard this morning. In his great speech, King said: “So I say to you, my friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed – we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (sic) are created equal.”[iv]

Those words express the dreams of a man who was not afraid to give his life for what he believed. They are the words of a person of great courage and conviction. He believed that we must deal with the difficulties that we face within the context and the boundaries of our dreams and our principles.

The second person who this week captured my attention for testifying to the light is our latest Nobel laureate, President Jimmy Carter. Carter, calling himself a citizen of a troubled world, described the generally accepted goals of society as “peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering and the rule of law.”[v] Carter, particularly since leaving public office, has dedicated his life to testifying to the light.

King and Carter are inheritors of the tradition of Isaiah and John. They are people who have spoken clearly to us about the light. However, so far we have only heard the easy part. All of us can proclaim that we believe in justice and peace for all. All of us can shout out the ideals that shape our way of life. What King and Carter recognized is that the realization of those ideals is something else altogether. As possessors of the light, God calls us to follow a different path, a path distinguished not by hatred and violence but by love, peace and justice. How difficult it can be in the face of threat and danger to embrace these ideals of love, peace, and justice for all human beings. Yet, that is precisely our call as Christians who testify to the light.

Listen again to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”[vi]

Of course, King made accessible to us the idea of nonviolent resistance, of fighting evil not with more evil but with love. King, like Ghandi before him, believed that only love ultimately could conquer the forces of evil.

President Carter concluded his acceptance speech with words that echo a very similar theme. He said: “Ladies and gentlemen, war may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us a capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes. And we must.” [vii]

Advent is about hope. The season calls us to follow the examples of Isaiah, John, King, and Carter. It calls us to testify to the light – the light that is coming into our world to bring peace and justice for all. How do we testify to this light? You and I might think that we do not have the power to affect our government’s policies towards North Korea, Iran, or Iraq. However, we do have the power to transform our part of this world. Carter quoted one of his schoolteachers as saying: “An individual is not swept along on a tide of inevitability, but can influence even the greatest human events.”[viii]

The only power that we have to bring about this transformation is love. So, during this season of Advent, if you truly want to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ, the light of the world, learn how to love more completely and unconditionally, learn how to love those who you do not like, learn how to love the poor, learn how to love yourself. You and I can testify to the light this very day through the quality of our love for each other and for all the people of our world. Amen.

[i] http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/12/14/korea.nukes/index.html
[ii] John 1: 6-7.
[iii] Isaiah 65
[iv] Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope, p. 219.
[v] Carter’s speech can be found at the following link: http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/12/10/carter.transcript/index.html
[vi] King, 218.
[vii] Carter, 4
[viii] Carter, 2