Scripture: Isaiah 9:6
Video of the sermon here (from 32 minutes)
Audio of the sermon here
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and mild and sweet; the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along; the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Those are the opening verses of a poem written by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day 1863. But cheery as those words sound, the backdrop to the poem was anything but. It was the time of American Civil War. Two years previously, Longfellow’s wife, to whom he was absolutely devoted, was killed in a fire. Then in 1863 his son signed up to fight in the civil war, against his father’s wishes. A month before Longfellow wrote the poem, this son was severely wounded. Although he recovered, his career as a soldier was finished.
The darker backdrop of the civil war is evident in some of the verses not often sung in the songs…
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound; The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn; The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then comes perhaps the darkest verse…
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong, And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
The disparity between the bells pealing about Peace on Earth at a time when his country was at war, was all too evident. Even worse, it was two groups who claimed to be Christian fighting one another, and one of them wanted to keep another
group of fellow believers enslaved. How can they possibly talk of Peace on Earth?
And 160 years on, as we approach Christmas, that same disparity is very evident. This year, owing to the conflict in Gaza, Christmas festivities in Bethlehem have been cancelled. No tree, no lights, no nativity scene. It brings into sharp conflict what we claim to be celebrating and what so many are experiencing in our world in 2023.
We’ve been looking at a verse in Isaiah, which is often read at Christian time and which the earliest Christians applied to the coming of Jesus into the world…
Unto us a child is born
Unto us a Son is given…
And he shall be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace
On the night of Jesus birth the angels announced Jesus birth and sang
Glory to God, in highest heaven
And on earth, peace to those on whom God’s favour rests
No wonder those first Christians saw, in Jesus, the promised Prince of Peace.
As we’ve worked through this list of titles, we’ve seen how they build on one another, creating a composite picture of what Jesus came to be for us. Jesus is not just a wonderful counsellor. He has real wisdom which can guide us through life or make the right decisions. But he’s also a Mighty God, with the power to do what he has promised, and strengthen us to follow him. But that power is balanced with mercy and compassion. He is an everlasting Father.
But he is not just interested in making me feel good. Jesus comes as the latest stage of a mission God first announced to Abraham that through him and his descendants that all the world would be blessed. He comes to bring peace where these is none. To be our Prince of Peace.
But of the 4 titles assigned to Jesus, perhaps this last one, Prince of Peace, can feel the farthest away. A number of years ago the rock band, U2, released a song called Peace on Earth, which said…
We hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history don’t rhyme
So what’s it worth?
This peace on earth
Our age may well echo Longfellow’s view that
Hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
Peace does not appear to be our natural state. In researching this I came across a few stats… well, I used to muck about with numbers before I was a minister. You can take the boy of out being a stato, but you can’t take the stato out of the boy.
In the last 3400 years of human history, there have been a total of 268 years of peace. This is about 8% of the time. I have to admit, I thought even that felt optimistic. It defines peace purely in terms of absence of war and a war has to be a sustained conflict which takes at least 1000 lives. Which for a fair bit of history would have been a sizeable proportion of a group of people.
You may or may not know this but we are living in a period known as The Long Peace or The Pax Americana. It has been ongoing since 1945, driven by nuclear deterrence, international trade, globalisation, increased democracy, efforts to reduce poverty, rise in the empowerment of women, increased education and quality of life…
But in truth it’s not just the name which displays a certain amount of western bias. It is really just describing war between richer countries against each other, not even taking into account when they go to war against what are classed as smaller, poorer countries.
The starker truth is that it estimated that since the end of World War 2, there have been 26 days of world peace. Not even a February worth!
But even that only includes wars between countries. When you start to introduce warfare within countries, that number can fall to 3, or arguably even zero.
In truth leaders haven’t always been defined in terms of their commitment to peace. Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great. There is something new and positive about describing a coming ruler as the Prince of Peace. But what was Isaiah talking about?
Well, there were three components to this idea of peace.
The first was disarmament. It wasn’t enough just to refrain from using weapons. They should be put beyond use. This stands in stark contrast to our world, where, what we think of as peace is at least partly determined by the knowledge that our missiles can be launched before their missiles can land. What’s called mutually assured destruction.
There’s a song in the play Hamilton in which George III, dismayed by the US War of Independence, expresses his belief that the American colonies will come crawling back to him when their rebellion is crushed. The song is called You’ll Be Back and it contains the line
Oceans rise, empires fall
We have seen each other through it all
And when push comes to shove
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!
Disarmament hasn’t always been easy. I remember the Northern Ireland peace process, when one of the stumbling blocks was the IRA decommissioning their weapons. To them, disarming was tantamount to admitting defeat. To the other side it was a sign that they were committed to the peace process. How could you negotiate with someone who had weapons and could just return to war.
It’s an idea that is at the heart of the Isaiah passage we’ve been sharing. In the previous verse Isaiah speaks of
every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
Earlier, in a prophecy which was later also shared by Micah spoke of how, under God’s rule, nations will
beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
It’s not just the lack of the absence of violence, but the threat of it, the inclination towards it.
The second aspect of peace is reconciliation. Where enemies are turned into friends. It’s often said that one of the things that cause the Treaty of Versailles to fail was that it was more intent on punishing Germany than achieving peace and it paved the way for World War 2. Real peace in times turns enemies to friends.
But the final aspect of this peace is the Hebrew word Shalom. Not just an absence of trouble, but a situation where people are not left behind, all can thrive and benefit.
How often have I shown you this drawing of the network of relations we live within, with relations with God, others, creation, ourselves. God is in the business of renewing, restoring, reconciling all things. Real peace is when these relations are all working as God intended. That is Shalom. That is what Jesus came to do and be for the world.
We are used to identifying the term Gospel with the story of Jesus. We have 4 of them in our Bibles. But at the term Jesus was born the word Gospel was had different connotations and was associated with someone else.
Caesar Augustus.
There has been an inscription taken from a building in what is now Turkey which says Divine Augustus Caesar, son of a god, Imperator of land and sea, the benefactor and saviour of the whole world, has brought you peace!
He was the one who, at that time, considered himself the Son of God, The Prince of Peace, The Saviour of the World.
But it was peace on the end of a sword.
You could embrace that peace, or…
Well, there is plenty of wood around. We can always make another cross.
Jesus couldn’t be more different. He refused to live by the sword. You might say he was following what God had been in the business of doing right from the beginning. There’s the very primal story, way back in Genesis, of the flood.
After the flood, God seals a promise with Noah never to destroy the earth with such a flood again. And how does he seal it? With a rainbow. God sets his bow in the sky. We might say God hangs up his bow. It is pointing upwards towards the sky. In a way it is God disarming himself, so the reconciliation can begin.
He comes not in power, but in vulnerability. In his life he models the love and reconciliation of God. It’s interesting that in the Bible you will never read of God being reconciled to us. Reconciliation has never been an issue for God. We see this in the story of the prodigal son. The son comes to the end of his rope and starts to think of some speech that might get past the old man. But the father is having none of it. Even when the son is a long way off, the father hitches up his skirts and disgraces himself by running along the road to greet him. Before the son has got midway through his little pre-prepared speech the father is ordering new shoes, robe, jewellery and fatted calf.
When they come to arrest Jesus one of the disciples strikes out and Jesus responds by telling them to put it away. Do you think I cannot call on my Father for more than twelve legions of angels? Instead, in all he faces, Jesus refuses the way of retaliation. As he is being crucified he prays Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing! When one of the prisoners on the cross asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his Kingdom, Jesus replies Today you will be with me in paradise.
And it’s interesting how Paul describes that moment. Jesus disarmed the powers and the authorities, making a public spectacle of them and triumphing over them at the cross.
Elsewhere he says Whilst we were still God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his son. And because of that we have peace with God. Jesus is our Prince of Peace.
In the face of God, his love and his plans and purposes to bless his creation and bring peace, even their very worst was powerless. Jesus remained obedient to God, retained his passion for creation all the way to death…
And even there he wasn’t beyond the reach of God, who reached into the grave and raised him to new life. God’s victory is assured. We wait, but it is assured. God is in the business of ultimately bringing Shalom to his creation.
Going back to the poem with which I started, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, there is one more verse I never mentioned…
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,; The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
It can be hard to hear and believe that in the period of waiting; in a world were wrong is doing pretty well, thank you very much. Right does not look much like prevailing. But it is God’s promise that it will.
But as we wait, one final thing. One final trip to a passage we have turned to alongside Isaiah, pretty much constantly. John 14. The night of his arrest, when Jesus tells his disciples he is going away and they are disturbed. He opens Don’t let your hearts be troubled. And he needed to say that cos their hearts were troubled, with good reason. He says Don’t let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. And later in that same speech he says Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
The peace we so often crave is an absence of trouble. But the prince of Peace also offers us a peace that can sustain us through the storms. It’s a peace with god, to know we are loved and nothing can separate us from that love. It is beyond understanding, because it comes not from us, but by God’s presence with us in the Holy Spirit.
And how do we access it? Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Talk to God. Tell him those things which disturb your peace. Nothing is too big for him to handle, and nothing is too small for him to care about. You are loved with an everlasting love and your Heavenly Father wants you to live in trusting relationship with himself.
He loved you so much that he emptied himself and came amongst us, born as a baby, far from home, to an occupied people om the edge of empire. As we eat bread and drink wine, we remember he does not stay in the manger, but goes to the cross, because of his great passion for the world, his commitment to rebuild all that sin and death had taken from us.
But God raised him from the dead and if we trust in him God promises to send his Holy Spirit to us, to be with us always.
So may you come to know him as a Wonderful Counsellor, one who is able to guide you along right paths.
May you come to know him as your Mighty God, the one who strengthens you to follow and has the power to bring to completion all he wants to do in your life.
May you come to know him as an Everlasting Father, who watches over you, cares for you, protects you and sustains you in all of life.
And may you come to know him as your Prince of Peace, who can offer you a peace beyond your understanding, and is ion the business of renewing, reconciling and redeeming all things.
For it is not just to people in 800BC, or in Bethlehem 2000+ years ago ago he came.
Unto us, Unto you, Unto me, a child is born
Unto us, Unto you, Unto me, a son is given
And if we trust him he promises to be
Our Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace
May you come to know him as all of that, this Christmas and into your future.
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