Peace also takes courage
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
It’s what everyone wants. Peace. Yes, I know the letters to Santa may mention other things – an iPhone 15 Pro Max; a nice affordable three-bed, quiet, warm flat on South Street; a 16.5 in this semester’s modules, well, every semester’s modules please. But the reality is we’d trade these gifts for peace in our lives and our world. We seem increasingly prone to hostility among flatmates, anger between University colleagues, conflict in student societies, worries deep in our own soul, and rage on anti-social media. (And yes, I did steal that line from Margaret Atwood, from her sermon on Tuesday in the chapel.) And we’ve gathered this December when wars continue to dominate the news, and affect our own community. Surely we are here, in part, to find peace, to feel at peace. And we’ve gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus, who was born 65 miles from Kibbutz Be’eri, 45 miles from Gaza City, 7 miles from Jerusalem. Let’s explore that Middle Eastern story of peace.
Jesus was a Jew, born to a family, community and nation steeped in words, written in Hebrew on scrolls of scripture, read in synagogue, known and memorised by rabbis. These texts are filled with longing for peace. We heard one earlier from the prophet Micah. In days to come, he sees a universal community, drawn together in a common faith in God. And this vision comes with a promise:
The Lord shall judge between many peoples…
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
It’s a beautiful, powerful image, of weapons not only put beyond use, but re-shaped into essential tools for tending the soil, bringing forth food for life.
By the time of the New Testament, around 2000 years ago, that hope for peace had crystallized into expecting a Messiah, an anointed one, God’s chosen one to rule in his name. The Messiah would bring prosperity and peace. This longing was all the more pointed in a time of occupation, by the Romans. It was the Empire which controlled land, government and taxation, the Empire whose soldiers, we might say, kept the peace. King Herod and the high priests had a sort of local oversight, but they knew that Rome was really in charge. For anyone taking the exam on Tuesday morning IR4601 Political Order and Violence in the Middle East, be aware of the long history found in those words.
It was into such an uneasy situation that two children were born. First, a son to Elizabeth and Zechariah, much longed-for, promised by an angel, given the name John (later called the Baptist). His father Zechariah’s tongue was unloosed and he spoke the beautiful poem we heard earlier, recounting God’s goodness and faithfulness, including these haunting words:
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
The final word in New Testament Greek is eirenes, but perhaps Zechariah said it in Aramaic – Shlama. Or if said today in Hebrew, shalom or Arabic, salaam. Shlama, shalom, salaam, Frieden, pace, myr [mwoo-ear], heping. In every language, in every community, in every individual, that deepest of hopes is unchanged – for the way of peace.
How then does the Bible understand this breaking of dawn from on high? Surely in the birth of another vulnerable child, about six months later, perhaps 70 miles south of where John was growing up. The occupiers’ presence is all over this story. We learn the Emperor’s name –Augustus. We learn the Governor’s name – Quirinius. It’s always the powerful whose names are recorded in history. It’s no accident that Ridley Scott’s new film is called Napoleon and not, for example, Jean-Pierre, the tale of a 19 year-old private soldier killed at Waterloo.
Anyway, Joseph and Mary had to move, from north to south, to Bethlehem, at a time when travel cannot have been easy, fearful of a premature birth. The inn, of course, was full: the Messiah, the anointed, the chosen, was born in a cowshed. How peaceful is any birth, in pain, without anaesthetic, with all the risks for mother and child? But how many have ox and ass shuffling, braying, relieving themselves cheek by jowl with the newborn?
And yet, this was the moment longed for, the promised possibility of peace become palpable, in Mary’s child. The angels sang it to the shepherds –
Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favours.
We sang it too:
and praises sing to God the King, and peace to all on earth.
Is it exclusive of God to offer peace only to those whom he favours? Perhaps, but I’d like to believe that favour, that forgiveness, that acceptance, that love extends to everyone, without exception, maybe even beyond humankind, a peaceable kingdom of all creation. And maybe even to plants and trees. After all, you may be wondering how two rival Christmas trees get along? They sign a peace tree-ty!
Those who have attended this service in previous years know that I have a habit of singing, more or less badly, during this sermon. This year, following the death of Shane McGowan, some 23 years after the angel-voiced Kirsty MacColl died, there can only be one acerbic, witty, affectionate song of conflict and peace to offer – sing it with me please:
And the boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay
and the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day…
Dadadadadadaaa…..
Which leads us to the nativity story’s astonishing coda: the Magi. They were foreigners, not Jewish, drawn not by scripture but starlight, who found the child of peace. Perhaps you have discovered more about them if preparing for AN4432 on 11 December – Magic in the Greco-Roman world, or AS5004 on 15 December – Cosmology, or ES1006 also on 11 December – Astrobiology: The Search for Life in the Universe.
The Magi did not return to the devious Herod. They escaped east, and Joseph, Mary and Jesus also escaped, to Egypt, but many more were not spared. Matthew records a massacre of innocent children ordered by Herod, fearful of any and all who would threaten his fragile security. The angels’ promise of peace was already exposed to the grim reality of human existence. Peace comes, but, in the words of W.B. Yeats, it comes dropping slow.
And in a sense we are in the days of Augustus now, of Herod now. Jesus has been born, and Christians believe that the Prince of Peace is alive today, present by his Spirit. And yet, as I said at the start, our time is one of conflict and war, conflict among communities, conflict in our own spirit. It’s not new: we sang that beautiful 19th Century hymn of peace, It came upon the midnight clear. It was written by Edmund Hamilton Sears in 1849, the news of the war between the United States and Mexico fresh in his mind.
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife
and hear the angels sing.
Were the angels wrong? Was the prophecy unfulfilled? Is this only a story, entirely unrelatable to our own experience? At times, I confess, I’m tempted to say yes, the angels were wrong. Hope and history won’t rhyme. But if those feelings lodged permanently in me, I think I should give up being a chaplain and should go off, become a life-coach, and charge an insane amount for a 40 minute appointment. Instead, my bedrock is that peace has come, our feet are being guided into its way, that, in the words of Seamus Heaney, another Irish poet,
once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Hoping, believing, but it takes something from us for it to happen. Peace is not like a herbal infusion that permeates our world. God’s peace doesn’t coerce us into ceasefires. Peace invites, it offers, it inspires – and we are called, challenged to respond.
In the early Noughties, a friend who lives in Pennsylvania gave me a badge (I guess she’d call it a button) which says Peace also takes courage. [Show] It was the time, following 9/11 of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the time of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. No-one can deny the immense bravery shown by so many personnel in armed forces in those and other conflicts. A close friend of mine, at that time a chaplain in the Royal Air Force, saw extraordinary courage in both countries, not least in the field hospitals treating soldier and civilian alike.
But peace also takes courage. It is brave to find ways not to retaliate, not to strike back, not to seek vengeance, not to draw the worst conclusion, not to see different people as enemies, not to judge our neighbours, not to dislike our own self. Why courage? Because of the risk of losing the place, the position, the meaning we hold in our own community. That’s why, from Israel/Palestine to Northern Ireland, from Russia to Myanmar, from Sudan to the United States, from St Andrews to our own circle of friends, conflicts can be so intractable – people become more extreme, not against an enemy, but to bolster favour with our own side.
This is what makes the birth of Christ the most wonderfully world-changing breaking of dawn upon us. Instead of God – holy, perfect, law-giving God – condemning his world for our hostility, remaining in his heavenly bunker, expressing even more extreme forms of judgment, God took a path of courage, in Mary’s womb, in the stinking stable, in the heart-stopping fear of the flight into Egypt. And later – the child become adult – arrest, trial, scourging and death. This whole story is one of embrace, of forgiveness, of not being offended, of knowing we’ve gone wrong, but still loving us completely.
The implication for our lives is clear. Wherever there is conflict, many seek comfort in re-affirming, even magnifying positions – it feels so much safer. But what comes is a cycle of conflict. The only way out is courage: to become vulnerable, to say sorry, to seek to be reconciled, to risk looking weak to certain communities. But there is a reward, and it’s the peace we long for more than anything else. If so, perhaps we can get that 16.5 in SD4116 on Friday 8 December – Building sustainable, inclusive and just cities.
It took a Jew to express courageously this deep hope of peace, which is celebrated at Christmastime, the late Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi:
Too often in the history of religion, people have killed in the name of the God of life, waged war in the name of the God of peace, hated in the name of the God of love and practised cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. When this happens, God speaks, sometimes in a still, small voice almost inaudible beneath the clamour of those claiming to speak on his behalf. What he says at such times is : Not in My Name.
In a moment we will hear St Salvator’s Chapel Choir sing Lux aurumque, including Latin words meaning:
the angels sing softly
to the new-born baby.
Just as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and flatmates have sung softly to children, some quite grown-up, this year in Kyiv and Khan Yunis, Tel Aviv and Tehran, St Petersburg and St Andrews. They’ve sung – we’ve sung – of peace tonight and tomorrow, of a peace shared from heaven, dropping slow as a winter dawn breaks, a peace which also, always, takes courage.
END