Isaiah 2:1-4, 9:2, 6-7 "Sleep in Heavenly Peace"

Isaiah 2:1-4, 9:2, 6-7

         Today the journey begins – yet again.  We do it every year.  We journey to Bethlehem to meet the Little One born in a drafty, ramshackle barn.  You know the story:  Because his parents were foreigners, not from around those parts, doors were slammed in their faces.  There was no room for them at any inn or boardinghouse in the city. 

And yet, in spite of that inauspicious beginning, we journey to that same cold, inhospitable, God-forsaken manger year in and year out.  We journey to Bethlehem, like the Magi before us, seeking a King, someone who will save us not so much from each other as from ourselves.  And the funny thing is, we never really tire of doing so – even though the odds of success seem hardly in our favor. 

We journey to Bethlehem hoping to encounter the Prince of Peace in spite of news headlines bombarding us from all directions (right and left), headlines screaming out to us that the journey is for naught, that the journey is founded on fake news. 

And still we journey on, even though the latest Facebook posting and twitter feed declare categorically that the journey is pointless because the real news is fear and despair.  The real news is migrants seeking asylum who are blinded by teargas. 

The real news is continued warfare in Syria.  The real news is troops still in Afghanistan – still getting killed - after 17 long years. 

And still we journey on.  Still we trust in, and pin our hopes on, the old prophet Isaiah and his timeless words about peace.  Still we walk in the darkness with only a glimmer of light to let us know that there is any future at all for us.  Still we journey on - dreaming of a time when swords one day are wrought into plowshares and spears are hammered into pruning hooks. Still we journey on – imagining that somehow, sometime, God’s dream will come true.

Still we journey on, somehow each year trying to move from whatever rut or trench or mouse hole we find ourselves in to some place different – if only for a moment – some place where “all is calm, all is bright”, some place where we might finally – in this crazy jaded world we live in – “sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.”  

Two hundred years ago this year, the beloved Christmas carol, “Silent Night”, was written. It made its debut on Christmas Eve, 1818 at St. Nicholas chapel in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. The legend is that the organ had broken, and what would a Christmas Eve service be without an organ?  And so, Franz Gruber wrote a melody for guitar that is now, of course, instantly recognizable from the first few notes. 

The original text, composed that very day by the young parish priest, Joseph Mohr, has, since then, been translated from the original German into over 140 languages. 

For many people, Christmas would be lacking something so deep and powerful if not for the singing of this carol.  I really think that ”Silent Night” is the reason so many people who never set foot in a church otherwise venture in on Christmas Eve – and leave a little bit less cynical, a little calmer, a little brighter, a little more at peace. 

Something truly mystical happens when the sanctuary lights are dimmed and our small, seemingly insignificant, candles are lit, when we sing – often with tears in our eyes – sing the hope of “all is calm, all is bright”, when we sing the hope of being able to “sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace” – not just peace and light for us or even for our families but peace and light for all the world – swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, the light growing stronger, beckoning all of us who walk in darkness, in deep and heavy darkness, beckoning all of us on, and I would submit that in this age of polarization and anger and wall-building, climate disregulation, and fear, that would include all of us.

        And so, in 2018, how could our Advent worship theme be anything other than a sustained meditation on the beloved Christmas carol, “Silent Night”, on this its 200^th anniversary?  Consequently, each Sunday before Christmas, we will highlight another verse of the carol.  Embedded in our usual Advent traditions – from the Hanging of the Greens to the Blessing of the Stockings – will be moments to dwell on the words of the carol and what they might mean for us today.

 In addition, the theme of our annual Advent Vespers service on Thursday evening, December 20^th, will be “All Things Silent Night”.  We will have readings and visuals that reflect the words of “Silent Night”.  Best of all, our choir will be singing variations of the carol as well as anthems and songs based on it.  It will be a wonderful service.  I hope you will come – and invite your neighbors and friends – to this opportunity to decompress in a busy season, to listen, to contemplate, and to find a deeper meaning for these frenzied days before Christmas.

         Because this first Sunday in Advent is the Sunday of Peace, we turn to the ancient – and oftentimes familiar – words of the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah’s words, of course, were never meant to foretell the coming of Jesus.  That was not the role of prophets in Isaiah’s day. 

A prophet was an advisor to the monarch, but someone unique who spoke the wisdom of God/Yahweh, someone who reminded the Jewish king who his people were and to whom they owed allegiance.  One blogger I read this past week wrote this about Isaiah’s words:

“This passage from the Book of Isaiah comes from around 740 BCE. It was a time when Assyria was threatening to overrun Syria and Palestine. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had formed a coalition with neighboring nations in order to repel Assyria. They had asked the Southern Kingdom of Judah to join them. Isaiah's prophecy (however) calls on the people to look (not to warfare but rather) to Mount Zion and the temple as symbols of their salvation. He paints a vivid picture of God's realm which will come if we learn to walk in God's way. It is a world where relationships between people have been restored and made whole. No one will be hungry or at war. All the weapons will be turned into tools for food production.” 

Isaiah invites us – down through the ages even today – to dream of a world where we walk in the light, a world where fear is no longer the basis on which we make decisions, a world where we are more concerned about how to bring people in rather than how to keep them out, a world of bridges connecting us rather than walls separating us,

a world where we search for what we hold in common with others rather than dwell on what differentiates us, a world where, as a result, swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, a world of peace. 

Isaiah invites us to dream, to focus on that possibility, and to live as if it is a reality.  You see, that is the only way such a dream will become real – if we live it - the only way we shall one day “sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace”.

         But can we really live into the possibility of peace? Is there such a thing as “calm and bright” and “heavenly peace”, or has the world become too cynical, too crazy, too violent?  Is it even possible for us to energize the same outlandish creativity of which Isaiah spoke (turning swords into plowshares?  Spears into pruning hooks?) Can we use our own ingenuity and energy for good, for building up rather than tearing down?  Can we acknowledge our God-given capacity to reach across divides and find our common humanity?

Those are such important questions for us to answer.  You see, surely this creativity, this discovery of our common humanity lies at the heart of Isaiah’s words – and will be the path that will lead us out of darkness.

I believe we really can use our human energy to birth the “calm and bright” of our Christmas carol.  I believe we have the capacity to birth some “heavenly peace”.  Otherwise, I would have given up on the church and quit this preaching business long ago.  We may walk in deep darkness most of the time, but I believe that over the years we have seen glimpses of light, enough to keep me going, at least.

The WWI Christmas Truce of 1914 is one such example – and it ties in beautifully with “Silent Night”.  Briefly, just months into the war, soldiers from both sides came out of their trenches for a single day and found their common humanity.  Listen to this news report:

Script

Host of the broadcast: “... a remarkable story emerged from the front line trenches [of WWI]. Though accounts vary, it seems that in the week leading up to Christmas 1914, groups of German and British soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings, cigarettes and songs between their trenches. The unofficial ceasefires allowed soldiers on both side to venture out into No Man’s land - the stretch of land between the German and British trenches – to collect and bury the bodies of dead soldiers.

One version of events has it that the Germans began singing “Stille Nacht”, “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve. British soldiers, recognizing the tune, joined in. Some groups of soldiers even finished up with a game of footy (soccer) together.

“Actual letters from British soldiers who witnessed the truce give us a glimpse of that Christmas Eve on the Western Front 100 years ago. Here is what some of them said about what happened:”

Voice 1: “The Germans started singing and lighting candles about 7.30
on Christmas Eve, and one of them challenged anyone of us to go across for a bottle of wine. One of our fellows accepted the challenge and took a big cake to exchange.”

Voices 2: “We came from our mouse holes and saw the English advancing towards us and waving cigarette boxes, handkerchiefs and towels. They had not rifles with them and there we know it could only be a greeting and that it was alright.”

Voice 3: “We had a church service and sang hymns, we met the Germans midway between the trenches and wished each other a ‘Merry Christmas’. We exchanged buttons, badges, caps, etc, and we all sang songs.”

Voice 4: “They gave us cigars and cigarettes and toffee and they told us they didn’t want to fight, but had to. Some could speak English as well as we could and some had worked in Manchester. The Germans seem very nice chaps who were awfully sick of the war.”

Voices 5: “We were able to move about the whole of Christmas Day with absolute freedom. It was a day of peace in war.... It is only a pity that it was not a decisive peace.”

Host: “In a letter sent from the front on 29th Dec 1914, Staff sergeant Clement Barker reports that during the truce British soldiers went out and recovered 69 dead comrades in No Man’s Land and buried them. Sgt Barker also reports that an impromptu football match then broke out between the two sides when a ball was kicked out from the British lines into No Man's Land. Another soldier writes about how the truce came to an end at 3pm on Christmas day when a German officer called his men in:”

Voice 6: “A German soldier said to me ‘today (Christmas Day) nice; tomorrow, shoot.’ As he left me he held out his hand, which I accepted, and said: ‘Farewell, comrade.’ With that we parted....”

“Script of WW1 tribute courtesy of PictureWise Productions http://www.picturewise.co.uk"

         This story is a powerful reminder that peace is only possible when we reach beyond the fear and the despair that characterize our world.  Peace is possible only when we defer to our common humanity, to what brings us together rather than what drives us apart.  Peace is only possible when we approach one another with curiosity rather than with fear.

Like that one person who issued the initial invitation to come out of the “mouse holes” and connect face to face, we each have the capacity, as Methodist pastor Marcia McFee noted, “to reach out across divides and connect because we are humans with common human needs and, deep down, we all have the desire for peace for ourselves and our children.”

Let’s try that this Advent season. Let’s come out of our trenches and mouse holes.  Let’s reach out to one another and come to face-to-face with what we have in common – not just with the people we know, but much more importantly with the people we do not know, the ones who are different from us – ethnically, racially, religiously, in regard to economic background, sexual orientation, politics.  

Doing so might just change the course of history, if only for a day. It might just make our world “calm and bright”.  It might just allow us to “sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.”