Dear Advent People,
Most of you can almost guess how I’ll begin most of my sermons – words similar to, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” I don’t claim any originality though. This is how Paul greets his hearers in most of his letters, sermons if you. Letting His hearers – those in the early church and us today – know God’s “peace” is with them.
“Peace” is another of those words in scripture that loses something when translated into English. The “peace” Paul speaks of isn’t a simple “absence of conflict.” It’s a much more complete peace coming from the Hebrew word “Shalom (שָׁלוֹם)” – a “completeness, intactness, and unity.” Only when something is truly “complete, intact, and unified” with all that is around it, can “true peace” exist. God mourns that, because of our sin, we don’t have true peace with Him or each other. However, God’s love for us reestablishes the peace we have broken.
Advent is a time of preparation. We prepare, of course, to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace – the means our Father uses to reestablish His desired “shalom.” Through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, He defeated sin’s power to create eternal conflict. Our Father’s gift of forgiveness through His Son Jesus reestablishes true peace between us and Him.
John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus by calling people to turn away from sin and receive God’s forgiveness (Matthew 3:1-2). As we confess our sins to God, He forgives them completely and totally. He removes the source of conflict with Him we create. Further, when we confess our sins to and forgive each other, as God has forgiven us – true peace begins to take hold. By our witness of God’s mercy, true peace grows – killing Satan’s seeds of conflict.
We shine the light of God’s true peace in the world. Let’s give the gift of God’s true peace in our words and deeds to all we meet now AND throughout the “Advent” life He calls us to live until Jesus’ glorious return.
In God’s Peace,
Pastor Jim