(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on December 9, 2018, Advent II)
“They Make a Desert and Call It Peace”
All his life, Zechariah had heard
the stories. He had heard about
father Abraham wandering underneath stars and hearing the wild, whispered
promises of God that he and his family would be blessed. He had heard about how the people had
been slaves in Egypt and God had delivered them to freedom. He had heard about little David and big
Goliath, about how that boy grew into a great king and how God had made a
promise to establish his kingdom forever.
But they were all just
stories. Reality looked very
different. Roman soldiers walked
the streets, curses on their tongues, the threat of violence never more than a few
steps away. Roman coins
circulated the ancient world declaring in their inscription, “Caesar is lord,”
and Roman taxes reminded the people regularly that they were not free but
servants of a foreign empire. They
were at the Romans’ beck and call.
When Emperor Augustus issued a census, people had no choice but to travel
to their hometown to be counted.
That is what they were to the Romans. Numbers, statistics, prospects for labor or monetary gain.
Zechariah and the Judean people
were not the only ones who lived under the oppressive rule of the Roman
Empire. Numerous other peoples
fell under the heel of the empire, and like Zechariah they knew the burden of
occupation. The Roman historian
Tacitus records one outsider’s view of Rome in these words: the Romans “make a
desert and call it peace.” In
other words, the pax Romana or peace
of Rome was not anywhere near what it was cracked up to be. For Rome, peace meant defeating your
enemies and keeping them defeated.
Or as the famous Roman proverb put it more simply, “If you want peace,
then prepare for war.”
A Desert Kind of Peace
The peace of Rome was a hostile
peace. But truth be told, the
peace that the Judeans sought was little different.
If Zechariah spent much time
around the city gates in Jerusalem, where people talked business and politics
and the state of the world, I imagine he’d have heard a debate along these
lines:
“If we really wanted peace, we’d
do something about it. We’re never
gonna get our way unless we fight for it.
We need a revolution.”
“A revolution? Have you seen how the Romans handle revolutions? It’s not pretty, my friend. If you’re lucky enough to escape the
sword and the flames, you’ll face a life of slavery. No, if we really want peace, we need to give up these
aspirations. We need to be content
with what life we have and just keep out of the Romans’ way.”
In a nutshell, it’s the classic
bully scenario and the choice of either fight or flight. Both options promise peace. But either way, it is a false peace, a
hostile peace—a desert kind of
peace. Fighting back may get you
what you want, but it leaves wounds and resentment. It leaves a desert, a desolation. Retreating from confrontation may keep you safe, but it also
keeps you on edge, on eggshells, afraid of what is to come. It’s like living in a desert, deprived
of growth and greening and life.
A Pioneer, a Prophet, a Preparer
Now at this time in his life
Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth had no children. And, as the Bible puts it, they were both “getting on in
years” (Luke 1:7). So when the
angel Gabriel announced to Zechariah that Elizabeth would bear a son, he could
hardly believe the news. It left
him speechless—literally. With
nine months of silence, I imagine Zechariah did plenty of thinking. I imagine that he wondered back then,
as many parents still do today, what kind of world he was bringing his son
into. I imagine that he worried
about his son having to living in such a false peace, a hostile peace—a desert
kind of peace.
But when his son is finally born,
something comes over Zechariah. He
is filled with the Holy Spirit, which is to say, something outside of him, or
deep deep inside of him, suddenly takes hold of him with a hope that will not
be held back, and he announces that his son will not live in the false peace of the world. No, he will be a pioneer, a prophet, a preparer for real
peace. He will make the world
ready for a different way of life.
“You, child, will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,” Zechariah
utters with utter conviction.
“[And] 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” (1:78-79).
How Peace Grows in the Desert
If your curiosity is piqued by
now, if you’re wondering, “Well, did it actually happen? Did Zechariah’s son prepare the people
for a different way of living, for real peace?”, then you’re in luck. The lectionary (our church calendar for
scripture) smiles kindly upon us and grants us a glimpse into the adult life of
Zechariah’s baby boy, John. Our
other scripture today fast-forwards us thirty years or so from the moment when
Zechariah defiantly announces his hope and conviction that his boy would lead
the people into a new peace. What
we find is his boy John all grown up and preaching. Where? Where
else? The desert!
It’s too good to be a
coincidence! While the world makes
a desert and calls it peace, the Spirit of God goes precisely to these places
of desolation and deprivation, where peace in fact is absent and most needed.[1] There in the desert, there in the
uneasy peace of Israel, among the scars of Roman violence and the fears of
further loss, there John proclaims real peace. There where people are languishing from a lack of peace,
John implores them urgently to change their mind—or as we say in the church, to
“repent” (3:3). In other words, no
more fight or flight. Instead,
John proclaims a different way, a way that his father Zechariah had foreseen
when he first sang his hope: “the forgiveness of sins” (1:77; 3:3). Not just God forgiving us, but us
forgiving others and honoring the sacred life they bear. When the crowd asks what this change
looks like, he responds: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has
none; and whoever has food must do likewise”—which is to say, think not only
about yourself but also about others; see them as God sees them; seek not
simply your gain but the common good.
That is how life grows in a desert. That is how peace grows in a world of violence and fear.
I wonder if it is any coincidence
that when we have heard such proclamations in history, they have come time and
again from the desert, from places of false peace. For that is precisely where the Spirit goes to prepare the
way of the Lord. [In El Salvador
where the powerful persons of business and politics exploited the poor through
threat and violence, Archbishop Oscar Romero responded with neither fight nor
flight. By the Spirit that
inhabited John, he pronounced: “Peace is not the product of terror or
fear. Peace is not the silence of
cemeteries. Peace is the generous,
tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.”] And in the United States where minorities continue to suffer
the cloaked persecution of prejudice, Martin Luther King, Jr. called for neither fight nor flight,
but declared by the same Spirit, “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be
achieved by understanding.” And in
my own home, when I complained of a classmate whose behavior was a bit rough
around the edges, my mom shared with me by the same Spirit that my classmate in
fact lived in a troubled home, and what he needed more than anything was love.
If the message of Advent is that
Christ is always coming—and I believe it is—then the message of this Sunday is
that the Spirit that prepares the way of Christ is always calling for peace
from the desert. Wherever there is
a false peace, a hostile peace, the Spirit is crying for real peace—forgiveness
and understanding and compassion.
Can you hear the Spirit’s cry
today? Or perhaps…perhaps it is meant
to come from our lips too?
Prayer
Spirit of God
Whose peace passes
Beyond understanding—
Incline our ears
And our hearts
To hear your cry
In the deserts
Of this world.
Change our minds—
Our compulsive habits
Of fight or flight—
And draw us into your way
Of forgiveness, salvation, and
true peace.
In Christ, who shows the way. Amen.
[1] While
Isaiah’s prophecy seems to predetermine the setting of the desert for John’s
preaching, I also believe that the setting has something to do with God’s
determination to bring peace where there is none, life where it is
lacking. Indeed, that appears to
be at least part of the desert’s significance as a setting for Isaiah. Shortly after the prophecy about the
voice crying out in the wilderness (cf. Isa 40:3), Isaiah uses the image of
life in the desert to describe God’s saving power (cf. 41:17-20).
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