December 6, 2020 - The Second Sunday of Advent
Deborah Laforet Matthew 5:9 Matthew 10:34 Mark 4:39 Luke 2:14
December 6, 2020 Luke 12:51 John 14:27 John 20:26
Peace Be With You
Peace. When I look at the earth coated in snow, I feel peace. When I’m laying in my hammock looking up at the leaves, I feel peace. When I’m spending time with friends, I feel peace. This peace to which I’m referring is tranquility, calm, and a freedom from anxiety and distress. This fits in well with our other candles. Hope, that we lit last Sunday. Joy and love, that we will light in the next couple of weeks. Hope, peace, joy, and love are sentiments that we can hold within us and sometimes share with others.
So many of our Christmas carols refer to peace and most of them are speaking of this tranquility and calm. The night Jesus was born is imagined as a silent night, a quiet night, a night filled with stars and the image of a sleeping baby. The shepherds in their fields are quietly tending their sheep and watching the sky filled with stars when the silence is shattered by the song of angels. We imagine a very peaceful, calm, and tranquil event, without worry or distress.
This is the peace we long for today. We feel fear. We feel grief. We feel isolation. Most of us are filled with anxiety and some are experiencing distress. We long for peace, for the absence of this fear and anxiety.
But there is another kind of peace and it’s the kind we are most likely to find in our bible where peace is often paired with justice. Peace, or shalom in Hebrew, is about wholeness and harmony. It’s the ability to live without worry of hunger, homelessness, oppression, and to be free from fear of violence. It’s about becoming one and about unity. Unfortunately, many in our world, in our country, and in our community struggle with hunger, homelessness, and oppression. Our world is experiencing divisiveness. The pandemic has worsened the situation in many ways. Low-paid, essential workers are more at risk. Those with mental health struggles can’t find the support they need. Residents in long term care homes are dying. Black and indigenous communities have felt an increase in racism and a deepened inequality of resources. The vulnerable have been made more vulnerable.
Tranquility and calm are good for us. They help us to be grounded and centred, more focused and present, but this kind of peace is difficult to find if you are constantly living with a fear that you and your family will go hungry, could lose the roof over their heads, will lose or not find employment, will be harassed and oppressed by people in authority, or will get COVID-19, which is more likely in poorer communities.
Christie Neufeldt is the Regional Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean for The United Church of Canada. She recently wrote a blog post about an interview she had with Kofi Hope. Kofi Hope is the co-founder and CEO of Monumental, a new start-up focused on supporting organizations as they work towards an equitable recovery from COVID-19. Kofi’s; I encourage you to look him up. Kofi grew up in the United Church, just across the way at Erin Mills United in Mississauga. I want to share with you some of what Christie learned from Kofi, and I think we need to hear this from Kofi, a black man within our Canadian context.
In thinking about inequity, pandemic, and faith within the Canadian context, Kofi sees this time as one of disruption in Canada. He observes that as a result of COVID-19, Canadians are feeling pain and anguish arising from economic insecurity and separation from loved ones. However, the suffering and pain is not shared equally.
Kofi argues “For many middle-class Canadians, it is an exercise in empathy to understand the realities of communities like the neighbourhoods in the northwest of Toronto.” Middle class dominated neighbourhoods are disconnected from communities in the city where higher numbers of essential workers, cashiers, truck drivers, labourers in plastic manufacturers live. These workers risk their lives by going to work each day and live in the neighbourhoods most affected by COVID-19 in Toronto.
This is also a time during which Kofi asserts that Canada’s self-image has been disrupted. This is seen in the challenge to White settler Canadians. In the face of heightened visibility of police and settler violence against Black and Indigenous Peoples, White settlers are called to join in the struggle alongside Black, Indigenous and other people of colour in Canada to end systemic and institutionalized racism. This racism was fundamental to the founding of Canada and continues to pervade Canadian culture and systems today.
Kofi posits that how we respond to the disruption and pain is a profoundly spiritual question. Fear and anxiety can lead people to faith or deepen their faith journeys, but in the context of the pandemic, the church community is not available in the same way and spirituality as an individual pursuit has its limits. At the same time, we are experiencing the possibility of a once in a generation moment, as large numbers of White settler Canadians engage questions of systemic racism, and police and settler violence and (hopefully) transformational change.
Allyson read for us some verses from our four gospels that reflect the way Jesus talked about peace. Two stand out for me after reading Kofi’s thoughts. One from Matthew, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and the other from Luke: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”
Kofi talks about disruption. Sometimes the only way to bring peace to all people is through disruption. There has been a lot of disruption in the world from this tiny virus that spreads so virulently. We have seen a large increase in unemployment, too many deaths in long term care homes, deceit and disinformation, a clash between protesters and law enforcement, election upsets and accusations of fraud. This disruption is painful, but is this the disruption our world needs? Can we work together towards a new way of life that offers equal resources for all people and fairness and respect for all races, genders, cultures, religions, and abilities?
On that silent night in Bethlehem, a promise was born, a promise of peace and justice. This child grew up to challenge authorities, spend time with poor fishermen, the demon-possessed, all genders, and to pay particular attention to those others had dismissed. He pushed back at a system that was unjust and unfair. He was a disruption to the system and this was his way of bringing peace to all, not through violence but through peaceful protest.
Imagine a world where all can find wholeness, harmony, calm, tranquility, and the absence of fear or worry. Peace on earth is not just about the absence of war but about the presence of justice.
Lighting this candle of peace reminds us that Jesus wasn’t born to a calm and tranquil world, but a world of war, oppression, greed, and abusive power. Jesus was born into a world that needed him. We still need him. We need his stories, his healing touch, his thirst for justice, and his mercy and compassion. And it’s all right here, in you and in me. We are the hands and feet of Christ.
As we sing of a silent night and heavenly peace, may we work together to create such a world in which all babies are born, a world of peace and harmony, unity and love. May it be so. Amen.