Marcia Sietstra:  Pastor

It is the second Sunday of Advent, and I imagine a number of you are already feeling the first pangs of Christmas panic. You know, the worry that you won’t get all the presents bought before the store runs out of something, or those cards written, or the cookies and fudge made. I heard some radio commentator say this week that if you’re not at least half done with your Christmas preparations, it’s time to move into high gear. Well this morning, for almost an hour, you get a wonderful break from thinking about that stuff. So take a deep breath, relax, and let’s focus instead on the spiritual themes of Advent!

Because in the whole scheme of things, this contemplative time that the church calls Advent, is far more important to our lives. Advent is the period of four weeks preceding Christmas; the word means literally "to come", and in these four weeks as we talk about the coming of the Christ child, it is a metaphor for the coming of God’s presence into our lives. We ask ourselves: How do I prepare for the coming of God into my life?

Now furthermore, on each of the four Sundays of Advent there is typically a theme; on the second Sunday, it’s peace. Quite a coincidence that today’s theme is peace, since we are poised to attack Iraq if the Bush Administration is not satisfied with Iraq’s report this weekend! Today is the deadline for the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, to furnish a list of all Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or face a threatened attack by the United States. We are facing the very real possibility of war in a matter of weeks, perhaps even days. I’d say the theme of peace today is timely.

So—let’s talk about those two things: preparing for God’s presence to come and peace. Are they connected? Yes, if you take seriously what Jesus taught, they are. I am convinced that Jesus believed that we usher in the presence of God when we establish peace and justice.

In the song of his mother Mary, in the Gospel of Luke, she announces to the world that Jesus is the one who brings justice: he has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. It is a song about redistributive justice where the poor have enough and power is shared. The angels sing about Jesus as one who will bring peace on earth.

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Now some would say he failed—there is no peace—there wasn’t in his day and there still isn’t! But perhaps that is not what we should expect. We call Jesus the Prince of Peace for more than one reason— but the one I would focus on today is this—he is the Prince of Peace because he taught humanity how to establish peace. If you want peace, and if you want to experience the presence of God in your life, you have a blueprint from Jesus on how to do it…care enough to do something to make the world more peaceful and just and kind…make it a priority to care as much about others as you do yourself.

We’ve been hearing an awful lot about weapons of mass destruction lately. Well, as Christians we have been shown weapons of mass survival instead—by Jesus Christ. Weapons of mass survival are things that help others, like life-saving vaccines, medicines and health interventions, emergency food aid and farming technologies that could avert literally millions of deaths each year. Weapons of mass survival include actions such as setting up educational aid, small business loans, and giving the kind of assistance that grows infrastructure in poor, struggling countries.

Christian Century magazine reports that while the U.S. prepares to spend an estimated $100 billion to get rid of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2 percent of that amount for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. "One stark result is that the world’s poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilize the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty."

What would be the shape of the world if our foreign policy deliberately sought to reduce human suffering around the world instead of seeking to maximize our nation’s power and access to resources such as oil? I don’t wish to be political here; but as a Christian leader, I have a responsibility to remind you that the darkness Jesus came to light was the darkness of human suffering, and if we are honoring the birth of Jesus and what he stood for, then we need to be serious about alleviating this suffering all around the world, not just among ourselves.

Christmas, if seen deeply, is not just about the birth of Jesus; it’s about the birth of his teachings. It’s a celebration of the light they brought to the darkness of human warring and greed. If we only honor Jesus’ birth, and not his life and teachings, we haven’t really experienced Christmas at all.

If we recreate the manger scene, but don’t recreate the qualities of peace, justice and love in our hearts and lives, and in this peace-starved world, then we haven’t re-created the proper Christmas. Forget the ornaments and the baking—there is much more important creating to be done if we are celebrating the Christ Child’s presence in life, here and now, today!

Last week I sent out a newsletter with copies of a letter signed by the heads of all the mainline Christian churches in South Dakota. It has been signed by the heads of nearly all mainline Christian denominations in this country in recent weeks, having come out of the National Council of Churches, and there is a groundswell of Christian resistance to attacking Iraq before all other peaceful means for security have been pursued. This weekend, Dec. 6-8, has been declared as a National Interfaith Prayer for Peace weekend all around the country. Some churches are having 50 hour prayer vigils; others are planning special services.

What can you do? You can spend time in prayer for peace today, as we will in just a few minutes. Pick up extra copies of the letter from the church leaders out on the table in the narthex and share them. You can write your legislators—their addresses are in your bulletin. You can email President Bush by sending an email to the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center. Their address is on a big sign on the card table in the narthex.

During these days of Advent, think about what you can do to work for peace in the world, because we’re called to do more than give lip service to peace. Instead of sitting around and watching "Friends," become informed about what is happening in your community and the world. Get on the internet and look up the National Council of Churches (www.ncc.org). Look at the UCC website (www.ucc.org). Raise your awareness; come to Adult Forum in January when we talk about the Christian concept of justifiable war, or come and learn about Just War Theory at this afternoon’s lecture. We’re called to communal recommitment and responsibility. You will need to choose how you fulfill that responsibility, and very often good Christians will disagree about how to implement peace. And that’s OK, the important piece is that we do our best.

Gary Trudeau, the political cartoonist, has commented that in recent years, our country has changed from one that wanted to be good to one that wanted, at all costs, to feel good. Have you and I settled for complacency and comfortable faith rather than the hard work of faith that Jesus modeled?

As a nation, we tend to be prideful. But I wonder what John the Baptist would do with us? Expose our pride and call us to repentance? Ask us how a nation so proud of being the greatest and capable of so much can fail to use weapons of mass survival to ease the pain of so many people in so many parts of the world? St. Augustine would say, "Our pride-swollen faces have closed up our eyes."

You see, it is not God who has failed us—it is we who have failed God.

If you want to experience the presence of God, then prepare the way this Advent, by working for peace! It may be one of the most important things we can do to prepare for the coming of the Spirit of the Christ Child this Christmas. Amen.