Making peace

 

Matthew 3: 1-12
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
December 4, 2022

Photo of tealight candles burning in the dark, in the shape of a peace sign.

In the northern hemisphere autumn into winter is a time ripe with storytelling. We gather with family, friends, and neighbors—close by or at a distance—around tables of food passed down from generations before us and we tell our family stories that remind us who we are. As the year draws to a close, in the glow of candlelight, we hear once again the stories of the birth of Jesus from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Many people have fallen in love with the Icelandic tradition of giving books as gifts on Christmas Eve and then spending the rest of the night reading and eating chocolate. Our Jewish friends and neighbors tell the story of Hanukkah, of the lamp in the temple burning for 8 days because by some miracle the oil did not run out. It’s almost as if it’s written into our DNA: darkness, fire, and stories.



Any story that tells us who we are has multiple layers: where it came from, who told it and why, how has it changed in the retelling, what does it mean now. For as long as there have been stories about the birth of Jesus, these stories have relied heavily on the Hebrew scriptures, especially the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, but also looking all the way to Genesis as the beginning of the Christian salvation story. And yet Christianity is not the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. Certainly there were early Jewish communities who followed Jesus, like the one the gospel of Matthew was writing to, who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the one promised by God to save God’s people Israel.



In following a new path, what was believed to be the correct path, Christians distanced themselves, differentiated themselves from their Jewish kindred. And of course, there would be discord but as time went on, the descriptive difference between Christians and Jews in the gospels became prescriptive and zero-sum. If one is right, the other must be wrong. The Pharisees as well as the Sadducees were made the villain, that ‘brood of vipers’, and charged with hypocrisy and with them the Jews. What began as a new sect in Judaism became a religion that in its powerful empire sought to end the history and family from which Jesus was born and blamed them for his death.



Two millennia after the birth of Jesus it is not only irresponsible but harmful to continue reading the Hebrew scriptures and claiming to find Jesus and the Church there. To be sure, the Hebrew scriptures give us instruction about humanity’s relationship to the divine, about God’s justice and desire for wholeness for God’s people. Jesus was steeped in these words and way of living; these words were written on his heart and into his DNA.



We no longer refer to the Hebrew scriptures as the Old Testament, as though they were a prelude to the testament of Jesus and the early Church. The gospel of Matthew is a prime example of pointing to Hebrew scripture as prediction of Jesus as the Messiah and yet the author of Matthew was not trying to convince outsiders but rather he was expressing the convictions of insiders. For Matthew and his community Jesus was the Messiah. And yet we in the 21st century, alongside our Jewish friends and neighbors, cannot claim that in all honesty.



To be sure we can share the same hopes of God’s justice be done on earth, the end of empire, the wholeness of humanity and all living things, but we can no longer claim the word ‘Messiah’ as our own. Jesus as Savior, as Kindred One, as Teacher, as Crucified and Risen One, these are some of our hopes as Christians. We cannot nor should we separate Jesus from his Jewishness. But we do need to be mindful of when we are overstepping our bounds and claiming something that never really was ours. If the Christian faith is dependent on proof or prediction of Jesus as Messiah in the Hebrew scriptures, we are continuing the sins of the crusades and doing violence in the name of Jesus.

Quote by poet Lori Hetteen: "You keep pairing me with quiet," Peace said, "but my true companion is the mighty clamor of chains being ripped clean from the wall."

It was the Romans who achieved peace through domination, what was called Pax Romana. But there are Jews and Christians who try to achieve peace through justice work. Making peace can also mean letting go of, doing away with, that which we do not need, like burning away the chaff until what is left is what matters: the essential seed.



So each Sunday in Advent our scripture reading will come from the gospel of Matthew and I invite us to struggle with his words and his interpretation of Jesus. We will be singing four different rewrites of the Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, leaving out the references to “captive Israel” and messianic titles like “shoot of Jesse” and “Key of David”. If this Table is about disrupting our lives for the sake of another, certainly we can disrupt and question our beliefs and traditions about Christmas out of respect and love for our Jewish kindred.



As we pray every time we come to this Table, let us have great courage to live out in the world what we pray and profess, that in sharing we may do justice, make peace, and grow in love. Amen.

Benediction

 

Lord, make us a channel of disturbance.
Where there is apathy, let us provoke;
Where there is compliance, let us bring questioning;
Where there is silence, may we be a voice.
Where there is too much comfort and too little action, grant disruption;
Where there are doors closed and hearts locked,
Grant the willingness to listen.
When laws dictate and pain is overlooked…
When tradition speaks louder than need…
Grant that we may seek rather to do justice than to talk about it;
Disturb us, O Lord, teach us to be radical.
To be with, as well as for, the alienated;
To love the unlovable as well as the lovely;
Lord, make us a channel of disturbance.