"Creation Will Be At Peace"--a Sermon

Last week, I threw together, at the very last minute, a sermon to preach at my dad's church. I am not a preacher, and I've only preached about 3-4 sermons in my life, but they were all class requirements. Anyway, my dad knew I had just taken a preaching class, and so he asked me earlier in the week if I wanted to preach when I got home, and I was really interested in doing it because it was to be a sermon concerning the Christmas message of the angels and the lighting of the angel candle, in celebration of Advent.

You see, I've been really stirred by the idea that we are in community with angels at any moment of any day. A very bizarre thought that nobody ever preaches about, but something that appears to be true nonetheless. I wanted to write a sermon that touched on that somehow. I also wanted to touch on the idea that the message of Peace that the angels brought was both an allusion to the peace of Eden, and a foreshadowing of the eternal peace to come at the second Christmas when Christ comes again to make a new heavens and a new earth. But alas, time ran out, and we had to pack up and leave for Arkansas before I could really figure out how to tie it all together into a sermon.

I'm not sure I ever did figure out how to tie it together well, but this is what I threw together in about three hours the night before I preached it (along with a little polishing up). It basically breaks every single rule I was supposed to have learned in my preaching class...but ah well. So if there is anyone out there who would like to randomly read my first Christmas sermon (heck, my first sermon I've ever written that was not for a class) enjoy!

And before I forget... Merry Christmas!

“Creation Will Be At Peace”

Luke 2:8-20:
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ[a] the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

I want to tell you a story. It is, in a way, the same kind of story that you see in almost every movie you go to. It is “the” story really—the story of which all other stories are really only copies. Have you ever noticed that many movies you go to work kind of like this:

Act I: As the movie begins, life is generally good. Everyone is pretty happy. You watch the characters as they laugh together. You watch the father scooping the little girl off the ground and raising her into the air, and then looking wistfully over at his wife with a cheesy smile on his face because he loves it. Ah… life is good. But then… huh oh… then something bad happens like…say…the wife and the cute little girl are kidnapped. Well, this ushers in Act II, and this takes up most of the movie. In Act II, the father sets out with all of his wit and macho-ness to save his wife and daughter from these bad men who have captured them. The hero-father goes through several trials and tests, almost dies several times, but always comes out alive. A lot of times, it is right when things look the worst for the hero that he begins his victory over the bad guys. Perhaps it is only a hair’s breadth separating him from his fate as he is knocked hard to the ground by the enemy…but wait! Then something happens… like say, he remembers his little girl’s laugh, his wife’s warm embrace, and these thoughts give him the energy he needs to get up off the ground and really take charge. He beats his enemy this time, and comes out alive. Act III. In this final thirty minutes or so of the movie, the father takes charge, beats all the bad guys once and for all (well…unless, of course, there’s a sequel where he does it all again), and he saves his family from the bad guys. And in the last scene, like the first scene, there are lots of giddy laughter and cheesy smiles as we see the family back to “life as normal”…but not quite the same as before because they have grown closer in a way, and a bit wiser.

This is, essentially, the story. Now we often don’t think about this, but it is also the story of God and man. Just as life began in Act I of the movie with everyone happy… so also our life began, in the Garden of Eden. What if we could catch a scene in a movie of Adam and Eve’s life? What if…? I can just see Adam and Eve in that glorious garden. Adam is in the back yard…maybe he just finished building a shed to put his new riding lawnmower in…who knows? Eve is in the kitchen with her 1950’s cooking apron on, maybe she’s baking some cookies for Adam… maybe she’s making some fruit salad… who knows? Well, Adam comes inside, wipes the sweat off of his forehead as he lets out a sigh of relief. “Ahhh… air conditioning.” Hmm… there’s a problem here… I don’t mind giving Adam a riding lawnmower and air-conditioning, but we can’t have kids yet, because they don’t have kids until they get kicked out of the Garden, right? Ok, so instead of kids…of course! They have animals! Ok, so Adam walks in the back door, and their little malti-poo (that is, of course, a maltese-poodle mix—Kara and I have a little malti-poo named Libby, and she’s really cute…)… so their little malti-poo comes running into the kitchen, and goes absolutely crazy with glee, jumping all over Adam and barking anxiously until Adam picks her up. And so, Adam picks up the little white furball of a dog, snuggles it close, and looks wistfully over at Eve with a cheesy smile, and she give him a cheesy smile back. Adam reaches over to the freshly baked batch of cookies, but Eve slaps his hand saying, “No! Don’t you remember, we are having God over to dinner dear… you can have as many as you want once he gets here, because, well… you know, he’s God and he just works like that.” Ah yes, life was good.

Ah, but wait… you see, life doesn’t stay good. You know the story, you know what ushers in Act II… God said to Adam and Eve, “Of all the grocery stores in Arkansas, you can buy as much fruit as you want—on my credit card even. But there is one store I ask you not to shop at, for if you shop at this store—the store down on 1st street with the picture of a pig, yeah that one—you will surely die. But what do Adam and Eve do? Some lawyer (you know… snake…) came along persuaded them that they should go ahead and shop at the Piggly Wiggly, and because of this, they are kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Now the point of this familiar narrative God gives us in Genesis 1 is not the specifics such as, “What kind of fruit did they eat?” I don’t even think that the fruit was the really point. The point is that Adam and Eve disobeyed God. And you see, when you disobey someone, fellowship is damaged with that person, peace is broken, and thus fellowship and peace was damaged between God and Man when Adam and Eve fell. You see life went from “good” to “hard.” Very hard. All the sudden pain and suffering and death are introduced into the story. Tears fall to the ground. Blood spills onto the earth. People get angry at each other, and fight, and kill, and lie. Hearts and promises are broken. Life is hard.

This is Act II. However, there is another difference between THE story and the hypothetical movie I mentioned earlier. You see in THE story, God’s story, it is not Adam who goes out to defeat the wicked lawyer who tricked them into shopping at Piggly Wiggly… it is God Himself. God is the Father who is trying to save his loved ones from the death that was brought about by the enemy—which is Sin, disobedience, broken fellowship. All through Act II, which lasts pretty much through the rest of the Old Testament, God is trying to restore this community he once had between Himself and Humanity. The Laws given in the Old Testament were a way to help restore this community so that the presence of God could dwell among the people of Israel again. But this is still an imperfect community between God and Man. In fact, because humans are just so stupid and can’t get it right, God’s presence leaves the temple forever, and eventually the people of Israel are sent into captivity. That is where the song “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” comes from—captive Israel, waiting, longing to be freed from their captivity by the Messiah, longing also for that restored community with God, a community of peace and wholeness.

You see, community was, essentially, Act I in the Garden. The Garden of Eden was this perfect community between God and Man, between Man and Man, and between Man and the Creation God placed Man in charge over. Community. But this community was broken because of Sin, and everything God has been doing since then has been to try to restore this perfect community, trying to bring the story on to the conclusion of Act III when life will be good again.

Well, Act III began 2000 years ago in the city of Bethlehem. You see, in Bethlehem, God Himself came to His loved ones from disaster, which is an astounding news considering that, for the thousands of years during Act II, God had been trying to redeem mankind to Himself more or less from a distance, sending prophets and angels to carry his proclamations to the people… Angels—yes. That is the advent candle we lit today: the angel candle.

At this point we have to interrupt the story and ask ourselves, “What is an angel?” Well, the word, “angel” literally means “messenger.” Now, we’re talking about God re-establishing community here, so I’m going to do something crazy here that I think might just help us sink into an idea of community with the people who have come before us: the Hebrews. This is the word the Hebrews would often use when they spoke of angels: “mahlaka.” Hear that as the Hebrews, thousands of years ago, would hear that, and try to feel the community between you and them: “mahlaka.” When Rome dominated the world in the first century, the Roman world spoke Greek. They would read these Gospels and letters of the New Testament we have in the churches. And when they would read anything about angels, they would use this word: “angellos”. Again, try to hear that as if you were a first century Christian, sitting on the dusty floor in a crowded room: “angellos.” “Angel.” “Messenger.”

Many people think that an “angel” is more of an office, a kind of position, than it is a type of spiritual being. I think this is probably true, because if we look at all the different times “angels” are seen in the Bible, there are various reactions. Sometimes angels just look like anyone else. The author of Hebrews even says that many people have entertained angels without even realizing it. But then on the other hand, you get these completely different reactions, such as we get from these Shepherds in the Christmas story who are scared to death when they see the angels. So some angels seem to be scary looking…others not so much…This could mean any number of things such as that angels can assume different appearances, or that it is an office for different kinds of spiritual creatures (such as Seraphim and Cherubim). They could be scared at the startling way in which they appeared all of the sudden… or heck, it could be that some angels are just ugly…like Jay Leno. Who knows? We do understand that demons are fallen angels, so this could further support the idea that “angel” is a kind of office.

Whatever the case…we just don’t really know all that much about angels, but we do know that they know a lot about us. We do not realize this on a day to day basis, but we are being observed, you see, not just by God…but by a whole host of spiritual creatures. I know this sounds like a science fiction movie, but it’s really not. If we believe what the bible and Christian tradition has to say about it, Angels do watch us, and care for us deeply because God cares for us. In a really confusing passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul talks about wearing coverings on heads, one of the reasons he gives is “because of the angels.” People think that this is implying that angels watch us as we worship, and they are exhorted and disturbed even as we do what we do in church and in worship of God. Whatever “angels” or “heavenly beings” are, we are, somehow, in community with them, right now… even though we don’t realize it.

Now you’ve heard all of your life that there are such a thing as angels, but it’s not something that seems truly real, is it? But I imagine that the shepherds heard similar stories of angels, maybe even believed them, but nothing could have prepared them for what they saw. They were scared to death as the angels appeared and they heard them say:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

I can just imagine those words, “Peace on whom his favor rests” echoing in their minds. Peace. No more hardship. No more suffering, pain, loneliness. Peace. The good life. Eden. This was a proclamation of Eden—the perfect life of perfect community. And where did the angels say they would find this savior who will bring peace? “lying in a manger.” A manger! Of all the places in the world, the son of God, the messiah, the one who was to bring peace back into the world, bring Eden back to the earth… was born in a cow’s feeding trough? And yet, I wonder if, as God was writing out the story, this movie starring his only begotten son, he added this whole “manger” and “sleeping in a stable” thing, surrounded by all the animals, as a nod to Eden. Could it be Eden? Paul calls Christ “the Second Adam,” and here this second Adam sleeps in a cow’s dinner. Is that just coincidence? I wonder…

Peace on earth. When the Jews would hear the word, “Shalom” or “Peace,” they understood it as a kind of “wholeness” or “complete-ness”. “On Earth, wholeness…” It is a picture of mankind being whole, complete, being just as God planned for us to be, kind of like before we messed it all up, breaking fellowship and peace with our sin. But this is Act III—and thank God for Act III! This is where peace and wholeness begins to happen again as the enemy begins to get defeated little by little.

Do we see absolute peace on earth in our lives today? No. But we do a little. And we have the Gospel that Christ brought to us that gives us a new life of hope, hope of eternal life in perfect community with God, and this is a hope that can make even the darkest hour on earth just a little brighter, an “eternal weight of Glory,” as Paul says. A glorious peace.

“Peace on earth.” It began with Christ, so it is happening right now already, but it is not yet fully completed. That will happen on the second Christmas when Christ comes not as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, but as a mighty warrior. Ultimate peace happens in the life to come. Peace. Wholeness. It’s already here, but not fully, but that is okay because we have hope. But humanity cannot horde this peace to ourselves. As it fills us, we let it overflow into the rest of Creation! And this is essentially the picture that we see in Isaiah 11. Many people interpret this simply as allegory, symbolic of the peace to come. But I think there is reason to believe that there is good reason to believe that there is more to it than symbol. I am not alone in thinking that this is more like a photograph of the messianic peace that is to come. Please, look at this picture of peace the prophet Isaiah gives us:

“The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling [a] together;
and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.”

You see, just as God created the heavens and the earth and filled it with all kinds of life—both in the heavens and the earth—he is working to bring that full life of peace to all of his creation, not just to mankind. I’m convinced that the end of God’s story in Act III will look much like His story began in Act I, much like this picture Isaiah gives—a “new heavens and a new earth” when not just man, but all of Creation will be at peace.

But that peace comes to us, little by little, even now, and it can fill us. Peace, yes, as it overflows from all “on whom his favor rests” to the angels who watch over what is happening in this wondrous story that their God, our God, is writing. Joy to them, I’m sure, as they got to play a part in it, “messengers” bearing God’s glorious message to the shepherds. And peace, also, to the animals who so graciously shared their beds with Mary and Joseph and the little baby Jesus that night. Peace to them, as they slept side by side with the people, feeling the warmth and the joy that came from the new parents.

This Christmas message the angels bring to the shepherds is an allusion, a reminder of the peace in the Garden of Eden, and it is a foreshadowing reminder of the peace that is to come once and for all when Christ comes again and we enter into eternal, perfect Fellowship and community with him and his Creation once again on that blessed second Christmas.

Now imagine, if you will, that hope of life that we have for a second. Imagine all the pains and worries of this world as they pale in comparison to the glory that awaits us. Imagine the peace you feel as you watch these daily sufferings you experience fade away like a mist fades in the penetrating rays of the sun, a mist that you have forgotten was even there by the time you eat lunch. Imagine that peace, and imagine it forever. Let this hope fill you as much as you can stand with peace and joy and hope as we remember the message of these angels this Christmas. Peace. And don’t horde that peace.

Imagine that peace overflowing from you into the angels that are watching you, even when you are alone. Say that something goes terribly wrong, and you are alone, and about to get really frustrated. Think of this Peace proclaimed by the angels on that first Christmas, the Peace of eternal life, and watch that frustration melt away, and imagine that peace and joy overflow into the angels that are watching you, perhaps even those very same angels that came to the shepherds.

As you experience that peace yourself, imagine that peace overflowing from you even the animals that you’re around. Perhaps you have a dog or a cat in your house. Imagine the kind of community Adam and Eve had with the animals, and recognize that this is the kind of community that God wants to restore you to. I know this sounds crazy, but nevertheless, let that community happen between you and your pet, or you and the squirrel climbing up the tree. Be Adam and Eve and bless the life around you, all life. Be creative with it!

Let joy and hope overflow from you in your relationships with people. Imagine the true insignificance of those little annoying things that happen around people—A waiter gets your order wrong, or you have to stand in line for an hour, or someone hides the remote control somewhere and you can’t find it—imagine as all these annoying things fade completely away in eternity. Instead, focus on the thing that will last even into eternity: Love. Let that perfect community that is to come once again start to happen in your relationships with people.

But finally, and most importantly, Give thanks and glory to God. This is part of your community with God, a communication of Thanks and Praise to Him. Follow the excellent example of the angels and say, “Glory to God!” Let His peace and His joy flow more and more into you as you give Him glory for what he has done in this wonderful, unimaginable blessing of a thing we call Christmas.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”