It
is hard for me to remember when we weren’t engaged in a war. When I was a kid, it was the Second World
War. I heard the news about Pearl Harbor
while I was listening to the radio in our living room. We had no television set then. We had blackouts and civil defense wardens
walking though our neighborhoods making sure that no light was shining out of
our houses. We had ration books and I
took them to the grocery store and got food with the stamps. At school we had drills when we huddled under
our desks when supposedly German bombers were threatening our peace.
As kids, we would play ball in a
vacant lot in back of our houses. There
was a war veteran living nearby who would come out on his back porch and yell
at us because of the noise that we were making.
Somebody told us that he was “shell shocked”. We didn’t really know what that meant, but it
served as an explanation for his behavior.
We now know that he had PTSD from the war and we should have been a
little bit more compassionate with him.
There was great celebration when the
war was over. I remember VE day when the
war in Europe was over and VJ day when finally the Japanese surrendered. We were a bit worried about the atomic bombs
that were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war, but we were very glad
that the conflict was over.
It was only a few years before we
became engaged in Korea and then Viet Nam.
The Cold War overshadowed all of these times. Peace is certainly an elusive thing.
I am struck by the Gospel on this first
Sunday of Advent predicting the coming of the Lord Jesus in great power and
majesty in the middle of extreme turbulence on this earth. The message is that we will be troubled
beyond our understanding; that wars and rumors of wars will be constant and we
will begin to wonder what was to become of us.
But God in His wisdom will send our savior to us and our redemption will
be at hand. That is the Good News of the
Gospel. What I know about that is that
it is none of our doing. We are the ones
on this earth creating the havoc and the multitude of difficulties. Our political systems simply aren’t strong
enough to get us out of our misery and we need the hand of God to help us. Our help is in the name of the Lord and he
will finally, at last, bring redemption.
The problem with that is that it has
very little to do with our own ability to solve our own problems. By ourselves, we can do very little to make
peace in this world. We can love one
another, care for one another and do our best to make this world a better
place. That is what Jesus taught us and
asked us to do as his followers. But
when it comes to creating a world full of harmony, we don’t have the ability to
do that.
There were times when we tried. After
Constantine recognized Christianity, the cross marched ahead of the Roman army
and we began compelling adherence to the Christian faith at the point of a
sword. That didn’t work very well. Certainly the Crusades were an example of
this. We sent armies into the Holy Land
to defeat Saladin and his armies and to free Jerusalem from those who had
conquered it. That resulted in more, not
less war. After all of the crusades were
over, we had the burden of the Inquisition, which tried to impose Christianity
on humankind by force and terror. That
didn’t really work very well either.
When I look at our history, it is hard for me to understand how we ever
believed that we could remake the world in God’s image by force and argument. It just doesn’t work.
What we have been taught by our Lord
is that love is the way to the human heart.
When we love each other, hearts are drawn to us. We don’t need guns or swords to do this; our
compassion and our love are what works best.
What our Lord promises us in this
season of Advent is that eventually, God will make the world over in the way
that it was always intended to be by sending his only Son back to us to be our
savior and redeemer. That good news is
what we are celebrating in this magnificent season. We celebrate Advent as a time of anticipation
that God’s incredible goodness will at last triumph over the egotistical misery
that our human nature breeds.
That is welcome news in this time of
increased conflict and fear. We wonder
where the world is going and our political systems don’t seem to be able to
give us much in the way of answers about what will happen next. But when we love one another and accept each
other the way that we come, there is a beauty in that that comes from the heart
of God. While we wait for our Lord to
come, we can make the world much better when we love.
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