The Candle of Presence

Second Sunday of Advent

For it is God who is at work in you.

Philippians 2:13

Not Absence

Last week we talked about what makes for Christian hope by looking at 1 Thessalonians. As we continue through our Advent themes, today we will talk about what makes a truly Christian peace with the help of Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

But first, what actually is peace? We often tend to think of peace as when some things are absent. An absence of war; the “peace and quiet” of no sound; stillness, a lack of movement (take the Christmas hymn “Still, Still Still”).

But when we look closely, none of these are exactly the right synonyms. Sometimes, quiet is very anxiety-inducing; when I first moved to Vermont, I found it very, very quiet in this empty manse in the empty countryside, and several times a month, the smallest creaks and cracks of the old home would convince me that somebody had snuck in the house. Stillness also doesn’t always mean things are at peace, because sometimes stillness sometimes it means someone we love is gone, or sometimes stillness is just war waiting to happen, enemies hiding in wait.

So what is peaceful? When we talk about a truly peaceful quiet or a truly peacefulness stillness, there is something else present—connection.

In the true peace of true silence, we connect to a deeper spaciousness in a deeper silence than is normally possible. I have found true stillness on the lakes around here, where my friend Natalie jokes about having “kayak summits” with world leaders, because it is just impossible to argue when you’re floating on the pond on a summer day. I know exactly what she means! And when you look out your window and see Christmas lights illuminating the snow in a truly peaceful way, you have connected through the quiet, through the stillness, to something greater than yourself.

Blessing and Connection

How else is peace about connection?

If there were only five Hebrew words every Christian knows, shalom would no doubt be one. You probably already know that shalom means more than simply “peace” but also means a deeper blessing, “well-being,” or “harmony” (keep that word in your back pocket for a second). It is not a coincidence that it’s still the message of greeting among Jewish people.

I am far from a Hebrew scholar, and there are oodles of scholars who have written, studied, and said more profound things about shalom that are beyond my comprehension. But know that greeting people with shalom is not about saying, “Quiet be with you,” or “Stillness be with you,” or “Absence of war be upon you.” It’s reaffirming a core prayer by embedding it within our everyday life, something more like, “I desire for you to be connected to a flourishing life in God.” When early Christian communities of Jews and Greeks translated this into their own practice with “Peace of Christ be with you,” Christians weren’t saying, “I hope things are calm for you,” no, it was a prayer that connected each other into harmony.

Last night, Jen and I were in Burlington for the one-year birthday of a company she works for, a very tiny startup that makes vegan food (I’m not vegan, but it’s very tasty). This was not some rocking party at a lavish place, but in the basement of a small community center. It wasn’t a huge crowd, mostly close friends and family of the owner. But there was connected flourishing. It wasn’t quiet, it wasn’t still; kids were running around kicking a ball and acting like maniac superheroes while Jen helped pioneer a hand-made shirt station with paint and stencils, everyone making vegan sandwiches, playing a get-to-know-you bingo game, and chatting. It really wasn’t a huge party. But as someone who isn’t politically or even morally vegan (but as someone who was working on a sermon), I thought, “This is peace.” Humble, simple flourishing on the root level that starts from a connection. In their case, it was over vegan food, but it can be over all sorts of things. When I text with my college friends about football, as silly and as negligible as the stakes are, that is also peace—connection in a state of flourishing over sports that simulate wargames for fun, an ultimate peaceful mockery of war.

When we wish for peace in the world in places that are horribly thirsty for it, the goal is not just that they be a place where there is no fighting, but a place of deep connection. When there's people bombing you, attacking you, subjecting you, oppressing you economically, imprisoning you unlawfully, there’s no connection, only disconnection.

Gospel of Harmony

For us as Christians, that connection to flourishing always starts with, comes back to, and is always rooted in our connection to God through Jesus Christ, because it is through him that we live in harmony with life. Harmony is another one of those words that has lost its meaning through overuse, but it is a beautiful reflection of a deep state of connection that honors individual freedom wedded with cooperation. Thinking of harmony in its musical meaning, the music is not always happy, sometimes sad, or intense, or somber, or even stressful, but harmonizing arises when we know how to complement the existing song from the place of our own true nature, contributing something that was not previously there. This is peace.

And so peace isn’t silence, it’s a song (sometimes with silence). Jesus connects us to that song of peace, and in his Body, we discover how we can harmonize with the world.

No, Christ did not come into the world to preach a gospel of quiet time. The peace of Christ came with trumpet blasts. The peace of God that “surpasses all understanding” is not Paul saying, “It’s like a lake more still than you knew was possible.” No, the peace of Christ is like in Revelation when people come together and worship God with a connection so pure that there is no more darkness, only light. Listen to what Paul says about Christ being our peace in Ephesians 2, and how Christ brings people into new connections. Pay attention to how much emphasis there is on connection:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Eph 2:13-18

Not only is the peace of Christ connects we who live, the peace of Christ also harmonizes us with this whole timeless, cosmic story of God:

You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone; in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Eph 2:19-22

But how does a Christian harmonize?

Cruciform (And Incarnational) Peace

We talked last week about how our hope can take on the shape of a cross, “cruciform,” a self-giving shape of holiness, shared together in patience and empowerment. It’s no coincidence that the peace of Christ is also a cruciform peace. Yet the peace of the cross is not a masochistic waste of life, but a simultaneously incarnational. This means the way God connected to us was through self-sacrifice, and it was his self-sacrifice that created a deeper flourishing of the world.

We celebrate the incarnation, or the “entering into the world as human flesh,” of God as a human baby on Christmas Day without often having the cross in mind, or considering how the birth of Jesus is also cruciform. Why? Because it is simultaneously God filling us and God emptying himself; God going out from himself and going into humanity. As Paul says in what is believed to be one of the earliest written down Christian hymns, “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:6-8)

Connection to his people was so important that the Almighty God lowered himself for it. But Christian peace—connective flourishing—is the same way; it sacrifices itself. Because when we know what we’re gaining, it’s joyfully worth it. As Paul describes his own sacrifices for the sake of the gospel, “Even if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the service of your faith, I rejoice, and I rejoice together with all of you.” (Phil 2:17) In contrast, peace that seeks its own self-interest is not peace at all: “Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things” (Phil 3:19). False peace is a surface-level peace that demonstrates a deep down disconnection, the kind that all exploitation feasts on.

A flourishing peace is one where everyody is making sacrifices for everybody else: a flourishing family, a flourishing church, a flourishing society. And when everybody’s doing that, the layers of harmony are just majestic. We’ve all felt it. It is a peace that is not empty, but full, life-giving and light-giving.

The Candle of Presence

Last week we talked about how you are fit to be a candle of Christ’s hope, and you are also fit to be a candle of his peace. No matter how unpeaceful you’ve felt, no matter how shaken, stirred, or even violent you’ve been, you can hold his peace. No matter how disconnected you are, you can hold his peace. His peace can be born in you.

It is Jesus Christ himself who says you are fit to be his dwelling place. Listen one more time to what Paul believes so fervently: “For it is God who is at work in you” (Phil 2:13). We celebrate in Christmas that wherever he is born in us, he can incarnate his self-giving peace within us. His peace was made to be given to you, and your peace, that flame, was meant to be given to others through the Holy Spirit. This will not happen all the time—we are flickering candles, and it sometimes rains—but you are always fit to be his candle of peace.

I mentioned earlier how peace is not “absence.” Not only is it not absence, it’s actually presence. I don’t have an acronym for peace like H.O.P.E. For peace, we have these ideas that are all important for peace—connection, flourishing, harmony, self-sacrifice—but they can be summarized in just one letter “P,” for “presence.” See, peace and Christmas go hand-in-hand because it’s about celebrating the miraculous presence of Christ—not the absence of war, the absence of noise, the absence of activity, but the presence of Christ. And so our Advent candle of peace is the candle of Presence.

How do we cultivate that sense of God’s presence? I’m afraid I don’t have innovative theological techniques, only practices that Christians have passed down for centuries: practicing our prayer life, including learning more about how to pray; immersing ourselves in Scripture, wrestling until we grasp its blessing; serving others, especially those who cannot pay us back; and regularly returning our loving attention to God through embodied worship. If all else fails, gather with other Christians. And if you are too distant from God for any of that, just be like Zaccheus and keep climbing trees.

And when all that isn’t possible, too foreign, too something or other, you could do worse than starting with those old almost-peaceful things: get quiet. Get still. And connect. Connect to the One who gifted them to you. Connect to the one whose emptiness is even more empty than the purest silence, the One who does not move for he is movement. Find Him there.

Sometimes, when we wonder why there is so much suffering out there in the world, why there is so much pain, and other big questions that never feel like the perfect answers, we can start by remembering Christ’s name: Emmanuel. God-with-us. In those exact times that make you want to cry out with the Psalms, “Where is God?”, Christ is already there. He is not just present, he is God’s Presence. Christ is present in the midst of chaos, the noise, of war, of genocide, of despair, on your worst days and your best days. The peace of Christ, the shalom of Christ, is the full presence, the full connective flourishing in Christ, the most perfect, infinitely layered harmony no ears could hear, nor could we understand—that is a peace beyond understanding.

This is what John the Baptist was announcing: the Presence of God is coming to bring us into greater Presence. The coming of the Messiah meant connection for those who had never been connected, and in forgiveness, reconnecting those who had been disconnected. The utter Presence of his light was on its way, that “every valley shall be filled” (Luke 3:5), all the wheat gathered (Luke 3:17). And for everything that is not of God, no longer will it disconnect us. As we heard John the Baptist’s father Zechariah sing in his song of peace, the good news is we are to be “in holiness and righteousness in his presence all our days” (Luke 1:75), and God will “shine upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:79)

One of the most miraculous things about his Presence is that he says you are the perfect place to start. No longer is his house a temple of stone, you are the perfect place for him to be Present with. As a human being, made in his image, Christ has said I am connected to you, saying, “You are fit to be an emissary of my peace from another kingdom.” Through the self-emptying love of Jesus, you are the pinpoint place of connection from the God of heaven to this earth. The walk of faith is to live in this connection, to fully believe Christ when he proclaims his peace to all people, telling you, “I am connected to you. I am always connected to you.”

“I have come into the world to connect my people Israel to the whole of humanity; it is not only for the people who have known God from the start. I have come to connect everyone to the true vine, the Way, the Truth, the Life, so that all people may connect to this flourishing, wonderful, harmonious life, that all may know my shalom.”

“Will you help me share this peace?”