[Transcript of video]

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to this Advent message! My name is Karl Hand, I am an Elder with Metropolitan Community Churches, and I wanted to share with you something about Messengers of Peace today. In the gospel of John, many of us know that Jesus said

“Peace I leave with you, not as the world gives, but as I give” – John 14:17.   

There are two different kinds of peace that Jesus mentions. And at the moment we are living at a time when, once again, as so often throughout history, there is a threat of war in the world on a very grand scale. And we don’t want to give in to a version of peace that isn’t everything it’s cut out to be.

A few years before Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus had an inscription carved in every capital city throughout the eastern Empire. And this inscription proclaimed that:

·     Augustus was a saviour.

·     His birthday was the birthday of God.

·     The peace that had been brought by the Roman Empire was Good News for the whole world.

And in many of the Advent readings that we have throughout this season, we hear angels coming and announcing words about Good News, about a Saviour being born, about the birthday of a God, and proclaiming great joy. It sounds very much like that inscription.

It’s only a few years difference between those inscriptions that Caesar asked to be carved into the monuments in cities around the word, and the time that Jesus’ birth was announced. But there are a few differences between the peace that comes through an empire, and the peace that comes through Jesus Christ.

One of the saviours is,

·     At the top of the Roman aristocracy.

·     The top of the Patriarchy in the world

·     Has taken power through force, through an army.

·     Is consolidating that power by making a list of who is where — we even see this in the Gospel story itself! — around the world, so that he can more efficiently tax them.

But the saviour that we remember at Christmas is one who,

·     Was born, not at the top of the aristocracy, but at the very bottom of the peasant system, of the peasant class.

·     He lived in a backwater called Judaea

·     He slept in an animal’s food trough

·     HJis only servants he was attended by, were those who came voluntarily: shepherds and sages who came to worship him.

·     He didn’t have an army, except for an army of angels.

And I believe that the Christmas story gives us two different versions of peace. Jesus would later say,

“My peace I leave to you, not as the world gives,” 

I think he meant, not as the Roman Empire would give. And not as empire offers us as we seek to be people of peace. This Advent season as we reflect on the stories of Christmas and we hope to be people who model the peace that Jesus offers, I think we’re given a choice about what kind of peace we will seek in the world, a peace that comes through control and through empire, or the peace that Jesus brings into the world when he says,

“My peace I give you.”

God, I pray for our church community. I pray for our world. In 2022 as we approach 2023, God let there be peace in the earth. Let it not be a peace of control or manipulation, or violence, but a peace that comes through Your Love, and through your Son Jesus. Amen.