Peace on Earth
Most of you know this about me, but I LOVE this time of year.
It really is one of my favorite times of year. From Christmas cookies to holiday decorations, from cutting down your own Christmas tree like Chevy Chase to watching Hallmark Christmas movies by the fire, the truth is I love it all.
I think one of the reasons I personally love it so much is because for a moment, it seems like things are the way they were always meant to be.
For a moment, there’s a sense of peace on earth.
There’s something about Christmas where, at least for a moment, everything changes.
That happens in small ways for people each year at Christmas. But it happened in a big way in 1914 during the First World War.
1914 War & Peace
In 1914, a different kind of darkness had come over the world as World War I had set in and with it, the grim reality of trench warfare. In a letter to his wife, Paul Hub from Wurttemberg wrote these words…
“My dear Maria, I feel so terrible I’d rather not write to you … every day spent here makes it clearer to me how beautiful home is – what a stirring of feelings that word ‘home’ brings out in me. I have lived through such horror recently, no words can describe it, the tragedy all around. Every day, the fighting gets fiercer and there is no end in sight. Our blood is flowing in torrents … all around me is gruesome devastation. Dead and wounded soldiers, dead and dying animals, horse cadavers, burnt-out-houses, churned up fields, vehicles, clothes, weapons … I didn’t think war could be like this.”
Boyle, David. Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914 (pp. 15-16). Sharpe Books. Kindle Edition.
The First World War is known in the history books as a bloody conflict resulting in the massive loss of life. Millions of people died as a result of new technologies used in battle, from tanks to machine guns to planes and U-boats.
Perhaps one of the gravest parts of World War I was what became known as trench warfare. The Germans and the British dug out trenches, seven or twelve feet deep, and separated sometimes by only 60-90 feet, and lined with barbed wire. Soldiers were living in these trenches and during the winter months they were wet, muddy, & freezing. Life in this chaos was a new kind of hell.
This war was different. Otto Dix, a German expressionist artist described it this way…
“Lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, shells, bombs, underground caves, corpses, blood, liquor, mice, cats, artillery, filth, bullets, mortars, fire, steel: that’s what war is. It is the work of the devil.”
Boyle, David. Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914 (p. 13). Sharpe Books. Kindle Edition.
It was during this conflict in 1914 that something unexpected happened on Christmas Day. Soldiers on both sides in the trenches agreed to something that their commanding officers didn’t sanction.
For a few hours, soldiers who had spent day and night killing each other agreed to a truce, a cease fire, and they met in the land between, what became known as “No Man’s Land,” to sing songs, play games, swap food, tobacco, and newspapers, and take a break from their fighting. It was something unimaginable. And it became known as The Christmas Truce of 1914.
For a moment, in the midst of a brutal war, there seemed to be Peace on Earth.
A World Still at War
We live in a world, sadly, where it’s hard to even imagine what peace on earth would look like.
Here we are a little over 100 years later, how many of us would like a little peace on earth? How many of us would like a Christmas truce?
I think about the past year, the past 2 years… and I can’t help but think about all the warring in our world.
Let’s just talk about politics for a moment. How many of you just got really uncomfortable? I did!
Or let’s talk about Covid. Or masks. Or vaccination. Has there been a more divisive topic?
Chances are as you sat around the table at Thanksgiving with family and friends, you avoided these topics because… well, because they are divisive. So in order to keep the peace, in order to avoid debate, fighting, and disagreement… maybe you did what these soldiers did in the trenches across from each other in 1914. Maybe you called a truce. A cease fire. Because what you wanted, at least for a moment, was a little peace.
The truth is, a lot of us are longing for peace right now.
Some of us are hoping for a cease fire in our marriage. We need to call a truce with our kids. Or, with our parents! We need to lay our weapons down at work.
We’re living in a culture of division, disdain, strong disagreement, and disrespect.
Can we get a cease fire? Can we get another Christmas truce? Is there such a thing as peace on earth?
732 BC War & the Promise of Peace
All of this division, fighting, warring, and conflict… it’s evidence of the fact that we live in a world filled with darkness. And that darkness didn’t start 100 years ago with the first world war.
If you go back to around 732BC, there was another war. This war was between the Assyrians and Israel. And the Assyrians had defeated the Israelite forces. Now, all of Israel is living under the rule of an Assyrian king.
If you had known that Israel were the people chosen by God to be the people of God you might wonder, where on earth is God? Has he abandoned His people? The truth is, His people had abandoned Him.
The people are corrupt. Wicked. They’ve chosen the occult over the worship of Yahweh. They’ve decided to go with the wisdom of mediums seeking counsel from the dead instead of seeking the wisdom and counsel of the Living God. The reason they’re living in darkness is not because God has abandoned them, but because they’ve abandoned God.
And now, having lost the war to the mighty Assyrians, living under the oppression of a foreign king, they’re hungry. Literally, hungry. There is no food. And their hunger makes them angry. They rage against each other, against their enemies, and against God. Truthfully, they are in a dark despair. (Isaiah 8.19-22)
Have You Abandoned God, too?
We could move on from this moment pretty quickly, but it might do us good to stay here for a moment and consider how this same plot line works it way out in our own lives.
How many times in your own life have you wondered, Where on earth is God?, when the truth is, it’s not God who abandoned you, it was you who abandoned God.
How often have you sought the wisdom and counsel of the world and all it’s advisors waiting to tell you what to do, really just telling you what you want to hear, and you chose not to seek the wisdom and counsel of the Living God?
And because you abandoned God, because you decided not to listen to the Word of God and the Will of God for your life, you ended up in a very dark place.
You felt defeated. Because of your choices and because of your present darkness you long for something you do not have and you have no idea how to get. You might even describe the pain you feel as hunger. Hunger for relationship. Hunger for love. Hunger for things to be different. Hungry for a second chance.
And that hunger made you angry. And in your anger you raged against family, friends, and… God. And in that moment you were living in dark despair.
This was Israel’s story. This is everyone’s story.
Peace Prophesied
The good news is that even though the people of God abandoned God, God never abandoned them. And even though you’ve abandoned God… either sometime in your past or perhaps even now in this present moment, God has not and will never abandon you. This is the good news of Isaiah, and this is the good news of the gospel.
Isaiah 9 begins with these words…
1 Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory.
2 The people who walk in darkness
will see a great light.
For those who live in a land of deep darkness,
a light will shine.
The same God who spoke the words, “Let there be light,” at the beginning of time and caused the sun, moon, and stars to be born now speaks light into darkness again.
Isaiah says,
6 For a child is born to us,
a son is given to us.
The government will rest on his shoulders.
And he will be called:
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
and then listen to the last name Isaiah gives to this child who will one day be born, this Messiah who will come, all of the names culminate and climax in this name…
…Prince of Peace.
Prince of Peace
What an incredible name! All of the other names, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father… those could all be spoken of Israel’s God. Of the One True God. The Living God.
But you wouldn’t call God, the King of the Universe, the Creator of all things, a PRINCE!
The title prince, that’s a title only given to human leaders. To those who are born to one day rule and reign. When Isaiah gives this name, PRINCE of Peace, along with all the other names, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, he points to One who will come who will be both FULLY HUMAN AND FULLY DIVINE.
This can only mean one thing, there will come a day when God will put on flesh, enter the story He authored, enter the creation He created, to set things right, to make things the way they were always meant to be. After all, that’s really the meaning of PEACE, isn’t it?
Peace can’t just mean a cease fire. True peace can’t be the absence of conflict. A truce. Far too often that’s how we define peace. As a moment in time where no one is fighting.
True peace, real peace, ultimate peace is found when things that were wrong are made right.
And isn’t this what the PRINCE OF PEACE brought to EARTH when he was born?
Ministry of Peace Making
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus starts by turning water to wine!
There should be good wine at a wedding party but the wine was about to run out. Jesus turns what would have been jars of water of disappointment and bitterness into jars of the best wine of celebration and gladness.
Jesus heals the leper.
No one should be physically sick or relationally separated from their community and family. This was social distancing before we knew what social distancing was! But we were never intended to be alone, to be separated from one another. We were intended to do life together. So Jesus reverses the effects of leprosy and those who were sick have their health restored, those who are outcast are returned to their family.
Jesus makes the blind See. The lame Walk. The hungry are fed. Those who are stuck in SIN are forgiven and set FREE thereby restoring their relationship with others and with God!
In fact, everything that has gone wrong Jesus reverses and makes right. Why? How? Because… He IS the PRINCE OF PEACE! He is the PEACE Maker. The PEACE Bringer. He is the PRINCE OF PEACE.
And the PRINCE of PEACE is still working in this world to reverse those things that have gone wrong. To set things right.
His Gospel is Peace
So what does peace look like for you?
In his book, Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914, David Boyle writes…
“Once darkness had fallen on Christmas Eve, the singing began.”
Boyle, David. Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914 (p. 39). Sharpe Books. Kindle Edition.
I wonder what songs they sang that night.
Silent Night? What would those words have meant on a night in which typically machine gun fire kept you awake all night?
Joy to the World? What would that song have meant to soldiers who living in a kind of hell they could have never imagined in those freezing cold, wet, muddy, trenches?
Or maybe, O Holy Night? Remember the last verse of that song?
“Truly he taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.”
His gospel, His GOOD NEWS, is PEACE.
What does peace look like in relationship?
When a relationship, a marriage, a friendship, between a parent and child, is broken for whatever reason there is only peace in that relationship when there is real reconciliation. When forgiveness is extended and received. When people who were separated are reunited and returned to caring for each other.
You see, Peace on Earth enters our world when you allow the Prince of Peace to live in you.
What does peace look like in the world?
World peace isn’t a treaty or a truce that says we won’t nuc each other. That’s not real peace. In World War 1 the Germans coined the phrase, “Peace through Victory.” That’s a sentiment that so many people have not just in world governments but in their personal lives, in their families, in their businesses. But that’s not peace. That’s conquering another through violence. That’s dictatorship. That’s domination. Not peace.
You want world peace? Then what you want is everyone working for everyone else’s good, well being, and benefit. That’s what world peace would look like. And O, what a world that would be.
Peace on Earth enters our world when you allow the Prince of Peace to live in you.
So what if this week you truly asked the Prince of Peace to take up residence in your heart and life? What would change if Jesus were really living in you?
Shots Fired
At some point the following day, the fighting started all over again. Shots were fired. World War I continued for FOUR MORE bloody years. More people died. The Christmas Truce of 1914 wasn’t real peace. It was only a cease fire.
At some point this week, someone is going to start a fight. Shots will be fired. And we’ll have a decision to make. Will we return to war? Keep fighting? Or, will we choose to live different? Will we choose to follow the narrow way of the Prince of Peace?
What does it mean to be disciples of the Prince of Peace?
First, it means we bring OUR LIVES under the rule and reign of Jesus. This begins with our baptism. But it is a daily decision to let the Prince of Peace live in us.
Surely it means we strive to bring peace, the peace of Christ into every relationship, every situation, every moment. It’s NOT striving to bring a truce. But, when and where possible to set things right. To make a difference. To restore relationship so there can be peace on earth.
May we live as disciples of the Prince of Peace looking for every opportunity to bring real Peace, to bring Jesus, to earth.
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