Sermon 49 - The Advent Candle of Peace
Luke 24:36
While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."
John 20:19
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"
Uuk klah ma, Rob. Wikaatla chachimhiy.
We'll come back to that.
Oh good, you are thinking. He can't possibly work grief into a sermon about the Advent candle of peace.
Oh, can't I?
These days I really hate jokes about marriage, but I have to use one to start this sermon off.
An unmarried man is not complete. Once he is married, then he is *finished*!
The reason to start off with that joke is the point out that without marriage we are incomplete. We use this concept in many ways in sermons. We say that the entire book of the Song of Solomon, in the Bible, is only *in* the Bible in order to illustrate that as a man is incomplete without a wife, so we, as human beings, are incomplete without God. And when you have been married, and your spouse is taken away, you realize just how *real* this incompleteness is. The bereaved often talk about the absence of the loved one like the absence of a limb from your body. You are constantly moving and expecting to put your weight on a leg that is no longer there. That means you fall over a lot. In the book "The Grieving Brain," Mary Frances O'Connor makes a distinction between grief and grieving. Grief is the syndrome of emotions that you feel. But grieving is a process, the very *painful* process, of learning that everything you depended on when you were married is no longer there, and you have to *relearn* the new reality of a universe where your spouse is no longer there.
And what does this have to do with the candle of peace? Well, the Hebrew word for peace is Shalom. Now, when we speak of peace in English, we tend to think of peace as an absence. Peace is the absence of war. Peace is the absence of fighting. Peace is the absence of conflict. Peace is the absence of disturbance. In English, peace, however much we want it, is not so much a thing, as an absence.
The Hebrew word, shalom, is very much a thing. It is a *complete* thing. It is, in fact, the definition of completeness. We do have a phrase in English which does capture something of this idea. It's the legal phrase, "to be made whole." When we are talking about being made whole, in legal terms, we are talking about restitution of whatever it is that has been taken from us. And not only the restitution of whatever has been taken, but, additionally, restitution of whatever we have lost from having temporarily had something taken away from us. To be made whole. To be made complete. To regain, or to gain, whatever it is that we need, and lack. That is Shalom.
But it's even larger than that. Shalom is used as the greeting at the Friday night dinner, in Jewish homes, that begins the Sabbath. It is not just peace, but also wellness. To be made whole, and to be well. To be made well. To have everything that you need for wellness. To be complete. To be whole. To be well.
But the word Shalom is not the only word for peace in the Bible. Shalom comes from the Old Testament. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. The word for peace in the New Testament, the word used in referring to Jesus coming to the disciples, following His crucifixion, and His rising again, uses the Greek word from which we get irenic. The Greek word for peace is interesting because it's strongest component meaning is that of rest.
And it is easy to see the need for peace there, as well. You cannot rest if you are not at peace. If you try to rest, and your surroundings are not peaceful, you will be constantly distracted and aroused by whatever is disturbing your peace. Well, I suppose there are exceptions. When completely exhausted, we can sometimes fall asleep even in chaos. Number One Daughter, who is the very illustration of the phrase "I'll sleep when I'm dead," has famously been known to fall asleep behind the wheel of the car simply because she is at a red light.
When you go for grief support, following the death of a spouse, the counselors always talk about "self care." What are you doing to take care of yourself. And, in particular, they ask about what you are doing to get rest. It is very important to rest, and allow yourself time to recover. After one such session, in a group situation, the counselor gave us a homework assignment to think about what we were going to do to give ourselves rest. We were to think about that, and practice it, in the week between sessions. One night that week, I was lying in bed. In the dark. There was nothing to disturb me. It was, one would think, the perfect time to rest. And in the dark, and the quiet, and the lack of disturbance, I thought about the homework, to think about how to pursue rest. And I realized that I *couldn't* rest, because there was, quite literally, no one to watch over me as I did. This works out in some interesting ways when you are newly single after having been married. The normal nicks and scratches and irregularities on your skin, and all the other things that you could ask a spouse to look at for you, when they are on your back, or under your feet, or in embarrassing places, you no longer have everyone anyone to look at, and put a Band-Aid on, or to tell you that it's nothing. It's okay. You never know whether you're okay, or not.
That phrase, to watch over, is very interesting. And the Bible uses it a lot. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit. He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Bible says that God watches over us, and sometimes that is said even in battle situations, that we would normally think of as the very *opposite* of peace. But this gives us peace. This gives us rest. At least, in theological terms. It still doesn't do you much good if you have cut yourself or scratched yourself, in an embarrassing place, and you have no idea how to deal with it.
In terms of concepts from other languages, it is interesting to note that the Nuu-chah-nulth word chachimhiy is very similar to the word shalom, as well as irenic. Chachimhiy means "well," or possibly "okay," but it also means safe. It is there in the official name of the reconciliaction meetings, a reference to a "safe space." It has these combined meanings of safety, wholeness, and wellness.
I am a security professional, and so the word "safe," and the concept of safety, is very interesting to me. We, in the field, know that perfection in security is impossible, and so perfection in safety is impossible. We always know that there are always failures and vulnerabilities, and we also have a concept of layered defence, or defence in depth, which holds that the imperfections of one layer of protection can be improved by adding another layer, in order to make a situation safer or more secure, but we know that we can never get to "perfectly" secure. This has implications for our understanding of sin, but, in addition, one of the layers is that we also plan for what happens when a protection fails. We have two modes for these plans: fail safe, and fail secure. Fail secure means that the system and situation is protected, fail safe means that system functions will continue as best they can, even if in an insecure manner. What this means, in practice, is that, in some situations, fail secure will protect the system from attack or loss, but it will definitely be inconvenient, and sometimes even dangerous, for people. The idea of safety, then (and we might be coming back to grief, here) carries the idea that, even if you suffer some kind of loss, you, yourself, are protected from danger. It is an interesting, if somewhat paradoxical, addition to the idea of peace in chachimhiy. Are we willing to accept peace, even if it means we lose something?
And so, for Advent, I wish you Chachimhiy, Shalom, irenic peacefulness, wholeness, wellness, safety, and rest.
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