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Advent 2 2019

Ever since the prophecy of enmity between the serpent and the descendants of Adam, we have been looking for peace. Not just between the serpent and humans, but God and humans too. More so, the story of Cain gives us the prediction of enmity between humans themselves. Cain kills his brother and then God has to mark Cain so others wouldn’t kill him. The whole life-with-God-in-the-Garden idea pretty much spiraled out of control pretty quickly. 

Humankind finds itself at odds with God, the Devil, the animals, and each other. Even the earth has to be worked harder to give up her bounty. Perhaps more surprising is that even between religions, Christian denominations, and within congregations, there is often a severe lack of peace. Not much peace to be found it seems. God has tried to woo us back and in so doing re-set the entire creation, but with every offer and promise of God, we manage to eventually reject it, insisting that we know better, that we need to look out for Number 1, and generally not trusting that God can make happen what we need him to make happen. We end up being faithless. 

And God tries again.

Here is a beginning insight. God doesn’t offer just a cessation of hostilities, and reduction in enmity. He offers much more than that. In Israel and therefore within the bounds of Scripture generally, the word from which we get our “peace” is shalom. Shalom includes the sort of peace we often think about, but it encompasses much more. This word speaks to wellbeing, well-adjusted living with sufficient food, supportive neighbors, and a reduction in turmoil among and within families. 

The shalom God offers includes even more than this wellbeing among people and extends to the creation itself, the animals, and even an earth that produces freely. Shalom is what Adam and Eve had in the Garden with God. Peaceful wellbeing with God in a creation designed to be the Divinely provided dwelling of God with Man. 

Jesus’s mission in Luke 4 reads like this: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” The middle of Isaiah 11 goes on to say: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth
shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”  

Shalom throughout the entire world and including the earth and its creation. This is the peace that God offers and which was incarnated in His Son. It is the shalom intended to be incarnated in us, for us, for our neighbor, and for the world. 

This Advent consider how you might become a focal point of God’s shalom for others.
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