The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

Christmas

Is. 52:1-10; Hb. 1:1-6; Jn. 1:1-18

" Formerly, his heart had been a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense...that if any help came to him it must come from without."

These are the words from the short novel, "Silas Marner", by George Eliot. They are the words that capture a sense of confusion and fear. The world that Silas Marner knew and trusted had disintegrated. He had been a solitary man not given to affection or giving or receiving love. He spends his day a broken, solitary man weaving at his loom in 19th century England.

Marner shuns all company--he cares for no one. People in his village fear him. He chooses isolation and darkness because love and light have cost him too much in the past. He has been the victim of betrayal, disappointment in love, and wrongly accused by others. He now feels it is safer to hide in his work. He represents what we might call a "workoholic." He accumulates money for its own sake--gold becomes the only thing he loves and trust--but one day it is stolen. Suddenly he is shattered. He experiences his own vulnerability--the first step to his redemption!

"And the Word became flesh !" That is the great mystery and proclamation of Christmas. it is the mystery that God freely chooses to enter the human condition in complete vulnerability and poverty. For what is more vulnerable than a human baby, especially one born to homeless refugee parents ? And this is central to this mystery of the Incarnation ! God doesn't choose the palace gate through which to enter our condition, but rather, chooses to enter through a situation of powerlessness and poverty. Through this God 's word of salvation tells us that it is through this vulnerability that God acts to save all creation, especially human beings!

God is Jesus proclaims that all creation, especially human beings are near to God's heart. All of our sorrows, joys and hopes are God's sorrows, joys and hopes ! Furthermore, the mystery of Christmas is a mystery that attracts and repulses us. It attracts us because of the love we experience from God located in the simplicity of the manger. It is a love our hearts were made for and so we approach it with joy. Yet it also repulses because God is so close, God takes us, our history and the creation seriously. If we were to be responsive to this God we would value ourselves, others and our world as God would have us do.

So Christmas is at once the most joyous and dangerous of holidays. It is joyous to the extent that we accept the love of God that emanates from the face of the Christ of the manger. It is "dangerous" because God is serving notice to the forces of death, oppression, greed, domination and violence that their days are numbered. God is serving notice that such things will have no part in God's future dawning on the Christ child. It is a future whose light cuts into the darkness of hearts, communities, societies and our globe. It is a light that, born in vulnerability, will show us the way to a new day, a new hope, a new way of being in the world despite suffering, disappointment and betrayal.

Like JBap we are called to point to this light with our words and actions. It is a way of being that draws inspiration from the birth of our Lord as a small, helpless child. Such inspiration comes from the understanding that each child contains a promise, a chance to start anew, a bundle of unimagined possibilities, a hope for a world that will finally be at peace grounded in real justice.

The Prince of Peace comes to us in apparent powerlessness--and that is God's power to save ! Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Christ child comes to us with the power of a love that gives of itself freely as gift--even unto death--so that our hearts can be opened and freely embrace it for our own. This is the path to peace. This is the path that all of the Lord's followers are bid to tread. This is so because the Word was made flesh. God identifies with the all the creation. God gave us bodies not by accident. God creates embodied creature to share in creation and to help to preserve it. It is a call to all to immerse ourselves into the heart of the world, into the world's sorrows, problems and complexities in the power of the vulnerable love of God in Christ. That is where good news of God is heard most clearly ! It is heard in being and attending to the vulnerable, the suffering of this world. All other responses can never satisfy, and can never be a source of joy, only mere illusion. For joy comes in embracing in one's own life the vulnerable love of God that is compassion. It is this that saves!

Silas Marner thought he could hide and be safe from life. But such a life cut him off from others, God , and himself. But he begins to come round. A little blond child whose opium-addicted mother has just died in the snow, wanders toward the light of Marner's hut, enters and cuddles near a fireplace. Marner comes into the room and spots something near the hearth.

"Gold !--his own gold--brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away ! He felt his heart beat violently...the heap of gold seemed to glow... He leaned forward at last and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft, warm curls."

Suddenly this vulnerable child called Marner out of himself to begin to feel to be compassionate. He found redemption in attending to the powerless and the hurting. He experienced the peace of God that is the gift of Christmas.

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded January 14, 2000