The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

Christmas

December 25, 2002

The Christmas Peace

In the year 1914, on the 24^th day of December something occurred that many have forgotten. For that Christmas period soldiers from both sides of the trenches caught the Christmas Spirit. In his book, “Silent Night: World War I and the Christmas Truce”, Stanley Wientraub reports the following conversation: 

As the Bedfordshires shouted”Encore! Good old Fritz!” an approaching German called out warily into the darkness, “I am a Lieutenant! Gentlemen, my life is in your hands, for I am out of my trench and walking towards you. Will one of your officers come out and meet me half-way?”…coming closer, the German asked again, “Will not one of you come out and meet me? I am halfway across now, alone and unarmed.” The British began to make out a shadowy figure who must have realized how many rifles were pointed toward him.

The Bedfordshires officer, known to his men as “Waddy”, broke out beyond his own barbed wire and went on. From the other side, the singing grew louder; lights flicker atop the Christmas tree that had delayed ammunition replacement for days. The enemies met on “NO Man’s Land.” P.77

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us! And because of this nothing can be the same. This joyous Christmas day we celebrate the coming into the Christ, the Word of God made flesh. Because of this every aspect of human life is revealed as being suffused with the divine presence. Nothing of this world falls out of the pale of God’s gracious and loving concern. But there is more to all of this! The Word enters the world in complete vulnerability as a helpless child. Love comes into in God’s acceptance of the risk of vulnerability. And it is through this vulnerability that God will save the world in the disarming Child. In the power of this child enemies see each other as human beings and recognize each other as brothers. Just as the Lt. took the risk to walk into No Ma’s Land that Christmas Eve night in 1914, we as the people of God, are called to get out of our trenches and risk in our vulnerability to help bring some measure of peace in the world.

This peace that we celebrate coming in the Christ child has many faces. There is the peace that is needed among nations. There is the peace that is needed between communities, neighbors, and family members, with oneself and with God. One thing peace will require of all of us is the willing to be vulnerable to make it happen. And this is the most difficult thing. It is so much easier to believe in peace, to admire peacemakers than to make it one’s own mission in cooperation with our Lord’s call to be peacemakers. Rabbi Donna Berman put it this way:

   …the achievement of peace involves doing similar kinds of things. It is a matter of looking at the whole picture, of being able to take pride in the accomplishments of one’s people or nation, but also confronting honestly its flaws and the possibility that mistakes have been made. It involves addressing and dressing old wounds and in so doing it involves perhaps the greatest risk of all—vulnerability. This is an unavoidable part of the peace-building process because reconciliation always involves the admission of fallibility. This is a frightening prospect for many. But the reality is that there can be no peace without some degree of vulnerability. What must be remembered is that there is far more vulnerability when there is no peace.

The human desire for peace, for justice for a world filled with compassion begins when a person, a community of a nation is willing to take the risk to step out of the soggy and grimy trenches of security and to say to the others: “ 

My friends my life is in your hands. Will not one of you come out to meet me half way?

That first Christmas our God echoed those words in the Christ child. In Christ our God calls out to us in our darkness:

My friends my life is in your hands. Will you come and meet me half way; will you take that risk so that we may begin to construct the world befitting every child. 

That is the Christmas Peace we have been promised, that is the Christmas peace brought by the disarming child that inspired battle-hardened soldiers to drop their weapons and risk peace.  

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Createded December 25, 2002