THE COMING KINGDOM OF PEACE - SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT, 2021

Peace Garden at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Park

 

"It's beginning to look a lot like Advent."

Last week, in the first part of this series, I started with that quote, questioning where I picked that line up from. Actually, it was a frame that can could be added to your Facebook profile picture.

Also, last week I mentioned that the concept of Advent can be tied to the line in the Lord's prayer, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." After all, Advent means coming, and Christians often refer to the Incarnation as the First Advent and Jesus' future returning to earth to reign as the Second Advent.

 There are different ways of referring to the four Sundays of Advent. The first variation dealt with different players in the first Christmas: Prophets, Angels, Shepherds, and Magi. A way I like better deals with important characteristics in our Christian life:
Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. If you weren't paying attention, I dealt with Hope last week.

I'll admit something that had me confused. The photos I'm using on the top of these blogs are also being used as my Facebook profile photo, and I've added a frame indicating the week of the post. I've seen two primary sources - Good News TV and Christy Gallinger. However, Good News TV had frames with the second week being Peace and the 2nd week as Love. What's more Christmassy than a bit of confusion?

Returning to my theme of the controversial and radical concept of God's Kingdom coming, we are looking for a Kingdom of peace, and there isn't much peace here. Everybody wants peace, as long as they get to define what peace looks like. For many, it's when their side wins that they  want peace, with their opponents throwing the white flag. For example, you notice how it's the winning party after an election that calls for the people to unify? 

Should we expect peace among unregenerate people? Of course not. But sometimes the place with the least peace are the Christians. Pick a topic: Sovereign Predestination vs. Free Will, whether we can lose our salvation, almost any element concerning the end times, style of music, Bible translations, and of course politics. In fact, I heard of a church that split over the question whether having a hat rack was Biblical or not.

One of the beatitudes is "Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God." (Matthew 5:9). Note the difference between being a peacekeeper and a peacemaker. The former basically is a referee, trying to make sure the opponents behave themselves. The latter does his work when the opponents are not on good terms and labors to create a peace between the two that is presently non-existent.

What are we doing to establish God's Kingdom of Peace? It calls for peacemakers, because there's none in the world to keep.