At Christmastime there is a lot of talk of peace. We scrawl the word on Christmas cards and sing it to each other in carols. It’s easy to think of peace as a kind of inner state of calm; something we hope to descend upon us as we are caught up in the last minute scramble of Christmas shopping and endless phone messages about who is bringing what to Christmas lunch.
It is a good time to remind ourselves that peace, for Christians and for Jews as well, is so much bigger and wider than inner calm. The Jewish word ‘shalom’ is connected to the idea of wholeness: it is about everything working as it should, and all things and all people being in right relationship with each other. Peace is less about inner ‘zen’, and more about you and me and how we get along. It is about our families and communities, and how the nations of the world find ways to live alongside each other, not with violence, but with love and respect.
O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie. Our vision of Bethlehem is one of picture-perfect serenity. Yet in Bethlehem today – part of the occupied West Bank – there is little in the way of peace and stillness. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in this ancient city, they have done away with the traditional nativity scene. In place of a stable and lowing cattle is a pile of rubble, with ‘baby Jesus’ lying amongst it. In Bethlehem, the threat of violence is always near.
The story is not so distant from the Bethlehem where Jesus was born: a place where the people were kept poor by the occupying power, and Mary and Joseph were only there because Caesar wanted to tax them more effectively. The streets of Bethlehem were violent, poverty-stricken places.
Peace eluded Bethlehem then, and peace eludes us now. This Advent, we are reminded that peace needs to not just envelope our own private hearts, but the whole world. And the path towards peace involves more than mindfulness and private prayer, but is the difficult, painful work of trying to understand each other.
This is the peace of Christ. We hope, indeed, that it will be born in Bethlehem again…and into our own families and communities.
Words by Rev Andreana
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