Imagine Advent Differently: Peace

Advent 2024

The Advent season is one of preparation. It is full of getting ready for Christmas. Sometimes, it is so full that the season itself gets overlooked. There is a general idea in mainstream U.S. culture that the Christmas season begins the day after Thanksgiving, instead of recognizing that Advent itself is its own time separate from Christmas. It is easy to get caught up in not only the hustle and bustle but also in the angst and anxiety about having everything ready and “perfect.” Just as easy is to say that the antidote is peace, yet how does one achieve a sense of peace in this time?

The traditional theme of second Sunday of Advent is peace. In addition, it’s known in the lectionary as John the Baptist Sunday. John the Baptist and peace don’t exactly go together at a glance. You may remember John as the one in the wilderness, wearing animal pelts and eating wild honey. He attracts crowds of people with his message of baptism and repentance, but then he calls the people “broods of vipers.” John offers bold, prophetic preaching that disturbs and disrupts. He is not calm and peaceful.

John is not peaceful, but he is peace-making. He is not peaceful in terms of an absence of conflict. Conflict seemed to surround him all the time. Instead, John advocates for a just peace. A just peace addresses the roots of conflict, not just the symptoms. It’s having done the hard work of seeking justice and not just a ceasefire of hostilities. A just peace is speaking truth, instead of shying away from saying hard things, such as when John tells King Herod that he shouldn’t have married his brother’s wife. John is not someone who brokers peace; you wouldn’t send him to peace talks. Rather, he’s the one working for a just peace, meaning justice for all.

John proclaims, “Repent! Think differently, and change your lives for the better. Change how you live so that your practices of living are more just for all.” I think John would advocate for things like fair prices, living wages, and economic stability. These types of practices bring about peace, when people are not scrambling to cover food and rent, when each person is treated fairly, when we each have enough. Can we re-imagine what a communal, or even global, peace would look like? To do so, we have to get at the roots. Stealing can come from greed and wanting what isn’t yours (on a large scale, think Russia invading Ukraine), or it can come out of being otherwise unable to meet your need for sustenance.

These changes for a just peace are not just external, in how we relate with others, but also internal. How do you live at peace with yourself? What does that look like? I have two thoughts on the matter. One is that we tend to have a higher sense of internal peace when we’re living congruent with our values. For example, if you love nature and fresh air, then you will probably feel out of sorts if you don’t spend time outside on a regular basis. The same can be true for artists, even if it’s a side hobby and not their main bread-winning job. If you are not living aligned with your values and what’s important to you, you will feel less at peace with yourself.

Second is to follow Elsa’s timeless advice to “let it go!” Sometimes we are not at peace with ourselves because we’re holding on tightly to an idea. Somehow that idea has become so important to us that we cannot see other possibilities, or how others consider the same idea. We are unwilling to let go of it because we have become invested in it, we are too close to it, and it’s harming our well-being. We’re literally obsessed with it. It might be family, or a job, an image of ourselves or someone else that has changed without our permission, even the aging process (How dare they! How dare we!). If you can hold these ideas lighter, the way your body has changed as you’ve gotten older, the way certain plans didn’t pan out how you’d imagined them, it brings a little mental peace. If we can accept the current reality, instead of holding tightly to a different idea, then we have a little emotional agility and lightness. Then, with intentionality, we can decide what we’re going to do and how we’re going to act and who we’re going to be in this set of circumstances. Rather than denying what’s happened or bemoaning it, we can move forward into it with a sense of inward peace.

John the Baptist let go of a lot. He didn’t seem to care much about what he wore, how he looked, where he lived, or about his reputation with people with power. Actually, I’d say he appreciated his reputation as a truth-teller, similar to the prophet Elijah, the “troubler of Israel,” as King Ahab called Elijah. Likewise, John laid it out. He was clear about who he was and his vocation and he lived it out unapologetically. John had internal peace, even while in external conflict, because it is a flimsy peace that is based on the absence of conflict.

Conflict is a normal and natural part of life. It is necessary to overcome injustice, oppression, and evil. There is nothing inherently wrong with conflict. What’s key is our attitude toward conflict. If we think it’s bad and should be avoided at all costs, then we’re not going to deal with it well. Conflict exists because of the diversity of creation and because all of us who are created different try to live together and be in relationship with each other. So, if we can hold it lightly, if we recognize it as a God-ordained consequence of diversity, then we learn more about God and more about ourselves and we’re able to work towards transforming the conflict into a just peace.