Prince of Peace

December 4th

Prince of Peace

She twists the wire around the branches, around and around and around, until all the unruly Christmas greenery finally yields and hangs submissive on the circular frame.

There’s an intensity to how she does this that most ten year olds don’t have. A determination. Because for this ten year old girl, the monster is not under her bed or in her imagination, but in her homeland. Ukraine.

This little girl is the oldest of four children who fled Ukraine with their parents as the darkness invaded. They travelled through country after country, searching for room at the inn, finding temporary lodgings in hospitable hearts again and again, all the way across Europe. To here. This sleepy town in the heart of the UK with large hearted people who welcomed them in. To stay.

This little girl is in a safe community for now, though the fear-monster still lingers in her young mind. But she is one of the lucky ones. There are many children in her homeland and the lands where God-with-skin-on once walked, for whom the monster looms much larger. Closer. Louder.

Where is the calm and the bright? When does the war end? When do little girls get to live free from fear? Can Christmas bring the Peace on Earth we long for? Peace on this earth, this earth beneath our feet right here and now?

 

Wonderful Counsellor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father.

Prince of Peace.

This scripture we pull out at Christmas time, this one prophesying about this baby born King, this Prince of Peace, if you read this scripture in the context of its whole chapter you’ll see clearly.

It begins in the dark.

‘Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honour Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan –

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.’

Isaiah 9:1-2

This promise of a Prince of Peace begins with a people caught in the dark. Like us. Here on this spinning earth. This earth beneath our feet right here and now.

Every year during Advent, our family snuggles together on the sofa in the light of the Christmas tree to watch ‘The Nativity Story’ movie for the hundredth time. This movie closes with the infant Jesus fleeing with his young parents to Egypt to escape the murderous reach of King Herod, the infant Prince of Peace, becoming a refugee on this earth He owns.

One of my favourite poems of all time conveys this scraping-wound reality of the first Christmas. A reality we’ve (perhaps subconsciously) endeavoured to bandage over with our glowing Christmas card Nativity scenes. But the truth of this first Christmas must bleed through eventually.

‘We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,

Or cosy in a crib beside the font,

But he is with a million displaced people

On the long road of weariness and want.

For even as we sing our final carol

His family is up and on that road,

Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,

Glancing behind and shouldering their load.

Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower

Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,

The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,

And death squads spread their curse across the world.

But every Herod dies, and comes alone

To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.’

(Refugee, by Malcolm Guite)

 

The baby Prince of Peace did not come into a serene Christmas card Nativity scene. He came into this world. Here. Like us. He came as a vulnerable baby covered in blood and amniotic fluid. He came into the grit and pain of a world with not enough love and too much violence; a world much like this earth today.

This baby born King’s first breath was drawn, not in a warm hospitable home with fire blazing in the hearth, but in the cold dark air of a stable, surrounded by the muck and mire of animal dung, reminders of the poverty of his worn-out-weary parents. He came into the gritty, dark, violent world of corrupt puppet Kings and Roman domination and as a toddler became an asylum seeker (just like this little girl), fleeing as the war against children whirled around him. The same streets where shepherds and Magi had walked to find the baby born king, soon after rang with crying and ran with the blood of baby boys born on the wrong year in Herod’s reign. Mothers grieved, rocking their lifeless babies in Bethlehem just as mothers grieve their children in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza and Jamaica today.

Little girls with Monsters in their homelands belong to a Prince of Peace who understands their scars from the inside. He’s been there. And He’s there now. With them. With us.

In the dark.

Jesus was born in the dark. He didn’t flee, He didn’t hide away. He stayed on this earth, this earth without the peace, the one with all the pain. This earth spinning in the dark. He stayed. With us.

And though this isn’t the version of the story we tell around a warming hearth at Christmas time as we wrap our Christmas story up all warm and cosy in green and golds and tie it all up with ribbons and tinsel and jingling bells, the truth is, that the truth of this story, it’s going to soak through eventually. Like eternity bleeding through the fraying edges of all time, into our time, into this life on earth without peace on earth.

We need this truth to soak through. Like light soaking up darkness. We need a Wonderful Counsellor to guide us into hope. A Mighty God to save us from ourselves. An Everlasting Father to cradle and hold us through our pain.

A Prince of Peace to bring peace to this whirling-pain-filled earth. This earth beneath our feet right here and now.

We needed Him. So He came. This child promised… ‘For unto us a child is born. Unto us a child is given…’

In the lines preceding the announcement of this promised child in Isaiah chapter 9, just before the part we read at Christmas time about this Prince of Peace, the writer of Isaiah describes a battle won by God against oppression and a time when war will cease…

‘Every warrior’s boot used in battle
and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning,
will be fuel for the fire.’

Isaiah 9:5

…Because from the beginning the Prince of Peace has been on a mission to fully fill this dark and hurting world with peace. Peace on earth is the long term plan, the ending of God’s long story with us.

But we’re not at the end of the story yet. And we know it. We feel it.

In the darkest night, the stars shine so much brighter. In the darkest night, the light is seen so clearly. It takes your breath away, and restores it all at once.

Corrie Ten Boom knew how dark the night could get. She and her sister were imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensburg for sheltering Jewish refugees. In the midst of all the trauma, pain and struggle she and her sister suffered they discovered God’s faithfulness unquenched, undimmed by their surroundings. One sad day, as Corrie’s sister Betsey lay dying in the camp, she turned to her sister Corrie and whispered, “We must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.”

Deep darkness. Deeper light.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.’

Isaiah 9:1-2

I wish with all my heart that the peaceful Christmas card Nativity scene were true. I wish the ‘all is calm’ and ‘all is bright’ was true. But it wasn’t then, when Christ was born, and it isn’t today, not now in the Ukraine, not in modern day Israel, not in the Gaza Strip, not in Jamaica or anywhere else on Earth, this Earth, the one with all the pain. We’re all still spinning here in the dark on a planet fraught with pain.

If we sanitise the Christmas story, we forget one of its central messages: God has come into our pain. Into our suffering. Into our complex and messy human existence. To be with us.

God has come into our deepest dark.

To be our unquenchable light.

The baby born King, the Prince of peace chose to live under the darkness of human “rule”, to establish a movement to invade and subvert all the kingdoms of darkness with light. A movement with Himself: the Prince of Peace as its source…

‘And He will be the source of Peace’

Micah 5:5

‘You will keep in perfect peace
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.’

Isaiah 26:3

This advent, let’s allow the truth of the true Christmas story soak through to the anxious edges of our souls, like eternity bleeding through the fraying edges of all time, into our time, into our lives on earth without peace on earth.

He didn’t come to join us in our comfort. He came to be with us now. Here. There is a Prince of Peace on Earth with us. In the dark. In the pain. In the mess. With us. With us on this spinning earth right now. This earth right here beneath our feet.

So where ever you are right now, whether life is simple, or life is difficult, whether you right now face mountainous challenges or dark valley emotions, the Prince of Peace is here.

You have a Wonderful Counsellor to guide you into hope. A Mighty God to save you from yourself. An Everlasting Father to cradle and hold you through your pain. And a Prince of Peace in it with you. Present. Close.

Reach for Him this Advent. And let Him guide you through to lasting peace in Him.

Unquenchable light.