“Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

If we read and prayed the collect for this week in Advent, it might be that we find ourselves wondering about the theme of Advent that is often associated with the second week of Advent. In some traditions, the second week of Advent is that of peace, but it does not seem likely to get to peace very easily when we are thinking about the message of the prophets. In fact, it seems that the prophets tend to upset the proverbial apple cart of the whole society! 

If we read the prophets at all, we will find messages calling a certain people group to repent for the things they have done or left undone. In the weeks leading up to Advent, our Wednesday discipleship group was spending time studying the minor prophets, and the last prophet we studied was Amos. Now, the book of Amos is not an easy one to read. It is hardly a book that we would associate with the notion of peacemaking in the world. After all, Amos is quite harsh with the people of Israel who have left behind the very people they are told to protect in the Levitical laws - the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Amos carries harsh words for the elite and hardly gives any hope for what we might think of as peaceful living. 

In short, it does not seem that this week of Advent is really about peacemaking at all. Instead, it might feel like we are in the midst of a week of causing trouble. The message of the prophets and the message of John the Baptist (himself a prophet) call us into a posture of repentance - of filling the valleys and lowering the mountains and hills. The posture the prophets calls us towards in this week of Advent is a posture of examination and of preparing ourselves for the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer. 

The posture of self-examination and prayer, however, is also a posture of peacemaking. Peacemaking begins with our own posture of prayer and preparing ourselves to receive Christ into the mangers of our hearts on Christmas Day. The work of peacemaking begins with ourselves and with making ourselves a place of peace through our commitment to the Gospel. The Episcopal Peace Fellowship puts it this way on their website:

“Peacemaking has clear political implications challenging all forms of systemic violence, injustice, and oppression. But in itself, peacemaking is a spirituality before it is a political agenda. Any political agenda for peace and justice not grounded in such a spirituality is doomed. So, the first step – which must be taken again and again each day – is to become people of peace.”

Before we build peace in our communities, we are called to enter into the work of having peace within ourselves and carrying that peace into the spaces we inhabit throughout our daily lives. Continuing with the reflection from The Episcopal Peace Fellowship:

“Such a spirituality of peace includes prayer, reflection, and disciplined acts of mercy. But first, it begins with seeing. Peace begins with how we look at reality including each other. In The Art Of Attention: A Poet’s Eye, poet, literary critic, and translator Donald Revell (an Episcopalian whose first literary influence was the Book of Common Prayer) says that to simply see things as they are is an act of obedience. I do not think he would hesitate to say it is an obedience to God.”

The message of the prophets is a message of obedience, and it is a message that instructs to see things as they really are versus as we might want to see them. Thus, heeding the message of the prophets is the work of preparing ourselves to receive Christ, and it is the work of becoming peacemakers in our communities. To be peacemakers will involve being bearers of peace while also having the courage to point others to see reality as they are versus through our own agenda or desire. 

The prophets call us towards peacemaking because they give us the theological language to lift up those places in our communities that are valleys to be filled, to be lifted up. They help us to see the places that need to be made low. The prophets help us to see clearly what is happening the world around us, and they call us to work towards peacemaking through the prophetic voice of the church as the Body of Christ. We are called forward to be peacemakers and that work begins with us preparing ourselves through repentance. We are called to be peacemakers by doing our own work first. We become peacemakers when we ourselves are places of peace and of prayer.

In Christ,

Hunter+