Last week, we began Advent by stepping into hope. We were reminded that this hope was NOT a passive waiting, but an active waiting that dares to believe that God’s future is already breaking in. Today, Advent invites us one step deeper: it invites us into peace. But this peace is not merely the quiet absence of noise. This peace is the stillness that steadies us while everything around us moves, changes, and shifts.
Isaiah speaks of a world transformed: a tender branch growing from the stump of Jesse, life springing from what looked lifeless. Predators and prey that are NO LONGER enemies. The whole creation living in right relationship. This is the vision of peace that the world does not yet know; the vision we consider in Advent; and the vision that God promises. It is a peace that arrives, not when circumstances are calm. It arrives when God’s spirit takes root inside us and begins to transform us from within.
Then we turn to Matthew’s Gospel and find ourselves in the wilderness with John the Baptist. There is nothing quiet about John. John is: loud, urgent, brash and obnoxious. He awakens people with his call to repent: to turn a new direction, to be transformed, to align our hearts with God’s coming new order. John does not invite us to escape the world’s chaos. He demands preparations for the One who brings true peace, a peace born through inner change. Advent peace, then, is not a soothing silence…it is, rather, a holy disruption that creates space for God.
Isaiah imagines wolves lying down with lambs, but that harmony does not come without changing what wolves and lions and humans desire. John the Baptist calls for repentance. It is important for us to understand what this means. Repentance is not about ‘feeling bad’ or ‘promising to do better next time’. It comes from the Greek μετάνοια (metanoia). It has two parts “meta” which means after or beyond and “noia” which means “mind” or “thinking” or even one’s “inner orientation”. Put together it is about a ‘change of mind’. Not by swapping one opinion for another, but rather a transformative shift at the core of who we are. Seen in this light, repentance leads to the peace when God changes our hearts so deeply that the world begins to change around us.
How about you? I wonder what parts of your life might be changing? What are places in your life that are ebbing, flowing, transforming at a faster pace and a direction than you might otherwise want? Changes like: health, relationships, finances, uncertainties about the future…these are all the places that we want to ‘put the brakes on’ and pray for God’s power to stop the course things seem to be heading. These are the areas that our world TRIES to control (as if we ever could). What if we sought God’s transformative through it all; what if we looked for the stillness that lies within the shift; what if we looked for the kind of transformation that John the Baptist teaches? I was following up with a family I served through the course of MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) as the Quiet Christmas Service is approaching. There are many hard times; however, losing a loved one is among the most difficult times a family goes through. Now on the other side, they report this loss a little differently. Hard…YES. But it also was a time when the family was closer than they ever had been! Gathering in love and support; uniting in care; being an interconnected family more than they had been in a long time! On the other side of the loss, there is a deep sadness that remains, yet there was a transformation through that loss that more deeply rooted that family in peace.
This tension between disruption and peace is something we are living into right now as a church. The “Towards 2035” initiative has called the United Church into a period of deep reflection, adaptation, and transformation. We recognize that the world has changed, and faith communities must also change. We must respond with a bold courage and creativity. The choice is not to cling to what has been, but to grow toward what God is calling us to become.
Change, especially in the life of our beloved church, is never comfortable. It shifts traditions. It unsettles familiar rhythms. It stirs questions and even provokes anxiety. But perhaps, I wonder, that is exactly what John the Baptist is teaching: change is where peace begins. Peace begins, NOT by resisting change. Rather peace begins by grounding ourselves in God’s holy presence that can be found at the heart of it. Peace is God’s stillness that lies within the shift.
As you know, we at Northwood are preparing to welcome a new First Third Ministry Leader. As a congregation we have passed this new position and the search begins. We now pray for someone whose calling is to engage young families, children, youth, and young adults. And this WILL bring a shift! With younger people come new energy, new ideas, new questions, and sometimes new loudness. It will be: a holy noise, a joyful disruption, (perhaps even) the arrival of the unexpected. At the bare minimum, like John preparing his community, we also need to prepare for how this will stretch us. It will NOT always feel peaceful in the calm-and-quiet sense. But in God’s Advent vision, THIS is peace: a community alive, a church family growing, a spiritual body becoming.
The peace the world teaches is largely about control: managing life so nothing disturbs; controlling distractions so focus is maintained; dominating our environment so we are master. But the peace Christ brings is different, isn’t it? It is the stillness beneath the shift. Christ’s peace is about trust: letting God shape us in the midst of the disturbance; discovering stillness that lies underneath the turbulent movement; experiencing a deep ocean calm beneath the choppy waves above. With Christ’s peace, we don’t find it by shutting out the noise; we find Christ’s peace by rooting ourselves in God while the noise around becomes the sound of transformation.
This Advent, we are called to prepare, not only buildings, or budgets, or schedules, but to prepare the inner terrain of our hearts. Where in our lives do we resist change because it feels like we are losing control? Where are we clinging to an old stump when God is already growing a new branch? Where do we fear the noise of new life when God is the one sending it?
The Prince of Peace is coming. But His peace comes not to keep everything as it was. He comes to make all things new. He comes to challenge injustice, to dismantle systems that harm, to gather the lost, and to bring the marginalized into the center of God’s love. Peace, in Christ’s kingdom, is a shaking awake. An awakening that we might live differently.
So even amid the swirl of change, God invites us into stillness. Not stillness that hides, but stillness that anchors. A peace rooted so deeply in God’s transforming love that we can embrace change without fear. A peace that listens for God’s voice even when the wilderness is loud. A peace strong enough to let children giggle in worship, youth ask bold questions, and the Spirit surprise us. Isaiah refers to “the stump of Jesse”. The stump still has life still remaining in it. Our roots, our traditions, our genesis as a faith and as a tradition…they are the foundations from which the new branches will grow! And those new branches will, if we pay attention, surprise and delights us, if we are open enough to see ‘the new thing’ that God is doing. That ‘new thing’ is the church being called ‘Towards 2035’; the new church of Northwood as Fleetwood expands rapidly over the next few years; the new church growing into God’s future. Advent peace is already growing: here, now, even within each of us…Advent is growing and transforming with YOU.
May we find our stillness in Christ. May we trust God in the shift. And may we let God’s peace begin in us…so that peace may take root in the world and Christ’s branches on the tree of life continue to grow and delight. Amen.