“Because a child has been born to us, a son given. Leadership rests upon his shoulders. And he is called by name a wonderful advisor, might of God, father for all time, chief of wholeness” (Isaiah 9.5).
It’s Christmas Eve. As the night falls and the world sleeps, we’ll again listen in the midnight darkness for the sound of angels singing, declaring a birth and offering us the blessing of peace on earth. And I find myself thinking back on the conversation I spoke of at the beginning of this season. I think of our friends saying just how impossible it is to have peace upon this earth. And what the impossible means in light of this birth.
The last two words of this verse are traditionally rendered as Prince of Peace. That word for peace is the rich Hebrew word shalom. And while it often gets translated simply as “peace” it really implies something so much deeper. Its meaning is closer to completeness, or wholeness.
Peace seems to convey an absence of war and violence. Wholeness, however, carries within it a sense of the physical—food, shelter, sleep—but also the mental, emotional, spiritual—being loved, valued, and cherished not just by others but by our own selves.
That, so much more than an end to violence, seems like something that could never, ever happen, not without Divine intervention. Not without God showing up with a love whose hands can break fevers and make insufficient into more than enough. In other words, not without Jesus right here in the midst of us healing not just the nations but all those wounded parts of ourselves. And, yet, we’ve come to another year’s closing with us still waiting for his light in the east.
At the other end of Jesus time on Earth, on the night of his arrest, at the table, he tells those with him that he’s leaving peace with them, his peace. He’s leaving his wholeness to those who would go and spread the news of his resurrection, his teachings, his life. A wholeness that they were meant to and did pass on to those who heard.
It isn’t, I’m sorry to say, a quick-fix. Those who heard it first still struggled with their own anxieties and insecurities. But it worked in them constantly, gradually over the years that followed. The same way it can and will work within us and those we pass it on to in word, touch, or deed.
And, as it does, things change. Slowly, yes. That’s what happens when it’s something that moves through person after person. But it moves. And it heals bodies, souls, and hearts as only love can.
As though the one who gave it first was right here among us.
Incarnate One, in these days we celebrate your coming and look forward to your return. But I also want remember that you are here, embodied in the acts and words of love from others and from myself. As we move to a new season, as this year nears its turning to another, may I see and be your presence in this world. And may that presence bring peace, wholeness upon the earth.