There are lots of traditions in the media at this time of year – the seasonal music, the “Christmas specials” particularly a dramatic edition of EastEnders to show you that however eventful your own Christmas has been, theirs is much worse!  And of course there is on TV and radio the “Review of the Year” either as a quiz or as simple programme.  This year, like so many others is rather grim to review and provides quite a contrast with the readings we’ve just heard about the Prince of Peace being born amongst us.  We feel a little uneasy when we compare the Christmas readings with the reality of our world. 

The Middle East is still in turmoil, the injustice of Israel and Palestine continues, Mugabe still rules in Zimbabwe clinging on to power like an alcoholic to a bottle, quieter oppressive regimes still function without criticism.  We hear of terrible crimes in our own country and react with horror as we hear more and more of how the Home Office treats those who seek asylum amongst us.   

All this talk about a “Prince of Peace”, as Isaiah puts it, is, surely just a little hard to take in our current context.  It sounds, all too much, like a form of “false comfort” we offer ourselves.   

The mess so much of our world is in together with the injustice we see means we long to turn to comforting and familiar stories and carols about God being with us, and we use them, perhaps, to evade the true seriousness of our situation, to provide a little “light” amidst the darkness that seems to surround us.  It’s understandable but it is what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”.  Grace always has a price; something Mary who was so “full of grace” truly learnt when she stood at the foot of the cross.  God is not a benign Father Christmas who stands there patting us on the head telling us that all shall be well.  God does not give us false comfort.    

Clearly the peace that Jesus brings has not been peace between the nations.  But this is not to say that the peace is a kind of existential “peace” in ourselves; a form of inner peace that we come to rather like we may say after a course of therapy that “we are at peace with ourselves”.    I am a little sceptical about this type of individual peace that derives from a sense which, if we’re honest, is really ‘feeling good about ourselves’ rather than any real ‘peace’.   

So, what are we left with?  Well, a look at the background to that part of the book of Isaiah we’ve just heard, that part in which those words about a Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God and Prince of Peace occur, we might get some surprising new insights to what is meant by ‘Peace’ as our faith understands it.  The part of Isaiah was written at a time when the Jewish people themselves were experiencing turmoil and upheaval, war and rumours of wars, and, ultimately, capture and exile.   

Here, I think, in an extraordinary paradox, here lies the true hope, the true “Good news” of Christmas.  Christmas is not simply God’s assurance that God is present, that really, all is well with the world in some vague, undefined way!   

On the contrary, the whole life and death of Jesus makes clear that Christmas is about God’s determined presence in a world that not only is indifferent to God, but actually resists, despises and ultimately rejects God.  Christmas affirms that God is present in the middle of the horrors of human violence and cruelty.

And if it is in the midst of all this that the “Prince of Peace” is born, then clearly, a different understanding of ‘peace’ is at work in the minds of these writers than in our usual understanding.  The peace the Church has always spoken of is the peace that comes from God’s future: it is a peace that is looked for as the gift of the One who, our Advent celebrations have reminded us, is to come.   

The child has been born, the son given, Isaiah says.  But the peace is to come - ‘the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.’  So, like the Jewish people living in Isaiah’s time, and like those first Christians living in fear of persecution and death, we must understand the ‘peace’ that Jesus brings as being a peace to be looked for in God’s coming future, a peace that breaks into this present darkness in hope. 

And Christian faith finds a way of living in this peace through its reflection on the life of the One who was born in Bethlehem.  And here come the “demands” on us.  The Christian faith requires me to live life like Jesus, to “surrender all security” in complete openness to the future.  Faith requires that I give up my tainted view and understanding of myself – even, perhaps, giving up that sense of “being at peace with myself” – in order to receive myself from the Coming One, who just as such undoes all security.  Jesus challenges us to live, not from the past, but from the future, from God’s future and so to live in God’s own self.   

The gospel challenge is to live life, not from the past, but from the future, because of the word of forgiveness that means the past no longer controls me. 

And so I live, we live, from the future, the future that is Jesus’ peace, a peace that ‘the world cannot give’ and that ‘passes all understanding’.  That future is shown in his life, as one who was utterly obedient, who, as a babe in Bethlehem, shows an utter ‘surrender of all security’, who is utterly open to the call of God, obedient to the Father, ready for that future.  And, that future is seen most clearly when, having trusted entirely to his Father and been handed over to death by humans, still trusting his Father, he is raised from the dead, into the new and eternal life that is God’s future for all who trust in him.

This peace, the peace that the world cannot give, stands in sharp contrast to the world’s peace.  For the world understands peace as something that is ‘won’ through dominance and power: through defeating Saddam and the Iraqi regime and then “imposing” our vision of what a “peaceful” Iraq should look like.  Or it is a “peace with myself” that I attain by attending all sorts of meditation classes or inner tranquillity workshops!   

God’s ‘power’, revealed in the child in the manger, is a power of radically new kind - not of the vague, ‘false’ comfort that comes from some woolly divine presence.  No, this is a divine presence in the reality of a radical act of re-creation - a re-creation seen in death and resurrection.    

So, Christmas tells us, God is with the world, God’s peace is declared for the world, in the one whose birth, death, resurrection and return in glory we celebrate around this table.  And that is why the Christmas stories we celebrate tonight always culminate in a sacrament that recalls a saving death and resurrection, rather than a birth, and that therefore offers a peace that is real -  because it is the one that comes from God’s future, rather than being worked for by dominance or power.   

This does not mean, of course, that we don’t go on working for peace – but we do that from the understanding that we won’t achieve it!  We go on working for peace because we know that that, ultimately, is God’s will for the world.  And, like our Lord, we continue weeping and grieving with the world in all its woes, violence and turmoil.  But in Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, we are given a foretaste of God’s radical reworking and re-creation.  When we look at that Babe’s death and resurrection, we see God’s future, and the dawning of a peace that only God can give.