12-07-25

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
December 7, 2025
Today is the Second Sunday of Advent, the Sunday usually described as Peace Sunday. The message in worship this morning will be indirectly about peace, though I thought I’d share some words from Brian McLaren who wrote clearly and directly about peace and non-violence within the Christian faith.

McLaren writes…
“In the aftermath of Jesus and his cross, we should never again define God’s sovereignty or supremacy by analogy to the kings of this world who dominate, oppress, subordinate, exploit, scapegoat and marginalize. Instead, we have migrated to an entirely new universe, or, as Paul says, ‘a new creation’ (2 Corinthians 5:17) in which old ideas of supremacy are subverted.

If this is true, to follow Jesus is to change one’s understanding of God. To accept Jesus and to accept the God Jesus loved is to become an atheist in relation to the Supreme Being of violent and dominating power. We are not demoting God to a lower, weaker level; we are rising to a higher and deeper understanding of God as pure light, with no shadow of violence, conquest, exclusion, hostility, or hate at all.”

On this Peace Sunday, as we celebrate the coming of the one our tradition describes as the Prince of Peace, let us reconnect to our baptism by which we, according to faith, became a new creation. If so, we need to make sure the ways we think about God, describe God, and even worship God, truly reflect the peaceful and humble incarnation of the divine, Jesus Christ. 

If we seek the way of Jesus, the powerless infant born in a stable, at least powerless by worldly standards, then we need to seek a more peaceful attitude and ethos. May those words be my prayerful request to you, O Good and Gracious God. Amen.