Third Week of Advent: “Speak Peace”

 God will speak peace

   to his people. (Psalm 85:8)

The birth of the Son of God is God’s decision to bring “peace on earth and good will to humanity” (Lk 2:14). In Christ, God speaks peace. Can that be? It seems violence gets the upper hand. With war brewing in Europe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a morning devotional from Psalm 85:

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

                        For he will speak peace to his people,

                 To his faithful saints,

                        let them not turn back to folly. (vs 5)

 After reading verse five of the Psalm, Bonhoeffer raises the question, “How will peace come about?” He lists certain treaty possibilities between the nations. And then concludes:

Once again, how will peace come? Who will call us to peace so that the world will hear, will have to hear? Only the one great holy church of Christ over all the world can speak out so that the world, though it gnash its teeth, will have to hear, so that the peoples will rejoice because the church of Christ in the name of Christ has taken the weapons from the hands of their sons, forbidden war, and proclaimed the peace of Christ against the raging world” (DBW vol 13, p. 309).

The war Bonhoeffer feared was a war between Christian nations: Germany, France, and England. Unfortunately, nationalism prevailed and war ensued. As Abraham Lincoln observed concerning our civil war: “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other” (second inaugural). The Confessing Church failed to prevent war; but it did proclaim “the peace of Christ against the raging world.” On Christmas Morning, the church proclaims “the peace of Christ” in the midst of our “raging world.”