Fourth Sunday of Advent The Trenches

You can listen to my message on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/bTbDD21xvBo

  

The Hebrew prophet Amos said, “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel To His servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7)

 

And so, some 700 years before the birth of the eternal Son of God in that little town south of Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah told us: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14). Many of you remember the name, Immanuel, means “God [is] with us.”

 

A little later the Holy Spirit then promises this same Messiah of whom Isaiah just told us: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

 

Peace. That’s what I want to focus our attention on today, on this the fourth Sunday of Advent. And I will remind all of us that Advent is the season during which many Christians focus our hearts a little more carefully on the promise of peace spoken to those shepherds on that silent night. Luke tells us, “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace  . . .” (Luke 2:13-14)

Speaking of that Silent Night. Millions – perhaps billions of people, even those who have never set foot in a church, know the song – if not the lyrics, then the melody.

 

Silent night, holy night/All is calm and all is bright/'Round yon virgin Mother and Child/Holy infant so tender and mild/Sleep in heavenly peace/Sleep in heavenly peace

 

Silent night, holy night/Shepherds quake at the sight/Glories stream from heaven afar/Heavenly hosts sing out "Alleluia"/Christ the Savior is born/Christ the Savior is born.

The words of this beloved Christmas song were penned in 1816 by a young Austrian priest, not long after the Napoleonic wars had wreaked their horrific toll of death and destruction on more than five million men, women, and children. The inspiration for the song occurred to Fr. Mohr as he walked one evening along a path overlooking a quiet, winter-laden town.

Nearly 100 years later, in 1914, that song stirred the spirits of what history tells us was approximately 100,000 cold, tired, and frightened soldiers across the Western Front during World War One.

The story of that 1914 Christmas Eve reads more like a miraculous event than a chance happening. That Christmas Eve was a particularly frigid, bloody, deadly, and mournful time for the soldiers along the Western Front.

 

For what is to most people inexplicable, on Christmas Eve Allied and German troops warily climbed out of their trenches and guardedly walked toward each other across ‘No Man’s Land.” The frozen corpses of soldiers from both sides littered the ghastly landscape. Yet, as this Christmas miracle cautiously unfolded, all across the Western Front, enemy soldiers shared Christmas with each other.

Most accounts report the truce began when the Allied soldiers heard the Germans singing in their trenches, ‘Stille Nacht’. Although the Allies didn’t understand the words, the melody of Silent Night was unmistakable. Before long, the Allied troops joined in song from their own trenches. This is how one soldier wrote about that night:

“First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours. [When we] started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing ­– two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”

Extraordinary? I call it nothing less than miraculous. To my knowledge, nothing like it ever occurred before that time, or since that time – when mortal enemies who only hours earlier were slaughtering each other, were now taken up with the Spirit of Christ on Christmas Eve. And they came out of their holes of hell, and shared peace with each other.

They shared photos of their families. They gave each other foods they’d prepared in their trenches for Christmas. Some accounts tell of impromptu soccer games that sprang up here and there between the two armies.

In many places along the Western Front, ‘No Man’s Land’ was often just 30 or 40 yards wide. Allied and German troops were sometimes so close they could hear each other talking, and even smell their cooking. In other words, enemy troops could not help but recognize the common humanity of one another – which is probably why the commander of the British Second Corps wrote: “Troops in trenches in close proximity to the enemy slide very easily, if permitted to do so, into a ‘live and let live’ theory of life.”

Wow. Wouldn’t that have been a terrible thing – to live and let live.

The commander was right. Several years later a former British soldier said that if both armies had been left to themselves, “There would never have been another shot fired.”

Of course, not everyone felt that way. One young German corporal in one of those trenches rebuked his fellow soldiers, declaring, “Such a thing should not happen in wartime. Have you no German sense of honor?”

The corporal’s name was Adolf Hitler.

So, what is the point of my message about that Christmas Eve more than 100 years ago in a place that resembled hell more than it did earth?

 

Even today in 2020, the Holy Spirit of Christmas can hold a supernatural presence in the hearts of those who know and love what happened under that silent night over the little town of Bethlehem 2000 years ago.

 

Every year and through the year, most of us – if not all of us – live in life’s trenches where conflicts without and fears within whirl around us without let up. Some face daily and desperate struggles with depression, or chronic pain, or unemployment and overdue bills. Some are nearly consumed by hatred, and anger, and frustration. Many live with a morbid and consuming fear of death. Others live with a fear of living.

But then, once a year, somehow and very mysteriously, a supernatural peace tries to make its way across the wasteland of our lives. We come out of our trenches for a short time and we try to let Christmas peace into our lives. Twinkling lights adorn our homes. We listen to Christmas carols on radios. We adore sparkling-eyed children acting out Christmas plays. We lovingly wrap brightly colored gifts to place under trees. We even smile at strangers and wish them a ‘Merry Christmas.’

But then, as it always happens, the enemy of our souls, like little Adolf Hitlers, call us back to those trenches. The Holy Spirit of Christmas fades from our faces and our hearts, and for the next 364 days life remains stuck in the frigid, bloody, and incessant battle in our personal trenches.

 

During the terrible decade of the 1960s, America was embroiled in a horrible no-win war in Vietnam. Young people, and likely a few older ones – especially parents who lost their child in the rice paddies of those Vietnamese jungles – they asked, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”

As I researched that 1914 Christmas Eve Truce, I read reports of soldiers in those trenches who wondered that same thing. “What if we stop fighting? What if we stop doing what the politicians and the generals tell us to do? What if they gave us a war and nobody came?”

And we can – and SHOULD – ask the same question during the 364 days after Christmas: What if we don’t participate in the hatred and the violence and the anger and the fear? What if we extend the Christmas truce to our individual trenches beyond Christmas day and into the new year, and then into Easter, and then into the summer – and back around into the fall and then Christmas next year?

But how can we do that? How can we let peace reign in our relationships with our neighbors and strangers? How can we permit the Holy Spirit of Christmas to remain in our homes between husbands and wives, and between children and their parents? How can we let peace reign in our relationships with our neighbors and with strangers?

 

At the risk of sounding wearingly trite and boringly redundant, let me remind you what is God’s answer to that question, “How can we do it?”

 

God’s answer is this: “YOU can’t. But I CAN.”

 

Why do we think King David prayed: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. . . . Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.” (Psalm 51:10-12)

 

In our own strength and abilities, you and I are as unable to let peace reign in our hearts as we are unable to lift this building with our pinky. The Lord Jesus was not joking when He said: “[A]part from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15)

 

Although we are born again and the Holy Spirit lives in each believer, our Old Nature is still active. And anyone who thinks it is not a moment-by-moment battle to keep that old nature under wraps is fooling only himself or herself.

You remember what the godly St. Paul lamented in the latter part of Romans 7: “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate . . . For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want . . .I find then the  principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”

Hear me, please. Our old nature is alive and well, and it wants to drag us back into our hellish trenches from which Jesus rescued us. For good reason, the Holy Spirit inspired Isaiah to tell us “[God] will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on [Him]” (Isaiah 26:3).

It is ONLY through our prayer and continual reflection on the Word of God that the Holy Spirit will mature our faith to such a degree that His supernatural peace can keep our hearts and minds at Christmas rest through the year.

 

In other words, peace of heart and mind reigns when we focus – when we fix our minds on Christ. Just as we cannot expect health to reign in our bodies if we drink a daily dose of poison, we cannot expect God’s peace to reign in our hearts if we let our minds imbibe the worldly spirit of anger and frustration and hatred and deceit that is all around us – and especially in the media.

 

Some of you may be familiar with the old Cherokee legend. I’ve referred to it in the past. An old Cherokee, teaching his grandson about life, tells him, “A fight is going on inside us. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

 

The grandfather continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

 

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

 

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

God tells us that the peace of Christ is available to us, but we have to LET that peace of Christ rule in our hearts. And to do that, along with prayer and reflecting on God’s word, it is also most helpful if we starve the bad wolf within us and FEED our spirits with things that are godly.

Do we really need to spend 30 minutes or more every day with CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or other media sites? Wouldn’t our time be better spent listening to a sermon on television or radio; Or reading your Bible or a spiritually nourishing book?

We are now in the middle of the Christmas season. This year in particular, Christmas is a most welcome guest. Even during the pandemic and the forced isolation from family and friends, the Holy Spirit of Christmas can still draw us from our trenches to experience what life can truly be like if we refuse to bite and devour one another – if only for a day.

And if we can do it for a day, then why not extend it to the next day? And the next? And the next?

 

Let us ask the Holy Spirit today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next to please, by His much-needed mercy, to help us to determine every day to NOT go back into the trenches of anger and fear and hatred and depression. Let us daily pray for His utterly essential help that we not feed the bad wolf, but instead to every day strive with His supernatural help to feed the good one. Only then, and only with His help, will anyone be able to extend the Holy Spirit of Christmas throughout 2021.