“From Trench to Truce: The Peace of Christmas”

Sermon Preached By The Rev. Bruce Sanguin
Christmas eve, December 24, 2006

Isaiah 9:2-7      Luke 2:1-20

            You know it’s really difficult, even for a minister, to remember what Christmas is about. It’s just so incredibly busy leading up to this evening, isn’t it? Canadian singer-songwriter, Bruce Cockburn, says that most of us arrive “shipwrecked at the stable door” – the stable where Christ is born.  Not a bad image for an evening like this- we literally arrived buffeted about by wind and rain – shipwrecked, soaking wet, and so in need of some reprieve from all that’s associated with the season – but in truth seems to miss the point. Don’t worry – this isn’t going to be a meditation about how commercialized Christmas has become – we all know it, and we’re doing the best we can to retain our sanity and some vestige of a Christmas meaning which has nothing to do with the shopping malls. Ministers are not exempt from the snares of the season. In fact, in some ways it’s more challenging. Along with the shopping, the Christmas letter deadline, all the details around the Christmas services can swamp us like a rogue wave, en route to the holy town of Bethlehem. 

But I was helped this year to remember by watching a movie – the best Christmas movie I’ve ever seen in fact: Joyeux Noel. Ironically, it’s a war story – with a twist. It’s a true story set in France, 1914, on the front lines. The Germans and the allied forces are shelling each other in their respective trenches 50 yards apart. Both sides had been systematically indoctrinated to hate and dehumanize the enemy. One cold winter evening, on a Christmas Eve, a German tenor began to sing Silent Night in his native language from his trench. Upon hearing the melody, bagpipers from the Scottish regimen picked up their instruments and accompanied the German tenor. Emboldened by the gesture, the tenor disobeyed orders, and went over the top, out into no-man’s land amidst the frozen carnage of dead bodies from the previous day’s battle. The pipers from the Allied side likewise stood atop their trench, and then, one by one, soldiers from both sides went over the top – not to attack but to meet their sworn enemies in the middle. In no-man’s land they exchanged photos of their wives and girlfriends, and bottles of scotch. Then the priest stood to offer mass.

“Lift up your hearts”, he cried out into the night.
“We lift them up to the Lord”, the soldiers responded with one voice.

And what was being lifted up was a longing for a peace so much deeper than their manufactured hatred. What was being lifted up was the realization that what united them- their love of life, family and friends – was infinitely deeper than what separated them. On Christmas morning, the German commander walked through no-man’s land to inform the “enemy” that they were going to be bombed in 10 minutes and that they would be well advised to take shelter in the German trenches. So the allied troops left their trenches and went over to the German line to wait out the barrage standing shoulder to shoulder with the Germans. When the bombing was finished, the Allied commander advised the German officer that there would be a counter-attack, and so together they all walked back to the Allied trenches. For one blessed evening, and one Christmas morning, they not only understood the meaning of Christmas – they lived it.

They experienced for themselves the prophecy of Isaiah, “Those who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in the land of deep darkness, on them light has shined. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire” (Isaiah 9:2,5).

            Of course, when their superiors heard about it, they sent in reinforcements to address the “crisis of peace” that had broken out. They sent the bishop to shame the priest, and bolster the holy war against the infidels. The powers called this crisis “fraternization” – treating the enemy as human beings. But the priest who performed the mass would not be shamed. Before he removed his crucifix and left the priesthood, he told his superior that he regarded what he had done the night before as the most authentic mass he ever presided over.  The tried to shame the commanding officers, but to no avail. They had experienced for themselves the possibility of peace. Peace was natural they now understood.  It was violence that was unnatural – and therefore needing to be propped up with the ideology of dehumanization.

            When the shepherds heard the angels that first Christmas Eve, what they heard were carols of peace (Luke 2:14). This was the “Good News of great joy” – that the heart of the universe is biased in favour of peace. And that the wide-open heart of the Holy One was about to be born in Bethlehem!

            Fear is the perennial problem for human beings. When we are afraid we lash out in anger, with words and weapons, hurting even the ones we claim to love. Each of us here tonight knows what it feels like to be stuck in a trench, at war with an enemy of our own making. It could be a cold war with our own partner that’s been going on for years – or just the last week.  It might be with a sister or a brother, a son or a daughter. We all come to the stable this evening with our wounds and our list of who did what to whom. These ancient wounds and historic hurts seem to surface, ironically, at Christmas time – perhaps it’s all the stress in our lives. Whatever the reason, there resides deep in the heart of every one of us a yearning deeper than anger, bitterness and violence. Christ lives in your heart. At the deepest level of your being peace already exists. We just need to allow it to be born.

 When you join the chorus of Silent Night at the close of the service know this: choruses of heavenly angels are singing with us – they’re rooting for us to hear the message that peace is possible. When you hear the chorus,  will you risk climbing out of the trench of anger that has come to feel like home, but actually is a foreign land of exile?  Will you risk taking the first step into no-man’s land – making the first gesture of reconciliation, laying down your weapons, and your steely heart, and allowing the yearning for peace to be born in you?  Are you willing to walk out of here with your light shining in the darkness, so that you will know for yourself that the realization of the prophet Isaiah’s dream that there shall be “endless peace” begins with you? And with me? And all of us. Friends, may the Christ child be born in us this evening.

 Isaiah dared to imagine a day when a child would be born with a heart for peace. A child who would grow and give his life that peace might prevail, and that humanity might learn the wisdom of this path. In this child, he declared, the universe would coalesce in flesh and bone to let us know what is the dream of the Holy One for all creation. Will you let this child be born in your heart tonight? That’s when Christmas begins to get real again – when you discover that it’s up to us to give birth to Christ, the power for everlasting peace, to be born in our own hearts.