The Peace of Good News

This piece was written for yesterday’s Choir program/Sunday school Christmas pageant. It was read as a transition between the Sunday school Christmas pageant and a choir piece called A Manger Gloria, which includes a “gloria in excelsis Deo” refrain.

“On earth, peace” said the heavenly host.  For us, the word peace might mean something like the quiet in the house after the children are all sleeping, or, perhaps, the quiet in the sanctuary after the children leave for Sunday School. But what happened the night Jesus was born was the breaking through of God’s peace in Bethlehem, and it wasn’t quiet, was it?

The whole town was crowded; at the very least, it was packed tight where Mary and Joseph were staying. Bustling might be a better way to describe things than quiet. Then a multitude of the heavenly host appeared to the shepherds; can a multitude of anything be quiet?  What’s more, there were shepherds, rushing into town to see “this thing that has happened,” and afterward, on their return trip, joyously telling everything to everyone, “glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen.” Does this sound quiet to you?

Still, what happened that night in Bethlehem was the beginning of peace on earth; not the peace of “peace and quiet,” but the peace of “peace and joy.” It’s more like the peace there is in a home when the children are all playing together in harmony and the family’s favourite supper is waiting in the oven, ready to be served; or when the children are here with us, performing the perfect Christmas pageant.

The peace of that night was the peace of good news: God was beginning to save the world.  It was the peace of great joy: Everything wrong was starting to be made right. It was peace with God, who was reconciling us to himself by sending us a Saviour.  It was the kind of peace that still causes angels—and all people who understand the significance of this birth—to shout, “Glory to God in the highest!”