Luke 2:13-14
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 among those whom he favors!”
I wonder how many of us tie God’s glory to our peace.
I think that many Christians – and perhaps persons of other faiths as well – tend to think that the proper response to God is one of praise. Or maybe fearful praise, or a holy awe that ends up in praise, or something else of this nature.
We tend to think this way, I suspect, because our dominant image of God is as a king – a powerful, sovereign, even fearful king of the universe. And, certainly, there are elements of the biblical witness that describe God in these ways.
But the majority report of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures portrays God in far less lofty, far more intimate ways. God is like an adoring (and sometimes frustrated) parent or a loving (and sometimes distraught) spouse.
These more relational terms call into question the dominance of praise as the primary way by which to relate to God. We thank our parents, partners, and friends, for sure, and sometimes offer praise. But is that the primary way we relate?
I realize that we can take our efforts to understand our relationship to God via analogies to our other relationships too far, but precisely because we are talking about a relationship I think we do well to press the point. Is “praise” the primary thing God wants from us? No parent or partner that I know wants only praise – rather things like communication, honesty, mutual dependence, and more all seem like equally important categories.
And when it comes to parents, it gets even simpler: the primary thing all parents I know want is the health and welfare of our children. We want them to be happy, to be well, to be at peace. And if you have more than one child, you especially want them to be happy, well, and at peace with each other.
In this small portion of the Christmas story, I think we see something similar. The angels – indeed, the whole heavenly host! –proclaim two things: glory to God – the expected – and peace to all those God loves – perhaps less expected. And the way they are joined in this scene makes me wonder if they are not intimately connected. Perhaps the way to glorify God is to be at peace with each other and to work for peace for each other. Or maybe God glories in our peace. Or maybe there is no meaningful glory apart from peace. Or maybe….
Well, you see what I mean. Part of what we celebrate at Christmas is that God is more like a parent than a king. More like a partner than an emperor. And precisely because that’s hard for us to believe, God surprises us by coming not in power but in weakness, not in glory but in vulnerability. God comes to be one with us and one of us in the babe born at Bethlehem. And pretty much nobody expected that.
Praise to God and peace to all!
Prayer: Dear God, surprise us again and again with the unexpected news of your absolutely commitment to us and inspire us to glorify you by working for peace with and for each other. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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