God enters our fearful world.
In the days when Jesus was born, in the time of King Herod, Rome claimed the whole world was at peace. Caesar Augustus issued a decree. Coins were stamped. Monuments were raised. Poets and politicians praised what they called Pax Romana. The “peace” of Rome. But this peace was not something you could rest in. You could not touch it. You could not trust it. Rome’s peace depended on compliance. On taxation. On surveillance. On the threat of violence. It was peace maintained by fear — fear of punishment, fear of shame, fear of stepping out of line. So when Luke begins the Christmas story with a decree from Caesar, he is not setting a peaceful scene. He is telling us: this is a fearful world. God’s peace — the peace of Christ — is not like that. God’s peace has a body. We still live in a world shaped by fear-based peace — peace through compliance, peace as the absence of disturbance, peace shaped by money or by a “might-makes-right” way of thinking. Peace packaged as sloga...