Peace on Earth

In just a couple of minutes, Lauren will be back with her last song, and I want to take a quick moment to thank her publicly for her help with this program. She did this — twice it turned out — as a very special gift to us, a generous contribution of her time and talent during a busy season for her, and I know you all join me in appreciation for it.

I didn’t tell Lauren what songs to use, so it was a nice surprise to me to see the ones she chose and realize how well they would all fit into the program that you’re watching tonight.

One of those songs — the next one you’ll hear — has an interesting history. When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” in 1863, he was a man in great pain.

His beloved wife, Frances, had died a couple of years earlier, when a candle caught her clothes on fire. He had tried to put the flames out, but he had been unable to save her, and his own face was severely disfigured in the fire to the extent that he later grew a beard to hide the disfigurement.

Then, in March of 1863, his son Charley joined the Union Army to fight in America’s Civil War.

Eight months later, in November, Charley was shot in a battle in Virginia, and the bullet nicked his spine as it exited his body. Longfellow was called to Washington to pick up his son and take him home to nurse him back to health over the coming months.

Christmas would be a bleak time for him, perhaps even more that it had been the previous year without his wife. That year, he had written an entry in his journal: “‘A merry Christmas’ say the children, but that is no more for me.”

And so, it is perhaps no surprise that Longfellow’s Christmas poem in 1863 takes such a bleak turn.

“And in despair I bowed my head. ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said. For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on Earth, goodwill to men.”

It’s easy to see how such a man in such circumstances during that time could have such thoughts on Christmas.

And here we sit in 2020, another year in which we have seen death piled up on itself, and when we have seen bitterness and hatred and contempt take over the headlines and seem to drive the very news of the day. And I wonder how many of us might quietly share Longfellow’s assessment of the situation.

How many of us might conclude with him, “There is no peace on earth, good will to men.”

And the fact is that it would be hard to look back into history and find many periods when “peace on earth, good will to men” would have seemed like an apt description of the world’s situation.

Surely it didn’t seem that way during Longfellow’s time, and it didn’t seem that way for Zacharias, either.

He was a priest in Israel and father of John the Baptist, who had been born during a time of Roman occupation of Israel. And the Romans exerted a heavy hand on the nations they occupied. It was a hard and frightening time to be a Jew.

And so, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Zacharias while he was performing his duties in the temple and told the old priest that he would father a child with his old and barren wife, I think Zacharias responded the way that anyone might whose faith had been rocked by the travails around them.

He was skeptical and even a little cynical about the angel’s promise, and for that, he was struck dumb until after his son John was born.

Luke writes that Zacharias’ mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak in praise of God.

And what I want you to notice today is that when Zacharias turned his focus to God and away from the circumstances, something incredible happened: He began to see the wonder of God’s promises, even before the birth of the Christ-child in whom they would be fulfilled.

In this time of the severity of Roman occupation, Zacharias could now look up to God and praise Him. He could recall God’s promise through the prophet Malachi of a sun with healing in his wings, who would visit Israel “to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death” and to guide their feet “into the way of peace.”

What Zacharias had come to understand is the same thing that Longfellow finally understood as he finished his poem: “God is not dead, not doth He sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on Earth, good will to men.”

This peace isn’t something that mankind brings about. It’s not a peace brokered by the United Nations. It’s not a peace that comes out of government mandates or court rulings or elections or any other human effort. The fact is that we aren’t very good when it comes to peace on earth, good will to men.

But God is. And so He sent His Son, the Prince of Peace, to be born of a young Jewish virgin, to live as a man among mankind, and to give Himself as a sacrifice on a cross, paying the price for our sins even though He was sinless Himself. The innocent died for the guilty.

In this violent act of sacrifice — and in His supernatural resurrection afterward — Jesus brought peace to mankind.

We who follow Him in faith that His sacrifice is our only means of reconciliation with God are no longer God’s enemies. He accepts His Son’s sacrifice, He forgives our sins, and He makes us part of His family.

We who had been rebels against God’s kingdom are now adopted sons and daughters of the God who guides our feet into the way of peace.

Things are still broken here. There is little in the way of peace here on earth, nor good will among men.

But because of that child who lay in a manger in Bethlehem, we can have peace with God Himself, and we can rejoice in the knowledge that one day He will restore peace throughout His creation.

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on Earth, good will to men.