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| Christ Swords into Plowshares Icon by Kelly Latimore |
Advent
creates space
for bold expectation.
Advent's original fire is
the light that resists despair
and joins God's peacebuilding
revolution in our own time.
This year, Emmaus City Church's weekly devotional was created by Peace Catalyst International. It begins with these words about recovering this subversive season:
The story of Advent tells
is anything but safe.
It begins with prophets
crying out under empire,
with a teenage girl singing
about the downfall of the mighty,
with shepherds who hear good news
that threatens the established order.
Advent began, in the generations
after Jesus' life, as a season of
repentance, longing, and resistance.
Early Christians observed it as a time
of fasting and vigilance,
a preparation not only to remember
Christ's birth but to live in readiness
of His coming reign of justice and peace.
This story echoes
Isaiah's visions of peace (Is. 2:1-4),
John the Baptizer's call to repentance (Lk. 3:9),
each proclaiming that God's justice
is breaking in despite the empire.
Advent was a declaration of loyalty
to another Kingdom
— God's reign of shalom —
amid the kingdoms of this world.
Hope
as prophetic imagination
rather than merely optimism.
Peace
as God's disruption of violent order
and justice restored
more than just calm sentiment.
Joy
as defiant celebration
in the face of suffering
instead of individual happiness.
Love
as incarnational solidarity
over temporary affection.
+ pgs. 5-7
Since we are in the second week of Advent, this post will focus on the theme of peace as seen through the lens of Isaiah, the prophetic book Emmaus City is journeying with in December and January.
God's Disruption of Violent Disorder
Isaiah's vision of swords beaten into plowshares (Is. 2:4) and Zechariah's prophecy of a humble king "who will proclaim peace to the nations" (Zech. 9:10) arose under empires that claimed to bring order through domination. The so-called Pax Romana promised stability through crucifixion. The prophets dared to imagine another kind of peace: one that dismantles fear and restores right relationships between peoples and with God.
The first Christians understood peace as profoundly social. Their gatherings were not spiritual escape but embodied witness to a different order. St. Paul proclaimed that in Christ "He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one" (Eph. 2:14-18). As theologian Gerhard Lohfink notes, the Church's nonviolence "was not an ethical option but the visible shape of salvation itself."
Writing at the close of the first century, St. Clement of Rome urged believers to bear witness before rulers "with humility and fear," showing that the Way of Christ was steadfast goodness in the face of hostility. Origen insisted that Christians "no longer take up the sword against any nation," and instead "by our prayers defeat all demons that stir up wars." The second-century philosopher St. Justin Martyr testified that those who once fought "have changed their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks.
Such peace was not private serenity
but public defiance —
a radical political alternative
to the empire's false order.
It was a visible, communal witness that
the Pax Christi exposes
the Pax Romana as counterfeit:
peace not through
domination or control,
but through forgiveness,
justice, and
restored relationship.
In the East, St. Basil of Caesarea's monastic rules envisioned peace as shared life rooted in simplicity, forgiveness, and hospitality. The desert communities of Egypt and Palestine likewise pursued nonviolence and communal equality as an alternative to imperial hierarchy — an embodied peace lived out in solidarity with one another.
To recover Christ's peace is to reclaim its downward, disruptive movement. It is to re-enter history — to pursue the kind of healing that confronts injustice rather than baptizes the ruling powers. True peace does not float above conflict; it enters it, disarming fear, dismantling domination, and daring to believe that God's reign of shalom is breaking in.
To confess Christ's peace, then,
is to enter a politics of vulnerability,
truth, and repair.
It is to resist the false comfort
— national, ecclesial, or personal —
that rest's on another's suffering.
It means building tables
where enemies become neighbors,
exposing illusions of security
built on exclusion, and
risking love as the only power
capable of undoing violence.
For peacebuilders today, this work is anything but sentimental. It is slow, costly, and imaginative — a holy defiance that transforms conflict and heals division, trusting that even now, under empire's shadow, God's shalom is taking root.
Lighting Advent's Candle of Peace
Advent calls us back into this kind of peace — public, courageous, and communal. This is not quietism or control; it is active participation in God's redemptive work, confronting domination with compassion and violence with vulnerability.
When we light the candle of peace, we testify that Christ's reign has begun, even amid conflict and fear. Advent peace confronts the world's violence with the Lamb's gentleness.
To walk in this peace
is to live with eyes open —
to name the lies that sustain our safety,
to choose love
when indifference would be easier,
to stay tender in a world
that rewards hardness.
This is the division
Jesus' true peace creates:
between truth and illusion,
justice and complacency,
mercy and control.
So we light the candle of peace,
defying every false peace
built on fear, and
following the One whose peace
heals and brings justice
to the world.
Peace isn't just quiet or calm. It doesn't mean pretending everything is fine when people are being hurt or left out. God's peace means setting things right — helping people feel safe, loved, and included.
When Jesus was born,
angels sang "peace on earth,"
not because everything was easy,
but because God was coming close
to heal what was broken.
God's peace grows when we choose gentleness instead of getting even, when we listen to people who are left out, and when we share what we have so everyone has enough.
Peace doesn't just happen;
it's something we make together,
little by little,
the light spreading in the dark.
Here are some ways to simply "walk or prepare the way of peace" — small actions that bring healing and fairness where things feel broken:
+ Include someone who's alone
+ Protect against unkindness
+ Say sorry first
+ Share what you have
+ Pray for people who are hurting
Light the second candle, and say, "Guide our feet into the way of peace." (Luke 1:79)
+ adapted excerpt from
pgs. 17-21,
With presence and peace in Christ,
Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan
