Isaiah 9:2-9
For me, the word from the Lord to us this evening is that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. That is who the Old Testament prophet Isaiah said would be the Messiah. The Messiah will be strong and powerful, a leader of peace, and someone who will establish justice and do what is right and fair and lead people to do the same. From our reading from Isaiah tonight:
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Great will be his authority,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
Maybe that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace is the word from the Lord for us tonight because we know so little of peace. There are wars going on around the world. There are political battles and trade wars. But closer to home there are conflicts in our families, in our churches, and in our communities. And then there is the turmoil and resentment and bitterness and heartbreak inside of us. Maybe God’s word to us is a word of peace tonight because the Lord knows we each and the world around us need to hear that word of peace spoken to us.
On Christmas Day 1914 as German and British soldiers were fighting in the trenches of World War I, a few hours of peace broke out. The Christmas Day Truce, as it has come to be called, wasn’t planned. It happened on its own, spontaneously. One account from an interview with soldiers in the 1960’s said it started when the Brits heard the German soldiers across the battle line start singing Silent Night. Being mostly young men, they didn’t want to be outdone by the Germans and themselves started singing The First Noel louder than the Germans had sung. One thing led to another and a few brave souls stood up from the trenches, went out and crossed the no-man’s land, and shook hands and shared cigarettes and cigars.
All war is horrible, but if you know any of the history of World War I, you know that it was a particularly brutal and bloody war. But for a moment, peace broke out. Here is how one British officer described what happened, “For a brief moment, soldiers on different sides saw each other as fathers, brothers and sons who just longed to go home and return to loved ones.” The Christmas Day truces didn’t last for long and the senior officers did their best to prevent them from happening again because they wanted the soldiers to keep fighting.
What always gets me choked up when I read that story and stories like it is how the peace, the truce, came to be. It wasn’t planned. There were no calculations involved to who would get the upper hand. Peace just broke out. It happened. In a way it is like the Christian story. No one planned for Jesus the Messiah to be born, let alone planned for the Messiah to be born to two poor parents in a manger in a barn. It just happened by the power of God. It was the work of God breaking into the world in the most unexpected of ways.
Isn’t that how God works? God makes a way when there is seemingly no way forward. Maybe you’ve experienced that in your own life? A conflict with another person that had been so strong and intense, something happens to change the course of it and a sort of peace breaks out. It isn’t magic – trust isn’t rebuilt overnight, the damage to the relationship needs repairing, and wounds take time to heal. But instead of fighting, you come to a truce of sorts. It’s that truce that opens up the possibility of some sort of reconciliation. If you’ve experienced something like that, it is the work of God. Jesus taught that the kingdom of God, the reign of God breaks in, coming to us often in unexpected ways.
Thinking about the soldiers in the trenches during the Christmas Day truce and how peace comes to us, there are two things that strike me. First, every one of the soldiers needed to be open to the possibility of peace. They had to be willing to put down their weapons. And they had to be willing to take a risk that they could trust the other side enough to do the same. Second, they had to take an active part in the peacemaking. The peace didn’t come by magic. They had to lift themselves out of the trenches, take a huge risk, and go and talk with the German soldiers on the other side.
If the word from the Lord this evening is that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, maybe God’s call to us as people in 2025 is to be open to the possibility of peace. And not just open, but active in making peace? As Christians, peacemaking is a core responsibility that each of us has. It doesn’t mean we have to like the person or people we are trying to make peace with. It doesn’t mean that we can’t stand up for what we believe. It also doesn’t mean that if damage was done in a relationship, that repairing that relationship might take a long time, if not a lifetime. But peacemaking is our responsibility and it is our privilege because our Lord is the Prince of Peace. Our Lord has has made peace with us so that we can be at peace with God. And, he is in the business of making peace among people and he gives us the Holy Spirit to be peacemakers with others.
Merry Christmas to you. Amen.
Work Cited
“’The war, for that moment, came to a standstill’: The story of the WW1 Christmas Truce.” BBC, 24 December 2023, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231219-the-ww1-christmas-truce-the-war-for-that-moment-came-to-a-standstill. Accessed 24 December 2025.