by Rev. Eric Folkerth

“Silent night, holy night…all is calm, all is bright.”

Just days from now —and like Christians all around the globe— we’ll sing these words on Christmas Eve. We’ll light our candles, hold them high, and experience a brief, blissful moment of “calm.”

There is something about this ending to a Christmas Eve worship that always calms my soul, gives me peace, at a deep and abiding level.

But, of course, all is NOT “calm” in our world.
All is not still, or silent, or “centered.”

Our world is experiencing not one, but two, deeply horrific wars. Nationalistic fever has not yet broken in our own country, and far too many are saber rattling.

We have a major presidential candidate literally using words about “pure blood” that were last used by Hitler.

Our own state government is passing laws that cause law abiding People of Color to fear that they might be stopped and frisked.

Women have lost their bodily autonomy.

The LGBTQ community remains a potent “boogy man” for far too many crass politicians.

And the planet seems to be burning up - before our eyes.

And all the while, in all these issues and more, people in power drive “wedges” between various “identities,” causing them, far too often, to turn on each other rather than fight against power and privilege in a common, united front.

And finally, of course: our televisions and social media scream out headlines about all of this and more.

“Fear not, for unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior.”

These are the words of the Christmas Angels to those terrified shepherds.

Those shepherds were no doubt ordinary working folk of their day, no doubt pawns in the vastness of the Roman Empire.
Perhaps they were afraid of the angels.
Perhaps they were afraid of their own smallness and insignificance.

It doesn’t really matter.
What matters is: the Angels say…God says…. FEAR NOT.

As many of you know, I have those very words tattooed on my arm.

“Fear not.”

It’s another way of saying: “All is calm.”

This Advent season, as I mediate on all this, I keep thinking about Naomi Klein, and her theory of “The Shock Doctrine.”

The theory goes that powerful interests exploit times up economic and social upheaval —wars, stock market crashes, global pandemics— and find ways to profit from them.

It’s too much to suggest that every cataclysmic event is controlled by small powerful groups “behind the scenes.” That’s too conspiratorial. (Although it is easy to see how conspiracies can feel like they must be true…)

But the real truth is challenging enough, already….

The truth is that in a time of global or local crisis, powerful interests CAN exploit our fear, our division, even our righteous anger…for their own gain and profit.

Our fear, our division, our anger can be leveraged against us.

As it happens, during Advent I have been reading Naomi Klein’s new book, “Doppleganger.”And as she always does, Klein has again written a book that I truly wish everyone in the world would read. And this one presciently gives us some powerful metaphors to look back at our last few years and see where we have been.

In one brief section, Klein talks about, of all things, “Calm.”

Naomi Klein says that her writing often stirs readers up. (With good reason!) Because she regularly writes about all these societal ills I’ve mentioned above. Learning about the vast social inequalities of our world can lead us to vast anger, or deep depression.

But one reader actually had a very different reaction to all. One reader, instead of being “stirred up” by her words, became strangely calmed by them. He said that the way Klein NAMED the truth of our world didn’t “stir him up;” it calmed him down.

He ended up writing these key lines which might be the most powerful thing I have read in months:

“When people and societies enter into a state of shock they lose their identities and their footing. Hence, calm is a form of resistance.”
— John Berger

“Calm is a form of resistance.”

As I read these words, it helped me name the continual challenge of preaching, or engaging the Biblical prophets, or being a social activist, in a time like ours.

As I’ve said many times since 2016, I have had a steady challenge to know exactly WHAT to say about all these destabilizing events of our world.

How can I speak of them and not simply “stir people up?”

And if things look hopeless, as they often do, how/where can I find a message of hope?

But all along, I suppose I’ve also been drawn to the truth of this little phrase Klein has now given me: In times like ours, “calm is a form of resistance.”

“All is calm, all is bright.”
That’s what we’ll sing in just a few nights from now.

“Fear not.”
That’s what the Angels sing.

There is a calm, there is a peace, that runs deeper than all these societal horrors we have named here. In another place, Klein describes this as the difference between being “calm” and being “numb.”

The world seeks to numb us in countless ways…mindless entertainment, shopping, food, drugs, sex, wedge issues that call our attention from deeper problems.

Our world doesn’t just want us to be“dumbed down,” it wants us “numbed down.”

The Powers That Be benefit when we give in to division and hate, or just “check out” and numb ourselves.

But God’s incarnational peace is a peace BENEATH all this.

God’s peace looks squarely at all of the problems of the world and does not avoid them. This is the heart of what it means to “see incarnationally.”

Instead of being “driven to distraction,” instead of fearing our divisions, we see God in all things and all people….beneath all our divisions.

We don’t sugarcoat our differences  or make others less than human. We humbly acknowledge our differences and all continuing injustices.

But because we know and understand that God moves inside each human being, our calling is to treat everyone with the greatest of respect and compassion.

As a Christian, this is what it means to see “calm as a form of resistance,” and simultaneously what it means to sing that song with integrity.

In the midst of it all, let us light those candles Christmas Eve.
Let us sing that song.

And let us trust in a peace beneath all the fear of our deeply broken world.