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Have
you ever wondered how people who lack faith get through life? I bet you
have. Apart from the things that rock everybody’s life, like health
problems, money problems, family problems and on and on, when the world
shudders under the weight of unexplainable events people who lack faith
react in one of two ways: they either suffer an emotional withdrawal into
silence, or they will take shelter in some kind of cynical armor,
muttering simplistic things like “The world stinks.” Or “I told you
there is no God.”
Thus
far in this month of May we have been confronted with the unbelievable
images that are so common in wartime: photos of American soldiers, male
and female, abusing prisoners in shocking ways. And then on Wednesday I
picked up the morning paper to see a headline even more stunning in its
way than 9-11: that terrorists had randomly captured an American civilian
and murdered him by cutting off his head.
How
does a normal human being with a normal sense of justice and order respond
to events like these? But especially how does someone with no inner
gyroscope of faith keep his or her balance in a world that apparently has
torn down righteousness and replaced it with wickedness? The answer is
that it is impossible.
Someone
who thinks that the world is nothing but random events or worse, chaos
without hope of redemptive acts of charity, can never find inner peace.
Worse yet, without some sense of a transcendent creator God can you even
have points of reference to determine what is good and what is evil?
No.
Only if there is a God with a moral order and a plan to restore justice
can we have hope in a world filled with such monstrous acts of evil. And I
want to use that as a jumping off point to talk about peace, the third
stop in this sermon series I call Building the Christian character. So let
me ask you, how many here feel completely at peace this morning? How many
would like to feel more at peace than they do?
One
of the curses of modern life is that a feeling of peacefulness and
serenity is extremely elusive. Why? Because we don’t feel that anyone is
in charge. We know we’re not in charge. I’m not much for amusement park rides,
because I tend to lose my cookies pretty easily on those things, if you
know what I mean. But Robin will ask me, if I’m driving and I take a
curve a little too fast, why that kind of motion doesn’t bother me but a
roller coaster will turn me as green as Kermit the Frog. The answer is
that I feel in control when I’m driving, but out of control on other
rides.
However,
here’s the irony: that superficial kind of peace is achieved by staying
in control. Spiritual peace, the kind of peace Jesus spoke of in today’s
gospel lesson, is achieved only by surrendering control to God. And
that’s why so few people today achieve real peace.
When
God created the universe, peace was intended to be the natural order of
things. God and man were meant to be like this, the creator and the
created. But sin disrupted this natural harmony by superimposing the chaos
of man’s desire for self-rule on the relationship. And all through the
Old Testament, the stories told are those of man at war with God. The
story of Noah and the flood, the Tower of Babel, the exile of the Jews
from the promised land, these are stories of civil war between man and
God. Sometimes it seemed like peace would never be achieved.
But
a few believed that peace was possible. They even pointed to the one who
would achieve it.
They
were called the prophets, and they spoke of the one Isaiah called the
Prince of Peace. Zechariah foretold the coming of the one who would speak
peace to the nations, and his dominion would be to the ends of the earth.
Micah was very matter of fact when he said, “This man shall be our
peace.” Isaiah quotes God as telling the world, “Though the mountains
be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not
be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed.” They were, in fact,
talking about Jesus, the one who would restore harmony to the world.
What
kind of world did Jesus come to? A world that was dominated by fear. The
Roman Empire kept peace by fear and intimidation. They used the cross to
strike terror into the hearts of the conquered. Step out of line, and this
is what you get. But there was other fear. The priests ruled the world of
religion by fear. Do it my way, play by my rules, or you’re out. Both
the Romans and the priests offered peace through law and order. And order
must be kept by the aggressive use of force. That’s the only way the
world can bring about peace, some say.
Others
claim that the road to achieve peace and contentment lies in
self-indulgence. Whatever your passion and desires want, go ahead and take
it. Be selfish, be happy. Recently I read a list that somebody put
together of the worst pop songs of all time. One of the honorees was Bobby
McFerrin’s ditty of a few years ago, “Don’t worry. Be Happy.” You
hear that song, and you want to say, “Yeah? Be happy based on what?”
The hedonist says be happy based on whatever gives you pleasure. And often
they don’t understand that such a lifestyle will crash under its own
weight until it’s too late.
St.
Augustine tried it their way; as a youth he was one of the world’s
all-time great hedonists, only he pulled out of his nose dive before he
crashed. There is a mass of human experience packed into that famous
prayer of his, famous because so many people can corroborate it based on
the facts of their own lives, “Thou hast made us for thyself and our
hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
So
the world offers peace on its terms, but that isn’t the deep personal
peace we all long for. At the height of her popularity Ann Landers was
receiving 10,000 letters a month, and she said that most of the writers
definitely weren’t happy; they seemed to be afraid of something. They
were afraid of losing their health, their job or their family. They were
afraid of upsetting their neighbor, alienating a friend or committing a
social faux pas. Many are afraid when there is absolutely no reason to be
afraid. Ours is a world of fearful people, what a psychiatrist would call
neurotic people.
The
irony is that the more we try to secure peace on the world’s terms, the
less we obtain it and the more we fear.
In
the movie Godfather II Al Pacino, the Godfather himself, has a heart to
heart talk with his mother, and asks her, “Can you lose your family by
being strong?” She’s mystified by the question, and replies, “You
can never lose your family.” But he’s afraid he can. What sets the
Godfather movie series apart from most mob pictures is this sense of
irony, that the more violent Pacino becomes, no matter how much power and
wealth and others’ fear he accumulates, the more it costs him—first
his wife’s love, then his marriage and finally his daughter’s life.
Someone
who gets trapped in quicksand must stop struggling immediately, or else
he’s doomed. The more you struggle, the more you sink, as the Godfather
found out. But if you relax and surrender your struggles, you can save
yourself by floating on the surface. That’s the legacy that Jesus was
trying to convey to his disciples just before his death: don’t struggle,
surrender. He had nothing of earthly value to leave them. Even his scraps
of clothes were about to become the prize in a dice game. But there was
one thing he could leave his friends—peace.
The
peace that Christ gives is a gift. That means we don’t have to do
anything to receive it, we don’t have to “deserve” it in any way, it
just flows to us. Having walked on this earth, and experienced the pain
and suffering that all humans suffer, Jesus was sustained by knowing that
he and the Father were one—totally on the same wavelength. And that’s
the peace he shares with us, from his heart to our hearts. So we too need
to be on the same wavelength with him. That’s why Jesus said “I am the
vine, you are the branches.” We need to be in spiritual union with
Christ.
The
peace that Christ gives isn’t the absence of anything—the absence of
money troubles, or family worries, or health problems. All those we will
have in heaven, but for now, on earth, Christ’s peace has to do with the
presence of something—God’s holy presence in every aspect of our
lives. God’s presence when we’ve lost our job and the bills keep
coming in. God’s presence when a once-healthy marriage starts to crack
and fall apart. God’s presence when your dreams for your children
don’t come to fruition. God’s presence when the diagnosis is terminal,
and it’s 3 a.m. and you’re staring into the darkness.
The
peace of Christ means to know his presence and love even when the darkness
closes in and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. You’d think
people would want that kind of peace, wouldn’t you? Yet when Jesus
approached Jerusalem, he started to cry. It’s not that he feared death.
As the kids say, he was cool with that. No, he cried because he could see
down the halls of history and the desperate struggles that people face in
their every day life, the loneliness of single mothers, the agony of drug
addicts, all the down and out, yet they refuse the peace that he came to
bring through that death on the cross.
The
peace of Christ means we are assured that our mistakes can be completely
forgiven and forgotten, and that we can have a personal relationship with
God that sends a piercing light into the darkest gloom that we can ever
find ourselves. And Jesus promises, this peace no thief can ever take
away.
Some
people don’t believe in an interventionist God, but I have told you that
prayer works, and we have seen examples where God has answered prayer
through healing of various kinds. I DO believe in an interventionist
God—a God who hears prayers and acts on them. He answers them by
granting us peace, however we need them. Catch that, folks. Sometimes
it’s not a matter of what we want to happen, it’s what we need to
happen. And that call is God’s alone. Sometimes God calms the storm, and
sometimes God calms his child, but he is still in charge. He is the sole
author of peace.
How
I’m not foolish enough to simply say give your troubles to Jesus and
peace will descend like an elevator at the touch of a button. Building
character takes work, like all good things in life. As we take communion
together this morning, let us remember the ancient prayer of the founders
of the Christian church, “Agnus Dei, qui tolem pecatatem mundi, dona eis
pacem.” That’s Latin for “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of
the world, grant us peace.” But at the same time, there are practical
things we can do to cultivate a sense of peace in our lives.
Duke
University did a study on “peace of mind.” Factors found to contribute
greatly to emotional and mental stability are:
1.
The absence of suspicion and resentment. Nursing a grudge was a
major
factor in unhappiness.
2.
Not living in the past. An unwholesome preoccupation with old
mistakes
and failures leads to depression.
3.
Not wasting time and energy fighting conditions you cannot change.
Cooperate with life, instead of trying to run away from it.
4.
Force yourself to stay involved with the world. Resist the
temptation to withdraw and become reclusive during periods of emotional
stress.
5.
Refuse to indulge in self-pity when life hands you a raw deal.
Accept the
fact that nobody gets through life without some sorrow and misfortune.
6.
Cultivate the old-fashioned virtues—love, humor, compassion and
loyalty
7.
Do not expect too much of yourself. When there is too wide a gap
between
self-expectation and your ability to meet the goals you have set, feelings
of inadequacy are inevitable.
8.
Find something bigger than yourself to believe in. Self-centered
egotistical people score lowest in any test for measuring happiness.
Nevertheless, in the end, all our efforts
to find peace, to be successful, must have the foundation of Christ.
One of the all-time champion conspicuous
consumers was William Randolph Hearst. He was a newspaper publisher who
built up the biggest chain of papers in the country in the 1920s. He built
himself a grandiose castle in California and spent millions to fill the
castle with art and antiques. Eventually he had so many valuables that he
had to build extra warehouses for them. One day Hearst spotted a painting
in a magazine and he decided he had to own it, so he sent his agent to
Europe to search for it. Months and months went by until his agent finally
reported that he had found the painting.
“Where
is it,” Hearst demanded. Said the agent, “In your warehouse. You
bought it years ago.”
William
Randolph Hearst had been frantically searching for what he already
possessed. Isn’t it funny how people frantically search for peace in
their lives, when it’s free for the asking, here at the communion table?
There’s a good reason—no, a great reason—why we gather here monthly,
folks: it’s because here we find peace in a crazy, out of control world.
I
read some time ago of a trick they use in maternity wards to calm crying
newborn children. When one baby after another starts to cry, and one wail
feeds on another until there is this incredible din, a recording is
played, and sure enough, one by one, they settle down until they’re all
sleeping again. Anyone care to guess what recording is played? It’s not
music, it’s the sound of a mother’s heartbeat that the fetus hears in
the womb. Apparently the infant’s sense of terror in a new world is
stilled by the security evoked by the sound of a mother’s heartbeat.
So
it is with the Christian. Amid the struggles great and small we all
encounter daily, we need to stop our frantic activity and take time to let
our Lord embrace us through the Holy Spirit. Through faith we feel the
heartbeat of God’s love and rest secure, knowing that we were made for
eternity and this, all of this, is nothing but a brief trip through a dark
tunnel. There is light at the end of the tunnel—our destination, the
home we have been promised in heaven.
Then
a wonderful thing happens. As we surrender our burdens to God, they are
replaced with a gift, the farewell gift that Jesus gave to his disciples.
It is a gift of ancient origin, yet it has power to regenerate itself
constantly so that is always new for you and me. Even more, it is a gift
that keeps on giving. It is the gift of peace, which the world cannot give
or understand. But neither can the world take it away.
And
may the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding fill all of our
hearts today and every day. Amen.
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