Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
Four Promises that Can Change Lives: 2- Peace
2 Peter 3:11, 12a: 11 Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, 12 looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. (NLT)
Joke: Good Sermon!
After a very long and boring sermon the parishioners filed out of the church saying nothing to the preacher. Towards the end of the line was a thoughtful person who always commented on the sermons. “Pastor, today your sermon reminded me of the peace and love of God!” The pastor was thrilled. “No-one has ever said anything like that about my preaching before. Tell me why.” “Well – it reminded me of the Peace of God because it passed all understanding and the Love of God because it endured forever!”
Today, the second Sunday of Advent is the day we turn our thoughts to “peace.” But peace is much more than the absence of war.
I think it’s true that when we hear the word “peace” our minds almost automatically have in view two countries. The United States and Canada have a long history of peace but that doesn’t mean that there are never hostilities. Of course, there was that war which helped forge the identity of Canada – the War of 1812 – but for the most part our disagreements seem to be most often related to trade and commerce. As Canadians, we want our relationships with other countries to be peaceful but in our history we have also proven there is a line that we will not cross, that there are times when we deem war necessary.
Sometimes the word “peace” comes with images of other individuals. Perhaps that most often comes when we have experienced a long term relationship that has not been peaceful.
What I am getting at here is that, the word “peace” is something that is absent or present within the context of relationships where there is a lack of conflict and that a relationship can be deemed a peaceful one even though it experiences periods of conflict that get resolved. But it is not always true that the word peace has to be limited to me and someone else or us and another country.
Most often, we end up at odds with someone else because they do or say something that we find offensive, whether or not that can be considered aggression. Some people are just mean and only consider their wants and needs and sometimes people just say and do things that rub us the wrong way.
But why is that? Why is it that there are some people that once we meet and get to know them a bit better, our opinion of them changes and not in a positive way? Why is it that there are those to whom we just take an instant dislike? Any ideas?
Well, I don’t know about you but, I find that most often the things that cause me to have negative impressions about someone else are usually those very same traits that I find in myself – traits I don’t like. Sometimes, it isn’t easy to look in a mirror, especially when what you see is ugly.
Our perceptions are not always true. Sometimes we dislike others and find ourselves at odds with them because of their words and actions. Sometimes, however, our discomfort and conflict with others is nothing more that the reflection of the conflict within. It is very difficult to be at peace with others when we are not at peace with ourselves. It is also true that when we are at peace with ourselves we find ourselves at peace with even some of those that are selfish and rude.
We can be at peace or not at peace with others and we can be at peace or not at peace with ourselves and if we are not at peace with ourselves it increases the likelihood that we will not be at peace with others.
So, how do we make peace with others? We start by talking to them, trying to understand where they are coming from and trying to allow them to understand what the world looks like from our perspective. While there are no guarantees, usually the first steps to peace begin with honesty and travels to justice. We cannot be at peace when we are being treated unjustly, or at least being treated unjustly without our consent and without our resentment. Even with our consent, if we are not at peace about being treated unfairly, sooner or later, we will rise up in anger.
How, then do we come to be at peace with ourselves? Is not the pathway the same – we begin with honesty and travel to justice? If there is no honesty or justice, how can there be peace. And this is where we run into a big problem. We can come to a place of honesty but how do we bring about a sense of justice within ourselves?
What happens when a baby is at conflict with themselves, when they are hungry, or thirsty, or uncomfortable because they are in need of having their diaper changed, or because they don’t feel well, or because they have gas, or because of all kinds of other things? They cry. Most often, regardless of what is causing that internal conflict, babies let others know that they are not at peace within by crying. Babies are smart enough to know that when they are not at peace within, that peace can only be restored by someone else changing their diaper, feeding them, giving them something to drink or burping them or finding out what is needed to correct their sickness. As we grow from infants to adults we learn to do a lot for ourselves but, in the process we also lose a lot. We begin to think that just because we can feed ourselves, change our own clothes, take an aspirin ourselves that we can fix ourselves all the time. Of course, that is not true. Even as adults, there are some things that only someone else can fix, that only someone else can bring peace to our beings.
This, of course, leads us to the third area of our relationships wherein there can be peace or conflict, and that is our relationship with God.
As in the other two types of relationships; our relationships with others and our relationship with ourselves, the pathway to peace with God begins with honesty and travels through justice.
Honesty is what confession is all about. Confession is not about making ourselves feel useless or worthless or ugly. It is simply about being honest – with ourselves and with God. When we do that, when we confess to God and to ourselves the lack of peace within and the reasons for it, at least, the ones we know of, God begins the process of waking with us down the path of justice.
We begin to discover the grace and forgiveness of God. Sin, that is, our desire to live our lives our way instead of God’s way, is identified and we discover things for which we need to ask God’s forgiveness, things for which we need to ask ourselves for forgiveness and for which we need to forgive ourselves and things for which we need to ask the forgiveness of others. When we seek forgiveness, we seek to have relationships restored. Restored relationships is the plan and purpose of God, the mission of Christ, the process of growth in the lives of believers and the goal of all history.
Four Promises that Can Change Lives – the title of the sermon series for the four Sundays of Advent, are not just themes we return to almost every year during Advent. They are promises, given by God. The promise of Hope that we discussed last week is a promise that things will get better, that we will make it though, that we are not alone and that there is a plan and purpose. Peace is not just something held out to us but a promise that God will work in us to bring us peace and to work through us to help bring peace to others.
They are promises that we can take advantage of or we can ignore. When we take advantage of them, our lives do change. When we refuse, I would like to say that our lives remain the same but that is not true, they get worse because the unresolved conflict raging within causes us to be uglier people on the inside. We can choose. Which will we choose?