Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
(2 Timothy 2:22), John 14:22-27
22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?" 23 Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. 25 "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
“No Jesus, No Peace, Know Jesus, Know Peace”
We’ve seen the bumper sticker hundreds of times. While I nod, affirming the message, I bristle at the whole bumper-sticker theology idea. If bumper stickers were meant to raise a question, I’d have slapped one on my car that says, “Arminius was right”, but they don’t always do that. They try to convey a complex truth in a few short words that can be read while traveling at 65 miles per hour on the interstate. More often than not, the bumper sticker does not do justice to the issue it is trying to address. That is why one of my favorites is ‘visualize whirled peas’. It doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The thing is, in those 8 words, “No Jesus, No Peace, Know Jesus, Know Peace” what is conveyed in that nutshell is a simple but profound truth that we can readily come back to or build on.
Since coming to Jerusalem, it has been my privilege to be involved in the ministry of visitation – people from the congregation or somehow related to the congregation who are either at home, in an assisted living center, or a nursing home. This includes visiting folks who are in the hospital.
What has been a true gift has been to witness the graciousness with which people deal with their infirmities, or illnesses. To look someone in the eye and have him or her say “I’m ready to die” with complete assurance has been a lesson in faith, and have made that aspect of this pastorate rewarding in a way that I never thought possible.
Just a few minutes after he was born, the pediatrician came in to check on Caleb. He placed the stethoscope against his chest, and listened intently. He repeated the process, and then looked up at us and said, “it sounds like he may have a slight murmur”.
Hannah had been born healthy as a horse, and Leslie had made it through both pregnancies with no major setbacks or crises. There was nothing that came up in the prenatal care, the sonograms, or during the delivery process that warned us that anything might be amiss. The doctor explained what a murmur was, a hole in the wall of the heart that separates the two lower ventricles from each other.
We were scheduled to see a pediatric cardiologist as quickly as possible, and I believe it was within 2 or 3 days of his birth that we found ourselves sitting in the specialist’s office. I don’t remember his name, but he looked at us, and explained that the hole in Caleb’s heart was relatively small, and that there was a good chance that it would close up on it’s own, but that there was also a chance that that would not happen, and that we might be looking at the possibility of surgical intervention.
I remember he stopped explaining the details, and looked at us and said something like, “at this point, in my experience, 90% of couples have only one question on their minds: “why me?” I was wondering if you might be asking yourselves that same question?”
Leslie and I looked at each other and just kind of shrugged and looked back at him and said, “No, that’s ISN’T a question we were asking ourselves”. He was surprised enough to ask why not. Our answer seemed to surprise him even more. I tried to explain why the question wasn’t even on our radar screen, and finally I looked at Leslie to help put into words what we were wanting to say, and she said ‘Things like this happen to all kinds of people. We’re no different in that sense; we’re as human as the rest of the world. But we do have faith that God will be with us through this, no matter what happens.’
Let’s broaden the scope of the word “peace”. We automatically think of the word that is in opposition to the given- peace, so the opposite is war or conflict.
There’s another Bumper sticker: “If you want peace, work for justice”.
I’d contend that there has never been true peace on earth. We have, of course, experienced periods of tranquility, times, sometimes years, when conflict has been mostly absent from our environment. But if we look at the situation worldwide, there has never been a time when there hasn’t been some sort of armed conflict going on somewhere in the world. I remember reading somewhere that, at any given time, there are approximately 200 armed conflicts going on somewhere in the world. There are those we are all familiar with: the conflict in the Middle East, in Ireland, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and between India and Pakistan. There is the conflict in Liberia, and again in Burundi, as well as East Timor, a province of Indonesia, where a civil war has been raging for decades. Some places make the headlines, others don’t, but there are always, always those whose daily existence is comparable to … hell. We have much to be thankful for, and at the same time, much to be responsible for.
Turning to the text, the context is at the last supper. John is a little different from the other Gospels in that sense. If you have a red-letter edition of the Bible, you can compare the four Gospels, and you find that in Matthew, Mark and Luke, there is a lot of connecting material, and the words of Jesus are interspersed throughout. In John, it is almost the opposite. There are pages and pages of Jesus speaking, interrupted here and there with connecting material, or text that is setting up the situation. In the passage, Jesus has already alluded to his coming death to the disciples, and they are struggling with trying to understand how that might happen. The peace Jesus spoke of could not be exemption from conflict and trial. Jesus himself had been "troubled" by the impending Crucifixion (12:27 "Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say--'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name."). The peace he spoke of here is the calmness of confidence in God. Jesus had this peace because he was sure of the Father's love and approval. He could therefore move forward to meet the crisis without fear or hesitation. The world can give only false peace, which mostly comes from the ignorance of peril or self-reliance. With his promise of peace, he repeated the words of comfort he had spoken in reply to Peter's earlier question (cf. v.1"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.). The disciples must have continued to show their dismay as they contemplated Jesus' departure.
William Powell Tuck, professor of Preaching at Southern Seminary for many years, [wrote in ‘The Struggle for Meaning’ (Pennsylvania: Judson Press, 1977), pp. 113-114,] describes it this way:
Two artists were commissioned to paint their conception of peace. Each went into his studio and worked for the allotted time. The day came when the paintings were to be viewed. The veiled canvasses were placed on easels in the gallery. The first artist threw the veil off his painting. Everyone smiled and took a deep breath. The tranquil, pastoral scene almost exuded the delightful odors of suppertime, hot biscuits, freshly mowed hay, and the contented lowing of farm animals being fed in the barn.
When the other painting was unveiled, viewers were jolted by the scene of a raging, torrential waterfall cascading, exploding, crashing on the rocks below. A gnarled little tree seemed to be clinging to a craggy opening in the rocks. Through the foam and mist of the waterfall, you could see a bird's nest precariously perched on the end of a limb stretched out over the falls. There on the nest in the midst of the crashing, thundering torrent was a mother bird singing her heart out. This is how Jesus would have painted peace-contentment in spite of conflict, joy that comes from within rather than from without.
We have in our own midst people who are facing the raging torrents of life. Some of us can look back on events of the last year, or the last few months or weeks and sometimes days, and see that waterfall in hindsight, aware that the raging is behind us, and that we have, through the grace of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit, come through. Others of us are aware that we are in the middle of the biggest storm of our lives.
Eijrhvnhn the greek word for peace used in verse 27, from which we get the name Irene, is an inward peace that comes from knowing who you are- and WHOSE you are.
I asked Elwood’s permission earlier to share some of his story, and he agreed, so here it is: He’s been healthy as a horse all his life, active, farming and working … for several months, beginning last year, he started feeling discomfort. For a long time the doctors thought it was a sinus infection. He finally went in for some serious testing, and they found that his spleen was three times the normal size, and ruptured. Surgery followed as quickly as possible, in early June. Tissue was sent off for analysis, and the diagnosis came back like a raging flood: cancer, and not only cancer, but also melanoma, as serious a prognosis as they could encounter.
I first met Elwood in the hospital after the surgery. At first, he thought I was a doctor. At the time, we didn’t have the pathology report. I went to visit him at home on the 11th of June, and I believe at that time he’d been given the report. As we sat and prayed, Elwood has shared that he felt a flood of peace come over him. Since then, going through all the testing, and the doctor’s appointments, and everything else, including the death of his father, that peace has not left him.
A few minutes ago we sang the hymn “it is well with my soul”. Reflect on those words:
“when sorrows like sea billows roll … though satan should buffet, though trials should come”
Are YOU at peace? Do you know to whom you belong? Can you look at your life and say “I am at peace”?
If you cannot, your invitation is to take the first step in that direction, by giving your life to the prince of peace.
If you have already done that, and are looking for a home from which you can share that peace with others, we would welcome you.
If you are a member of Jerusalem, your invitation is to recognize that peace, and be sensitive to anything that would hinder it, and strive for peace not only in your own life, but in the life of the church and in the life of our community, and in the life of the world.
Let’s pray.
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