Serenity Now

(23Dec 2018)

Peace.  The final frontier.  I know - you thought it was space.  Some of you engineers and sci-fi buffs thought that space was the final frontier.  That’s what Captain Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard have told us for generations.  But peace.  Have you ever thought about this?  Sleep in heavenly peace.  A more peaceful sleep.  Don’t we all aspire to that?  And beyond that, how about this oh-so-familiar cultural icon? [gravestone carved with R.I.P.]  It is an accepted icon, isn’t it?  Rest in peace.  May he/she rest in peace.  Isn’t this our common lot?  We spend our entire lives in search of peace, sometimes finding it, yet often not, finding it to be elusive, and in the end, when someone crosses over TO that final frontier, to the great beyond, the “great unknown”, we just hope to God that they find peace.  Rest for their soul.  Don’t we?  But peace.  Serenity now.  Still waters.  It is a global wish, isn’t it?  A universal aspiration.  Wishes for peace fill greetings and leave-takings the world over.  The very words which peoples in the Middle East, the land of the Bible, use for hello and goodbye, literally mean “peace”.  Shalom - if you are Jewish.  Salaam - if you are Arab.  And it's the same word, whether you are coming or going.  Peace.  I come in peace.  Go in peace.  May you experience peace in all your undertakings.  May you enjoy a generally good time in the coming weeks.

But peace.  Restful peace.  Peace and [what]?  Quiet.  Our soul at rest.  Doesn’t that sound just heavenly?  Still waters.  Literally, waters beside which you can rest.  Tranquility.  Serenity.  Serenity now - isn’t that what everyone is looking for?  Kosmo Kramer and Mr Costanza famously tried to find it simply by reciting those exact words to themselves over and over - serenity now, serenity now.  Deep abiding soul-satisfying thirst-quenching peace.  Aren’t we all looking for something like this?  But where do we find it?

How ‘bout here?  Will we find it in a place like this?  [Pic of lake, mountains, sunset, beach…]  

Aren’t we all looking for something like this?  Maybe not exactly this, but something in the general vicinity?  The operative word here, I believe, is paradise.  I think most of us here in the US prefer to describe this as “vacation”.  The Brits call it holiday.  What we’re essentially looking for is time off.  A respite, a rest and a break from work, and not just for a day but for a week - or even longer (altho it is hard to come back from those long breaks, isn’t it?).  Some people look for it in what we call “retirement” - but it seems like those folks are often busier than they were before they “retired”!  But what we’re looking for is a break from the grind, from all the worries and cares of this life.  From the Curse…

Sadly, most of life sometimes seems to be about trying to get out of sand traps and avoid the water hazards than it does enjoying a relaxing walk or cart ride along beautifully manicured fairways and greens.  What was it Bob Hope said?  Golf is a good walk ruined.  Life can feel that way.  Life is hard, isn’t it, grown-ups?  It is the infamous curse of Adam:

Genesis 3:17-19   

And to Adam he said, Because you gave ear to the voice of your wife and took of the fruit of the tree which I said you were not to take, the earth is cursed on your account; in pain you will get your food from it all your life.  Thorns and waste plants will come up, and the plants of the field will be your food;  With the hard work of your hands you will get your bread till you go back to the earth from which you were taken: for dust you are and to the dust you will go back.

What had happened is that our marching orders got all befuddled.  God directed the first couple (and us as their descendants) to fill the earth and subdue it, but now the earth was going to bow up and resist us, at almost every turn.  Thorns and thistles.  Sand traps and water hazards.  Death and disease and destruction.  Everything breaks down.  Scientific types refer to this as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which basically says... - well, that’s exactly what it says.  Randomness increases.  Stuff breaks down.  Things do NOT naturally tend towards greater complexity on their own (Mr. Darwin - VERY wrong about that).  Pretty much everything breaks down in some way or other.

And thus we find ourselves in a bit of a quandary, a lifelong quest for daily bread and peace in fields which keep coming up not daisies but thorns and thistles, hoping to God (or too often not to God) one day to be able to finally rest in peace.  Trying desperately to get back to the garden, to paradise, to serenity now.  I’m sorry, that’s not really a message of glad tidings and cheer, is it?  But this time of year, as much as any, we're talking about peace, aren’t we?  Looking for peace.  It is one of the core messages of the Christmas season, isn’t it?  Right from the the very beginning, that’s precisely what the angel said, wasn’t it?

Luke 2:14  

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

Peace on earth.  Peace on earth.  Peace among men.  Good news, people!  This was good news to all people, to all the world!  Our age-old, lifelong search for peace, our quest for serenity now, was about to be fulfilled.  And not a new message, this:

Isaiah 9:6  

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; 

And the government will rest on His shoulders; 

And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, 

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

  There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, 

On the throne of David and over his kingdom, 

To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness 

From then on and forevermore. 

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.

There is one word here which is repeated.  Peace.  Shalom.  This Child is The Prince of peace.  And when He comes and establishes His throne there will be no end to the increase of peace.  Doesn’t that sound divine?  Heavenly?  Doesn’t that sound like paradise?  I think that’s precisely the point.  But hundreds of years before that first Noel, the birth of this Prince of peace - the Lord of hosts confirmed through the prophet Isaiah that He was going to send a child, a baby boy, Who would be given to Israel and to the whole world.  Not just any baby.  This would be God Himself, coming down to earth and - somehow - taking on finite human flesh and frailty.  Mighty God.  Eternal Father.  And He would rule always and forever with justice and righteousness, establishing peace once and for all and forever.  The Prince of peace.  Doesn’t that just sound wonderful?  And we know now that His name is Jesus.  We celebrate His birthday in just two days.  

Peace.  The final frontier.  Serenity now.  Freedom from disturbance.  Hopefully I’ve established that we’re looking for it.  But where does one find it in the here and now?  And HOW does one find it?  What are we really looking for?  And how do we find it in this Prince of peace here on the earth while He is not on the earth, not yet having returned to set up His rule on earth?  How can we find some this very day, this very week?  How can we find serenity now NOW?  Cuz if there’s one thing sadly missing from many an experience of Christmas, isn’t it peace?  Our experience can get swallowed up in all the hubbub and hustle and bustle, all the shopping and tinsel and cooking and hosting and all the trimmings.  All the trinkets.  All the ribbons and tags and boxes and bags.  Even the Grinch saw the downside of those things (of course, everything had a downside for him - until he learned the True Reason for the season!  But I digress...).  For many of us at this time of year, it’s “How about just a little peace in my life?”  Well let’s talk about that…

There are multiple levels on which we as denizens of a broken and cursed earth pursue this quest for peace, three I’d like to look at this morning.  We are looking for peace with God, peace with our fellow man, and peace within ourselves.

Romans 5:1   

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is where we begin, the jumping off point.  Peace with God.  As it turns out, all other levels of peace - peace on earth and peace in my heart - are fragile and elusive at best until we get this one taken care of.  Vertical peace.  The Bible says that we actually start out as enemies of God.  From our earliest days, we learn to live for self and put other things in God’s place.  This is what the Bible calls sin, and this is what separates us from God.  It creates enmity.  Hostility.  We need to be reconciled back to God, which is entirely why Jesus came, to broker peace between us and our Creator.  Jesus came to earth so that He could pay the penalty for our sin.  He opened the way for us to turn around in our hearts and be restored to a right relationship with God.  Forgiveness for every thing we have ever done wrong.  Peace with God.  Eternal, lasting peace with God.  This is one peace treaty which will never be broken.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Do you believe this?  Belief, faith in the Lord Jesus, making Him our Prince of peace, is how we are made right with God.  Faith in Jesus is how we begin, how we find peace with God.  Everybody needs it, and is searching for it on some level - sadly many don't know where to look… We look to Jesus.  The baby in the manger.  The Prince of peace.

The second level on which we pursue peace on earth is with our fellow man.  Horizontal peace.  With our neighbor.  With our spouse and with our kids and with our parents and with our relatives.  Especially at this time of year, right?  How about peace between enemies?  Peace treaties which actually do last.  The challenge here is that we are dealing with selfish people (self included) - and nations full of selfish people - who are basically looking out for number one and invariably get sideways with someone (or someones) else who is doing the exact same thing.  Looking out for number one.  Me first.  Survival of the selfish.  I’m gonna take care of me-myself-and-I, me and my own, and don’t get in my way.  And thus we have conflict.  Taking from one another.  Taking off from one another.  Hurting one another.  Hating one another.  War and all kinds of avoidable destruction.  Untold sorrow.  Literally.  Man’s inhumanity to man.  And yet we have all these aspirations for peace.  Can’t we all just get along?  World peace.  In fact, this is the very charter of the UN:

The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945.  It is currently made up of 193 Member States. Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the United Nations can take action on the issues confronting humanity in the 21st century, such as peace and security. 

[preamble of the Charter] WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained

Peace on earth.  The whole world is looking for it, longing for peace between people who can’t seem to avoid getting in each other’s way.  Some insist that the way forward is tolerance.  Tolerance - which means to allow the existence or occurrence or practice of something without interference.  Even when you don’t like or agree with it.  Non interference.  That’s the prime directive, isn’t it?  Star Trek fans?  Non-interference.  Well how does that work, practically speaking?  How does that work if you are raising kids?  How do kids really feel about tolerance?  About non-interference?  Hands-off?  They feel UN-loved, that’s how they feel.  The parent who lets their child just do whatever is going to have a child who grows up feeling unloved.  And how do they turn out?  

You know, one of the things I have been most looking forward to in moving to east texas has been the chance to grow some azaleas.  Anybody here grow azaleas?  They’re beautiful, aren’t they?  You know, the key to get them to bloom and look their best is to prune them.  To cut them back.  Because all along their stems they have these tiny latent buds, buds which could produce bunches of blooms, but which don’t come out until you cut back the stems.  And pruning takes some time, some effort, and it is no doubt painful in the short-term.  So you need to do it right, you need to have some sharp pruners.  But the same is true with people.  Each one of us is vested with incredible untapped potential, right from the start.  Buds all along our stems…!  God has designed us with glorious potential.  And what brings it out is not tolerance.  It’s not non-interference.  Laissez-faire.  What brings it out is attentive, loving parenting.  Mentoring.  Discipleship.  Pruning.  Instruction and correction done with a caring heart.  The way young people know they are loved is when their parents and other caring adults engage with them.   The same is true for old people - the way we know people care is when they engage with us, when they speak the truth to us in love.  And of course because we are not perfect, because we all mess up, we also require things like self-awareness and teachability and tact and honesty and compassion.  But the skill we need more than anything else is not tolerance, but actual forgiveness.  There is no avoiding people and their messiness.  There is no shielding them from my own messiness.  Unless you decide to become a hermit in Alaska or something.  But my messiness and other people’s messiness messes with our serenity now.  What we all need is to care enough to actually interfere in love, and then the precious ability to say (and live in to) "I’m sorry", and "I forgive you".  Admitting faults, and then letting go of hurts.  And what makes this realistically possible is first doing this with God.  Admitting my faults, my sins to God, and receiving His forgiveness through Jesus.  Have you done this yet?  Because it is next-to-impossible to forgive anyone else until and unless I have been forgiven.  World peace sounds great, but lasting peace between selfish unforgiven people is not much more than a pipedream.  And yet, this is part of the good news of Christmas - peace on earth, peace with my fellow man - is something I can actually pursue.  Because of Christ.

Romans 14:19 

So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.

Isaiah 52:7    

How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”

There is peace with God - which comes through Jesus.  There is peace on earth (between one another).  God’s people are peacemakers, we go to the world with the message of peace.  World peace - which can be realized only through Jesus, the Prince of peace.  And somewhere in between there is the peace OF God.  Peace with myself.  Internal peace.  Peace which springs up out of a heart which knows it is forgiven.  God’s peace, that peace which surpasses all understanding.  Beyond comprehension.  Incomprehensible.  Inexplicable.  Indescribable.

Philippians 4:6-7 

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Paul mentions it, but he doesn’t try to describe it.  It's indescribable.  Out of this world, but it is not found in a place.  It - like the other forms of peace - is found through a Person.  The cure for anxiety, the antidote for all of these would-be peace stealers is Christ Jesus.  And once you know Him, you can experience God’s incomprehensible peace every day just as Paul describes:

Prayer and supplication (He is in control - Rom 8.28 - AND He provides every need - Phil 4.13)

Thanksgiving

In everything

Guard like a fort

You might need to make what I call a Philippians 4 list… (make a list of everything in your life/heart that is a "peace stealer" and then write Philippians 4.6-7 over it.  No, literally, read those verses and then write the "address" over your list as a way of affirming your belief in that promise)

When I first began following Christ and was first beginning to understand this truth about the peace of God, I found myself needing to make one of these lists practically every week.  But over the years, as these twin towering truths of God’s sovereign goodness and His faithful provision have washed over my soul, and as I have learned to practice the discipline of thankfulness - thanking God in everything and FOR everything, the Lord has forged a transformation in my heart.  Anxiety doesn’t plague me like it used to.  It is no longer a constant companion.  I’m by no means perfect, but I am able stand before you today and attest that serenity now is not a pipedream.  God’s peace is attainable, every hour of every day, in season and out, even during this season that conspires towards chaos.  

The disciples were with Jesus out on a boat, and a storm came up out of nowhere.  Wind, huge waves, crashing.  And the disciples, some of them very accomplished seafarers, were not only caught off guard, they were convinced they were going to die, things were so bad.  Anxiety out the wazoo.  NO peace.  No soup for you!  And where was Jesus?  What was He doing?  (What was sleeping in heavenly peace for the win, Alex).

Begin, or continue, your quest for peace today with prayer.  And thanksgiving.  Thank Him today.  Thank Him for that thorn in your flesh.  Thank Him for that person who has wronged you.  Pray for that person, pray for them the way they would pray for themselves.  Trust the Lord, that He will fully supply all of your needs, and that He will faithfully work all things that concern you together for good.  And that He will surround and guard your heart with His indescribable peace like an impenetrable fort.  Peace on earth - beginning in my heart.  Will you pray with me?