Psalm 42:1-11 // Romans 7:14-25 // Luke 14:25-35
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the next four weeks, we are turning toward our Annual Theme, Shalom: That Glorious Day. Shalom means Peace. Peace is not just the absence of violence or the absence of hate; it is a harmony of relationships. Those relationships were broken in the Fall, and each generation smashes the plate into more pieces. But. The Hebrew Shalom means a fullness of love, of joy, of right relationship between God, ourselves, others, and creation. One commentator writes that when grace manifests itself in our relationships, it’s called peace. In the grace of Christ, we receive a peace that passes all our understanding. In Christ, God brings peace to our broken relationships with others. In Christ, God starts in us a peace that finishes in the glorious second coming of Jesus. The theme for our meditation today is “Peace with Ourselves.” One of the best pieces of my seminary education was a requirement of my counseling class: that each and every student would go to at least 3 sessions with a professional counselor. I remember going the first and second times and skating the surface, but on my third session, I opened up … about my fears: Would I be able to finish seminary school?, about my insecurities: am I worthy for someone to love?, about my faults and my regrets: I’m a clumsy, forgetful, up-in-the-clouds kind of a person, and I remember getting in my car and driving home crying because of all the things I had hardly told anyone, that had all come out that night. And I tell you that to tell you this: all that pent-up whatever-it-was had been keeping from peace in myself. Today, our meditation is on how the grace of God won for us on the cross manifests itself in our closest relationship – in our relationship with ourselves. Four questions we would ask for today: First, what is the opposite of peace and what causes it? Then, what causes peace with ourselves and what does it look like? First, what is the opposite of this kind of peace? What do you call it? Some might call it insecurity. Others call it self-doubt. If you were reading parenting books from the 1980’s, you might call it lack of self-esteem. Some would call it a restless soul or a bad feeling inside but whatever you call it, you know how it looks… It’s the teenager who looks in the mirror and wonders, “Why did you have to make me like this, God?” It’s the man struggling with depression whose friends don’t really know what to do with him, other than watch and pray. It’s the woman overtaken by alcohol who can’t seem to muster the willpower to stop. It’s the aging adult who used to be the get-it-done fixer type of person, who now, more often than not, is the one who needs help, whether he says it or not. Why do you think that is? Three ideas that I have for you. First, that issues of this nature are shameful. It doesn’t feel good to think that the thing closest to ourselves – that is our own self – isn’t working right. You use yourself every day. You try to keep yourself in good working order. It doesn’t seem like you should be a problem for you. Second, these issues are overwhelming. You are the only self that you can use. Trying to fix yourself would be like trying to wipe peanut butter off of your face with hands full of peanut butter; it only makes it messier. It would be like having to pedal on flat tires to get to a store and buy new tires; it’ll do more damage to your bike to get there. It’s overwhelming because it’s so close to what you do and who you are everyday. Third, these issues are under the surface. Like me at my counseling sessions, it takes time to get to these issues. They aren’t about actions; they’re about a way of life. They aren’t about content; they’re about tone. More often than not, you leave yourself wondering, yeah, why did I do that at all? That’s what it looks like, but what causes it? The short answer is sin. Did you catch it above? When man fell into sin, all our relationships were broken, even our relationship with ourselves. And every generation since smashes the plate a little more. Paul says it like this, in a verse that I shared with a man in prison, broken by his own addiction, as he sat in the chair next to me saying, “I knew what I was doing. I knew I would get caught. I knew I was betraying my son, my mom, and my girlfriend. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I did it anyways.” Paul says it like this: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Do you catch the biblical way to talk about these things? Paul says, lack of peace in me takes me captive. It’s a sin deep in my bones. A wretched man trapped in a body of death. David calls his soul downcast. Sin leaves us with the abiding sense that something is NOT RIGHT and we can’t put our finger on it. And here’s the crux of the Law. You can’t just will yourself out of it. Just as any person struggling with depression would know, just as any person wrestling with anxiety would tell you, just as anyone dealing with substance abuse, with self-harming tendencies, with overeating, oversleeping, overworking, oversexing can say, the solution does not start with the statement “Just try harder.” The real problem is sin – is a desire to love something that in the end hurts and destroys you. You see, for the Christian, this kind of a peace begins where every other kind of peace begins: by the grace of God. Without it, self-help books are only a temporary fix. It starts outside of yourself. The fancy-dancy Latin way to say that is Extra Nos. Peace is the manifestation of grace in our relationships, even our relationship with ourselves. Love incarnate would sit down in the dust next to you and hold your hand. He would dry your tears. He would look you in the eye and tell you, you are worthy because I paid a price for you. You are whole because I broke the body of my son for you. You are good because I have taken every stich of your shame, your burden, and I have thrown it all away. The only one who can tell you who you are has told you that you are first and best a child of God, and nothing can snatch you out of your father’s hand. That’s the beginning of a peaceful soul. Knowing that the very great questions of life have been asked and answered by your God, and that every other question will follow suit. David says, a peaceful soul is like flowing streams. It’s full of hope. It’s like a room where the windows are open and light streams in. It’s what Paul calls, “The victory in Jesus Christ.” So, what should this make us do? First, see yourself as God sees you. Accept your faults, your limitations, and your shortcomings. Own them. Know them. Look them in the eye. Do this, because they’re no secret to God, and guess what, he loved you anyway. Drop the “perfect” act. Leave the idea that you are without fault behind. Instead, remember again that Jesus Christ knows all your faults and yet he still loves you. He knows all your shortcomings even better than you know yourself, and yet he still chases after you. He knows all of your sins, and yet he would hold out the gift of salvation to you, on your good days and on your bad, in sickness and in health. Second, know that God loves you, and he calls you to love what he loves, and one of those things is you! He says, you are worth it, and you are worthy. You are loveable, and you are loved. You are redeemed whether you feel like it or not. You are bought by the very most precious thing in the world, the blood and death of your God on the cross, and on your shoulders rests the very righteousness of Christ. If that’s true, and it is, then love yourself the way God loves you. Learn to desire what he desires; learn to love what he loves, to go where he goes, to stay where he stays. Seek him where he promises to be found. Third, make your inner circle people that believe the same thing you do. Learn to rely on people that are chasing after what God would have them do. Learn to rely on people whose first inclination is one of forgiveness and tranquility, of grateful reception and of kind action. The kingdom of heaven is like a young person who has grown up knowing from his mother’s knee that his worth comes from God’s love for him, and so as he grows and becomes useful and successful, he learns to love what God loves and to do what God does, and when his abilities leave him, and he can no longer go and do but only be, he rests in the same knowledge he has had from his mother’s knee: that his worth comes from God’s love for him. Amen and Amen.
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