Sermon - Thanksgiving 2015 - Church at the Mission - Colossians 3:15-17
The story is told of two old friends who bumped into one another on the street one day. One of them looked very sad, almost on the verge of tears. His friend asked, "What has the world done to you, my old friend?"
The sad fellow said, "Let me tell you. Three weeks ago, an uncle died and left me forty thousand dollars." "That’s a lot of money."
"But, two weeks ago, a cousin I never even knew died, and left me eighty-five thousand free and clear." "Sounds like you’ve been blessed...." "You don’t understand!" he interrupted.
"Last week my great-aunt passed away. I inherited almost a quarter of a million." Now he was really confused. "Then, why do you look so glum?" "This week... nothing!"
That’s funny, perhaps, but it does illustrate, in an exaggerated way, a certain attitude toward life, a perspective that can come out of us humans. People are funny that way.
What kind of person do you enjoy being around? What raises your interest in a new person that you meet?
Are you drawn to someone who is discontent, someone who is angry a lot of the time, someone who complains about many things?
Someone who finds fault in others, someone who is basically unhappy?
Or, are you drawn to people who are positive, who express appreciation for life, who you find yourself encouraged by when you're around them, are you drawn to a grateful people, thankful people?
I don't think that's a particularly hard decision to make.
Most of us are drawn to people who have managed to live this difficult life that we all live, and yet have somehow risen above their difficulties, their challenges, even their suffering, and have chosen to look at life through gratitude-colored glasses.
You see, I think negativity is easy. I think complaining is a cinch. It's effortless to gripe, it's no sweat to dwell on the negative.
There can be satisfaction in complaining. Especially when you find others that are sympathetic to your complaint.
We enjoy commiserating with others who feel the same negative way that we feel, who agree that we have been treated unfairly, who agree with us that the system doesn't serve us well, who agree that life is just plain unfair.
There is some satisfaction in complaining, but I am persuaded that there is no actual virtue to complaining.
Pastor Lee, who most of you know, is constantly managing challenging, difficult situations. He does it with a lot of wisdom, grace and a very deep understanding of human nature.
Many times Pastor Lee has brought to my attention a concern or problem that someone is facing, that the mission is dealing with, that is making life difficult.
But he has never, to my recollection, come to me with one of those situations without also having at least one, sometimes many more, proposed solutions to the problem.
It really seems to me that he views problems as opportunities. That he views difficult situations as opportunities to call on God, to seek the wisdom of God, and even to help the rest of us remember that God is in control, that God loves us.
There are many reasons that I respect Pastor Lee. This is a big one.
Pastor Jan is the same. In fact, this past summer when we were facing what we thought was going to be a big problem for the church, Pastor Jan spent what must've been hours coming up with an incredibly detailed, positive, holistic solution to the problem we were facing.
Her thinking contributed to the solution to the problem. She was not overwhelmed by the problem.
She didn't throw her hands up in the air. Instead she prayed, she did some of her best thinking, and she made a very positive difference. And the problem is no more.
What you find with these kind of people, Pastor Lee and Pastor Jan, is that they don't buy into the lie that any problem or challenge is bigger than God.
And they are thankful. Thankful to God for blessings, but also for challenges. It is a gift to be alive, and being alive means we will face troubles.
But we can never forget what Jesus said about this very thing. John 16: 33b “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
And so, my dear friends Pastor Lee and Pastor Jan know that they know that they know that Jesus is Lord, that God is good, and that it is God who gives the answers to the problems we face.
And not only that, it is God who gives us something, without which we are sure to panic, to complain, even to despair.
I'm going to ask _____ to read our passage for today, and then I’m going to ask you what it is that God gives us that enables us to be not complainers and whiners and fault-finders, but a thankful people.
Reader reads.
So what is it that God gives us that enables us to live lives of gratitude, lives of thankfulness?
He gives us the peace of Christ. The peace of Christ.
Yeah, but what does that mean? What is the peace of Christ? What kind of peace did Jesus have?
Well, Jesus was a real man living in our real world. He faced all kinds of problems including a type of poverty that many of us have never experienced.
He had no place to lay his head at night. He had enemies who wanted Him silenced, or if they couldn’t silence Him, they wanted Him dead.
Jesus faced temptations, again worse than any of us here in this room, but He managed to have a deep and abiding peace.
How could He do that? How can anyone do that? How can you have that kind of peace?
Well, Jesus was rooted. He had deep roots. He was rooted in His relationship with God the Father.
He acknowledged God as His Father, He spent as much time as He could manage in His busy life in prayer, in conversation with God His Father.
He was connected to God and He kept that connection strong by regularly going to God with His needs and His problems.
He was rooted in His relationship with God. That means He knew Who God is. He knew how faithful and good God is.
Jesus was fully human and fully divine, fully God. As a human man He had a history with God, He had experienced God’s love and felt God near to Him.
Part of the temptations Jesus experienced was to exchange His relationship with God for a substitute. In Luke chapter 4 Satan, actually, tries to tempt Jesus.
He tries to tempt Jesus with using His abilities for Himself and not others, He tries to tempt Him with the promise of unlimited earthly power (as if Satan could give that), among other things.
Substitutes for a real relationship with God are everywhere. Addictions can be a substitute for God; money be be a substitute for God.
It can be food, pleasure, luxury...whatever we might put above God in our lives. But none of those things bring us closer to God.
None of those things bring us closer to happiness. None of those things give us purpose or joy. None of those things give us peace.
Jesus was and is rooted in His relationship with the Father, and because of that, Jesus knows Who He is. Jesus identity was as the son of God.
And that identity helped Him greatly to have peace in the midst of great difficulties and trials.
He knew that He was loved by God. He knew that because He was loved by God He had the favour of God in His life.
So when things would go wrong, He never assumed God wasn’t with Him. He knew that He was in a broken world. He knew that bad things happen.
And because Jesus was grounded in His relationship with God the Father, because Jesus clung to His identity in God, the peace of Jesus (we talking about the peace of Christ, after all) the peace of Jesus was not dependent on external things, external circumstances.
His peace was a part of Who He Was.
That’s why on the cross, the place of His greatest suffering, the cross where Jesus laid down His life for you and for me, Jesus could forgive the ones who were crucifying Him. He could pray for those who were killing Him.
And lest anyone here think that Jesus was above pain, above the wounds of rejection, above being scorned, that Jesus was so perfect that we can’t possibly relate to Him, we just need to remember this.
When He was in the garden of Gethsemane on the night He was betrayed, knowing what was ahead of Him, He “began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said.
He fell to the ground, knelt and prayed: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” ...And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground”.
So Jesus was not removed from our experience. He didn’t go through the agony of the beatings He endured or the crucifixion in some sort of transcendent, other-worldly state. He wasn’t above seeking a way out of His coming torture and crucifixion.
But He was, above all, determined to do what God the Father wanted Him to do. And so He went willingly to the cross to suffer the penalty not for His own sins, but for mine. For ours. For the sins of the world.
That’s what the peace of Christ is. It is the peace that Jesus experienced through every moment of His life, even when in anguish. It is a peace rooted His absolute trusting the living God.
Ok! Well that’s Jesus. What does that mean for me? What does that mean in my situation, you might be thinking to yourself.
Well, Paul uses a vivid picture. "Let the peace of God be the decider of all things within your heart”, says another translation. Literally what he says is, "Let the peace of God be the umpire in your heart."
He uses a verb from the athletic arena; it is the word that is used of the umpire. What does the umpire do in a game of baseball? He or she settles things in any matter of dispute.
If the peace of Jesus Christ is the umpire in our hearts, then, when feelings clash and we are pulled in two directions at the same time, the peace of Christ will keep us in the way of love, the peace of Christ will direct our paths. And we will find ourselves to be a thankful people.
When people come to me and ask for direction about decisions they need to make in their lives, I tell them that they will have a peace that will favour one decision, one direction over another. It is a deep inward peace.
And like Jesus, in order for us to be able to be sensitive and aware of the peace that God is leading us with, we need to spend time with God. We need to invest in that relationship with God, we need to be rooted and established in Christ. The more we are rooted in our relationship with God and in our identity on Christ, the easier it is to decide which way to go. The easier it is to discern between differing paths, even when people are shouting conflicting opinions at us.
So, may we each experience the peace of Christ this Thanksgiving. That peace comes to us by way of the grace of God, who gives us the gift of Jesus Christ to dwell in our hearts, to live through us.
The kind of person that we are becoming can be a grateful person. A person who is thankful for the blessings of life.
A person who attracts others not be appealing to the negative, but by appealing to the positive.
Melodie Beattie, a noted author, said this: Gratitude unlocks the fullness fof life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates vision for tomorrow”.
5In closing, I think I’ll read our passage one more time as a blessing to you. This is God’s Word to you, this is God’s gift to you.
This is a passage to live by, and a passage to return to again and again when life threatens to flip us on our heads:
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.
And be thankful. 16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him”.
.
