Advent 2 (Peace) Sermon - December 5, 2021 Luke 1:26-38, Is 40:3-5
The peace of Christ be with you. (And also with you). If that greeting was familiar to you you’ve either been in an Anglican worship service or elsewhere where this blessing has been pronounced.
Though raised atheist I have enjoyed worshipping in multiple settings, including Pentecostal, Baptist and Anglican, particularly when I was at seminary.
That’s why I sometimes call myself an Anglibapticostal.
I like this greeting, because it speaks of a profound truth that all followers of Christ share, and that we are learning together to participate in - the peace of Christ. Do you participate in the peace of Christ? Have you been learning to rest in His peace.
As there are now, there have always been a great many reasons to not have peace. We have all been through, so far, a 21 month pandemic. No one on this planet has been unaffected by this reality.
But there have always been factors fighting against Peace, and this includes real things that make it hard for Christians to dwell in the peace of Christ. There have been frequent wars. There have been economic meltdowns. These global things I’ve had an impact on us.
There have been local tragedies. There have been far too many shootings, there is far too much gang activity in our own city, in our own community.
And these things are just the tip of the iceberg. How are you and I expected to find peace where, some would argue, there is no peace.
For those of us who have been Christians for a really long time, we all run the risk of forgetting…forgetting that whatever peace we know in our lives today is not first about circumstances, it’s not about our character, it’s not even about how we’ve chosen to abide in the peace of Christ, whatever that may mean to us.
The peace we know is rooted in the character and calling of the One Christians think of during this Advent season as the Christ Child. This Prince of Peace. And during Advent, Jesus is calling us toward himself. He is the ultimate person of peace. He is the location of peace.
Do you ever wonder, “Why does God seem to care so much about me living with peace, when He knows that life and circumstances around about will always be somewhat unstable and we will always be vulnerable”?
Do you ever wonder “Why does the world around us seem in such despair, such chaos, such a feeling of teetering on the precipice (especially given this very long pandemic, and now the new Omicron variant that is somehow an even greater threat than the previous viruses)”?
And I wondered how we as a community could make a step closer to Jesus during this season. What is it about the Christ Child that makes approaching God somehow a little easier that it can seem otherwise.
Let’s listen carefully as these few passages are read to us: [Have readers read the following passages on Peace]
Isaiah 26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Colossians 3:15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.
Romans 8:6 The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;
Romans 14:19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
Luke 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
Let’s consider the question: God knows there will often be turmoil around us that will impact us. We are vulnerable to the things that go on around us. Nothing has shown that to be true more than this current pandemic.
Why does God then care that we live personally and collectively in peace, despite all that’s stacked against us?
If you are a follower of Jesus, your life stopped being about just you, or you and friends and your family, sometime ago. Your life is about you, and it is about your family, and your friends.
But your life is also, very importantly, about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God that is under the rule of the Prince of Peace.
And Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is my Lord…
He personally rules my life as I turn it over to Him daily, and I live in the light of His loving grace. That makes so much of life so much better than it would be without Him. Does that mean that nothing bad will ever happen?
That idea…that nothing bad should ever happen to a follower of Jesus….it is very, very misplaced, very wrong, and ultimately there’s nothing that way of thinking can do but cripple our faith if we live with that assumption.
In the book of Acts, the first Christian martyr, Stephen, dies. But he was the first of many.
It’s good to look into the lives of the early Christian martyrs…how they stood uncompromisingly for Christ when the culture around them thought them to be mad,
and how they were led to their violent deaths, always, always with the promise that if they just recanted their faith, if they just gave a verbal nod of allegiance to Caesar, they would be spared death.
And not one of those hundreds of Christian martyrs denied Jesus. They didn’t see their suffering or their martyrdom as any kind of sign of God’s absence, or of God not caring. They understood their suffering to be a mirror to Jesus' own suffering on the cross.
The Apostle Paul himself expresssed the desire “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death”
Brothers and Sisters. Bad things will happen in the world around us, and maybe even to us. If we deny that reality, if we think that belonging to Jesus insulates us entirely, our faith will not mature enough to deal with tough things that will happen because of sin, because of the broken world we live in.
God wants us to have peace in the midst of this broken world because He wants us to be near Him.
The alternative…to live in fear, to be freaked out when anything goes wrong, causes us to live very self-involved lives; consumed with and distracted by our own situations instead of being focused, as God intends us to be, on His Kingdom purposes, which very much include the well-being of others.
I want to suggest that having peace is rooted in a deep commitment to Jesus Christ. God wants us to have peace…that’s another way of saying God wants us to know Jesus.
I know of no effective “how-to” method of having peace. There are some practices, some things we can do to try to calm ourselves in stressful situations. But Peace is in a person, Jesus Christ,
and the way to have peace is to commit our whole lives to Jesus, and then to live in the Way Jesus calls us to live.
So considering the theme of Peace is quite a challenge in this climate or Covid.
Now without hope, without faith…despair is an understandable response to the vulnerability that we feel. But is that necessary?
By no means! What is the alternative to placing our faith in the systems of the world around us that sooner or later, we are told, will crumble? Is there an alternative, or are we stuck?
What is the solution? The solution is a Person. The solution is a powerful Person.
The solution is a powerful Person who comes to us, knowing that the power and authority and majesty He possesses is too much for us to grasp initially, too much for us to not recoil in fear from.
A Person of grace and love and compassion who comes to us this season as He came to us that first Christmas, to a world of chaos and despair.
I speak of course of the Christ who entered the world as infant. Lowly, needy. Vulnerable, at risk. A little bundle of need. Dependant entirely on His mother and step-father. We feel shakey and unsure of our ability to cope sometimes.
A human infant is the most vulnerable being on the planet. And yet God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of all the galaxies out there that we’ve just begun to map, the Alpha and Omega, became a human child.
Why? Well, in part to become for us the warmest and most tangible of expressions of the character of God
I’ve been aware of the Incarnation for a lot of years, but it remains a jolting thing to me, a marvelous mystery.
How could all that power and authority get squeezed into a human? What would all that power and authority and love look like in a human being.
Well, the answer is given to us in the life of Jesus.
The fully human, fully God person who would reveal to us the thoughts of God, the heart of God. Who would walk the streets of Jerusalem, who would talk with the people and walk with the people and heal the people.
Who would be tried before Pilate and unjustly condemned. The Christ child grows up to be the one who suffers for our sakes on the cross; motivated and spurred on and incarnating the mighty love of God, Jesus dies on the cross.
And He defeats death and triumphs over the grave. And all our hope and purpose and love are somehow bound up in His whole magnificent life. Born in abject poverty, in a vile, stinking stable. Humble. Weak. Yet so incredibly powerful and world-changing in his passionate love for humankind, for you, for me.
But what if I’m struggling and I really have little or no peace? Here are some practical take aways:
Peace comes through repentance
If you’re living for yourself and not for God - either because you’ve never come to Jesus recognizing Him as Saviour,
OR if you’ve done that and are not daily walking in the faith that you possess by God’s grace, then honestly, you need to repent. Advent has been understood as a season of repentance, an opportunity to get right with God.
Have you never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. What is keeping you from today praying and asking Jesus to become the Lord of your life?
Speak with me or Pastor Arleen or Pastor Jan or one of the Elders after the service and we would be happy to lead you in a prayer of faith where you repent of your sins, confess that Jesus died ont he cross for your sins, and receive Him personally as your Lord and Saviour.
If you’ve confessed Christ before but you’ve been wandering and not serving Him as you know you ought, you can go to Jesus on your own or with
guidance, and confess your sins to Him and be restored - if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Peace through Community
A lot of us don’t really do so great in our own heads. When we’re left to our thoughts and habits, without the positive influence of other followers of Jesus, we can start to drift. So make a commitment to God to be as connected to other believers as possible.
Be the one that asks another out for coffee. Join us in our weekly online Bible Studies - the Men’s study on Wednesday afternoons and/or the Fireside Bible Chat on Thursday mornings.
You don’t even need to have the internet. You can join by phone! But be connected to other believers. It’s part of how God works in your life. You were not meant to do this alone.
Peace through spiritual disciplines
It’s so, so important to establish and maintain positive daily habits that become a wonderful rhythm in your life.
What’s a good habit you can practice that’s a spiritual discipline? Repentance. Resting in God’s presence. Worshipping the Lord. Prayer, for yourself, yes, but I would suggest mostly for others.
This is regular, daily connection with God. It’s practicing the presence of God.
If you’re interested in developing your spiritual life in any of these ways and would like support, please speak with me after the service or contact me during the week. We are very happy to support you in your journey with Jesus.
In this world we will, as Jesus told us, have trouble, and yet Jesus has overcome the world and He is the Rock of our lives.
We confess in our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father; can we do that outloud as we have done before, church?
Can we say boldly this one critical, beautiful, unchangeable fact that God means us to anchor our lives on…
5that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father!?
May we say ‘yes’ in our hearts to the Christ Child who comes to us this Christmas with God’s invitation to draw near, to freshly put our trust wholly and completely in Christ who died for us.
Let’s pray. God, you know all things. You invite us this season into Your peace. Grant us faith, O Lord, that we may each take steps closer to You this season, that we might receive all Your promises and that we might live in Your peace.
In the matchless name of Jesus we pray. Amen. The God of peace be with you all . Amen.
