Peace. All I want is an hour of peace! If I could just shut out the noise, pull the plug on the telephone, and send everybody packing for a couple of days, I’d be all right.
Have you ever said that? Have you ever felt as though you were on the very edge of falling into an abyss? You were in the midst of such turmoil that you were about to self-destruct? Has there been a time in your life when you would give almost anything for just a little quiet, just a day, no, an hour, even ten minutes of peace?
I see some parents nodding their heads! I see some schoolteachers with their eyes rolling back in their heads! I see some office workers who had one of those days when the phone would not quit and the boss brought an endless stream of new assignments! Peace. We want peace.
But it is not just peace in our personal lives that we want. We also want a world in peace. When Serbs slaughter Albanians and Albanians retaliate against Serbs, we want peace. When Ulster Protestants insist on provocative marches through Catholic neighborhoods, so that Irish Catholic hotheads pepper the Protestants with pipe bombs, surely we long for peace. A moment of peace.
When a man, driven by his own demons and fueled by despair over losses at the day-trading exchange, can bludgeon to death his family and strike out at everybody; when the name Columbine reminds us that evil that stalks the earth, we hunger for peace.
And in a city where, despite all the positive, some are still afraid to leave their homes at night, some fear to drive on certain streets, and even church members, whose faith, they say, is in God, fear coming out for prayer meeting – in such a city, we want peace. We need peace.
The trouble is that not only do we not know how to get peace, we are not even clear what peace is! Not only does peace elude us, but we are not even sure we understand what peace is.
The author of Hebrews has very pertinent words for us. He knows how to get peace. He knows why we don’t have peace. And he knows what the consequences are when we neither know how to get peace nor why we do not have it. This ancient writer, having spoken very clearly about the work of Christ, is not about to let up on that theme when he comes to the issue of peace. He will tell us that it is in Christ and in what Christ has done that the real deal comes concerning peace.
Let me use a little play on words today to help us get at this. You all know the old English nursery rhyme, “Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold; pease porridge in a pot, nine days old.” By the way, it comes from the 16th Century, and refers to a major of London named Pease, best known for levying very high taxes. Poor people had only a few vegetables to eat, and very little meat, so they would throw whatever they had into the pot, heat it up and eat, let the leftovers get cold and just throw in whatever they got their hands on the next day. Some of the Pease porridge might be seven, eight, nine days old! Not a very appetizing picture, is it?
Well, the mistakes we make in searching for peace are not very appetizing either. So let me play with these words just a little. Pease porridge hot; I’m going to call it “Peace Pottage Hot.” Peace pottage hot. You’ll see why.
The issue is peace. What is it, how do we get it, and what are the consequences if we do not have authentic peace?
I
When I say that we don’t know what peace is, I mean that we confuse peace with being nice. We think that all is peaceful if folks are blandly nice to each other, pleasantries are exchanged, there is a certain level of politeness. Nice equals peace. Or so we think.
But did you know that niceness often conceals hostility? Were you aware that the guy who smiles in your face and is excessively polite can actually hide profound anger? Haven’t you felt, even when somebody was being very correct with you, that there was a deep-seated hostility and a corrosive prejudice there? What’s going on?
We have thought of peace as passive niceness. We have thought that peace meant stay out of the way, don’t get in his face, shuffle and smile, keep your head down. We think that we can make peace by avoiding confrontation. But we don’t. Not at all. We don’t make peace by avoiding the truth. We may push conflict to the side, but it will hit us anyway. We don’t make peace by being passive and sweet and oozy-goozy. That will come back to haunt us, as anyone knows who has lived through the racial tensions of the last few decades. Peace is not achieved by being passive. Peace is an active pursuit of justice.
And so isn’t the author of Hebrews right on target when he commands us to pursue peace? Pursue peace. Listen to all the active words he uses, not a one of them passive:
Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled.
Pursue peace and holiness. See to it that no root of bitterness springs up. It is not good enough to leave well enough alone. We must pursue peace. God is interested in a whole lot more than being surrounded by nice, passive people. Anybody can do the politeness thing. God’s call is for Christians with guts to pursue peace and holiness. God’s call is for tough-minded Christians to get out of the passive mode and to pursue peace.
It struck me not too long ago that in a church like ours, with a reasonable degree of success, I could coast for a very long time in the passive mode. I could lead worship services and prayer meetings; I could attend deacons’ meetings and teach Sunday School classes. We could spice all this up with an occasional picnic and revivals, and we could be very nice. We could think we had peace. Everybody being nice to one another. I’ll wager we could go on like that for another twenty years, and I could retire fat and sassy. Well, fat anyway.
But I must tell you, I know that this is not God’s vision. I hear another challenge. I see another vision. Pursue peace, pursue holiness, root out bitterness. God’s word challenges us to an active, redemptive commitment to peace and justice. This lively word teaches us that if we want peace, we do not get it by retreating behind security locks and stained glass windows. We get peace by pursuing the things that make for peace.
That’s why I continue to focus on multiplying ministries. Every human need we can identify ought to be served out of the resources of God’s people. Pursue peace, teach and share Christ in every apartment house, every business, every school, every setting around us. We cannot be half-hearted. We cannot tack up a few puny little signs and suggest that if they want to go to church, they know where to come, and then call that evangelism. That’s passive. That’s avoidance. That’s nice. But that’s not pursuing peace and holiness.
Pursue peace. Peace among differing peoples. It is not enough for us just to reminisce about our multiracial history. We must work at hearing one another, we must work at understanding those who are not like us, we must be utterly committed to this thing of rooting out every scrap of bitterness, or else it will choke us. My wife has a garden at home. Despite her best efforts, weeds grow in that garden. On Mondays I get a strong hint that it would be awfully good if I were to root out those weeds. Well, I go to it, half-heartedly, not really wanting to, and so most of the weeds get torn off, but not rooted out. What will happen after just a little while? They will come back. They will not just die out. I have been forcefully told, on Monday mornings, that that is not good enough. My summons is to root out everything that will choke good growth.
So it is not enough to settle for passive peace, for a quiet church. What people around us need is real peace, active peace, peace with God and peace in their own hearts. They will not get peace and we will not have peace until we “pursue peace and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” It is not good enough just to come to church; we must be the church. Pursue peace.
II
That’s how you go about getting peace. But there’s a pottage here. Pease porridge hot; play with the words, peace pottage hot. What do I mean?
The writer of Hebrews takes us all the way back to the Book of Genesis and the story of Jacob and Esau. Do you remember that story – how Esau, the older of two brothers, was working in the fields? He came in all hot and tired and hungry. His brother Jacob was cooking up a savory stew. The word they use is pottage. A pot full of finger-lickin’ good. So, if you recall the story, Esau asked for a bowl full, but his conniving little brother Jacob struck a bargain. Esau, I’ll give you a bowl of stew, a mess of pottage, if you’ll give me your birthright. What a deal, huh? You get food right now, while you’re hungry. I get everything our father is going to leave you when he dies. I’d call that a mighty expensive stew, wouldn’t you? “Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.”
You see, our problem is that we want what we want when we want it! We don’t look at the long-term consequences. We want instant gratification. Like the fellow who prayed, “Lord, I want the gift of patience, and I want it right now!” We want our thing right now, and we don’t think about what it is going to cost down the road. Let Hebrews say it for us:
See to it that no one becomes like Esau, an immoral and godless person, who sold his birthright for a single meal. You know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, even though he sought the blessing with tears.
Friends, our failure to pursue peace has consequences. When we miss an opportunity because we don’t want to put ourselves out, we miss it forever. Esau could have inherited all that his father Isaac wanted him to have, but he gave away his rights for one little old bowl of stew. Why? Because he wanted to get rid of the hunger pains he felt right now; but he sentenced himself to years of starvation later on.
We don’t pursue peace because the feeling of the moment takes us over, and we don’t care about long-term consequences. We just want this one tough moment to be over. We become like Esau, immoral and godless. We would rather be comfortable now, even though it means awesome pain later on. And even though it means a lost opportunity.
I have it on my heart one day to visit someone and present the claims of Christ. Something in my spirit tells me that this is the right time to go. So I make plans – sort of. That is, I write that name down on my prayer list and my list of things to do. But, well, it’s already four o’clock and there is a meeting tonight, so there really wouldn’t be time. I put it off. The next day, well, I ought to handle this and write that and check on something else, but then I’ll call. However, several people stop in, the day doesn’t go as planned, and, well, tomorrow is another day. And so are tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. What do you think is happening? Even though I know that I am called to pursue peace with holiness, even though I know I am to do Kingdom work, the pain of my shyness catches me, and, like Esau, I settle for one comfortable moment, not counting the consequences. And so, when, two weeks later, I finally get around to that call, what do I hear? “Pastor, I didn’t think you were really interested in me. I’m not sure I now want to be a Christian.” Esau has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, for just a moment of comfort, and the opportunity is gone!
Now you can say, “Oh, that’s his problem, not yours. He has to answer to God for his own spiritual decisions.” Yes, that’s true. But what will I say to my God if, because I went with my feelings and my comfort and solved my immediate problem, some soul is lost, some life is not developed? What will Takoma say to her God if because we were reluctant to take risks, because we waited to cross every T and dot every I, we just never got out of our comfort zone? What will Takoma say to her God about the child who was abused, the youth who went to jail, the marriage which did not survive, while we were writing rules to govern new ministries? You cannot push toothpaste back into the tube, and some lives, if we do not touch them now, will never be changed. Never.
We do not have peace, not only because we do not pursue it, but also because we find it painful to get out of our comfort zones and reach those who are strangers to God . We settle for too little. We miss unique opportunities to be the agents of peace. We sell our souls for a mess of pottage. Peace pottage hot.
I know that we could spend many years here as a quiet, calm, happy undisturbed congregation. But we would not be an authentically peaceful people. Quiet, calm, happy, and undisturbed is not peace. Peace is a redeeming people, peace is a people lovingly involved in the hurts of humanity. Anything else is a mess of pottage. “See to it that no one becomes like Esau … who sold his birthright for a single meal.”
III
With awesome language and deep-stirred emotion, finally this Scripture reminds us that we are dealing with a white-hot reality, nothing less than the presence of the living God. This Scripture insists that we remember who we are dealing with. “Our God is a consuming fire” Not language calculated to make us comfortable. “Our God is a consuming fire.” Peace pottage hot!
An awesome word: God will hold us accountable for all we know and all we have. If it is not devoted to justice and peace, how can we expect to keep it? How do we suppose that we can build for ourselves alone and not lose it? What we personally accumulate and what we as a church put together in buildings and assets, programs and possessions – it’s not for us. It’s never been for us. It’s for the world. It’s for those who profoundly need peace with God. And if we do not use what we have for the Kingdom’s sake, we will lose it, for our God is a consuming fire.
Back in my student days in Louisville, I met a young Lutheran pastor, Tom Sauerman, who had gone to serve a church in a changing neighborhood. You understand the phrase “changing neighborhood” -- code words for “whites are moving out, blacks are moving in.” Now Lutherans, as you may know, tend to be German or Swedish or Norwegian. So you can imagine that the folks in that church and the folks coming into the neighborhood were quite different. As you might imagine, tensions built up. That church, once large and strong, included in its physical plant a gymnasium, where those young strapping Germans and Swedes and Norwegians used to play. But they were all older, and the gym had been locked up. Pastor Sauerman told me that when he arrived at that church, the trustees announced a crisis. The church gym had been broken into so many times, despite stronger and stronger locks, that the insurance company was canceling the policy. No more coverage! What to do? So Pastor Sauerman said, “Take off the locks. Don’t lock up the building at all. Let them come in and play any time they want, midnight if necessary.” What do you think happened? As soon as word got out that you could play basketball at the Lutheran Church, the vandalism stopped, completely.
You see, our God is a consuming fire. And if we do not use what we have for Kingdom purposes, He takes it away. He is not into monuments and mausoleums! He is into people. He is into redemption. He is into peace and reconciliation.
The grand paradox is that whatever we try to keep we will lose; but whatever we use, we get to keep. And we won’t lose. We’ll win. Peace Pottage Hot? No, not for us. For we have this profound promise:
You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.
In other words, you haven’t come to a wrathful, judgmental God. That’s not the last word about our God. The final word from our God is not a word of unrelenting judgment. The ultimate word from our God is altogether different:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant…
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks.
There is no such thing as losing when you go the way of peace. The way to have peace is to pursue peace. The way to pursue peace is to surrender inhibitions and get past self-gratification, our mess of pottage. And the way to keep peace is to use what we have lest we lose it to a consuming fire. Peace Pottage Hot.
But because of Jesus, we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Because He died and is risen, we are enrolled in heaven and cannot lose our inheritance. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives.
We receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Let us give thanks and pursue peace.
