“Peace, A Healing Choice”

Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – December 18, 2016

Centenary United Methodist Church

Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:7-17

    Last Sunday we discussed how much our lives are like the unfolding of a movie.  What was not directly addressed was that we are the director and the producer of that movie.   Why does our playing these obvious roles escape the understanding of so many people?  If all of us understood that we are the sole creators of our own movies, there would never be any finger-pointing toward something or someone else that caused us to have the experiences we have had.  We are the only ones that interpret for ourselves what is happening.

    Buddha once said, "Become the ruler of your feelings or they will become the ruler of you."  Such wisdom was available 500 years before Jesus was born, but we continue to allow our upset feelings to define our experiences. 

    When we heard Paul's words to the Christians in Rome this morning, we sensed his enthusiasm to share how his new insights for living would benefit everyone.   Paul wrote,

I can hardly wait to see you so that I can teach you some spiritual gifts that will make you strong.  What I mean is that together we can encourage each other by sharing our faith.  I have an obligation to bring this Good News to the civilized and to the savage, to the educated and to the ignorant.  (Romans 1:11f) 

    Paul described his desire to teach everyone a better way to order their lives.  What he would learn during his ministry is that everyone already had been living their lives according to the responses that were decades in the making.  The people that Paul would be dealing with had already set the boundaries and values by which they were living.

    No one, in spite of how powerful their message is, can change the movie of another person.  Change did not come to Paul's life until he was struck down by what he described as a profound divine intervention.  (Acts 9:1-19)  Even Jesus’ life before Paul was dramatically affected by the voice of God. (Luke 3:22)

    During the early years of my ministry, news came that there was a problem in the elementary school where my siblings and I received our first six years of education. The problem was that the teachers wanted a break in their day. They did not want to go outside during their lunch hour to cover recess on the playground.  They asked the Parent Teacher's Association for help.  A number of parents were employed, and, those that were not did not want to assume the responsibility of a good number of children on the playground.

    After volunteering to step into this void, I discovered that the most remarkable door opened to a marvelous behavioral laboratory.  Recess was divided into two periods.  The first half hour was for children grades one through three.  The final half hour was for grades four through six. The characters that most of us encounter during our adult years had younger versions playing on that playground.  Many of them reflected what was happening in their families.

    One little boy referred to his female classmates this way, "Mr. Dick, look at all this meat out here."  There was a little girl that was stunningly attractive. She actually complained to me that the adults in her life were always focusing on her looks. She said, "I want people to see me.  Sometimes I don't feel the way people think I look."  She appeared as a most unique sixth grader with a PhD in Spirituality.

    These children were easy to love.  All of them were struggling with forming their identities in the same environment that helped me to form my own. The setting was the same, only the characters were different. 

    Initially, my desire was to teach these children to learn how to get in touch with what was inside of them.  Yet, like the Apostle Paul would learn, there were no assurances that the seeds being sown by my presence were making any difference. My years with those children helped me to understand how challenging it was going to be to affect any change in someone's life by my presence and my words.     

    Last week, we learned that an abbot instructed his scribes with these words, "Jesus never once fought for what he believed.  He chose instead to live what he believed."  This morning we have lighted our fourth Advent Candle of Peace.  That abbot's message to his Scribes is what life is all about for people of faith. Modeling what we teach is all that we have to give.       

    Think of the numerous times Jesus struggled to teach the skills of spirit to his disciples.  These men had their own trust issues and fears. (Luke 12:26) Jesus could not give anything to his disciples other than his presence and the ideas that he offered them through his words. Whether his words resonated with his disciples is debatable. 

    Judas remained in a different universe from Jesus during most of their shared ministry. Peter drew his sword in the Garden.  All of them but Jesus' cousin John ran for their lives after their Master's arrest.  Jesus gave one parting exclamation point to his ministry by dying on the cross with words of forgive your enemies on his lips. 

    Paul would later discover that his words often did not find an accepting audience that was ready to soak up his guidance and wisdom like a thirsty sponge.  In fact, he once caused a riot.  (Acts 19:21f)  He would later encounter people that had become slaves to their self-imposed impulses. (Galatians 5:19f)  Paul ministered to countless people whose lives were like a stream that was heading to some destination by following the path of least resistance.

    Today, people find their minds so over stimulated by thoughts that come and go that good listening skills are a challenge to maintain. The advertising agencies have known for years that, if they do not capture the attention of their targeted audiences within the first five seconds, they will lose their attention. The human mind never stops working.  Random thoughts come in and out like pop corn. This is one of the reasons why we often cannot remember people's names even minutes after hearing them.

    The messages that every clergy person proclaim from their pulpits on Sunday may find that some in their congregation can hardly wait for the service to conclude, particularly if Chelsea and Manchester United have a match around 12:00 p.m. Who is really interested in listening to a sermon on Hope, Love, Joy or Peace when such rival football teams are on television? 

    The other morning the eastern sky was absolutely magnificent. Like the Apostle Paul, I had to share this great vision.   However, awakening Lois to share my discovery was not greeted with much enthusiasm.  She exclaimed, "What are you doing?!" In spite of our enthusiasm to deliver our insights to others, do we preachers really expect to change the direction of many people's lives because of a sermon we spent time crafting?  

    Actually, most pastors can only hope that some people are listening.  When people say, "That was a wonderful sermon," such words do not mean that any of the message will be remembered by lunchtime.  The ultimate truth is that we pastors are the only ones that can make a course-correction in our lives. Very few people are as hungry about what excites us as we are. 

    The only peace that can develop is to sow our verbal seeds inspired by what visionary skills we have. We have to trust that our seeds expressed from our presence will settle in fertile soil that is not ours to find. 

    While he was a brilliant man, Paul could never have foreseen that his letters would be in circulation thousands of years in the future.  Most of the people that he wrote to could not read or write.  The Gospel writers wrote for audiences living in a territory no larger than a circle that was eight miles in its circumference and three miles wide.  How could their message eventually reach audiences in their own languages all over the world?

    our personal movie is absolutely remarkable and filled with the skills of spirit of our four Advent candles, we are the ones that created every frame of that movie by our choices, our moods, our attitudes and our needs.  This is the marvelous consequence of each of us having free will to determine the pace of our own spiritual evolution. God created a master plan where one size fits all. 

    For those of us who want the world's vast populations to wake up to a new understanding of the potentialities within each of us, we will find peace by understanding that every individual is in the process of development.  This is God's one size fits all plan.  What we can do as individuals is sow seeds of kindness, generosity, compassion and forgiveness.  The treasure we have found will only be of value to those that are also searching for it.            

    What is interesting is that Jesus' teachings and many of Paul's letters found their way into our lives.  We do not need to understand how words that were spoken or written to an uneducated population survived to get to us.  Peace comes to us when we realize that an unseen presence is involved with how the seeds that we sow find their way into the gardens of others. 

    Jesus said, "Ask and you will receive.  Seek and you will find.  Knock and the door will be opened."  (Matthew 7:7)  This is the process by which everyone learns more about any field of inquiry. Even though the skills of spirit are available to everyone, they do not come automatically.  Like any skill, we have to perfect them by their constant use.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote words that summarize this process:

To laugh every day; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived.  This is to know the peace of having succeeded.

    Living a life from a peaceful center is the most consistent, remarkable healing attitude not only for ourselves but for all others that we will meet during the course of our lives. When we consider all of the drama in our past experiences, peace is the ultimate prize when we make it our choice in all circumstances.