"Peace on Earth?" Third Sunday in Lent March 27, 2011 Romans 5:1-8
I’m thinking of setting up two pillars in my home, taking my cue from the Old Testament reading, one I will call Massah and the other I will call Meribah. This will make things a lot easier in our home. We won’t have to worry anymore about arguments or fighting all around the house. The new rule will be if you get annoyed with someone you go over to one of the pillars and have your argument there. Then it will all be left there. In all seriousness, sometimes it seems like the home itself is a monument to quarreling and contention. Everyone in the family can get along just fine and be very pleasant in a social setting, but once they get in the car or once they step inside their home the angry words come flying out. Our homes are supposed to be a place of refuge, a sanctuary from the outside world and all the contention and stress that is rampant out there. Instead, our homes can too often become war zones, battlefields where we are trying to gain the upper hand on our own family members. In the world we see things seem to spin out of control. Natural disasters strike and often with a ferocity that seems to bring with it the end times. Dictators never seem to lose their insatiable desire for control and power and an iron fist over ordinary citizens. We always hope our workplaces to be a source of pride and accomplishment when they too often effect stress and weariness in us. The news never lacks for stories because there’s always someone doing something illegal, immoral, or just plain not very bright. We live in world that has its share of anguish to match any enjoyment we have in it. Things may be getting worse, we live in a fallen world, how can they not but get worse? But have they really gotten much worse? The Israelites had been enslaved under harsh conditions for hundreds of years when God broke them free from their bonds. He brought them through the waters of the Red Sea and those very same waters brought to defeat their captors the Egyptians. God was bringing them through the wilderness to the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. No one there would be ruling them with an iron fist. Things were pretty good for them now, they would all agree. That is, until there were some bumps in the road. It seems that God’s people the Israelites subscribed to the theology of What Have You Done for Me Lately, God? Of course, running out of water in the desert is a serious problem. But did they really forget so quickly everything God had done for them, and not just what He did, but how He did it? He was powerful, bringing to defeat the powerful Egyptians. But there in the wilderness, far from the Egyptians, the Israelites contended against God. Like little children who want what they want and when they want it they rose up against God, questioning why He wasn’t helping them. We’ve all probably known couples who had been married for many years only to end in divorce. Sometimes this comes as a shock to us because it’s a couple that everybody thought was so happily married. This is devastating especially in contrast to those who seem to thrive in making a wreck of their lives with multiple marriages and unstable family settings. Was there a time when this kind of “family life” wasn’t so common? Perhaps. Perhaps it was just covered up better. Across the centuries people haven’t been immune to making a mess of God’s blessed creation and instituting of marriage. Jesus ran across one such woman in the Gospel reading. We aren’t told why exactly this lady had been married five times, perhaps each of her husbands died. But the thrust of Jesus’ exhortation to bring her husband hints at a life that had been marred by much contention and strife: you have had five husbands and the one you are now living with you haven’t even bothered marrying. Whether in far flung countries are in our own homes, there doesn’t seem to be much peace in the world and in our lives. Where is the promise given at the birth of the Savior? It was proclaimed loudly and clearly by the angels: Peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Was this just a nice thought? Was it just a promise that was to be fulfilled at the end of time when Jesus comes again in glory? That would certainly be an easy to explain it. But it would also leave us with an explanation that is more like weaseling out of it. The fact is the angels declared Peace on Earth at the birth of Jesus, not Peace on Earth that this one who is born will be bringing after He lives and ascends into heaven and then returns again in glory. Peace on earth at the birth of Christ must mean Peace on Earth at the birth of Christ. So if it’s true, then God must have a strange definition of Peace of Earth. At least, it is very strange to our ears. God means what He says, whether He’s speaking through angels, or the men He inspired to write the Holy Scriptures, or simply speaking directly Himself; as He does in the case of Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh. And that is the answer. There is peace on earth because God has come to earth. God became a man. God entered into the world He created in the flesh. Yes, there is a lot of conflict and war and contention and strife. But there is also Peace on Earth. Wherever God is there is true and ultimate Peace. Wherever Christ is, there is Peace. Jesus was present there at that well where this woman was who lived a very unpeaceful-like life. And yet, there she was, in the presence of Peace on Earth. Christ, amazingly, was even present there in that clash in the wilderness in the Old Testament reading. Paul says in 1Corinthians that the Israelites “drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” (ESV) There in the midst of the wilderness their thirst was not only quenched by the water flowing from that rock, they also received peace flowing from Christ Himself. In the Epistle reading today Paul says that “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” You may wonder exactly how you have this peace in your life. You may think God must have a different definition of peace than you do as you live day to day in your crazy hectic world and life. You may wonder if God needs a reality check as you see your life filled with all kinds of problems, stress, and strife, but certainly not peace. And not only that, but where is Jesus anyway? Even if He was present there in the wilderness with the Israelites and with that Samaritan woman at the well, where is He in my life? How can I have this peace of God when it doesn’t appear that Jesus is present in my life? Well, it didn’t appear that He was present to the Israelites either. Jesus didn’t appear to be God Almighty and the source of ultimate peace to that woman who just came for a supply of water. But God is very present. And He is very powerful. But He is also cloaked. He is present with us in an undercover way. The way He gives you peace in your life—and He does—is not by ripping you out of your home and your workplace and your world and dumping you into some fantasy land where there are no problems. The way He does it is by coming to you right where you’re at, but in a hidden way. Not invisible, but hidden. Not fantasy, real. But hidden. He was present with the Israelites. And it was not the Israelites who were struck down for their pathetic whining and insubordination against God, but God Himself—Jesus Christ, the Rock—was struck so that water and peace could flow forth. In the same way Jesus was struck by the rod of God’s justice on the cross so that ultimate Peace on Earth could flow forth as freely as the water and blood flowed from His side when the soldier pierced it. And even as God Himself, in the Person of Jesus Christ, was stopping to rest at a well because He was weary—think about that, God Himself having to stop for a rest from being weary—we are clued in on the purpose of this when John tells us at what time this occurred. The sixth hour. The same hour that Christ hung on the cross, wearied and burdened by the sins of the world. Struck down by God Almighty; forsaken, and bearing the wrath of holiness against ungodliness. There is your Peace. It is in Christ, the one who was born in a lowly stable and had to take a rest at a well in the hopes someone who would come by to offer Him a drink of water and who finally stretched out His arms so that they could be nailed to a cross. There is no true peace apart from this. And if you still think this doesn’t answer your question about how this peace is real in your life, how Christ is present in your life, how very strange it is that God says you have peace with God, how it is a reality, that it is truer than anything can be, then God has you covered here too, because He is thinking along the same lines. God loves to give us peace. That means He loves to come to us. But He comes in humble means. A rock. A baby. A Jew who needed some rest at a well. A Savior who didn’t look very much like a Savior while His life was coming to an end on a hill outside Jerusalem. He does the same thing today, coming in humble means, hidden ways: God in the very same Person of Jesus coming to earth in water and bread and wine and words. Never underestimate God. Don’t see Him the way the Israelites or the woman at the well did. When He comes to you in the way He comes to you, rejoice in what you have. Christ Himself. Peace on earth. Peace with God. The water that flowed over you in your Baptism may as well have come directly out of the Rock that was Christ or from His side as He hung on the cross. Because Christ was present at your Baptism. He was in fact in your Baptism, coming to you in that Sacrament, joining Himself to you. The bread and wine that you eat and drink here at this Table, which is His Table, may as well be given to you directly by His hand, because He is the Lord of the Lord’s Supper we partake of. He is not only our Host but also our Meal. We partake of Him. We eat His body and drink His blood. We receive Christ into our mouth, we feast on God Himself, in the flesh, joined by Him into Himself, there is no greater peace than that. Peace on earth is peace in your life in Jesus coming to you in the flesh, even in the midst of everything that is the opposite of peace. The cross was the most unlikely of places where you could find it. That is the same as your Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Peace on earth at the cross and to you in His Sacraments. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list. 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