Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 9, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Every week in our worship service, after we have received and prayed over the offering, I turn to the congregation and say: “And now I invite you to turn to your neighbor and share that greatest of all of God’s blessings. The peace of Christ be with you.” I know that some of you like that part of the service, and some of you don’t. That’s OK. One thing I’ve learned in my years of pastoring this congregation is that nothing we do, and nothing we change, in how we do worship will be popular with everyone. But have you ever stopped to wonder why I call the peace of Christ the greatest of all of God’s blessings? None of you has ever asked me why I call the peace of Christ the greatest of all of God’s blessings. Indeed, none of you has ever asked me what the peace of Christ is. Still, whether these questions have occurred to you or not, they’re really important questions; so this morning I’m going to try to answer them anyway. And I’m going to try to do that using our passage from Philippians that we just heard. It doesn’t use the phrase “the peace of Christ,” but it does use the phrase “the peace of God.” They’re the same thing, which I hope to explain in a moment.

That passage from Paul’s letter to the church at the Greek city of Philippi begins with a famous line: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice.” Some of us leaned a camp song using those words that we’d try to sing as a round and get horribly confused doing it. Still, Paul clearly wants us to rejoice in the Lord. Be joyful in the Lord Jesus Christ. Be filled with joy. Be glad. Sing. Laugh. Shout for joy because of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul’s saying all of that, I think, in his rather terse “rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice.” Then he transitions to a thought that ends “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” What produces that peace of God, which surpasses all understanding is, he says, making our requests to God in prayer with thanksgiving and supplication. So in this short passage Paul connects three things: rejoicing in the Lord Jesus, thankfully praying our requests to God, and receiving in return the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. It seems pretty clear that for Paul there is a direct connection between these three things, but what that connection is may not be immediately apparent to us. Here’s what I think it is.

Let’s start with that peace of God that passes all understanding. That peace is the prize. It is the reward. It is what we receive when we turn regularly to God in prayer. Note that Paul doesn’t say that when we make our requests to God with prayer and supplication that God will give us what we’ve asked for. What God gives us is rather that peace of God which surpasses all understanding. What kind of peace is that? As a peace that surpasses understanding it is clearly not a peace that we can think our way into. It is a peace that we can only pray our way into. It is a peace that we can experience, but we can’t explain it. Certainly not in terms the world will understand we can’t. It isn’t peace the way the world understands peace. It isn’t the absence of troubles. Paul doesn’t say that what we get when we pray is avoidance of troubles in this life. What we get is a peace we can’t understand, that we can’t explain, that those who have never experienced it will never understand. It is a deep inner peace that we not only sense with our minds but feel in the marrow of our bones. It is the peace of the saint, the peace of the martyr, the peace of one who knows that ultimate safety beyond the safety of the world that only God can give.

And that peace, I think, is how we can rejoice in the Lord always. It’s easy to sing and shout for joy when things are going well. It’s easy to celebrate in the good times. It’s not hard to feel joy at the birth of a healthy new child. At a celebration of the union of two people who have found love and life in each other. When we land that dream job or get to take that dream vacation. When we get to spend really good time with friends and loved ones. Joy comes naturally in those times, and God shares our joy in them. God wants us to feel joy in those good times.

But we all know that life isn’t only good times. Life also and unavoidably involves pain and loss. It simply isn’t possible to live as long as most people in our society live today without experiencing bad times as well as good times. We and all of our friends and loved ones are mortal, so death and grief are unavoidable parts of life. The only way to avoid them is to die very young; and even then you might not avoid them, for loss and grief are no respecters of age. Certainly St. Paul knew the truth that human life unavoidably entails loss and pain as well as joy and gain.

Yet he still could say: Rejoice in the Lord always.” How? How could he say that given the undeniable realities of human life? He could say it because he knew that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, was indeed available to us through the life of faith and especially through the life of prayer. If all he had to offer was whatever peace the world can give there’s no way he could honestly tell his people to rejoice always. Whatever peace the world can offer is transitory, is fleeting, is unreliable. Sometimes the world can give us the peace that comes when everything is going well in our lives, but it doesn’t last. Sooner or later life comes crashing in on us, and we suffer loss. We feel pain. We fall into despair. Our souls become disturbed, anguished even; and we feel anything but peace.

Not so with the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. That peace comes from beyond this world, and it transcends anything this world can offer. It is a peace that holds in the midst of loss, the midst of grief, the midst of despair. Perhaps paradoxically it is a peace that allows us to feel those very human emotions of loss, pain, grief, and despair without losing our bearings. Without losing our faith. The peace of God that surpasses all understanding allows us to enter into the pain of the world with the knowledge that that pain does not have the last word. With the assurance that God enters the pain with us and waits for us on the other side, calling us forward, calling us out of despair, calling us into hope, calling us even into joy.

That’s why the peace of Christ, which is the peace of God that surpasses all understanding that we know in Jesus Christ, that we access in and through Jesus Christ, is the greatest of all God’s blessings. It is the greatest of all of God’s blessings because it addresses the greatest of all of life’s difficulties. It is the greatest of all of God’s blessings because more than anything else in life the peace of God gets us through. It gets us through the night. It gets us through the bad times. It is our safe harbor in the storms of life. There can be no greater blessing.

So once more I say: The peace of Christ be with you. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, be with you. And in that peace rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice. Amen.