The Key to Peace

The message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on October 3, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 14:23-27.

            Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”

            That is one of the most wonderful thoughts in the whole Bible, don’t you think?  To be at peace.  To feel the peace of Jesus Christ in our lives.  To live lives that are at peace.

            Do you feel that peace?  I hope you do.  I hope we all do.  But I doubt it.  Not all the time anyway.  Maybe sometimes we do, but I suspect a lot of times we don’t.  

And don’t get me wrong, that’s not a criticism of anyone.  It’s just that life throws an awful lot of things at us.  Life can be stressful, for all kinds of reasons.  We have health concerns.  We have relationship concerns.  We have concerns about our families.  We have concerns about our finances.  We have concerns about our jobs.  We wonder if our lives are really making any kind of a positive difference.  We wonder if our lives matter, whether anyone would even notice if we were gone.  

And that just scratches the surface.  There are all kinds of ways in which life is very stressful.  And when we undergo all that stress, it’s really hard to feel any kind of peace.  We hear those words of Jesus, and they sound really good, but--they also seem kind of impossible.  It sounds great in theory, but in practice, that kind of peace just seems like something that’s never going to happen to us.

It may have sounded impossible to the disciples, too.  Jesus said this to them just before he went out to the garden of Gethsemane.  Judas had already left, on his way to betray Jesus.  The disciples did not know that at the time, but they did know that they were in danger.  In a little while, Jesus would be arrested, beaten, and killed.

I assume, when that happened, that the disciples thought back on this, this last evening they had spent with Jesus.  And they thought of Jesus’ statement about peace.  And they must have thought:  Peace?  How in the world can we feel peace?  The Messiah, the Savior, has been killed.  And they may be coming for us next.  It feels like we’ll never have peace in our lives again.

But if they thought about it some more, they may have realized that Jesus gave them the key to how they could feel that peace.  He gave it to us, too.  It was in the first two sentences we read tonight.  “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.  My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

The key to feeling the peace of Christ is loving Jesus.  And the key to loving Jesus is to obey his teaching.  If we obey Jesus’ teaching, God will be with us, and we will have peace.

Simple, right?  Well, in a way, yes.  It is simple.  It’s just not easy.  

We’ve talked about this a few times, but Jesus’ teachings are not always things that are easy to obey.  Jesus told us to do things like love our enemies.  Jesus told us that if someone takes something from us, not only should we not ask for it back, we should give them more.  Jesus told us that we must deny ourselves and take up a cross to follow him.  Jesus said we should expect the world to hate us, just like it hated him.  

Those are all hard things for us to do.  They are for me, anyway.  There are lots of times I don’t feel like loving my enemies, even though I know I should.  If someone takes something from me, I sure want it back.  And I sure don’t want to give them some more.  There are some ways in which I can deny myself, but there are a lot of ways in which I don’t, and I really don’t have much desire to.  

And I most definitely don’t want to be hated.  I don’t know anyone who does.  I’ve never been this super outgoing person who’s always surrounded by his posse or something, but I do like it when people like me.  And I don’t like it when they hate me.  And I really don’t know anyone who does.

This is, as they used to say, where the rubber meets the road.  Because I suspect all of us here would say that we love Jesus.  One of our favorite old hymns is “Oh, How I Love Jesus”.  But do we?  Do we really love Jesus?  Because Jesus said if we love him, we’ll obey his teaching.  If we don’t want to obey Jesus’ teaching, can we really say that we love Jesus?

This is why it’s hard.  We want to feel the peace of Jesus Christ, the peace that he promises us.  But a lot of times, we really don’t want to do what it takes to get that peace.  We want to find a shortcut.  We want to find a way to get the benefits of feeling the peace of Christ without having to pay the price.  And Jesus says it does not work that way.  So what do we do?

Well, here’s the good news about this.  Jesus knew this was going to be hard for us.  Jesus knew, quite frankly, that a lot of us would find it impossible.  In fact, some of the disciples might have found it impossible.  So, Jesus told us we do not have to do it by ourselves.  

Listen to what else Jesus said:  “All this I have spoken while still with you.  But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

Jesus did not just leave us to do these things on our own.  When Jesus left, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, came.  And the Holy Spirit will teach us how to do this.  The Holy Spirit will teach us how to obey Jesus’ teaching.  The Holy Spirit will teach us how to love Jesus.

And so, we come back to what it seems like we come back to so many times:  God’s Holy Spirit.  We need to open our hearts and open our souls to God’s Holy Spirit.  We need to feel God’s Holy Spirit with us.  We need God’s Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and teach us.  That’s the only way we can obey Jesus’ teaching.  And that’s the only way we can feel the peace of Jesus Christ.

If we have God’s Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and teach us, we will be able to do all the things Jesus taught us to do.  We will be able to love our enemies.  Our possessions won’t be so important to us--we will know that God will take care of us and will give us what we need.  We will be able to deny ourselves, because our focus won’t be on ourselves, it will be on Christ.  We won’t care what the world thinks about us, because we will know we have the love of Jesus Christ, and that’s all we really need.  And that will give us peace.

Now, I don’t want to sound like this is some kind of magic formula.  Again, it’s simple, but it’s not easy.  God’s Holy Spirit will do all this for us, but we have to allow Him to do that for us.  God’s Holy Spirit will not force His way in.  We need to invite Him in.

And the best way I know to do that is to pray.  Now, I don’t want to sound like prayer is some kind of magic formula, either.  It’s not like all we have to do is say a quick prayer and boom!--God’s Holy Spirit comes in.  It’s not that easy.

At least, it’s never been that easy for me.  If it is for you, that’s awesome--I don’t mean to be limiting what God can do.  But for me, it’s always been a process.  I pray for God’s Holy Spirit, and over time, I start to feel God’s Holy Spirit.  I start to feel peace.  And then, I let the doubts and the worries and the fears come in, and I start pushing God’s Holy Spirit away.  So, I need to spend more time praying for God’s Holy Spirit.  And, over time, I start to feel God’s Holy Spirit again.  But for me, at least, it takes time.  And sometimes it’s a matter of two steps forward and one step back.  Or maybe one step forward and two steps back.

But it’s a process, and it takes time.  If it does not work that way for you, if you can feel God’s Holy Spirit instantly and never stop feeling Him, that’s great.  But if you’re more like me, where it’s a process that takes time, I want to tell you this--don’t give up.  Keep at it.  Stay in the process.  Even when it feels like you’re taking steps back--even when it feels like you’ve taken a lot of steps back--keep at it.  Keep praying for God’s Holy Spirit to come to you.  It’s worth the effort.

  If we keep praying for God’s Holy Spirit to come into our hearts and into our souls, eventually, we will feel that.  We will feel God’s Holy Spirit as part of our lives.  Then we’ll be able to do the things Jesus told us to do.  We’ll be able to obey Jesus’ teaching.  We will love Jesus.  And we will have peace.  It may take some determination, some persistence, on our part.  But having the peace of Jesus Christ in our lives is more than worth it.