So I spoke at the May Oasis service, so I thought you guys would like to hear (read) what I said. Jeremy the cactus makes yet another appearance. I just can't get over it.
I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine. This is my cactus, Jeremy. Isn't it cute? Last year, my friends Matt and Em gave it to me for my birthday (by the way, it was their idea to name it Jeremy, but i thought it fit, so I kept it). I have to admit, I've been really proud of how well I've taken care of this cactus—I usually forget plants about 2 weeks after I get them. But look at Jeremy! He's still going strong, and the flowers haven't faded a bit! To be honest, I usually don't like cactus—they hurt when you touch them. But the flowers made up for that because they're pretty.
Ok, now I'm going to show you a close up picture of Jeremy.
Look closely—-see that globby stuff between the cactus and the flower? That's glue. A month ago, Victoria picked up Jeremy and said “Kelly, why did you glue flowers to your cactus?” Now, if any of you know Victoria, you know that this is something she would just say, meaning, “wow, Kelly! The flowers on your cactus look so good they could be fake!” But that's not what she meant. After I had been lovingly caring for Jeremy for an entire year, Victoria sees in a glance what I hadn't noticed. The flowers are fake. They're glued on.
The reason I was so upset about the cactus is that it doesn't follow the order of things. Flowers are produced when a plant is cared for, watered, gets sun and nutrients from the air and soil, and then as a product of being nourished on the inside, the flower grows on the outside. With Jeremy, as soon as I found out that the flowers didn't come from that process, I realized that I didn't even know if Jeremy was a real cactus! If you see here, I cut the top of of this part of it just to make sure there was life on the inside! It's real, but it's just a plain old cactus. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it hurts worse to touch it now than it did when I thought the flowers were real.
Now, you may be saying to yourself about now....”What on earth does Jeremy the cactus have to do with peace?” But actually, I think it has a lot to do with it. You see, I think we often want to see peace like Jeremy's flowers—we want outward expressions of peace—absence of conflict between people groups, treaties, ceasefires, families getting along, good relationships with neighbors, emotional stability, less stress, calm and quiet. We want peace to be evident all around us. I don't think there are many people who honestly believe that peace is a BAD idea.
But like the flowers on the cactus—even when things look peaceful on the outside, even though we all really want peace, when you go deeper than the surface, it's not always the case. We as humans don't have a very good track record when it comes to peace. The fact of the matter is that there has not been a period of time in history since the garden of eden that total peace has actually happened. There has never been a time free of war, of violence, of fighting, of pain. We, as members of the human race, even though we really do want peace, have killed, we have fought, we have oppressed other people, we have been jealous, and we have held grudges. We have abused others and withheld respect. We have devalued others based on their place of birth. We have laughed at someone else’s misfortune, and we have been hurt and secretly vowed revenge. we have made and broken countless treaties. We have used and distorted the words of others to justify our own cause. We have all hurt, and we have all been hurt. It's like we've got this thick skin on that makes us hurt others and ourselves. We find ourselves caught up in an endless cycle taking hits and swinging back, between cultures, with the people around us, and with our very own bodies, minds, and emotions. we NEED peace!
When we look at the problem of the human race as a whole, it starts to be evident that we need more than wanting peace. It hasn't worked. We don't have enough paper in all the world to make treaties to stop all the fighting—after hundreds or thousands of years of conflict, a peace of paper is a really thin and fragile peace. In our own lives, we experience real hurt and real pain. There are wounds too big for bandages and stresses to strong for yoga or jogging. Underneath all our nice ideas about peace, we're often like the cactus—it still hurts to touch. There has to be something deeper.
But in the middle of this crazy world (which was just as crazy in the time this letter was written) this is what Paul had to say to the Colossians about peace:
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.”
I think in this statement Paul recognizes a simple but vital concept when it comes to peace. I think the order of things in this verse matters. First he says “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” then he goes on to say “since as members of one body you were called to peace.” Paul definitely doesn't let us off the hook about peace. Not only does he say it's a good idea—he says that as followers of Jesus we are CALLED to peace. It's a real responsibility. But it starts with the heart. REAL PEACE WORKS FROM THE INSIDE OUT. Just like Jeremy the cactus, you have to look at the inside to see if it's real.
That is the one concept I want to leave you with. REAL PEACE WORKS FROM THE INSIDE OUT. One word that Paul uses here really emphasizes that inside-out point-- since. Paul doesn't say to let the peace of Christ rule, then as members of one body work for peace. He says let the peace of Christ rule since as members of one body you were called to peace. I think the word since here is important. Basically, Paul is saying that the way we get to outward peace is to get inward peace with Christ. Cause and effect. Peace on the inside causes peace on the outside.
This is a huge topic—you could do a whole sermon series out of this thing! So I'm really going to simplify a bit here and just focus in my talk on the first half of this—the inside part, and then later on we're going to have some stories from other people that illustrate how this peace from the inside works its way out to make “real flowers,” in other words, to affect the outside.
“Let the Peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace”
I figured out the main point of what I was going to say easily enough, and the cactus illustration made for a great intro, but after that I had a really hard time figuring out what to say about this verse. I really wanted to take it and look at it in depth and give some practical pointers on how to have peace in your life—on how to make it work from the inside out. But this wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.
We talk about peace a lot. We say things like, “I just want some peace and quiet,” or we have catchy slogans like “give peace a chance.” Every contestant in every beauty pageant wants world peace. We hear people making a decision say things like “I just don't have peace about it.” We throw the word peace around as if it were an easy concept to grasp.
Except we all know that it isn't that easy. We're all broken. We all have wounds. We all have needs and rights. Wars, wounds, and scars run deep—how can we have peace when it still hurts? Is Paul crazy? No, I think that Paul is well aware of the existence of real pain and real conflict when he said this to the Colossians.
That's precisely why it's important to notice what he does and doesn't say in this verse. He doesn't say “be at peace” or “try to be peaceful.” He doesn't even leave his statement at “let peace rule in your hearts.” --he says the peace of CHRIST. That makes all the difference.
When we look at the life of Jesus (if you want a more detailed account, you can look at the Gospels), it doesn't look peaceful at all. His entire life on earth was under foreign occupation of His home country. His mother became pregnant before she was married—an unacceptable crime in Jewish culture at that time. As a baby, he fled with his family to Egypt to keep from being slaughtered by a jealous king. He openly contradicted the religious leaders of his time, sometimes speaking pretty harshly. He wept for Jerusalem. He openly grieved about the fact that He would have to die, and He was violently beaten and killed.
I don't know about you, but when I think of peace, I wouldn't include any of these things in my list of what a peaceful life includes! But it was precisely this life and violent death that bring us the peace of Christ. The peace of Christ doesn't just ignore or try to skirt around the existence of pain and conflict—it works through it! Earlier in Colossians, Paul says that the blood of Christ actually brought about peace with God!
“For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making PEACE through His blood, shed on the cross.” Col. 1:20
What I see in this verse is that the peace of Christ is different from any other peace because it is rooted in grace. It comes from a loving God that knows full well the extent of hurt and pain and violence, and chooses to come down and make peace right in the middle of it, even though those things are real, and ugly—because of grace. This is the peace that Paul is talking about when He tells us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. Not a calm quiet, not a treaty, not a compromise—peace with God. So much more than what we can do or even imagine ourselves. Real peace, the peace of Christ—this peace that Paul says to let rule in our hearts, is dripping with GRACE.
Think about it—real peace can work from the inside out because of grace.
My current favorite song is “Grace” by U2, and the final lines of the song say “what once was hurt, what once was friction, what left a mark no longer stings, because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.” I think that describes the peace of Christ so well. The peace of Christ. Peace that goes straight through prejudice, hurt feelings, religious differences, physical danger, grief, and even violence and death to bring about reconciliation with the creator of the universe. This is real peace. The peace of Christ, dripping with grace, that makes beauty out of ugly things.
Imagine the repercussions of this in our lives—this could be, and I believe it is, revolutionary! I can think of a couple immediate effects in my life, for example. I tend to overwork and worry about how I'm performing in front of other people. When I acknowledge that I have been reconciled to God through Christ, and if I have that relationship with the creator of the universe, my performance in front of others suddenly pales in comparison to what I already have. There's some emotional stability and removal of stress, from peace with God. I get annoyed when people are rude on the metro. But when my heart acknowledges that Jesus has died to forgive so much more than rudeness in my life, being polite to rude people pales in comparison to what Jesus has already done. I have peace with God, and that affects peace with those around me. Real peace works from the inside out.
These are small issues, and I think we all have bigger issues than rudeness or worry about performance. I think it's a pretty normal reaction to look at all this about peace and think “Yeah, it's a nice idea, but I'm carrying so much junk that gets in the way. How do I let the peace of Christ even get to my heart through all of it?” Sure, real peace works from the inside out, but doesn't it have to get in there in the first place?
There is a danger of being trite about this, saying “just have the peace of Christ,” especially for someone like me who has led a life pretty much void of major conflict or pain. But some things are big, and it won't work just to change a perspective and expect a quick fix. A quick fix would be just like Jeremy's flowers—they may look nice, but they're just stuck on the outside. The cactus still hurts.
It's all well and good to say that the peace of Christ works through all the junk and ugliness, but how? I don't think natural explanation is enough here. I think if natural explanation was enough, then none of us would need to hear about peace because we would have figured it all out already. I don't know how to explain how the grace covered peace of Christ works, so I'm going to borrow from a story....
In C.S. Lewis' book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there's this kid Eustace who is a real pain. Kind of like a Jeremy the cactus, coming into contact with him usually hurts. He doesn't have any real friends and always thinks everyone is out to get him. He is a miserable kid who tries to cover up his misery by complaining all the time and only thinking about himself. He has a knack for making everyone around him miserable. Through magic (since they're in a magical world) all his greed and selfishness, his hurt at not having friends, and his general rotten attitude that was such a part of his personality showed up very externally when Eustace became a dragon. He finally had become on the outside what he had been all along on the inside. Only then did he realize that he didn't want to be a dragon anymore...he wanted to be a real boy with real friends. In one way of looking at it, Eustace really wanted peace--he wanted to stop being miserable and stop making others miserable. In the scene I'm about to read, he meets a lion named Aslan (the creator of this magical world). Here's Eustace's side of the story:
“....I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins.....So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully....In a minute or two I just stepped out of it....It was a most lovely feeling....But just as I was going to put my foot into the water I looked down and saw that it was all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as it had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off?....Then the Lion said... “you will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.
“...and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch...”
I would love to keep reading, but you get the idea. I think we're often like Eustace when it comes to peace. I think we all have hurts and pain and selfishness and real issues that no matter how hard we try, we can't work through. It's like we've got this thick skin that causes us to hurt ourselves and others, and no matter how hard we work at it, it just won't go away. Real peace, the peace of Christ, works from the inside out—but letting the peace of Christ in is sometimes hard. Sometimes like Eustace we have a pretty thick skin that He has to get through to be able to start the work.
Just like Aslan to Eustace in the story, I think the peace of Christ can cut through all the nasty, knotty stuff we're carrying—what if just like Aslan, God is saying: “You have to let me do it. It's going to hurt, but I'll peel that stuff away and get rid of it for good.” Think again about the life of Jesus. The grace of Jesus Christ has worked through ugliness before. It has worked through pain before. It has worked through violence before. It has worked through insults and slander before. It has worked through death before. And it has brought about peace with God. It has taken very ugly things and made something beautiful.
Imagine that. It's easy to just think, oh that would be nice, but really imagine what would happen if we really believed this and let it happen. If we stopped worrying that we're not peaceful and trying to think peaceful thoughts and failing over and over. If we just quit the facade, pulled off the glue, threw out the fake flowers, and asked Christ for peace. Imagine what could happen if we really did let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. Just imagine—real peace, from the inside, out. The peace of Christ offers an opportunity to be real, to be ourselves, to have Him remove all the junk that causes pain to ourselves and others. And He's simply saying “let me do it.” And like Eustace, we just have to be willing to let Him do it.
So we have these 2 characters: Jeremy, who has pretty flowers, but they're fake, and it hurts to touch him, and Eustace, who has this gross, thick ugly skin out where everyone can see, but he comes out real and smooth in the end.
I don't want to be like Jeremy the cactus. I don't want to spend my whole life working and working to feel peaceful, or to live peacefully, and never see a real change. I don't want the things I do to just be glued on the outside of me--I want to be real. I want real peace inside my heart. I want to be like Eustace. It may hurt more to get rid of this thick skin, but it's real.
REAL PEACE WORKS FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
It sounds elementary. It sounds too good to be true. It sounds too simple. I still want to complicate this, to add points and how to's and give you a list of practical steps to peace. But maybe it really is that simple. Maybe it's there for the asking. So I guess if I were to offer some practical steps to peace, I'll take you as far as step one, the tip of the iceberg—ask.
In a little while, we're going to have a couple stories of how the peace of Christ has played itself out in real life—from the inward change I've talked about to an outward expression. But before that, I'm going to finish the time of talking about the inside in the same way that I started, just reading this verse through a few times, but this time, as you repeat it silently, we can make it a prayer by changing the word “your” to “our.” It starts with the asking.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of one body we were called to peace.”
“Let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of one body we were called to peace.”
“Let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of one body we were called to peace.”
