Flicker of Peace (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

We. Good

morning.

Okay.

I don't know what it is that makes this particular season

the one that's supposed to be all about peace.

Feel actually very, peaceful.

Like, you know, when you start your day, everything's going to plan.

You are on time.

You're ready for school or for work

or for that important appointment.

And as soon as you get out of your neighborhood, all of a sudden

you not literally, but figuratively run into a big,

huge tractor trailer truck that is pulled across the whole road.

You know, there's like, no gap to go around it or no space or anything.

And what they're doing, well, they decided to unload

the construction supplies for this house that they're building.

Right then in there.

It's like hitting a 40 ton

massive barrier to your peace day, right?

You are stuck.

They're not going anywhere.

You're not going anywhere.

And at this point, at this point, no matter how much peace

you started off your day with, it's gone.

It's gone.

But did you know in ancient Israel, massive stones were purposely

put into the building of the foundation of the temple laid by King Solomon

when he built that first temple in 957 B.C.

as a symbol of peace?

These stones weighed between five tons to 570 tons.

Each stone was brought in complete and whole so that there were no gaps,

no cracks, or no missing pieces as it was assembled.

Today, some of those stones are still left,

and they are just as perfect as they were 2000 years ago.

A rabbi once wrote the whole mass of the stones of the temple

in altar are to establish peace,

although they do not see, hear, or speak, yet

they serve to establish peace between Israel and their father in heaven.

It seems

a bit weird because we know from the Babylonian destruction

of the temple in 586 BC, and then the Romans destruction of the temple.

The Second Temple in 70 A.D., and then the Muslim

armies winning the Mount in 600 A.D.

still, those massive stones hadn't

provided much peace at all.

So it's with some surprise that the prophet

Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 957,

every warriors boot used in battle, and every garment rolled in

blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting

Father, and Prince of Peace,

of the greatness of his government and peace.

There will be no end, and he will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom,

establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness.

From that time on and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Now, even in our current reality, peace

seems just as elusive as it did in ancient times.

If everyday occurrences can be barriers

to our peace, what can we do?

In today's sermon Flicker of Peace, let's face

our barriers together and see what God can and will do

so that we can overcome these barriers of peace as well.

Okay, so what's your barrier of peace this morning?

What's your tractor trailer?

What's your massive 500 tonne

stone right now?

Think about it.

Maybe it's a person.

Maybe it's more than just one person.

Maybe it's a habit, a way of thinking.

Maybe it's something physical or mental or spiritual.

Go ahead and turn to your neighbor and interrupt their peace

and share what you think might be your barrier of peace right now.

I'll give you a minute. Go.

So give me some answers.

What?

What did you hear?

What?

What did you say? What did others say?

Well, I said, My kids.

Yep, yep.

Buried peace kids. Definitely. Yup.

I want them to come with me this morning.

They didn't want to, so I said, next week.

There's not going to be a choice.

There you go.

Someone else.

Busyness.

Busyness.

Yup. Yup.

Tiredness.

Tiredness. Yeah.

Justification. Justification.

There you go.

Right.

These are good things right now.

Sorry, but my barrier to peace

is the fact that the sun is shining just right on the piece of metal outside.

And it's flashing in my eyes.

So. Thanks, Emily.

I was just like,

Okay.

In the Bible, the word for peace is this word shalom.

It's Hebrew for peace.

It's also, in Greek we say irony,

and it means completeness or wholeness.

Like the rocks in Solomon's Temple.

These stones were shalom.

They were brought in without cracks, without gaps.

They were whole and complete.

Shalom is like a brick wall with no gaps or missing bricks.

It's complete,

but it has a beginning and end and it's perfect.

This is how they thought about peace.

Peace is present when there are no missing pieces,

no cracks, no brokenness, no gaps.

For example,

in the book of job we read, you will know your tents are shalom or at peace.

Your dwelling place, your family,

everything will be at peace when nothing is missing.

But shalom is not just about completing a wall or a project.

It's about making something like new

or restoring something back to its original state.

In Exodus 22, shalom only happens

between neighbors when one neighbor

actually restores or replaces or repairs

something that was lost or broken because the other neighbors.

Because your neighbor sheep jumped over the other neighbor's yard,

right?

You have to act and restore it to such a place that no one knows

it actually happened.

That's peace.

The relationship is no longer broken.

Nothing is broken.

Shalom is in action.

It's making peace

through an action and action that makes it like it was originally.

Like there was never any crack or never any damage.

So when rival kings make shalom, it's

not that they sign a peace treaty and just stop fighting each other.

Shalom is actually worked for and happens

when they start working with and for each other.

But Israel's kings failed to work for Shalom because no massive stones

or religious system or show of power confronted the real problem.

So they assumed, rightly, that peace started with God.

So when there was an absence of violence or war

and they were living in prosperity, they figured it was peace.

But that assumption led them

to abandon the action of peace.

Peace that started with God was supposed to spill out

into the ways they treated one another.

And so anytime that there's gaps between tribes or cracks

between the religious leaders and what was happening in the temple,

or brokenness between neighbors and husband and wives or poor and rich,

peace wasn't being practiced.

So the prophet Isaiah gave them the only solution.

Look for the child that will be

called the Prince of Shalom, the Prince of Peace,

and there will be no end to his peace.

Now, last week I was in CC kids in the third to fourth,

fifth grade, third, fourth and fifth grade class

and we were actually talking about this verse.

Wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And and we said to them, hey, what part of this do you like?

Like what words make sense to you?

What words actually sort of pop up to you?

What do you you know, why do you like them?

And you know what's the best when you think about Jesus?

And of course, many. The boy said,

Mighty God, because it sounds like it comes with a superhero cape.

It just feels strong.

It's like powerful.

They were wondering what wonderful counselor

actually meant because they were confused.

Because, what is cool about a person who talks a lot

and ask too many questions?

But none of them said Prince of Peace.

So I asked, why? Their answer?

Because it sort of sounds weak, wimpy and weak.

My thought how did the idea of peace become wimpy and weak?

Do adults think this way too?

Well, if our love of a superhero movies

is any indication, then yeah.

So what's so hard about this piece

that makes us reject it as a good attribute?

Maybe it's because

we've been shaped more by Christmas carols than by Scripture.

A way in a manger, no crib for his bed.

The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.

The stars in the heavens looked down

where he lay, the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love carols,

but this carol makes this child very passive and not at all

like the vision God had for the Prince of Peace.

Now, remember when

I said, the wholeness of the stones of the temple

are to establish peace, although they do not see or hear or speak,

they serve to establish peace between Israel

and their father in heaven.

He asked this Rabbi actually be also wrote,

how much more then should the child of peace

who establishes peace between people, between husband and wife,

between city and city, between nation and nation, between

family and family, between government and government.

Be protected from harm.

It's because this rabbi

may have been realizing that God was about to do something

at the time of Jesus that he had never done before.

God was going to give Israel a child that would be even greater

than those massive building stones, even greater than the kings

who sacrificed in them, greater

than any stone or king ever.

And that this child's peace would establish

a type of peace that would last forever.

This child of

peace was going to make peace, make it happen.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,

and the government

will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor,

Mighty God, Everlasting Father,

Prince of Peace.

Now, as I was studying this.

I got very excited.

I actually ran down and told my husband,

oh my goodness, I just put these pieces together.

Can you believe it?

Now he looked at me like with this sort of blankness and said,

I think this might feel like

when I come home from work, he's a pastry chef, by the way.

When I come home from work and start discussing frosting

and cake and batter and, like, how to decorate.

You sort of get this glazed look.

I'm like, oh, okay, I get it.

But still listen to this.

Because what the pieces that I like realized at this moment is that it's

why the apostle Peter describes Jesus like this.

See, I lay a stone in Zion, or in Jerusalem,

a chosen and precious cornerstone,

and the one who trust in him will never be put to shame.

Peter was there with Jesus when he foretold

that the temple would be torn down, and those massive

500 stones were going, weren't going to protect them anymore.

And Peter was there when Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.

No, peace wasn't going to be found in

any massive stone or some regular old building.

It was going to be made by Jesus himself.

We read in the

book of Colossians, For God and all his fullness was pleased

to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth

by means of Christ's blood on the cross.

And in Romans

it says, therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith,

we have peace with God

because of what Jesus Christ our Lord, has done for us.

Ephesians says, Jesus Himself is our peace.

Put this together.

Jesus is the living stone.

They were always looking for.

Peter's tells us as you come to him

the living stone, rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him.

You also are like living stones.

You are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,

offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Do you see this?

Not only did Jesus become

the very foundation of peace,

he replaced those massive stones

that could not see, could not hear, could not speak.

He became

peace for us.

And we who say yes to Jesus, yes to following

Jesus are now part of that peace foundation.

Jesus came not to be a barrier between

God and man,

but to be the foundation stone.

The beginning peace that we would rebuild all of creation

to a place of peace.

Not to be super graphic or anything, but I was imagining when you say

yes to Jesus as your foundation, your cornerstone.

It's like his life

seeps into all your gaps,

all your brokenness, all the places that lack peace.

And he rebuilds them as new creation,

as though they were never broken in the first place.

It's like

tendons and flesh get needed together

and join those places

and then grow into his kingdom

because he is our peacemaker.

He takes up the action of restoring and remaking

and rebuilding the gaps in the brokenness and the missing pieces.

And because he's done this for us,

we are called to go out into the world and do it as well.

So what does it look like?

How can you embrace the Prince of Peace

and flicker like the stars in the sky and not get rocked every time

something or someone gets in your way,

or feels like a barrier to peace.

Well, I think the place we start is with God.

If we don't have peace with God,

we won't have peace with anything else.

No matter the sunset,

the standing on the shore, the mountaintop view,

moments of peace

but not long lasting peace

because our peace starts with God.

So if we want to find peace, this lasting peace, the kind of peace

where those barriers end up looking like little bits of sand,

we have to see Jesus as the Prince of Peace.

So I want us to pause and just sit here for a few minutes,

and I want you to close your eyes if you'd like to.

Or maybe it's just helpful to stare at the twinkling lights.

It's okay.

And I want you to imagine yourself as a stone

with a big crack or gap in it.

Or a brick wall that's missing some pieces.

I want you to ask God right now to show you

if you recognize the areas in your life where peace,

completeness, and wholeness

of self is missing.

Maybe you can ask him

what part of the brokenness of shalom

that you've actually engaged in with people, with situations

that you've broke because of your behavior, attitudes,

or interactions?

Maybe you've been striving

to do all the right things.

You keep feeling like you're falling short.

Do you realize that there's nothing you can do to make yourself whole

without a crack or a gap, unless you invite

Jesus into it?

I want you to hear Jesus's words to you.

Peace I leave with you.

My peace I give you. Do not.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.

So go ahead, just sit here

and allow him to do the work

of making peace with you.

Invite him into the places

that need healing in your heart,

healing in your body,

healing in your mind, in your soul.

Allow him to forgive you and free

you and join your heart to his.

For some of you,

this is the place that you're going to stay for a while.

This is the place that you need to camp out on

that need to talk about,

to research more, and to go into more.

But for some of us, we're ready to actually start to imagine the barriers

or the barriers or peace that you thought about at the beginning of the sermon,

and ask Jesus how and how

are you supposed to enter into the peacemaking work?

If we are to

become flickers of peace, it has to begin inward.

But then it has to move outward.

Now, in the past, we've talked lots of times

about not being able to change the other person.

Some times you can't make peace with another person

because it's either not trustworthy or they're not trustworthy.

It's not safe. It's not going to go anywhere.

There are some times that you have to just not enter into that situation,

or there's some times that peace is just not going to happen,

and you just have to allow that to just be.

We're not talking about these situations, but know that

they exist and you need to go to God with those situations.

But sometimes peace

is really hard if

the other side is not going to do anything and it's not good for you,

but for the rest of us in the rest of our situations, most likely

what will it take for us to be a flicker of peace?

Well, we said it starts with God inwardly so that our very nature,

our very posture, our very attitude become peacemaking actions,

that we

are changed on the inside and then move out.

So what's your posture

as you enter into the brokenness

of other people's lives?

What's your posture when it when you see a barrier

and something is standing, or someone is standing in your way

and you have no peace?

Do you come in it like an infant,

or do you come in like Thor with a hammer and lightning?

Two different postures.

One is helpful.

One is not.

When you come in, are you more interested in being right

or actually mending the gap

that's between you?

Are you holding on to the stuff that they did to you?

Or are you willing to release it for the sake of wholeness

and restoration?

Are you willing to go first

to reach out, make the move, and ask for forgiveness,

or to hear their story so you can forgive them?

Maybe

instead of seeing every inconvenience as a barrier to peace,

you see these barriers as ways in which you can practice

peacemaking in your very own soul.

So that ends up just spilling out of all that you do and say.

Remember, biblical peace is not the absence of conflict,

but the active participation of peacemaking

that looks restorative, renewed, that brings

wholeness and completeness for you and those around you.

It doesn't happen naturally.

So it has to be made and worked out in practice.

This is active, not wimpy or weak.

And it requires a different kind of super hero cape,

one that looks like Jesus,

the Prince of Peace.

Remember, sometimes Jesus made peace

by ignoring certain behaviors or doubts or questions,

and you just came in and healed a person and fulfilled or like,

healed their brokenness and just made their bodies whole,

or their spirits whole or their mind whole.

But sometimes he

confronted false beliefs and challenged people

to rethink that, that they the way that they were approaching

other people are the way that they were approaching God.

That's why peacemaking, being a peace doer takes practice.

As you listen to the Holy Spirit's leading,

this is very silly or you'll think it's very silly.

But this morning is my husband and I were driving in a car,

came up behind us, and my husband's like, whoa, that is cool.

And the person had had a white car.

And they had they had decorated their whole entire car

with LED, colorful Christmas lights.

It was like a neon glowing sort of disco ball.

Right?

And I was literally I stopped at the stop sign and I'm like, I'm sorry.

And I jumped out of the car and I was like, that is just cool, right?

Like, I don't know this guy.

He's never going to see me. I hope he never sees me again.

But you're like like, you know, just like allowing

God to spill out, to be at peace.

Maybe it made his day. Maybe it didn't.

I don't know,

but, like, that's a flicker of peace.

It's being a flicker in the darkness that we're all dealing with.

Maybe he was in a hurry and I made him late.

But, you know, whatever it is, it's like, how do you enter into these situations?

Ephesians 423 remind us

to be complete, humble and gentle.

Be patient, bearing with one another in love, making every effort

to keep the unity of the spirit to the bond of peace.

As the worship team comes forward.

I want you to think about the one person or the one barrier,

or the place that God is inviting you to this morning.

Maybe it is about making peace with him,

accepting his peace for you.

Maybe it's going to the person that you are not in peace, whether it's morning.

So as you're singing this last song,

allow God to speak to you, to heal you,

to allow his love and his peace to remake you.

And so, Jesus, we thank you for this morning.

We thank you that you are the God who is so,

so pursuing of us,

that you sent your son Jesus

to come as a child,

but to grow into the Prince of Peace,

that through his very nature,

dying on the cross and rising again,

he made peace between us.

And yet you were so interested in each one of us

this morning, making peace with you.

Guide us.

Let us speak

in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.