Weekly Sermon: 04-19-2026 - Values that Stick - Peace

Now, on the same day, two disciples were going to a village called Emmaus,

about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these

things that had happened.

While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them.

But their eyes kept them from recognizing him.

And he said to them, What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?

They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas,

answered him, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things

that have taken place there in these days?

And he asked them, What things?

And they replied, The things about Jesus of Nazareth,

who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,

and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

Yes, and beside all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.

Moreover, some women of our group astounded us.

They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body

there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels

who said that he was alive.

Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women

had said, but they did not see him.

Then he said to them, Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe

all that the prophets had declared.

Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things,

and then enter into his glory?

Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the

things about himself and all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.

But they urged him strongly, saying, Stay with us, because it is almost evening,

and the day is now nearly over.

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them,

he took bread, blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.

They said to each other, said to each other, The Gospel of the Lord.

You may be seated.

So, back when I was in high school, we had a stink bomb problem.

There were these little packets where you would activate them,

drop them somewhere, anywhere.

There was a huge pop that followed. And what followed was a smell so foul that

everybody would step over each other trying to get away from this god-awful stench.

Somebody had found these stink bombs at the local dollar store and decided that

school of all places was a perfect place to share this experience,

and most of the time during this month of terror it was just chaos and there

was one stink bomb event though that still has stuck with me until this day it was my junior year,

AP English and the class had a strange dynamic.

There was me, my best friend, the girl I dated throughout high school and the

three of us were actually outsiders in the classroom because the rest of the class,

about 10 students, all went to the same church as our teacher and so they were all close.

And then one afternoon, while our teacher stepped out, one of those stink bombs

went off right behind our teacher's desk.

And when she walked in, her face went quickly from gagging to disgust to anger.

And she directed that anger directly on me and my best friend.

But the rest of the class went on, and we didn't think anything of it the rest of the day.

But then the next day, me and my friend were called into the vice principal's office.

This was the first time for me, by the way. I had never been called to the principal's

office before because I'm a good kid.

All right, I try really hard, but it wasn't for my best friend.

All right, he was a frequent flyer to the vice principal's office.

And so he reassured me, he said, don't worry, it's going to be okay. We're innocent.

Nothing's going to happen. But we spent 30 minutes in a vice principal's office

arguing for our innocence because we honestly had no clue who set off the stink

bomb behind my teacher's desk.

But we were in there having to argue for our innocence.

And eventually the vice principal let us go when

he figured out that well couldn't pin anything on me and my friend and we couldn't

give him any dirt on who was doing it so he let us go back and we walked back

into the classroom and the teacher looked up at us and said i didn't think you'd be back,

and all I can get off after that statement was we didn't do it and she responded with yeah sure.

Okay so what followed was three more months attention because we had three more

months at the school and my friend and I handled this situation completely differently,

He, because remember he's a frequent flyer to the office,

had some choice words for her every chance he got.

And some of them weren't very nice. And on a couple occasions,

my friend stormed out of the classroom.

And I just didn't do much. I didn't say much. I didn't say much to her.

I just kind of held it all in and let the semester end.

And so we got to the end of semester and that was it.

But I want you to know I did find out who did it. I found this out three years later.

And it was actually my girlfriend at the time. who set off the stink bomb. She let us take the fall.

And you know what I remember from this entire incident, and it wasn't a betrayal

that she let us take the fall for this event.

What I remember most was those three months of holding everything in.

Of the silence, of not saying much to my teacher, to just getting through class

without sitting down and having a conversation.

I tried to do this in order to keep the peace with

her But it didn't feel like peace inside There

was disappointment in my chest Every time I would walk into the classroom Nothing

was resolved and nothing was ever named And I thought that by being silent and

not doing anything It was my way of keeping everything stable And I carried

the weight of that event much longer than I probably should have.

And my friend's way didn't work either. He was cussing her out,

and it didn't restore anything. If anything, it caused more issues between her and him.

And the rupture between those two just got louder. And I don't remember how

he did it in class, but I don't think he did well.

But we were both trying to solve the same problem. We were both wrongly accused.

We felt unseen. we fell unlistened to, and neither of us found our way through it.

But I wonder how many of us have had similar moments like that,

where by keeping the peace in our situations and our lives,

we either be silent or hide parts of ourselves or hide our truth.

But, you know, it just seems natural for us to do, because all of us,

everybody in the world, we're all yearning for peace, right?

There's this deep part of us that feels uncomfortable when things don't feel

peaceful, and we will do almost anything to get away from that feeling.

We call it peace when we avoid hard conversations, because we're afraid that

being honest is just going to lead to more arguments.

We call it peace when we just smile and nod and let something slide that hurts

us because we've learned to equate discomfort with conflict.

And while these things may keep us from going at each other's throats most of

the time, they come with strings attached.

Because with this kind of what I call fabricated peace, someone is always carrying the cost.

The unspoken things in our lives

they pile up and so the silence we thought

was keeping us safe actually starts to feel more like a weight that we cannot

let go of or put down this kind of peace that we manage or maintain through

silence or quiet while seemingly effective,

is actually feels weak and

fragile and it can only hold things

together just long enough until something finally explodes or we give up altogether

and i'm wondering if the peace we've been chasing through these means through

just being silent isn't actually peace of all peace at all but actually just

survival mechanisms or control,

and it's just keeping things together just enough at the expense of what is actually true.

When we turn to Romans, Paul offers us a different kind of peace entirely than

the one that we try to make in our lives.

See, the passage opens with a hinge word, therefore.

This therefore is a word that points backwards to all the chapters before it.

And what it's pointing back to is everything Paul has argued against four chapters,

that none of us can earn our standing before God.

Not through religious performance, not through moral achievement,

not through managing every outcome of our lives.

And the whole human project of justifying ourselves before God,

Paul says, has actually already been settled.

And better than that, it's not settled by anything we ever did,

but by what God did through Christ Jesus.

Paul is telling us, basically similar to what the disciples experienced on the road to Emmaus.

While they're walking around with Jesus on this road, and they're oblivious

to this person that they're walking with and talking with, that the gift of

Jesus Christ was actually right there all along.

And so, going back to Romans 5, peace has already been given.

It was secured at the cross before you knew you needed it. It was placed in

your hands before you even had a chance to reach for it.

And the work of recognizing it, of opening your eyes of what is already true,

that doesn't create peace.

It just lets us receive what has always already been ours.

And so we had to ask ourselves if we already

have received this peace if it's already been given what is this peace that

paul speaks of when paul writes peace here he's using the greek word and there's

something interesting interesting about this word it isn't a neutral word actually in the Roman world.

I don't know if you have heard, but they had their own famous version of peace in the word Pax Romana.

This is called the Roman peace.

And Rome made this peace the way that empires had always had made peace.

They did it through conquest, through domination, and through silencing any

opposition against them.

They had peace as control and as enforcement.

But that's not what Paul is talking about here.

Because Irenae, by the time Paul writes this letter, it's actually doing something

else entirely than peace through control.

When Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek centuries earlier,

they chose the word Irenae as the word they would use for shalom.

And they poured everything shalom meant.

Wholeness, flourishing, right relationships, and divine blessing from God into this Greek word.

And so when Paul writes Irenae, he's writing a Greek word with the Hebrew soul.

It means to bind together again, what has been separated to set right.

Once again, this is actually the piece Paul is talking about here.

It's not silence after domination.

It's not control or calm when somebody swallows their pain.

But rather bringing everything back together that was broken,

the wholeness of being fully known and not turned away, the belonging that comes

from a relationship you did nothing to earn and cannot do anything to lose.

And Paul says this piece is possible because God has already done the work through Jesus Christ.

God has brought us into right relationship, and then God's love,

the love that makes all this possible, is poured directly into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

There is no conditions for it, and it's not trickled out in small little amounts.

Here you go. Here you go. Here's a little bit of peace for you.

But it's actually poured onto you.

This peace isn't a feeling you cultivate or calm that you achieve through your own effort.

It is a relational reality, a new standing with God.

You are no longer on the outside of the relationship you most need.

You have been claimed by God.

Through grace and not by anything you have ever done.

Which means the peace that you, in your life, that you've been working so hard to make,

all that time, all those times that you have been silent and all that calm you've

been maintaining at the cost of yourself,

none of that is the peace God is offering to you.

Now, receiving God's peace, this doesn't mean that conflict disappears.

In this scripture, Paul makes no such promise.

And actually, just a few verses after telling us that we have peace with God,

he turns around and says, we also should boast in our suffering.

Not in spite of them, but actually in our suffering.

Because as Paul says, suffering produces endurance and that produces character

and character produces hope.

And this is a hope that doesn't disappoint because God's love has already been

poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

This isn't Paul describing a life without hard rooms or hard discussions or

painful conversations.

He's describing a life where you enter into those hard situations held by something

stronger than the conflict that is inside of those situations.

The peace God gives you is not the absence of struggle, but actually is a foundation

you can stand on through your struggles.

It is what keeps you from being swallowed by the very things that used to require you to disappear.

Because God's peace doesn't require anyone to disappear.

God's peace doesn't ask anyone to swallow who they are so the room stays manageable.

God's peace is not built on someone's silence. It was built at the cross and

through the resurrection.

And only God can do it. And it is freely given to you and to all of us as a

gift to get through those struggles, through those hard conversations,

and gives you room to grow and to become your best self.

You are no longer having to rely on a peace where you had to protect or perform

during the struggles in your life, but rather on a peace that was already finished

before you even came to the party.

And what this means for us is that we no longer have to keep seeking the kind

of peace that comes from holding everything together on our own.

Because it's already been given to us. We spend so much time and energy maintaining

the appearance of peace that we forget what it means to simply rest in it.

We've been so busy keeping everything together that we haven't stopped to ask

ourselves whether we are meant to carry it on our own.

And so the first thing that this passage asks of us is to simply put it all down.

Put down the performance, the careful management of all the rooms that we enter into.

And that version of yourself, you've learned to deploy when things feel unstable.

Because honesty is exhausting, because it's exhausting work,

making sure none of this explodes.

Know that you are not the keeper of everyone else's peace, but actually God is.

And so repeat that line to yourself That I am going to put this down This weight

of holding it all together,

Of having to manage all the room And the responsibilities,

For everybody else And for yourself And just tell yourself I am putting this

down And once we learn to do that we can feel the freedom to tell the truth.

Because fabricated peace depends on silence,

but real peace, shalom, right relationship that Paul is talking about has room

for honest speech, not blowing up at somebody, but having conversations.

And it doesn't mean that every hard conversation has to happen tomorrow,

but it does mean that the silence you've been keeping to hold things together

may actually be the very thing keeping you from genuine relationship with the

people you love and even with God.

If you remember, I kept the peace with that teacher for three months.

We didn't have any confrontations or arguments, and I walked into that room

every single day carrying every bit of what hadn't been said.

If I would have just sat down with the teacher and had a conversation during

free time, maybe we could have worked things out.

And things would have been better for the rest of the semester.

It was a lesson that it took me time to learn.

But I walked into that room, if I would have walked into that room respectfully

and we would have talked it out, we wouldn't have had such a misunderstanding for three months.

God's peace makes for space for truth-telling, for going to someone and saying,

this hurt me, for allowing yourself to be the one that finally names what everyone

else has been stepping around.

And it's not an act of aggression, but an act of faith that the relationship

is strong enough to hold up to honesty, and that the God who holds you can hold

conversations in our life as well.

So just take a moment to make sure before you have this conversation that your

heart is in the right place and think through how to tell the truth without

continuing any violence or being mean like my friend.

But go to God, pray, and have those conversations.

And know that God is going to be there holding you in those moments.

And finally, I think the hardest one is if we have received God's peace as a

gift that we didn't earn,

we are also called to extend that peace to the people in our lives who we feel

hasn't earned it from us.

It's not pretending that harm didn't happen, but grace isn't the same as pretending.

But it does mean that the person across from you, whether it's the teacher who

accused you without evidence, the friend who lets you take the fall,

the person who never admitted what they did, they too are held by the very same grace that holds you.

They too are called into right relationship.

You are not responsible for completing that work in them, but you are invited

to refuse to let these things define your relationship and be the last word between you.

It's not easy and it's not supposed to be, but it is possible not because you

are strong enough to manage me, but because the peace underneath you is stronger

than the conflict in front of you.

So if you're angry with someone and you are not able to reconcile with,

at least spend some time and pray for them.

Because the Holy Spirit can work with you, with those who you are arguing with.

So pray for these people that you feel conflict with.

And allow God to work with you in those moments so that you can extend the same

grace extended to you to them.

And all of this will take time, and we will make mistakes through this process.

But what I hope is that we know that it's not us holding all this together, but it is God.

And it is a peace that was never ours to maintain to begin with.

It's peace that has already been given to us in Christ, and we get to receive

it and live into it. We just get to walk on the same road with Christ and while

Christ is helping us through it.

And so with all this in mind, if we all can follow this passage and stop trying to make peace,

but start living from the peace that God has given us, we can be a community

where everything doesn't have to be easy or we don't always have to agree.

And we don't have to be a table where no one says anything hard,

but we can be a community where no one has to disappear to feel welcome,

where honesty is possible because grace is already present, and where all those

people who are sitting silently at the edges of the room are seen and known.

Because the God who makes the peace has already made room for all of us.

And that is a church we are all called to be. Because we are not the peacekeepers,

but rather the peace receivers.

And we can be a people so held by a peace we did not make that we have nothing

left to protect and everything to give.

Go forth into the world, strengthened in Christ, to live with values that stick.

Sharing the fruit of the spirit love joy

peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control tell

others what jesus has done for you and invite them to saint luke's as you love

serve and welcome all thanks be to god and we if you're inspired by this week's.