Mark 9: Peace in You

So I woke up yesterday incredibly anxious.

I do that sometimes.

Sometimes I wake up and the world is wonderful.

Sometimes I wake up and I'm just anxious.

I'm just anxious about whatever.

And it didn't help that the night before, Friday night, I had a dream.

I had two dreams at the same time.

They're both stressful, and dreams are never interesting to other people, but I'll be very short on it.

So one dream was I like I bought a we bought a house and like it just had constant needs, and so that sounded familiar to my life.

And so I did that all night.

And then as well, I was auditioning uh for a part in front of Steven Spielberg, which was very interesting because I'm not an actor, and I uh was never in drama or anything, so this was filled with incredible amount of anxiety that I just did that all night while I slept, and then I woke up incredibly anxious, and then we went to my eight-year-old soccer game, sat next to Matt.

We were both very anxious throughout this eight-year-old soccer game, because here's the deal with an eight-year-old soccer game, is they all constantly almost do the thing they should do.

And so the whole time you're like, oh, just uh, oh, just go kick the oh just when they're six, it's just all fun.

None of them do the right thing, right?

Like, and so you laugh and like, oh, look at them, you know, but when they're eight, they're oh it's just so close all the time, the whole game.

And it's just like it just mounts inside of you, just uh when they're ten, they just actually start to do the right thing, like on the field, and so you move.

Eight is just oh, it's just anxious and anxious.

And I go home and I watch the Georgia game, and that's anxiety.

I just need to quit watching these games, and so that's anxiety, and then we drive in Atlanta traffic to go to the Gwynnette County Fair.

For some of you, you just got elated with joy, and for others is you just the word fair just created anxiety.

And so we met Christy's family out there, and the fair is uh all my worst nightmares.

Fair rides.

I'm trusting the the lives of my three precious little children on uh machinery that folds up and travels down the highway, and this is what I'm entrusting.

Everything's dirty, uh and I'm a little bratty, I'll just go ahead and admit that I can be a little bratty about this stuff, and so I'm a little bratty in this process, and I'm holding it within because I'm not gonna pass that on to my children, but it's in me, and I'm just just building up inside of me, and so everything's dirt.

We got them home, we just we sprayed them with the hose, we burn burned the clothes, we didn't let them in the house.

But it's just all this anxiety.

So finally, finally, at some point within this, uh, my oldest and I we head over to like the adult big kid area of the fair, and we're walking through and we're holding hands, and so it's kind of sweet, you know, dad and daughter, and as well, it's because I don't trust any of these people at all.

And so I'm holding that hand.

And eventually we we go into a few fun houses.

Um, like the two of us, we go into the fun houses and we do bumper cars, and she was incredibly present and joyful.

And and and somewhere along the way, like inside one of the fun houses or bumper cars, I forgot to be anxious.

And I I'm not kidding you, just peace washed over me.

I mean, a little bizarre, right?

I mean, at the Gwinnett County Fair.

It's not the kind of place you expect to have like this great experience of peace, right?

But it happened, a strange place to happen, but it happened.

And I'll mind you, my senses were on overload, right?

Like, I mean, there's lights everywhere, and there's music, and my daughter is laughing.

But it happened, okay?

I'm just saying it happened.

An experience of peace.

Now we all sort of know this, this kind of sort of peace.

It's actually pretty easy.

We get it everyone, we'll take it, right?

Like, you'll take it.

I'll I will take that piece, whether it be at the fair or a concert or a vacation, a moment on the beach, or you know, you're having a great dinner, like we will take it.

We need it, right?

Like, there's nothing wrong with it, we'll take it, we need it, like, yes, thank you, right?

All the circumstances line up, and you get this moment where it's like, I am not anxious finally, and I am whole, and I am fully present.

But if that's all there is, then like, yeah, I mean, peace could come and go as quickly as you go to a fair or have a moment at the fair, and then what if you didn't ever have that moment?

Because the fair ends, or the concert ends, or the money ends, or the vacation ends, or you know, or relationships are hard, and life can get hard, and you mess up, and I mess up, and we have our past, and we have our families, and we have our extended families, or you have the lack of family, and all of that, and personal narrative and woundedness, and all of that can come back up, and it can affect whether we feel whether we feel at peace.

So, what does it mean to have peace?

To be at peace, to be non-anxious and whole and fully present.

So, a corresponding passage with this Mark 9 is James 3.

And James 3 fits so nicely with this passage in Mark.

And James 3, 18 says this.

You can just listen, it's not your bulletin.

This is the NIV phrasing.

Peacemakers, doesn't that sound nice?

Right?

The whole verse just sounds nice.

Listen to it.

Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

Doesn't that all sound wonderful?

Like, like I want that.

Like that's a sentence full of things I want.

Like I want, I want peace, I want to be a person of peace, I want to be a person who makes peace, and I want a life that like good things are occurring.

Like a life of righteousness, a harvest of righteousness is going on.

So follow the logic just a little bit here.

So a good life with good in it, with righteousness in it, this good life, it comes from people of peace sowing in peace.

So, what does that mean?

Well, point number one: being a person of peace is about living from the wisdom of God, not the foolishness of this world.

All right, so this is all in the preceding verses.

You can read it later.

You can read it in your Bible right now, you can read it later when you get home.

The preceding verses, James lays out for us two different paths.

And the first one, he calls it the world.

He calls it the path of the world in these preceding verses, and he says, Hey, do you do you lack peace or do you try to find peace?

And he he uses three different words.

Like, do you do it by jealousy?

Like, I I want that.

I should have that.

Like you went over to somebody's house and you said, Oh, I want that, or you get the catalog in the mail, I want that, and I want that, and I want that, and I want, because then I'll have peace.

Or you're over to somebody's house and oh, I want that, and I've had that, then I'll have peace.

Or, like, oh, they're so good at that.

If I could only do that, then I'll have peace.

Or maybe your jealousy takes the form of comparison, right?

Comparison is the thief of joy.

We know that because as soon as you start comparing yourself, you're just unhappy with everything you have, and none of that's peace.

Or James also says, selfish ambition.

Right?

Like, I will get that.

I will go after that, and it doesn't matter who's in my way, I will get that.

I'm going after that.

And James says, all of that, like way of life, for thinking that way, is foolish.

It's foolish.

And I think how much time, right?

Just think about, just think about how much time you spend in that way of thinking.

And that's the way of thinking of the world is not the wisdom of God, and it is foolish.

You will waste your whole life.

I will waste my whole life.

The author Anne Lamont, she said this following, it was just after she got some success.

She's becoming known a little bit, and she says this.

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled.

All the things that culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you.

Stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even kind of a low-grade fame.

The culture says these things will save you as long as you also manage to keep your weight down.

But the culture lies.

This is what James is saying.

He's saying the culture lies.

The world lies.

It's just it's just a lie.

And we do it and I do it, but it's a lie.

And it's easy, right?

Like, like it'll be easy to do that.

That will be the easy thing for you to do and for me to do to live as a fool.

It'll be easy to just hunt and buy and accumulate and want and want more, and then think.

If you had more, then it'll all of a sudden you'll you'll you'll be non-anxious and whole and fully present.

And it has it ever worked?

I don't know.

Because it's a lie.

And the entire time I do this, I'm missing, I'm missing the thing that is already given to me.

So my personal narrative is one of always looking for something else to comfort me or give me satisfaction.

And part of that's just me being a sinner, and part of that's my woundedness.

I can distinctly remember when my household or family went from having money and like there was extra money to there being no money.

And I can remember thinking, like, I don't ever want to do that.

Like that's really hard.

And so there's this bit in me, a little bit out of woundedness, and it's my sin and the two things working together, that's just like, okay, I will just accumulate and I'll have, and then if I can get something else, because I never had stuff, so if I can get something else, then I'll then I'll be comfortable or I'll be at peace.

And so I like really, really need this sermon.

Because most days I know I'm defined by God's love for me.

I know that, I understand that.

But there's a lot of days, like yesterday, where I'm not at peace.

And it's because I'm not resting in the thing that's already true about me.

That while I am a sinner and imperfect, God loves me.

I don't have anything to, I don't have to prove anything.

I could not prove anything the rest of my life, and it's okay.

But I don't always rest in that.

But imagine the freedom of that, imagine the freedom of that to already be defined.

Right?

You so you wouldn't need comparison, you wouldn't need jealousy, you wouldn't, you wouldn't need selfish ambition, you wouldn't need those things.

That wouldn't be, you wouldn't be on the foolish path.

You'd be on this other path, right?

That you are loved and you're already whole, then you can own stuff.

You can buy stuff or not buy stuff, you can run stuff, you can accomplish stuff, and it almost is like great, if not, great too.

Imagine that kind of freedom.

Now we're ready for what James calls in those preceding verses, he calls the wisdom of God.

And he says, this is a life that is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, impartial, and sincere.

And we even hear those words, and it's like, oh that sounds good.

Point number two, being a person of peace is a harvest of God's grace to your sinful wounded heart.

Being a person of peace is a harvest of God's grace to your sinful wounded heart.

Here's what I mean.

Every once in a while, Christy, my wife, she'll walk out into our yard and she'll go over to our limelight hydrangeas and she'll nip off a few and she'll put them in a vase on our kitchen counter.

Now the flowers are wonderful.

We love flowers.

She went out and she harvested the flowers.

That's what she did.

She gathered that which had grown.

That's a harvest.

A harvest is something not in of itself, but it's caused by something else.

Meaning this.

Peace isn't found in living up to standards of looks or accumulating or like how religious it's.

It's a harvest of God's grace to you.

So if you want the peace, you've got to start with the God's grace to you.

You can't just try to get the peace on your own.

It's a harvest.

Because if you go after it with trying to look a certain way or accumulate a certain thing, or get to a certain point, and then you know what always happens, has always happened in your past.

And what it is, is you realize you're not enough.

And that's not enough.

And somewhere along the way, you have to realize okay, I've got to root my life somewhere else.

I've got to not just understand something else and be defined, but I gotta rest in it.

I gotta sit my soul down in this.

Because the fair ends and you get the award, or you finally, you finally fit into the dress that you wanted to fit into.

You've been thinking about it for so long, and then you get into it and it doesn't just do it.

You still aren't at peace because peace and righteousness is a harvest from God's love to you in Jesus.

Now our text for today.

Okay, now I'll start the sermon.

Mark 9, 33.

I'm kidding.

Mark 9, 33 through 35.

And they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house, he asked them, What were you discussing on the way?

But they kept silent.

For on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.

And he sat down, he called the twelve, so he called all his disciples together, and he said to them, If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.

So he's just trying to get them to understand, like, it doesn't matter.

Like you can be last.

You can not succeed.

And it it would be okay if you understand that you're already defined by me and following me.

You could be the servant, and it would be okay.

I mean, that sounds silly that they would be like having this argument, right?

I mean, we read this and it almost feels like I oh, I would never.

I would never have that argument with a group of my friends, right?

But we sort of do it, right?

Like in your mind, you do it.

Like you sort of wonder in the back of your mind, you go, yeah, I wonder if I'm more valuable than he is.

Like, I wonder if I'm actually more important than they are.

I wonder if other people view me as that.

Like, we do that.

And listen, your lack of my lack of peace is in direct connection to my resistance to accept myself and that which is already true about me in Jesus.

This week I I thought about buying some new vans, like high top shoes.

You know what I'm talking about?

Not a van, vans, high-top shoes.

And and I was thinking about, I thought about for about an hour.

What I'd get some high tops, what color was I gonna get?

Very important at the time.

And about after an hour of this deep contemplation about these new vans I'd get and how it would really make winter for me so much better.

It was really gonna solve fall and winter for me.

And then I realized I have two pair of vans that are clean.

They're not like dirty and old.

So I have two pair of vans already, and I realized I'm just anxious and bored.

I had nothing to do with a pair of shoes.

Alright, you know what I'm talking about, is you do it too.

And we we can do it in much more harmful ways.

Right?

I mean, you you could do it with pornography or an affair.

You could do it by like just staring at your money so much.

You could do it with self-medicating in some way, some abuse to yourself in some way.

You could do it like you get caught and passed shame so much, you never move out of that, you just keep revisiting that over and over.

Or you can, like me, live in a dream world in the future so much that you just miss everything that's just today.

Today's the only place that you could you can live non-anxious and whole and fully present.

You can't do that in the future, and you can't do that in the past.

You can learn from both those places, but today's the place that you can have peace.

And all that toxic self-saving, it's sin, by the way, that's what it is.

From the little, like consumerism, to thinking I need a third pair of vans to solve all my problems for the fall and winter, from that to something dark.

All of that is taken on the cross.

Jesus takes all that self-saving that we do, and all of our lack of peace, he takes it on the cross for us and he gives to us his righteousness.

So we are forever his beloved.

So when you lack peace, you're still his beloved.

Isn't that great?

When you're fighting against that, you're still his beloved.

One of the guys who helped start our church in the first year of our church, it was five years ago.

Some of you were here, he tragically died.

It was horrible, it was sudden, it was tragic, there's an unbelievable sorrow in our community for that season.

And I officiated his funeral.

I went back and I think I went back because I started this week to think about this idea of rest in peace, right?

Because that's what we say when somebody passes.

We say, oh, would they would they rest in peace?

R.I.P., right?

Like, I mean, we start seeing that at Halloween, little, you know, tombstones, R.I.P.

But this idea of rest in peace, and I went back to to read what I what I prayed at his funeral because I was like, I wonder what I prayed at his funeral.

And this was the closing prayer, and I didn't write this prayer, I said this prayer, this is a historic prayer.

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.

Receive him into your arms of mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, in the glorious company of the children of God.

You've probably heard something like that before, right?

Into the blessed rest of everlasting peace.

Because death is the final rest.

We get to actually experience, actually experience everlasting peace, relief from all this that we struggle with.

But what James is saying, James is saying, hey, live in the wisdom of God now.

Like you'll have to die a thousand deaths to jealousy and selfish ambition to do this and all that foolishness.

You have to die to that every single day.

You have to pray thousands of confessional prayers of you, not in order to be forgiven, but to remember you are forgiven and you are already righteous.

Point number three, the image for you to hold and for you to be held by is God holding you.

The image for you to hold and to be held by is God holding you.

Mark 9, 36 and 37.

And he took a child and he put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me.

Well, that's a bunch of kind of religious, kind of coded language there, but here's what it means.

At the time, children had no importance.

They were just kind of a nuisance.

They were last.

And the word for children is the same word for servant.

And yet, children, like what we know, we think of children it's the perfect image of beautiful and imperfect, right?

Like all the time, you're like, you're so beautiful, and you're driving me nuts, right?

We know that experience.

Whether you have children or not, you know the experience.

Maybe more if you don't have children.

And God says, let those, them, that beautiful and imperfect, let them come to me and I will hold them.

So here the disciples are, and they're all worried about who's the greatest, who's the greatest, and my life's gonna be all about this, get to be the greatest, I'm gonna accomplish stuff, I'm gonna be the greatest.

They're killing themselves with this argument.

You can't have that argument and have peace in your inner self and your heart.

And then there's these children.

Simply come and they allow themselves to be loved.

And I'm not a child psychologist.

I'm not, but I do know this.

I know a child is wonderfully free and at peace when they know they are loved.

My my youngest little girl, she still doesn't know what day it is.

And I'm like, oh, I love that.

That's amazing, right?

She doesn't even know what on a Saturday, she's not sure if we've eaten lunch or dinner or like, she doesn't know.

It's so wonderful.

We get in the car, she doesn't know if we're going to Florida or we're going like to just Chick-fil-A for 30 minutes.

She's just like, hey, where are we going?

Okay, sounds great.

Like because she's so secure and a love for her that she has never even thought to question.

She's never even thought to question it.

She's held.

Will you allow yourself to be loved before you're great, before you're accomplished, before you're thin, before you're perfect enough or good enough, will you allow yourself to be defined by God's love for you?

You're beautiful and yet you are incredibly imperfect.

But God's love for you is even greater than it all.

My brothers and sisters, may the peace of God hold you and define you.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace and mercy, that in your truth you lay out for us and you reveal to us how foolish we are.

That we would give our lives to jealousy and selfish ambition, and the entire time we would fight the very thing we want peace.

And that you give us your truth, that the peace is in the wisdom of God, in your character, and in the person of Jesus.

And we thank you that while we fail before all of this, Jesus is enough for us.

We don't have to do more or try harder this morning or tomorrow.

Help us to live in a greater recognition that we are not as you have called us to be, and yet you are perfect for us.

Your love for us is enough.

May that be not just knowledge, but may it be our experience.

We thank you for the gift of Jesus.

May it define us in greater and greater ways.

Amen.