Finding Peace in Community
Isaiah 11:1-10[1]
As I mentioned last week, I’m following the lead of one of
my favorite authors as we make our journey through Advent this year. I’m asking
Henri Nouwen to be our guide as we reflect together on what the themes of
Advent—hope, peace, joy, and love—mean for us in our daily living. And as I
discussed last week, one of Nouwen’s convictions is that we hold onto those
aspects of our faith together in community. This week we are looking at how we
find peace in community with one another. That might seem like a strange way to
find peace. So much of what we hear about peace these days emphasizes finding
peace with and within ourselves. And that’s no small task. It seems that our
personal peace can be so easily disturbed. We let a hurtful remark that someone
makes disrupt our peace, whether they meant it to be hurtful or not. We let the
outcome of sporting events upset us, especially when we think the referees
called the game unfairly! Our personal peace is easily disturbed!
Most of you know that I’ve participated in Twelve Step programs
for years. I’m not an alcoholic or an addict, but I have been affected by
people whose lives were impacted by alcohol or drugs. I recently had someone
ask me why I continue to participate in those programs year after year. She
asked me, “Do you have to do this in order not to drink?” Obviously, she
misunderstood the purpose of the meeting. My answer to her is still the reason
why I “keep coming back,” as we say at the conclusion of every meeting. I’m
there because I’m learning healthy ways to live my life, and I want to stay on
that path. More than that I want to share that path with other people. Every so
often we have new people who come into our fellowship who are hurting deeply. One
of the things we say in our meetings is that we gather together to share our
experience, strength, and hope, especially with people who are in the midst of
crisis.
As many of you know, one of the central features of the
twelve-step program is the “Serenity Prayer”: most of us know it in this form,
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to
change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” And in the
twelve-step program, what we continually remind each other is that we cannot
change or control what anyone else thinks or feels or says or does. That’s true
at the level of our personal lives. It’s also true at the level of our families,
our communities, our nation, and our world. We cannot change or control what
anyone else thinks or feels or says or does. Even and especially when it
affects us directly. What we can change is how we respond, how we choose to
live our lives, and whether or not we stay true to our values. And I keep going
back to my meetings because I’m still learning to live that way in that
community of people.
The quote I want to share with you this week from Henri
Nouwen is this: “Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every
other form of community … can become ways to reveal to each other the real
presence of God in our midst. Community has little to do with mutual
compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological makeup, or
social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for
community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the
attractiveness of people to each other…. The mystery of community is precisely that
it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and
allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and
daughters of his heavenly Father.”[2]
Again, my reading of Henri Nouwen’s books has made it
abundantly clear to me that we learn how to live the Christian life only as we
come together with a community of people who are also learning how to live the
Christian life. It’s not something we can do on our own. Not fully. Nouwen
reminds us that every form of community we experience can be the place to
reveal “the real presence of God” among us. He insists that community, at least
the community that makes a real difference in our lives, is “grounded in God.”
That’s especially true in the community of those who claim to follow Jesus. As
Nouwen points out, the community we share with each other in the body of Christ
is not based on whether or not we’re “compatible” in any particular way,
whether it’s ethnic background, or personality, or social and political
viewpoint, or lifestyle, or family structure. Our community together in this
congregation is based on God’s presence in our lives. That’s what brings us
together, and that’s what holds us together. And when that is the case, then
our community “embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may
be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and
sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.”
That’s what brings us together as a community. And it’s the
presence of God in our lives that creates peace between us that will last
through all the ups and downs of our lives together. We live in a world where
peace may seem like just a “dream.” Especially the kind of peace that the
Prophet Isaiah envisioned when he foresaw a time when real justice would be
extended to all people, especially those who have been exploited by the rich
and powerful. It seems like those who are exceedingly rich and powerful always
have a way of getting out of having to face the consequences of their actions,
and those whom they have exploited never really have things made right for
them. That peace that Isaiah foresaw can seem like a dream. So can the peace
that he envisioned extending from the human family to embrace all of nature, so
that the “the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down
with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a
little child will lead them all” (Isa 11:6, NLT). But that kind of peace
that can seem too good to be true is precisely what God is creating in and
through us in this community, right here and right now.
It seems to me that is the basis for our peace in this
world—at least any peace that is lasting. It starts with the peace that we have
with God through Jesus Christ. Our experience of being loved and accepted by
God—unconditionally, irrevocably, and without any qualifications or
exceptions—enables us to find peace with ourselves. As we learn to accept
ourselves as those who are beloved by God—always and forever—we find peace that
endures all the circumstances we may have to live with. When we have peace with
God and come to be at peace with ourselves, then we can extend that peace to
those around us. We can accept the people in our community, regardless of any
differences that may threaten to undermine our community.
We can live in peace with one another when we learn to do
as the Apostle Paul said in the lesson from Romans for today: “accept each
other just as Christ has accepted you” (Rom 15:7, NLT). Again, in these
days when there is so much division and strife among us, that might seem like a
“dream.” Some of you may be able to remember a time when the larger community
in this place was divided based on whether your ancestors were German or Dutch.
They went to different grocery stores, and they went to different churches. We’ve
moved past that now. These days, the dividing lines are drawn based on social
and political views. But as we gather in this place, however, the presence and
the work of God in our lives overrules all the lines that may appear to divide
us. The peace that lasts is the peace that is based on God’s presence among us.
It’s based on the fact that we recognize God’s presence in each other. That’s
the peace that keeps us together.
I believe with Henri Nouwen that we learn that peace best as
we practice it in a community of people who come from all kinds of different
backgrounds and perspectives. When we learn to live in peace in this
community, with those who hold opinions that we may find offensive, we’re
developing peace like a muscle. The peace we find in a real community like this
one despite the differences between us is a peace that can sustain us in our
divided world. Perhaps more than that, it can begin to make that dream of peace
from Scripture a little more real in our lives.
[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/7/2025 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New, 82-83.
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