The Depth of God's Love

 The Depth of God’s Love

Philippians 2:5-11[1]

Sometimes our faith can seem to contradict the reality of our lives. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the reality of our lives seems to contradict our faith. Last week we talked about Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father as the crucial event by which God is working in the world to make everything new, already here and now. Just as the light dispels the darkness, Jesus spoke of his being “lifted up” as depriving the so-called “the ruler of this world” from any and all power. But in reality, that’s something we all have to choose to believe, and choose to see in this world. And I choose to believe that’s the truth about God and the truth about us and our world. But as I mentioned last week, there’s all too much evidence that the darkness in this world is just as deep and just as powerful as ever.

 However strong our faith may be, there is a dark side to life that I think most of us would rather avoid. But whether we’re willing to look at them or not, there are dark places all over the world. There are dark places in our country, in our State, in our county—and in our town! For some, the darkness consists of a loneliness that may feel like it’s choking the life out of you. For others, it may be a sense of grief that you just cannot process. For still others, it may be a job that’s suffocating, or addictions that slowly erode the soul. For all too many, the darkness consists of mistaking what may feel good right now for “happiness.” However much we may believe that God is truly in the process of making all things new right now, there remains a dark side to life.

It’s no wonder that most of us would rather avoid facing the darkness in our world or in our own lives. But the hard truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome darkness is to have the courage to face it squarely. And that usually means taking a journey into that darkness that can be painful and frightening. The only way out of the darkness that we feel trapped in is to go through it. As we allow ourselves to wrestle with the pain and fear and doubt within, the very process itself heals us. And as we become healed, we grow strong enough to recognize the darkness without giving in to it. We grow strong enough to enjoy the freedom to live in the light. We grow confident that our faith is not misplaced, but rather that we have good reasons to believe that God is working in and through us for good right now.

I believe that’s a part of what our New Testament lesson from Philippians for today is about. It’s about Jesus’ journey into the very heart of the darkness that oppresses the human family in order to set us all free from its power. That journey led him not only to give up his rightful place with God to become a human being, just as vulnerable as the rest of us. His journey took him farther than that: he not only “emptied himself” to become human, he also subjected himself to the humiliation of a cruel execution and actually tasted death for us all. He went into the very abyss of all the darkness and suffering we can experience in this world and took it upon himself.

If we had not heard this story all our lives, I think at least some of us would venture to ask why Jesus would do such a thing. When you look at our world and the darkness in it today, you do see a few brave souls who are willing to enter some aspect of it, at least for a time. But the idea of someone actually taking on all the darkness of this world strains our ability to understand how anyone could possibly do such a thing. In the death of Jesus on a Roman cross there is something more going on than simple human compassion in action. In Jesus we see the depth of God’s love in all its life-changing power at work. I think that’s the key to understanding how Jesus could take on all the darkness in this world. And we learn from this that God’s love is a love that will not rest until it reaches out to every dark place we can possibly go to bring all of us back home to the light.

Of course, that answer is also a part of the faith we’ve been taught all our lives. But it seems to me that if we think about it, this too raises questions that may not be easy to answer. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to at least wonder why this particular expression of God’s love was the one chosen to set us free from the darkness. Many have tried to understand this in human terms and imagine that Jesus volunteered to take God’s wrath toward us all on himself. The idea is that his death was the punishment that we deserved. It’s embedded into our faith not only through Scripture, but also through the hymns we sing. But I don’t find that perspective to be very compelling. That only reinforces the idea that we have to cower in fear before an angry God who may strike us down at any moment. And I don’t think that’s what was going on when Jesus embraced his death on the cross.

Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross because that’s who God is: a God who loves us enough to suffer for us so that we can be whole. The God of the Bible is not an angry God, but rather one who constantly suffers on behalf of his chosen people. That’s the lesson of much of the Hebrew Bible. And beginning with some of the prophets, and especially in Jesus, we see that love extended to the whole human family. That’s how the God of the Bible chooses to love us all, time and again. And the God of the Bible is a God who never quits loving us this way. Part of the mystery of our faith is that it was God who was suffering on our behalf on that cross. St. Paul said it this way, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). Somehow, some way, it’s God who takes on the suffering we endure when we wander into the dark places of this life. That’s the depth of God’s love for us all!

Now some of you may be feeling like I’m only taking you further down the “rabbit hole.” The love of God poured out for us in Jesus on the cross is indeed, as one of our confessions puts it, a mystery beyond our understanding.[2] So if you’re wondering how God could suffer for us on the cross, the only answer is a short one, though it is far from being a simple. The answer is that in Jesus we see the mystery of God’s love. It’s a mystery how God could suffer for us on that cross. In Jesus, we see the God who is the redeemer of the despised, the savior of the hopeless, the one who chooses the unwanted. It bears repeating: the death of Jesus on a cross shows us that God’s love reaches into the very depth of any darkness into which we can go and will not rest until we are all back home with him.

The good news of the Gospel is that there is no depth of suffering that Jesus did not reach in his death on the cross. Truly does our affirmation of faith state that “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”[3]  That means Jesus’ death on the cross has set us free from all the darkness we could ever experience —the loneliness, grief, agony, alienation, cruelty, abandonment, estrangement, despair, shame, rejection, and self-destruction. Jesus has taken all of that on himself. God has taken all of it into his love. For me, that means that no one can sink so deep as to be beyond hope, beyond the reach of God’s love. However far we may fall, the love of God has already been into the depth of the abyss in Jesus Christ and is waiting there to bring us back home.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/24/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] The Book of Confessions 2016, Confession of 1967 9.15, p. 289.

[3] “The Study Catechism,” question 45 (approved by the 210th General Assembly of the PCUSA, 1998).

Choosing Peace

 Choosing Peace

Philippians 4:4-13[1]

If you’re a person who follows the news, you know that the times in which we are living can make it hard to find our way to personal peace. Just the wars that are going on in the world right now are troubling enough. The war in Ukraine is moving toward a third year. And now, we have a conflict in the Middle East that threatens to engulf several nations. At the same time, the people of Afghanistan live under the constant threat of violence. When you add Iraq, Ethiopia, Sudan, Myanmar, Mexico, Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Colombia, and about 10 other countries where there are conflicts that have each inflicted thousands of deaths, it becomes a bit overwhelming. I think we might understand why so many people are frightened by the current state of the world. Or at the very least troubled.

Unfortunately, the history of the world is a history of violence and war. Indeed, there was a time when warfare was so common that it was simply expected that a young man would define his character by going off to war! It was a rite of passage! And many of those wars were not fought on some faraway battlefield across oceans. Rather, they were fought among the people. That’s still the reality with most of the wars going on today. They take place in the cities and towns and villages where innocent people become casualties. If you add up all the fatalities just in the last couple of years, it reaches the hundreds of thousands. And most of these wars have stretched on for decades, many of them for more than fifty years!

It’s hard for me to imagine entire generations of people growing up and living their whole lives in a state of war. I can’t begin to understand what that must be like for them. I don’t know about you, but I find that life in the relative safety of this country feels stressful enough. To be sure, we have threats at home as well. Our grandchildren are growing up with the specter of school shootings hanging over them. We all live with the knowledge that we cannot anticipate where the next mass shooting will happen. When you think too much about all of this, you may wonder whether “peace” is even a choice we can make.

But the truth of the matter for all of us, whether we’re talking about those of us who live in this country, or those who live in the midst of an active war, is that we all choose how we are going to respond to what is happening in our lives. Granted, there are some situations where we have more choice than others. As I mentioned last week, many of us may allow fear to control our reactions, and we don’t take the time to respond to the challenges of life with wisdom, faith, or courage. What we may not be able to see is that we are choosing that response. And we may not be able to see that we also have the ability to choose differently. We all can choose peace, no matter what we may be facing in life. The question is how to do that.

I believe our lesson from St. Paul gives us some practical help with that. What we should remember is that the people he was writing to in the church at Philippi faced many dangers because of their faith in Christ. Some of them had been thrown out of their families. Others had lost their livelihood, because they would no longer sacrifice to the Greek gods that were patron deities of their trade unions. Many found themselves at times at the mercy of mob violence—beaten and humiliated, and sometimes they lost their lives. These were people who knew danger quite well.

We should also remember that St. Paul himself experienced threats, even threats against his life! In his various letters he recounts his life as a Christian Apostle and it definitely was not a storybook life. Paul lists all that he had been through for the sake of Christ and the churches he served: he was flogged to the brink of death five times, pelted with stones and left for dead, shipwrecked three times, spending a night and a day adrift on the open sea, not to mention spending many a sleepless night in prison, hungry, and cold (2 Cor. 11:23-27). His life was one that was far from safe: as he said it himself, he experienced “danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea” (2 Cor. 11:26).

When I think about what the first Christians had to go through because of their faith, it makes me wonder how they were able to endure it all. In part, St. Paul answers that question with his call not to give in to fear, but to turn to God as our source of peace. And the promise he makes is a familiar one: “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7). I think that’s where the battle with fear is won or lost—in our hearts and our minds. We need to feel safe in our hearts and we need to be able to think of our lives as secure. And St. Paul promises that we find that safety and security in God alone.

He goes on to assure us that “the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:9). It’s a wonderful promise that may sometimes get overlooked because of the previous one. But it’s just as important for our ability to choose peace in our lives. Promising that “the God of peace will be with you” is something of a loaded statement. Speaking about the “God of peace” can be a description of God’s character: He is the God who embodies peace. It can also say something about the end result of God’s work in our world: He is the God who is working toward peace that extends to everyone. But, perhaps most importantly for this context, “the God of peace” can describe how God relates to us: He is the God who gives us peace. And Paul says that it is this God who is constantly with us, providing us with an anchor for our souls and a foundation upon which to build our lives.

I don’t believe we can rely on the circumstances of our lives as the source for our peace. At least, that’s been my experience. There will be times when life may seem fairly calm. In those times it’s relatively easy to find peace. But the challenge is finding peace when life is anything but calm. We need something more stable to help us face the fear and uncertainty of those times. For most of us, our fear isn’t about the threat of violence or war. Rather our fear comes from other threats: the loss of livelihood, the loss of family, the loss of health, the loss of home. Because the “God of peace” is always with us, we can always choose to respond to what is happening in our lives by looking to God to supply the “peace that surpasses all understanding.” In part, I believe that means recognizing that there are some aspects of life that we cannot control. We can’t control wars that are taking place around the world. We can’t control the violence that is overflowing our cities and towns. We can’t even control the most basic circumstances of our own lives. What we can do is to trust that our lives are always in God’s hands, and that regardless of what may happen to us in this life, there is no safer place for us to be. I would say that’s at least the first step toward choosing peace.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2023. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 10/15/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Worthless

Worthless

Philippians 3:4-14[1]

When I was younger, I did something some of you may have done. I used to look over my resume from time to time. I had worked hard from before I even graduated High School, and it was satisfying at times to “review my progress.” I’m not particularly proud of that fact now. As I continued to “rack up” achievements—degrees, publications, speaking engagements, and honors—I continued to “review my progress” with satisfaction. And I expected that progress to continue. At the ripe old age of 31, as a brand, spanking new Seminary Professor, I had my whole career planned out before me. Of course, as it so often does, “life” intruded in my plans.

While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having goals and feeling the satisfaction of meeting them, that aspect of my life just stopped being important somewhere along the way. It’s not that any of my achievements or plans were selfish or harmful or in any way dishonorable. I started serving the church before I graduated from High School! I simply lost interest in “reviewing my progress.” Maybe it was that life changed my plans so drastically I recognized that I needed more. I’d like to think that I “grew up” a bit and learned that life isn’t all about achievements. At some point I started focusing more on the present moment with the prayer, “into your hands I commend my life”! I realized that I needed God more than anything else.

It may be hard for us to understand St. Paul’s reasons for “boasting in the flesh” in our Scripture lesson from Philippians for today. His achievements belong to a very different time and place. But in essence, Paul is saying that came from an elite family, he attended the finest prep school, he knocked the top out of his test scores, made it into an Ivy League University, and graduated at the top of his class. Among the leadership of the Jewish people, he was known as a rising star. But on the road to Damascus, he met the living Christ, and everything changed for him. All that he valued previously suddenly became worthless in his eyes.

Again, it’s not as if there had been anything inherently wrong with most of Paul’s achievements. They were all noble and honorable. But they were his achievements. When he met Christ everything changed. In comparison with the amazing gift of new life through faith in Jesus Christ, Paul says that he counted everything he once saw to be an advantage to him as a “loss.”  In fact he uses much stronger language than that. The holy Apostle himself says that in comparison with knowing Christ he now considered his previous achievements as rubbish, filth, or as the KJV so bluntly translates it, as dung! What he had previously valued was now worthless to him.

Part of what we have to understand here is that Paul was in the middle of a serious debate about what constitutes true faith. Other Christian preachers in Paul’s day were demanding that Gentiles first had to convert to Judaism before they could truly embrace the Christian faith. To some, that might have seemed logical. After all, the Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets served as the foundation not only for the teachings of the Apostles, but also of Jesus himself. And so it seemed logical that a person who came out of a pagan context would have to embrace the truth of the Jewish Scriptures before coming to faith in Christ.

But I think Paul knew by personal experience the major pitfall with that kind of approach. It makes salvation all about what we do, not about what God has done for us in Christ. Paul knew what it was to do one’s best to fulfill all expectations and yet to find that seeking your life in those self-achievements is ultimately hollow. He knew that it’s impossible to build one’s own “stairway to heaven” through doing all the “right” things. He knew that when it comes to ultimate things, like life and death, salvation and eternal destiny, we have to rely on God’s grace, not the works of our own hands.

So one side of Paul’s personal revelation is that it’s impossible to ever do enough good to earn God’s grace. But the other side is that we don’t have to! The reason he knew this was because he had discovered a whole new way of life centered in Christ. In this new life he found the fulfillment he could never find on his own. And it came to him purely as a gift from God, not as something he had reach for or work hard enough to achieve. In comparison with what he had gained in Christ, Paul could write the word “worthless” across his whole previous life.

That’s the way life works. When we accept it as a gift, we find the joy and peace we’ve always been looking for. When we go out and try to force life to work out the way we planned, we only make ourselves miserable (and perhaps those around us). To some extent, this Scripture lesson cuts against the grain of what makes sense to us. We think we’re supposed to do our best to work as hard as we can. And in fact, there’s nothing wrong with seeking to do well. But life teaches us that we can never find our sense of worth solely from these things.

That especially includes the notion that we could somehow “earn” God’s grace. If anyone could have done this, it was St. Paul. But as he discovered, it’s impossible to ever do enough to earn God’s grace. When it comes to our relationship with God, it’s not about what we do at all. In Christ, we receive everything God has to offer us as a gift. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu says it, “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more” and “there is nothing we can do to make God love us less."[2]

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[1] © 2019 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/7/2019 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time, 32.

Into the Abyss

Into the Abyss

Philippians 2:5-11[1]

There is a dark side to life that I think most of us would rather avoid. But if we’re willing to open our eyes, we will see that, along with the light that is most definitely real, there is also darkness. There are dark places all over the world. There are dark places in our country, in our State, in our county—and in our town! For some, the darkness consists of a loneliness that may feel like it’s choking the life out of you. For others, it may be a job that is suffocating, or addictions that slowly erode their souls. For all too many in our own town, the darkness consists of mistaking what may feel good right now for happiness. There is a dark side to life in this world.

It’s no wonder that most of us would rather “stay on the bright side of life” and avoid confronting the darkness in our world or in our own lives. But the hard truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome darkness is to have the courage to face it squarely. And that usually means taking a journey into that darkness that can be painful and frightening. The only way out of the darkness is to go through it. As we allow ourselves to wrestle with the pain and fear and doubt within, the very process itself heals us. And as we become healed, we grow strong enough to recognize the darkness without giving in to it. We grow strong enough to enjoy the freedom to live in the light.

I believe that’s a part of what our New Testament lesson for today is about. It’s about Jesus’ journey into the very heart of the darkness that oppresses the human family in order to set us all free from its power. That journey led him not only to give up his rightful place with God to become a human being, just as vulnerable as the rest of us. His journey took him farther than that: he not only “emptied himself” to become human, he also subjected himself to the humiliation of a cruel execution and actually tasted death for us all. He went into the very abyss of all the darkness and suffering we can experience in this world and took it upon himself.

If we had not heard this story all of our lives, I think at least some of us would have to ask why Jesus would do such a thing. When you take a look at our world and the darkness in it today, you do see a few brave souls who are willing to enter some aspect of it, at least for a time. But the idea of someone actually taking on all the darkness of this world strains our ability to understand how anyone could possibly do such a thing. In the death of Jesus the Christ on a Roman cross there is something more going on than simple human compassion in action. In Jesus we see God’s love in all its life-changing power at work. And we learn from this that God’s love is a love that will not rest until it reaches out to every dark place we can possibly go to bring all of us back home to the light.

Of course, that answer is also a part of the faith we’ve been taught all our lives. But it seems to me that if we think about it, this too raises questions that may not be easy to answer. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to at least wonder why this particular expression of God’s love was the one chosen to set us free from the darkness. Some mistakenly think of God in human terms and imagine that Jesus volunteered to take God’s wrath toward us all on himself. But I don’t find that perspective to be very compelling. That only reinforces the idea that we have to cower in fear before the angry God who may strike us down at any moment. And I don’t think that’s what was going on when Jesus embraced his death on the cross.

Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross because that’s who God is.  The God of the Bible is not an angry God, but rather one who constantly suffers on behalf of his chosen people and the human family as a whole. That’s how the God of the Bible chooses to love us all, time and time again. And the God of the Bible is a God who never quits loving us this way. Part of the mystery of our faith is that it was God who was suffering on that cross. St. Paul said it this way, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). It is God who takes on the suffering we endure when we wander into the dark places of this life.

Now some of you may be feeling like I’m only taking you further down the “rabbit hole.” The love of God poured out for us in Jesus on the cross is indeed, as one of our confessions puts it, a mystery beyond our understanding.^[2] So if you’re wondering “how can this be?,” the only valid answer is a short one, though it is far from being a simple one. That is, in Jesus the Christ we see the mystery of God’s love. In Jesus the Christ, we see the God who is the redeemer of the despised, the savior of the hopeless, the one who chooses the unwanted. It bears repeating: the death of Jesus on a cross shows us that God’s love reaches into the very abyss of darkness into which we can go and will not rest until we are all back home in the light.

The good news of the Gospel is that there is no depth of suffering that Jesus did not reach in his death on the cross. Truly does our affirmation of faith state that “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”^[3]  That means Jesus’ death on the cross has set us free from all the darkness we could ever experience —the loneliness, agony, alienation, cruelty, abandonment, estrangement, despair, shame, rejection, and self-destruction. No one can sink so deep as to be beyond hope, beyond the reach of God’s love.  However far we may fall, the love of God has already been into the abyss in Jesus Christ, and is waiting there to bring us back home.

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[1] ©2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/25/2018 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] The Book of Confessions 2016, Confession of 1967 9.15, p. 289.

[3]“The Study Catechism,” question 45 (approved by the 210th General Assembly of the PCUSA, 1998).

The God of Peace

The God of Peace

Philippians 4:1-9[1]

The world in which we live is definitely not one that could be described as “peaceful.” Uncertainty seems to be the watchword of our time—from the economy to family life, from politics to technology. It seems like everything is in a constant state of flux. Just when you figure out how to actually use your “smartphone” or your iPad, you get a software update that sends us all scrambling to figure out how to work the thing! It can be incredibly frustrating. More than that, the pace of change creates a sense of anxiety in us all that perhaps there really isn’t anything out there you can rely on any more.

The truth of the matter is that change has been one of the “constants” that have defined the human experience from the beginning. No doubt, the changes in our world have accelerated to the point where it can make your head spin. But the human family has always had to adapt to change. In fact, some anthropologists would say that it is our ability to adapt so well to changing circumstances that enabled us to achieve a position of predominance over the created order. It’s hard to reconcile yourself with the pace of change in our day and time, but the strength of our species has always been our adaptability.

In the midst of all this, however, I think we need some kind of anchor, some kind of foundation that steadies us when we are facing such uncertainty. I believe St. Paul understood that very well. He knew that the people he was writing to in the church at Philippi faced a great deal of uncertainty because of their faith in Christ. Some of them had been thrown out of their families. Others had lost their livelihood, because they would no longer sacrifice to the Greek gods that were patron deities of their trade unions. Many found themselves at times at the mercy of mob violence—beaten and humiliated, and at times they lost their lives. These were people who knew uncertainty intimately.

Beyond that, St. Paul himself knew the kind of hardships they were undergoing. In his letters he recounts the life he had experienced as a Christian Apostle. It was definitely not a storybook life. In another place, Paul lists all that he had been through for the sake of Christ and the churches he served: flogged to the brink of death five times, pelted with stones and left for dead, shipwrecked three times, spending a night and a day adrift on the open sea, not to mention spending many a sleepless night in prison, hungry, and cold (2 Cor. 11:23-27). His life was one that was far from safe: he says he experienced “danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters” (2 Cor. 11:26).

When you realize what the first Christians had to go through because of their faith, it makes you wonder how they were able to endure it all. In part, St. Paul answers that question with his call not to give in to anxiety, but to turn to God in prayer. And the promise he makes is a familiar one: “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7). I find that an incredibly practical statement. That’s where the battle with uncertainty and anxiety is won or lost—in our hearts and our minds. We need to feel safe in our hearts and we need to be able to think of our lives as secure in God’s hands.

But more than that, St. Paul assures the believers of his day and every day that “the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:9). I think that’s a loaded statement. Speaking about the God of peace can be a description of God’s character: He is the God who embodies peace. It can also say something about the end result of God’s work in our world: He is the God who is working toward peace. But, perhaps most importantly for this context, it can describe how God relates to us: He is the God who gives us peace. And St. Paul says that it is this God who is constantly with us, providing us with an anchor for our souls and a foundation upon which to stand when everything around us feels like it’s falling apart.

I think it’s easy for us to look back on times past and think that it was much more peaceful then. The pace of life was slower and its course was more predictable. For most of us, those “golden days” were the days of our childhood. I grew up in the 1960’s in a small town in Texas. It certainly seemed a lot more peaceful to a young boy. But of course, it was a time of great upheaval in our country. I think the same can be said for any decade going back to the founding of this church. It has been a time of constant turmoil and uncertainty.

I don’t believe we find our stability, our foundation, or our anchor in a particular time frame. Nor do we find it in a particular version of our culture. Those things are always in motion, flowing like the current in a great river that wanders seemingly at will. We need something more stable than that to help us face the uncertainty of our times. As one observer puts it, we really do face the choice to “trust God or to trust nothing.”^[2] Trusting nothing leaves us at the mercy of whatever comes our way. The only real solution is to trust the “God of peace” who is with us through all the uncertainty we face.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/15/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God, 71, where quotes John Donne.

New Life In Christ

New Life in Christ

Philippians 3:4b-14[1]

I think most of us value a feeling of being “rooted.” It means having no lack of friends who have known you for a good long time, perhaps all your life. It means not being able to go anywhere without running into someone you know. It means stability, and it feels like home to us. When I first visited this church, in response to their question about whether I intended to stay here, I replied that I had spent my whole life looking for a place to set down roots. Unfortunately, circumstances beyond my control have “conspired” against that. Three years later, it’s still my hope that I will have the chance to put down roots here.

But one of the problems with roots is that they get stiff and brittle. At times they may start to rot, and when that happens, the life that should flow freely gets choked off. Sometimes a windstorm comes along and blows down trees with roots that have grown brittle or rotten. We usually see that as a bad thing, but when a storm uproots that which is dying, it makes room for something new to grow. The same is true for us: when we find ourselves “uprooted” by our circumstances, it makes room for new life to grow in us. It may be painful, and we may not like it, but in the long run, we can see the beauty of the new things that grow in the place of our old roots.

St. Paul knew what it was like to be uprooted in life. In our lesson from Philippians for today, he begins by giving us his “pedigree.” If we translate them from the Jewish world to the Presbyterian world, I think we could say that he came from a family that could trace its Presbyterian roots back for generations. He went to the best prep school, he knocked the top out of his test scores, made it into finest university, and graduated at the top of his class. He was poised to take his place among the top leaders of his people. He had roots in his life that had grown deep and strong.

But something happened to him that ripped up all of the roots that had given meaning to his life. On the way to Damascus to arrest as many Christians as he could find there, he met Jesus Christ. And that meeting was like a great windstorm that uprooted all that had given his life meaning. In fact, Paul says that he regarded “everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8). Beyond that, he says that compared with knowing Christ, all the achievements that he had relied on previously to give meaning to his life he now considered to be “rubbish” (Phil. 3:9). A better translation would be “filth,” “dung” (KJV), or as one recent version puts it: “sewer trash” (CEB).

We might wonder why Paul would have such a dramatic change of heart. After all, most of the achievements of his life were noble and honorable pursuits—in his eyes and the eyes of his contemporaries. It may seem rather harsh for him to take it and flush it down the toilet. But I think Paul may have known something about the achievements that we tend to rely on to give our lives meaning. They have a way of binding us, of closing us off, of keeping us stuck in a rut. And when God shows up to bring new life to us we tend to cling to our roots rather than allowing ourselves to be opened up for new life to be planted in our hearts.

Make no mistake: the new life he found in Christ was what motivated St. Paul. He had encountered the living Christ whom he thought was dead and buried, and he had discovered for himself the power of what our affirmation of faith calls “resurrection hope.” In light of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul says he longed to know “the power of [Jesus’] resurrection” (Phil. 3:10) in his own life. He longed for this even though he knew that the path to that new life would mean sharing Christ’s sufferings and “becoming like him in his death.” But that’s typically the way it is with the new life God offers us—something has to die in order for new life to be born in us.

The power of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead is a power that changes everything. It brings the dead to life. It overcomes “evil in all its forms.” It makes all things new: a new creation, “a new heaven and a new earth” where love and peace and justice reign on earth in the place of violence and oppression and greed and warmongering. But in order for that new life to take root in this world, there’s a lot that has to be uprooted first—like our complacency, our self-absorption, and our quest for comfort above all else. The new life God offers us will not let us cling to those dead roots.

We talk a lot about the new life in Jesus Christ as a good thing. And it is that. But the death and resurrection of Jesus demonstrate that it only comes through radical change. Jesus had to suffer and die in order to bring the power of resurrection life into this world. Paul knew that he would have to share the sufferings of Christ in order to truly know the “power of his resurrection.” I think what that means for us is that we can no longer go on clinging to the roots in our lives that we think give us meaning and safety and happiness. In order to truly know the “power of his resurrection” in our lives, we have to be willing to let some things be uprooted. But the good news is that when what we’ve been clinging to gets torn from our hearts, it leaves fresh soil that is open and ripe for new seeds to grow and blossom and bear fruit in ways that we probably couldn’t imagine: seeds of new life in Christ!

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/8/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Giving Up

Giving Up

Philippians 2:1-13[1]

I would say that we spend a great deal of effort these days trying to hold onto our expectations of what we want our lives to look like. This goes beyond the drive to make sure we have the basic needs of life. I think most of us enter the adult phase of our lives with an “ideal” or a “dream” of how we want our lives to unfold. Unfortunately, for many of us, life has a way of thwarting that ideal. Instead of living the life we’ve always wanted, we may find ourselves sitting among the pieces of our broken dreams. And the tragedy is that we’re taught to succeed in life, not to lose. Most of us don’t really know what to do with ourselves when we lose.

I would say that the typical response to this kind of experience is that we simply tighten our grip on life. We seem to think that if we hold on tighter we can keep the pieces of our life from slipping through our grasp. But that’s not how life works. Our lives seem to take a course of their own, and when we try to swim against the stream, we only succeed in making ourselves miserable. No amount of effort will enable us to control the outcomes in our lives. But this points us to one of the deeper ironies of life. It’s only when we take the risk of giving up our expectations that we can truly find the peace, contentment, and even joy that we were looking for in the first place.

I think that’s a part of what St. Paul is trying to get across in our lesson from Philippians for today. He uses the example of Jesus Christ humbling himself and literally giving up everything for us to urge the Christians of his day to adopt that way of living themselves. I believe he knew that he was asking them to do the hardest thing they would probably face in their lives. But from St. Paul’s point of view, Jesus’ sacrifice of himself for us demands of us nothing less than giving up our selfish and self-centered ways.

Paul puts it this way: “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, … Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:1, 3-4). As usual, I like the way Gene Peterson puts it in The Message: “If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, … Don’t push your way to the front; .... Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. ... Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.” That means “having the same attitude that Christ Jesus had” (Phil. 2:5, NLT). It means following Jesus like you really mean it!

I think that the key to all of this is a matter of being willing to surrender the illusions we cherish of being able to control our lives. Those illusions keep us closed in, head down, and shoulders hunched as continue chasing pavements that lead us nowhere. I agree with Richard Rohr that surrender involves three aspects of our identity: “our opinionated head, our closed-down heart, and our defensive and defended body.”^[2] We have to surrender the willfulness of thinking we know what’s best for us. We have to surrender the hardness with which we surround our hearts to keep them from getting hurt. And we have to surrender all of our efforts to defend ourselves against anything that would keep us from getting the life we’ve always wanted.

 That may sound rather depressing to some of us. It might seem like we’re supposed to give up all our hopes and dreams if we’re going to follow Jesus. But when we have no more hopes and dreams for life, it’s easy to fall into despair. I don’t think that’s what St. Paul had in mind. Rather, I think he had in mind embracing a different vision for our lives than the one the vast majority of the human family has always followed. Instead of seeking our own advantage no matter whom we may hurt, St. Paul held up the image of Jesus as an example of a life that “serves others no matter how much it costs.”^[3] I think Paul knew that the lesson of the cross is that not only is God’s strength manifested in weakness, but also God’s life is manifested in death. And he knew that it is only by following Jesus’ example of serving others that we can find our true lives. He knew that the only way to have the life we’ve always wanted is to give up our wants and at times even our needs for the sake of serving others.

We’re not really geared towards giving up anything. Most of us will keep trying as long as we can, even if it means we wind up beating our heads against a wall. And we think of our Christian faith as a way to get what we want out of life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that pretending to follow Christ without being willing to sacrifice ourselves and serve others cheapens God’s grace. By contrast, he says that the grace offered to us in Jesus is “costly” because “it costs people their lives; it is grace because it thereby makes them live.”^[4] Following Christ demands that we give up our own wants, hopes, and dreams in order to serve others. That may sound like a raw deal. But in fact, when we actually make the choice to follow Jesus in that way, we learn that we truly find what we’ve always wanted in life only by giving it up.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/1/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 8.

[3] David Garland, Mark, 335.

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 45.

Living for Jesus

Living for Jesus

Philippians 1:21-30[1]

No matter how far along the path of the Christian life we may find ourselves, I think we always face the challenge of dealing with our own self-interest. Try as we may, it seems to dog our steps all our days. There aren’t many of us who can truly get past concerns of our well-being, our safety, our health, or our financial security. These are matters that are basic to our experience of what it means to be human. We need love, shelter, health, safety, and the means to provide for our basic needs. I’m not sure what it would look like to be able to completely set our self-interest aside.

And yet, the New Testament consistently points to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sakes and calls us to follow his example. In the words of Jesus, we’re to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him (Mark 8:34). Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously interpreted this statement by saying, “Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.”^[2] By that “death” he was referring to the self-denial that “means knowing only Christ, no longer knowing oneself.”^[3] While Bonhoeffer was speaking of the ideal, I think it gets more complicated when it comes to the push and pull of the demands life in the real world makes.

I think that both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul the Apostle knew how difficult it is to put into practice the call to follow Jesus. In our lesson from the letter to the church at Philippi for today, St. Paul writes as a man contemplating the end of his life. He was very likely in Rome, under house arrest, awaiting his day in court with Caesar. Whether the outcome of that trial would be life or death he did not know, but he considered the possibility that he might very well lose his life for the sake of his service to Christ. No one, not even Jesus, could face that prospect without some kind of struggle.

And yet, by the time Paul writes this letter to his dear friends in the church at Philippi, it seems he has already come to some kind of resolution of the crisis. In fact, the situation had created an internal conflict within him. As he relates to his friends, he was torn between the options of “departing and being with Christ” which he considered “far better” and “remaining in the flesh,” or continuing with his life of service, which he knew was “more necessary” for them (Phil. 1:23-24). Between the two, Paul reassures his friends that he is convinced that he will get through the crisis and continue to serve on their behalf.

At the beginning of all this, Paul makes a statement that may seem strange to us. He says, “For me, living is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). If we understand that purely from a theoretical standpoint, we might be able to grasp what he’s saying. One translation says it this way: “To me the only important thing about living is Christ.”^[4] Another renders it this way, “For me, life finds all of its meaning in Christ.”^[5] I think we can understand that Paul was so dedicated to the cause of Christ that it had become the sole purpose of his life. He found fulfillment by living for Jesus.

If that were as far as it went, I think we could all admire St. Paul for his sacrifice, his dedication, and his single-minded devotion to serving others for the sake of Jesus Christ. But I’m not so sure that’s all there is to it. For one thing, it makes it too easy for us to let ourselves off the hook for not being the kind of “super-Christian” that St. Paul was. More importantly, Paul makes it clear elsewhere that he meant for all of us to follow his example in serving others for the sake of Jesus with the same kind of devotion and sacrifice that he did. In fact, in another of his letters Paul says that Christ died for us “so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Cor. 5:15).

We, too, are to find the meaning of our lives in Christ. I think that’s why St. Paul said what he did: “For me, living is Christ.” To say that living is Christ goes beyond finding our highest fulfillment in living for Jesus. If we define our commitment to Jesus by saying “For me, living is Christ,” it means completely redefining all the ties we have relied on for meaning in life. To say, “For me, living is Christ” means leaving behind all that we might call our “old selves” in order to find new life in Christ. Living for Jesus in this sense means no more and no less than finding our life in Jesus Christ himself, and in him alone!^[6]

In the push and pull of our daily lives, this may seem like an impossible ideal. Reality has a way of thwarting all our best intentions and diverting us from this kind of single-minded devotion to living for Jesus. But Christ’s call demands an answer: will we take up our cross and follow him or will we try to excuse ourselves due to the “conflicts” in our lives? If we want to say “For me to live is Christ,” I think it means that we renounce our ideas of self-sufficiency and find our true lives—and our true relationship with every facet of our lives—through the lens of our commitment to Christ. I’m not saying that it will be easy. It’s a perspective we must continually seek to learn. But I do believe that’s what it means to be the kind of people who are living for Jesus.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 9/24/2017.

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 87.

[3] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 86.

[4] Philippians 1:21, New Century Version

[5] Philippians 1:21, New International Reader’s Version

[6] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 62, 65, 74.

Empty?

Empty?

Philippians 2:5-11[1]

I think it’s fair to say that a life of service in the name of Christ is not an easy path. After all, his path led him to a brutal execution. If we set out to follow him expecting to experience only joy and blessing, I’m afraid we may be deeply disappointed. The reality is that many who serve others in the name of Christ can find themselves facing not only frustration and discouragement, but also exhaustion and burn-out. This is true not only for pastors but also for anyone who takes seriously the call walk in Jesus’ footsteps. When you give so much of yourself to so many people, you can find yourself feeling empty at the end of the day.

The truth of the matter is that this is a feature of human life that is not restricted to the church. It affects people of all classes, in all walks of life, engaged in a variety of vocations. You give of yourself on behalf of those you love, or on behalf of those you work with, or on behalf of total strangers, and it can leave you feeling empty. When you stretch that kind of experience into days and weeks and months and years, it can make you begin to wonder why you even get out of bed in the morning. The simple fact is that life can be challenging and hard and draining at times. And there is no “free pass” that exempts those of us who follow Christ and trust in God from experiencing that emptiness.

I think, however, that our lesson from St. Paul for today might give us some inspiration here. In the context of this chapter of Philippians, Paul is trying to instruct the Christians about how to live together in community with one another. He urges them to “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” and to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves” (Phil 2:2-3).[2] Paul sums up the kind of relationships he wants to see in the church in terms of imitating the same attitude Jesus displayed (Phil. 2:5).

I find it interesting when Paul spells out what that looks like, he quotes what was probably an early Christian hymn.[3] In fact, the believers in the church at Philippi may very well have been familiar with this hymn. I also find it interesting that this hymn about Jesus only actually refers to two acts Jesus took: the act of “emptying himself” to become human, and the act of “humbling himself” to die on the cross. If we want to know how much we’re to give up in service to others, Paul points to these two acts that reflect the incredibly generous and giving heart of Jesus, as well as God himself.

Scholars have debated for centuries what exactly it was that Jesus gave up when he “emptied himself.” I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that question in this life. But it seems, however, the main point is that Jesus was equal to God, and rather than clinging to that status as something that was his by right, he gave it up to come among us as a servant in order to redeem us all.[4] If that were as far as it went, Jesus would be the most amazing example of self-sacrifice. And yet there’s more: not only did Jesus give up everything to come among us, he also “humbled himself” by obeying God’s will to redeem us all through suffering love.[5] Jesus chose to surrender himself to one of the cruelest means of death ever devised.[6] And so, at the end of his life as at the beginning, he made the choice to sacrifice himself in a way that surpasses our ability to understand or imagine.

If you’re like me, you may be thinking that’s a pretty hard act to follow. You may be wondering how any of us could ever hope to even come close to the kind of loving sacrifice that Jesus made not only by choosing to come as one of us, but also by giving up his life for us all. I must confess there have been times when I myself have asked God how I could keep sacrificing and keep serving when Jesus “only” hung on the cross for six hours. When you think about a lifetime of “taking up your cross” and following Christ in a life of sacrifice and service, it can be an intimidating prospect.

I think one of the practical questions we face is how we can maintain the energy and the motivation to continue following Jesus’ example, as demanding as it can be. I think our expectations may play a significant role in how we experience a life of service. If we expect recognition or reward for our service, we are probably setting ourselves up for serious disappointment, if not flat-out defeat.[7] Rather than expecting any kind of return for following Jesus’ example, I think at least a part of the answer to this question may be to view a life of service as fulfilling and meaningful in and of itself.[8] We don’t derive our sense of satisfaction with our lives from what we get from our service. We simply offer it because following Jesus is the way to find true life.

We can all face times in our lives when the challenge of living out our faith can seem overwhelming. That’s when we can look to Jesus for encouragement and inspiration. His willingness to give up his rights to come among us as a servant inspires us to do the same in our relationships with others. His death on the cross not only brings us forgiveness and new life, it also serves as an example for us to follow.[9] I will not pretend that seeking to follow Christ in either of these ways is easy or that it will bring any special recognition. We do it because that’s what Jesus called us to do. And as we answer that call and follow his example, we find that giving ourselves away in service to others can leave us not empty but fulfilled in a way that no other life endeavor could possibly match.

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[1] © Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/20/2016 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Morna D. Hooker, “The Letter To The Philippians,” New Interpreters Bible XI: 515-16, where she summarizes Paul’s intent: “Those who confess Jesus as Lord should not be looking for status or power; nor should they be acting from ‘selfish ambition or conceit’ (2:3). Rather, they should be humbly considering others better than themselves. And because they are concerned with the interests of others (2:4), they will be of one mind and one purpose, ‘having the same love’ and of one accord (2:2). In stark contrast to the modern spirit of encouraging competition and giving rewards to individuals who get to the top, Paul insists on mutual concern and service.”

[3] Cf. Fred B. Craddock, Philippians, 39: “Paul is quoting a hymn which arose in another context to address another problem, perhaps a Christological question. Christological hymns and confessions are not uncommon in Paul’s writings and they seem, by internal structure and relation to their literary contexts, to be quotations from a common store of materials used in the worship of Gentile Christian churches (I Cor. 8:6; II Cor. 8:9; Col. 1:15-20, and others).”

[4] Cf. Hooker, “Philippians,” NIB XI:507. She points out that there is an implicit contrast with Adam in this part of the passage: “Christ, who was ‘in the form of God,’ might well have claimed the privileges of equality with God as his right, but did not do so. What Adam desired, Christ was content to forgo.” And yet she also rightly observes (ibid., 508), “Christ did not cease to be ‘in the form of God’ when he took the form of a slave, any more than he ceased to be the ‘Son of God’ when he was sent into the world. On the contrary, it is in his self-emptying and his humiliation that he reveals what God is like, and it is through his taking the form of a slave that we see ‘the form of God.’”

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, 40: “Christ entered into this humiliation and this forsakenness so that he could become a brother for the humiliated and forsaken, and bring them God’s kingdom. He doesn’t help through supernatural miracles. He helps by virtue of his own suffering—through his wounds. ‘Only the suffering God can help’, wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his death cell. God always helps first of all by suffering with us. …The God of Jesus Christ is the God who is on the side of the victims and the sufferers, in solidarity with them.” Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:164-66, where he summarizes the New Testament references to this theme. He says (ibid., 166), “The story of Gethsemane (like the story of the temptation at the beginning of the Gospels) shows two things: first, that we have to do with His genuine human decision; and second, that it is a decision of obedience. He chooses, but He chooses that apart from which, being who He is, He could not choose anything else.”

[6] Cf. Hooker, “Philippians,” NIB XI:509. She says, “More than two thousand years of Christian piety have obscured from us the shock and horror with which these final words would have been heard by their original audience. Crucifixion was the cruelest and most shameful of deaths, and there could be no greater contrast with the opening lines of the “hymn,” or with the exaltation that follows.”

[7] Cf. Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, reprinted in Ministry and Spirituality, 155-56. Nouwen warns that many of those who base their Christian lives on the search for visible results “have become disillusioned, bitter, and even hostile” to the faith “when years of hard work bear no fruit.” He advises that our ability to continue to serve others is not based on the results we see, but rather on the hope that is firmly grounded in Christ’s victory over death itself, which demonstrates “that there is light on the other side of darkness.”

[8] Cf. Craddock, Philippians, 42: “Christ acted in our behalf without view of gain. That is precisely what God has exalted and vindicated: self-denying service for others to the point of death with no claim of return, no eye upon a reward.”

[9] Cf. Craddock, Philippians, 42: “The central event in the drama of salvation is an act of humble service.”

Peace Be With You

Peace Be With You

Philippians 4:1-9[1]

I’m afraid that the Bible’s teachings about worry don’t really connect with us in a realistic way. Oh, we like the passages that tell us we have nothing to fear. We love the Scriptures that encourage us not to worry, but to entrust our lives into God’s care. I’m just not sure we have much success actually doing that. We worry about our children. We worry about our finances. We worry about our health. We worry about getting older. We worry about what may happen to us in the future. We worry about what others think of us. When we're honest about it, our lives really are out of our hands, and we aren’t very comfortable with that reality. We’d much rather figure out a way to make things work out the way we want. And so we worry.

We worry, even though we know down deep inside that we really cannot “add a single cubit to our lives” by worrying, as Jesus said. We worry, even though we are aware in the quiet places of our souls that our habit of worrying robs us of the peace and joy of living that God offers to us through Jesus Christ. We worry, even though we get the fact that our worrying really does no good whatsoever.[2] It’s just a colossal waste of energy on our part. And yet we worry, because it’s become a habit that we can’t seem to break.

Despite our seeming addiction to worry, there is a very simple remedy. It’s not easy, mind you, but it is simple. St. Paul describes it in our lesson for today: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). I like the way another translation puts it: “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done” (Phil. 4:6, NLT). On the surface of things, that may sound a bit simplistic. When it’s your child who is seriously ill, it seems a bit weak for someone to say, “Don’t worry, just pray about it.” In fact, in some situations the advice “just pray about it” can seem downright offensive, as if it’s making light of the situation.

But I don’t think that’s where Paul was going with this. You see, I think Paul knew a secret about this that many of us struggle to discover. Think about it: the Apostle Paul didn’t exactly live a storybook life. If you pay careful attention to the details of his letters, you realize that he was constantly going from the frying pan into the fire. He had experienced more than his share of hardship. And yet, he knew his life was not in his own hands. He knew how to turn to God with every concern, every hardship, and every need. He knew how to give God his every worry in prayer.

Believe me, I know how hard this can be. And yet, I also know that it is the only way to find peace and joy in this life. We can choose to torment ourselves with constant worrying. When we do, we find it is a recipe for a burdensome life that is bereft of real joy and peace. Or we can choose to take the Scriptures at their word and turn to God with everything we worry about. And when we’re willing to recognize that God cares even more than we do about the things that worry us, and we learn to turn everything over to God’s incredible love, that’s when we discover “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7). That’s when we begin to open our hearts to the joy God offers us.[3]

Paul adds something that I find interesting to this promise. He says that when we turn our worries and concerns over to God’s loving care, God’s peace “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I find that an incredibly practical statement. Isn’t that exactly what we need when it comes to worry? That’s where the battle with worry and anxiety is won or lost--in our hearts and our minds. We need to feel safe in our hearts and we need to be able to think of our lives as secure in God’s hands.[4] That’s how we really experience the peace and joy St. Paul is talking about.

I like the way Gene Peterson renders it in The Message: “Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.” While I like that way of looking at this, it almost makes it sound like it’s a magical process that just “happens” to you. Sometimes we have those special experiences that seem to just “fall from the sky.” But in my experience, for the most part the Christian life is a discipline. We experience that wholeness displacing worry at the center of our lives when we discipline ourselves to “cast all our cares” upon the God who cares for us. We find that peace and joy that Paul is talking about when we replace our habit of worry with a regular practice of entrusting our lives into God’s hands.[5]

Every Sunday we greet one another with the phrase, “The peace of Christ be with you.” I’m afraid it has become just another way of saying, “Hi, how are you.” But that ritual that we perform is more than that. It is a prayer that we share with one another in the midst of all that life brings our way. When we say “Peace be with you,” we are praying that God’s peace will fill the lives of those around us, replacing anxiety with trust, replacing worry with joy. That is my prayer for each of us today: that we may learn more and more to let go our habit of worrying about the cares of life and to entrust our lives and the lives of those we love into the hands of the one who loves us all best.[6] And as we do that, we experience the peace of God that surpasses our ability to understand. We experience the peace of God that guards our hearts and minds in all of the fears and uncertainties and cares that tempt us to give in to worry. We experience the peace of God that frees us to find the joy of new life.

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[1] ©2014 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/12/2014 at Hickman Presbyterian Church in Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap, 17.  She says, “self-absorption, this trying to find zones of safety, creates terrible suffering.  It weakens us, the world becomes terrifying, and our thoughts and emotions become more threatening as well.”

[3] Cf. Huston Smith, “Reasons for Joy,” The Christian Century (Oct 4, 2005), 10. He remarks on the consistent quality of joy among the early Christians despite their circumstances. He says, “These scattered Christians were not numerous. They were not wealthy or powerful, and they were in constant danger of being killed. Yet they had laid hold of an inner peace that found expression in a joy that was uncontainable. Perhaps radiance would be a better word. Radiance is hardly the word used to characterize the average religious life, but no other word fits as well the life of these early Christians. Paul offers a vivid example. Here was a man who had been ridiculed, driven from town to town, shipwrecked, imprisoned, flogged until his back was covered with stripes. Yet here was a life in which joy was the constant refrain.” (emphasis original) Cf. also L. Gregory Bloomquist, “Subverted by Joy: Suffering and Joy in Paul's Letter to the Philippians” Interpretation 61 (July 2007): 280-282, where he argues that Paul and the Philippians discovered a kind of joy that was counterintuitive by the standards of the day: they experienced joy in the midst of and even through their suffering.

[4] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.3:82-83, where he discusses in depth the theme of “the gracious preservation of creaturely being by God the Father” as it is found throughout the New Testament.

[5] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 27: “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.” He continues by saying that joy “is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”

[6] Cf. Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God, 71, where he recounts John Donne’s struggle with his questions about suffering, and that he came to the conclusion that the choice he faced was “to fear God or to fear everything else, to trust God or to trust nothing.”