Creekside Church Sermon of August 6, 2000 "Pencil People" Philippians 4:4-7	Rev. David Bibbee
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There is another reason peace is appropriate on this day and in this setting. Nature is the sacred space I enter when I'm tied up in knots. It's an oasis where I can become re-acquainted with peace and rest. I have never had an argument with a flower. I have never been in conflict with a bird, unless you count the thrashing chickens I helped my grandfather behead and pluck when I was a kid. I've never been at war with a sunset. There is a calm that I and many of you feel outdoors which if only for a few moments makes us feel like St. Francis conversing with brother sun and sister moon. But such moments are only moments. Like you, I find peace an elusive prize.

Peace is something we deeply desire within us and in the world, but it is something of which we know so little. It's easier to point to where it is not rather than to show with certainty where it has established a foothold. For the most part, peace is what we have learned to live without. We know all about conflict. If we are not in it, we are trying to tiptoe around it. We know about wars and rumors of wars. It is easy to despair over finding peace within our own skins and in the world...easy if not for the promise, "It is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

The kingdom that began with Jesus Christ and was entrusted to ordinary people has withstood every attempt to kill it. Now, by God's continuing good will, the gift has been entrusted to us. Paul said it is something to rejoice over. "The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything. But in everything by prayer with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ."

Now I would like to offer some thoughts about the peace we long for. Years ago someone broke into the house of the abstract artist Pablo Picasso and stole some of his belongings. When the police arrived they asked if he had seen the robber. He had. "Could you draw a sketch of the suspect?" they asked. He did. When the police phoned headquarters the captain said, "Do you have a description?" "Yes. Mr. Picasso provided us with a sketch." "Well what does our man look like?" "As far as we can tell," the policeman said, "the suspect looks like a refrigerator."

How would you sketch peace? My sketch is of a construction site. A backhoe has dug a large hole in the earth. The concrete footers and foundation have been poured. Trucks from the lumberyard deliver wood for the floor and ceiling joists and the walls. Another truck brings wallboard and paint. Another comes with electrical wiring, lighting fixtures, lavatories, faucets, and all the plumbing necessary to make it work. Other trucks will arrive, some loaded with bricks, and others loaded with cement to pour the sidewalk and driveway.

A master carpenter has purchased everything needed to build a house, but not for himself. In fact, he will not hammer one nail into this house. It is for his son. The father wants his son to feel the great pride and satisfaction he felt when he built his first home. One afternoon he asked his son to run an errand with him. He took him to the site. They got out of the car and his son said, "Dad, what's all this?" "It's going to be your new home." "My what?" "Your new home." He handed his son a roll of blueprints. In almost a ceremonial manner he tied a nail apron around his son's waist and placed a new hammer in his hand like it was a glistening sword. "Build your house, son." "But Dad..." "What?" "Dad...I can't build a house!" "Why not?" "I don't know how! And I'm only five years old!"

When we think about all that Jesus asks us to do, we feel like a five-year old asked to build a house. The law said, "Don't kill." Jesus said, "Don't even get angry at or insult another person." The law said, "Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth." Jesus said, "Don't retaliate. Turn the other cheek. Go the second mile. Give to whoever asks. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Be perfect even as your heavenly father is perfect." In all the peace sermons I have heard, I never heard the preacher say, "I can't do these things...and you can't either. For us to bring peace to the world is an impossible task."

Why does Jesus place such impossible demands upon us? To make us appropriately humble. We need to know our limits. The other is to make us absolutely aware that it is an impossibility for us to do what Jesus asks...impossible, without God's help. When Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 she said, "I am nothing. He is all. I do nothing on my own. He does it. This is what I am, God's pencil. A tiny bit of pencil with which He writes what he will."

As Christians we are asked to do impossible things while remembering that with God all things are indeed possible. We are so accustomed to living without peace. We know how fragile cease-fires and political treaties are. As someone said, "In the affairs of nations, peace is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting." But where and how do we find peace?

We find it through prayer. Julian of Norwich fervently prayed for a revealing encounter with God; a "showing" as she called it. Finally it came. The experience lasted two minutes at most. It was the only time in her life she felt so close to God. But she was given the peace that passes all understanding, and from two minutes sprang a ministry to Popes and peasants and a treasury of spiritual wisdom that continues to touch spiritual seekers today.

We know all about the fears that torment our days and keep us up at night. But in prayer we make ourselves accessible to the peace that God gives. When Jesus first appeared to the disciples after his resurrection, the first words from his lips were, "Peace be with you." When we experience the peace of the resurrected Lord, it changes everything. The feeling of peace may be fleeting. It is a peace which after all "passes", but it doesn't take much of a taste for it to bear fruit in our lives. We find peace through prayer.

One of the Enemy's effective weapons against our efforts at peacemaking is futility. The world's problems are so enormous and our efforts so insignificant. It's the Wednesday Ladies Sewing Circle and Bible Study against global terrorism. It is the local church witness commission against the world's nuclear arsenals. No contest.

But instead of seeing the enormity of the problem, we must believe God's peace will prevail and that in everything no matter how small, God works for good through those who love him. What would happen if each of us would pick some situation...a relationship or person for whom there is deep sadness and strife, and become God's pencil to them? Mother Teresa didn't write to her congressman to support legislation to end human suffering. She didn't convene a symposium on the latest theories about hunger and poverty.

She said, "The masses are not my responsibility. I look only at the individual. I can only love and feed one person at a time. I picked up one person...maybe if I didn't pick up that one person I wouldn't have picked up all the others. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if we don't put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less." Establishing world peace is not in our portfolio! As Christians we are called to do what we can where we can with what we have, believing that no prayer or deed no matter how small, ever returns empty. We find peace through prayer. We find peace by bringing it to one person and one situation at a time.

There is just one more thing I would like to say about peace and planting its seed in the world, and that is this...peace will come to us and through us when we stop committing acts of violence against ourselves.

The Catholic priest Thomas Merton once said, "The most pervasive form of contemporary violence is activism and overwork...to allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns; to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our inner capacity for peace."

Somewhere along the way when we put together our "Things to do With Our Lives" list, we left off something. Sabbath. Rest. Quiet. It's important to note that the scripture does not say, "Burn the candle at both ends and know that I am God." God made us with a need for rest. God made us with the capacity for a relationship with him, but only if we take time to be quiet and listen. God has given us a peace that passes understanding that we have the responsibility and the ability to share where and with whom it is needed most, but only as we rejoice in the Lord always, having no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer with thanksgiving letting our requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

Now let us conclude this sermon by singing the round, "Peace, be still, and know that I am God."

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