I have decided to model my sermon today after one of my favorite radio programs, This American Life. If you are not familiar with Ira Glass and this delightful show - I recommend it heartily to you –and allow me to describe the basic set-up. The show always has an overarching theme – which is the segment’s title and then there is a prologue, and one or more acts dealing with the theme. After each act is a clip of a song that sums up the act and segues into the next. So welcome to this JPUSA life, I am your host, Debbie Baumgartner. Today’s show is called “Keeping the Peace”. This summer, here at JPUSA, we will be exploring the topic of “calling”. While I think it is essential to identify a personal calling, today I will be talking about a corporate calling, a calling that we share – we find this calling in Colossians 3:15: “And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.”
Called to live in peace. Called to live in peace. What does that mean? Just an absence of conflict – that can’t possibly be enough. In Hebrew the word for peace is shalom. The root of the word shalom means “to make complete or whole.” Greek word for peace, eirene means health, welfare, prosperity, bliss and every good and kindness imaginable
Act One: Permission to Speak Freely
I first heard of accountability from my friend Barb White. Up until then I was sort of hiding behind a good-girl façade and trying to keep up appearances. She was the first friend who actually called me on things that I thought I had well hidden. It was very alarming at first and my initial reaction was to deny the charges and hide better. This proved ineffective and so I started on a journey of transparency to find my true self. Now just to let you know, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” so this journey was (and is) a long one and left to myself I would think I am doing pretty dang well. My heart lulls me into a false sense of security and I can see myself as the “good guy” the “poor, misunderstood one” or the “martyr” and get away with a lot of ugly living.
That’s why God sent me here to JPUSA. Living so close with people it becomes impossible to hide. I could do it for spurts or, if I didn’t get out much, for a little longer; but eventually my true colors would show and someone would see them. And the gig would be up. I was caught red-handed and faced with some choices: point the finger at someone else or own up. The pointing the finger thing started with the first two humans and hasn’t let up. There are so many options these days for the blame game – parents, teachers, pastors, friends, the government, bosses; the list goes on and on. Being the victim worked for a little while, but at some point when I was left alone with myself, I longed to be known and I longed to change.
Making peace with myself would require a clear sense of my strengths and vulnerabilities. This clarity could not come from myself alone – I am unable to see myself clearly. Through God’s word and prayer, I gained a lot of truth, but God also sent me some wonderful women to speak into my life and to help me know myself and begin to do some deeper work.
When you invite people into your life to speak truth, you have to be ready to hear it. It sounds so nice and easy, but “I want you to tell me when I am acting badly, but I will bite your head off when you do!” is not going to work. I invited several women to speak truth to me and guess what! They do! And then I have to receive it. Yippee! Last year, Andrea Spicer and I had a real nitty-gritty talk like this where she brought up some areas in my life that needed to be worked on. I have known Andrea for more than 15 years and she has helped me through some serious trials. We have talked about many topics and hashed out many things over the years and yet, and yet, I did not want to hear what she had to say.
The next few days after this conversation there was a serious battle for my mind. Part of me just wanted to go home and lick my wounds and tell myself how misunderstood I was. How she didn’t really see me. How I had plenty of people who would tell me otherwise. Oh and then it got really ugly – I started picking apart her character! Who is she to tell me this or that – what about the way she…. Wow. Really?
The other part of me let the truth sink in. Took deep breaths. Listened to the love and nurture of a long-standing friendship – a friendship deep enough to speak the truth, and I felt myself coming to a new level of peace with my inner wounds. Looking at them for what they were in all their ugliness and letting Jesus look at them with me. In the Amplified Bible, our verse starts out “Let the peace that comes from Christ rule” “(act as umpire continually) in your hearts [deciding and settling with finality all questions that arise in your minds, in that peaceful state]”. This is the place to start if we are to live in peace with one another.
Act Two: And the Second is Like it
I was leaving Arai school one Sunday morning in a foul mood. Seeds had played at the end of the worship service and the set had ended with them singing “love your neighbor as you love yourself, love your neighbor as you love yourself” and I walked out into the sunny day and thought “no!” I don’t want to. Well, so because I have this accountability relationship with Andrea – I went to confess my ugly heart. Suzanne Stewart had just moved 10 feet away from me, and although we were friends, our friendship wasn’t easy. I am so blunt and loud and opinionated and she is not. We had different views on politics and parenting and world events and ideologies, we could get into arguments over the stupidest things. And then things would be tense but we wouldn’t really resolve it – just pick up and move on.
And to be honest, it was mostly my fault. I think I was pretty mean – or at the very least I was shutting her down. And I would justify my behavior with some nonsense but if I talked it out with Andrea she would try to bring me back to reality. So finally I had to face it – I was being a jerk and I had to cut it out.
Many years ago at a summer camp, one of my counselors gave me a very useful tool for changing my thinking about someone. So I implemented it with Suzanne. Let me share it with you. It looks like this: I WILL BE patient with _________I WILL BE kind to _________I WILL not envy _________I WILL not boast about myself to _________
I WILL not be proud around _________I WILL not dishonor _________I WILL not BE self-seeking, but look out for ________’s interests,I WILL not BE easily angered by _________I WILL keep no record of _________’s wrongs. I WILL NOT delight in evil but rejoice in the truth about _________I WILL always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere in my words, actions and prayers concerning __________
Now let me tell you, if you want to hold on to your bad feelings about someone, praying this prayer will not let you do that for long. I prayed this every day. And it wasn’t long until I saw Suzanne. Really saw her for the gift that she is. And I also saw how she had never given up on me. How she kept coming in my room. Kept entering into conversations. Kept giving me cards and gifts. Kept praying for me and being kind to my family. Kept calling out the good things in me in spite of myself and my bad behavior.
It’s not perfect, but it has been many years now that I have seen our friendship as a treasure. We fought for it and we let the Holy Spirit unite us. It wasn’t enough for either of us to co-exist. We didn’t choose each other as neighbors but I know it wasn’t an accident. “As members of one body, you are called to live in peace.”
Act Three: You Got Some Splainin’ to Do
The last part of the verse says, “And always be thankful.” Nothing makes us more thankful for community than going through a difficult time. Tiana was just telling me that while the whole community was up-in-arms about the clean team changes, she and Dave had just learned that their son was autistic. She didn’t have any energy or desire to enter into the discussion. Someone commented to her “you are living real life” - but that’s always true…while we are arguing about cleaning or dogs or woodchips or the paint colors for the dining room – people around us are living real lives. Battling addiction, going off to college alone, trying to save their marriages, suffering from illness – drowning, not waving. And when the enemy can keep us squabbling over little things, he is delighted. And the people struggling, who need us to be a strong harbor, they cannot get our attention.
I want to end this morning with a piece that Rebecca Hill wrote for the Wilson Station site. Maybe it will help us to be more thankful… it is called “Let Me Explain”
I always have to explain. My autistic son goes to a special school; we deal with a lot of therapists, doctors, social workers, etc. They get that frozen smile, usually, when we tell them we live communally. We call it the ohmygodtheyliveinacultthisisawkward face. When they get to know us, and realize that I am the not exactly a mindless submission kind of a girl, they begin to ask questions. Questions like, “how in the world do you all get along?” “Don’t you wish you had more privacy?” “Do you get tired of living with so many people?”
The answers, are, respectively, we don’t, yes and no, and no. We don’t all get along, we drive each other crazy, and I long to be alone sometimes, but when I am, I don’t like it much, and I want to be surrounded by people who know me, and love me, and get me, and it is worth it. What I give up to live here, it is a pittance, really, compared to the richness of this life.
It is a process, a tapestry, a journey and a fight to the death, a circus, a picnic, a tent revival and a rock concert. It is Bible camp and a college dorm, a PTA meeting with all those people you would just as soon avoid. There are snacks, lawn chairs, water fights and a rummage sale. You spend hours picking through the refuse for a treasure. You beg God to help you see the beauty amid the chaos, you love your friends, you hate them you can’t believe they would be such jerks and you pray and hold vigil and love them with every ounce of your being when they hurt, when they fall. You thank God with every breath that they are with you when your child is sick, when your father dies, when you do something so stupid and sinful that you wonder how you will get up and brush your teeth and function tomorrow.
You wish everyone could know this kind of love, this unconditional love that gives you just a taste, just a glimpse of how God loves you, what His heart is.
It is dirty, messy, chaotic, and beautiful. It is your friend who you have known since you were both teenagers crying on your shoulder and then laughing until you hurt because she reminded you of how you once had a crush on a guy with a blue mohawk.
It is not having to explain.
It is good, it is terrible, it is easy, it is like climbing Mount Everest, and it is mine, all mine.
I don’t say all that, I just say, it is family, one big messed up family. This seems to be enough, and then I go home, which is a relief, because when I get there, I will not have to explain.
