Colossians 3:15
LET THE PEACE OF CHRIST RULE IN YOUR HEARTS
Christmas 1 (ILCW-B) Colossians 3:15. 2008
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…
Tomorrow it’s back to life’s normal routines for many of us. What is normal routine like for you? Like the opposite of the 23rd Psalm?
“The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.
It makes me lie down only when exhausted.
It leads me into deep depression. It hounds my soul.
It leads me in circles of frenzy, for activities sake.
Even though I run frantically from task to task, I will never get it all done,
For my ideal is with me.
Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.
They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule.
They anoint my head with migraines, my in-basket overflows.
Surely fatigue and time pressures shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration forever.” (Source unknown)
We’ve all felt that way and probably quite recently, having just come through “Stressmas.” That’s what a recent Chicago Tribune article called the Christmas season, because getting ready for Christmas and everyone rushing around, impatient and excited, makes for a lot of stress, in addition to the pressure and strain of every-day to-do lists and schedules.
How would you like real stress relief? Can’t be done, you say? Stress is inevitable? Yet we would all jump at the opportunity to get rid of stress, and for obvious reasons.
Stress gives us head and neck tension that make us feel we need a nap or break – but we can’t do that right then because we’re too busy. But if we don’t take a nap or break, we won’t be on top of things mentally.
That makes our head hurt more, our chest tighten, and our breathing more frequent. OK, so we lie down and try to relax for a bit, but our minds are processing megabytes of thoughts, playing all kinds of scenarios, and putting things on a to-do list on which we are already way behind.
Our emotions tighten, and we become irritable, upset – like Martha, making the perfect dinner for Jesus. She looked for someone to blame and took out her frustration on Mary and also on Jesus.
Stress makes us irritable, too. So we smile less. We become short with people, and we take our frustration out on them, by complaining about how stressed we are or by even blaming them for our being stressed.
Everything is one more straw on the camel’s back. We talk less and pull back into ourselves, seeing life as us against the world, and we really don’t have much control over things out there. But even if we had control, we wouldn’t have enough time or energy to handle everything. And things over which we have some control we haven’t always handled well; and that fact brings more stress – in the form of guilt, feelings of regret and failure.
There’s also the future, something Jesus said worrying about won’t do us much good, and for good reason. Very often we can’t tell if the light we see is the end of that tunnel or a train coming at us. So we get stressed because we don’t know exactly what to be stressed about.
That includes the effect that other people’s emotions and reactions to things will have on our lives. We can’t factor those things in for sure, because we don’t know for sure what their reactions and responses will be.
Then there’s the old saying about mice and men – namely, that we can do everything perfectly, and it still doesn’t work as we planned and expected. Which brings us to another stressor: Expectations. We feel that our spouse, parents, or people at work and school have expectations that we can’t live up to. Or maybe we have unrealistic expectations for ourselves – like thinking I have to do things perfectly. This party or this assignment has to be done perfectly – or else.
That’s not just stressful; it’s foolish. The world will not fall out of orbit if your plates and napkins don’t perfectly match the color scheme and the party theme. The world will not come to a halt if you slow down.
Beware of thinking otherwise! It appears to be self-sacrificing, but is really rather self-centered and arrogant. God was doing a fine job of running things before we arrived on the planet. He wasn’t saying to himself, “I can’t wait until ______ arrives so I get some help with running the world and the church”; and God isn’t sitting there saying, “Things are going pretty well right now, but look out if _______ takes a moment off or slips up.”
Am I suggesting that we settle for less than perfection because the consequences for imperfection are minimal? Not exactly. Consequences of a party theme and colors not matching perfectly are rather small, and consequences of not playing an error-free game really don’t last long, but there are imperfections with consequences that are enormous and eternal.
If you ever failed to honor God, to serve him, to obey God, you should be very stressed. If you have ever failed to love God as you went about responsibilities and tasks he has given you, if you ever felt a little upset with him for the tasks and responsibilities he has given you – then, no matter how well you did them, you should feel stress that is nearly stifling. If you have been the perfect employee simply to receive the praise (and maybe the raise), if you have looked for relief from your normal routine in ungodly activities, then you should feel crushing stress.
Sin ought to really stress us, because it has hellish and eternal consequences, and we can’t do anything about them. God doesn’t say, “No problem, everybody sins.” Nor does God smile and say, “Just do better in the future, OK?” God says, “Be perfect/holy, like me or spend eternity separated from me.”
Where do you get sin-stress relief? Not in a bottle. Not in a movie, a website, or deep muscle massage, but in the peace of Christ.
Do you think of Jesus as being stressed every day? He wasn’t. When storm waves rocked a boat he was in, Jesus slept. Enemies out to get him, yes. Irritated and stressed about that? No, he wasn’t, and why should he have been?
The only thing really worth stressing about is being guilty of sin before God, and Jesus had no sin. So he always knew that God was on his side, and therefore storms, schedule, opposition, his assignment from God or anything else weren’t worth getting stressed about.
Yes, there is a time when we see Jesus very stressed. In the Garden of Gethsemane he is so stressed – not just in mind or body, but in his soul – that he sweat bullets (little droplets) of blood. Why was he so stressed? He was facing the burden and guilt of the sins of the world. He knew how great those sins were to God, and Jesus knew that meant the freight train of God’s holy wrath over sin would soon be barreling down on and over him.
But you should know that it was your sins about which Jesus was stressed. And he paid for those sins when he suffered hell and died on the cross.
So you don’t need to stress about your sins. There is peace between you and God. You just heard it clearly on Christmas. On earth peace, God’s angels said. Peace to men on whom his favor rests (Lk. 2:14). And men meant women and children, too. It means you, and it means me, because the Bible says: We have peace with God through…Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1).
Peace with God means that hostilities between him and us have ceased. Our sins won’t bring us under God’s fire in this life or get us dropped into the fire of hell in the life to come, because we don’t have our sins anymore. Jesus got them and took them away from us.
That’s the peace of Christ. Now let that peace rule in your hearts: Peace of God’s pardon, not stress over the guilt of sins. Peace in fearlessly serving God, not the stress of having to perform perfectly in his eyes – or else! Forget that stressor! You are already perfect in God’s eyes through Christ Jesus.
You can stop stressing over material things, too, remembering that God remembers. He remembers his promises and comes through on them. Remember Christmas? Promised by God. Also delivered and performed by God exactly as promised! And God has promised to take care of us, to strengthen and help us – to pick us up and carry us, if need be. Do we deserve it? No, because we are sinners and always will be. But evict that stressor from your heart, because God and sinners have been reconciled!
When you feel stressed because the world is against you and no one cares, remember that even if that is true (which it probably isn’t), the Christmas-born Prince of Peace cares. He is also Emmanuel (God with us and for us), and he has said: In me you may have peace… I have overcome the world (Jn. 16:33). Let that peace rule in your heart.
And when you are stressed because there is so much to do and not enough time or skill to do it all, ask yourself if you are doing things that truly serve God. If you are and you are doing them to the best of your ability with the time given you, let the peace of Christ rule your heart. No, you may not be fulfilling the expectations of others (or even yourself), but you are fulfilling the expectations of Christ, because he said: It is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful (1 Cor. 4:2).
And if you have been less than faithful, don’t stress out about that. Confess it, be assured of God’s forgiveness in Christ, and start again with peace ruling in your heart.
That is where we will always find the solution for things that stress us: at the manger and the cross of Christ, because the peace of Christ is there – peace for you and me at Christmas and always. Let that peace rule in your heart! Amen.
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