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Peace Like a River-wading Crazy Person Calling Me to RepentAs I write, my eye is twitching.Some might say it is potassium deficiency. They are wrong. My eye is twitching for reasons you may guess and probably a hundred or more that will go unsaid. Most have been in my shoes. There really isn’t anything special about it. Stress and lack of sleep and demands at work and with family are all at play – college students call it “adulting.” Usually, I can take a drink of water, a deep breath, and find enough peace in the day to move on.We learn, don’t we? We learn coping mechanisms for life, ways of dealing with things so that we can keep moving. Some are healthier than others, but at the end of it, we are all trying to find a little peace. Some find it at the beach (though I prefer being out on the water), some find it in the mountains (and I must admit that clear mountain mornings with a cup of joe and a panoramic view are pretty amazing). Other people find a little peace in meditating and yoga, reading or sitting alone watching paint dry.I wonder, what does peace look like for you?I think the lesson here is that for many of us, and I am certainly right in the mix of it, peace is this momentary, almost illusory experience of calm. If this rings true for you, I have good news. This week I stumbled across something in the Bible that helped me immensely.The scripture reading for today is the first lines of Mark’s gospel – Mark’s spin on who Jesus is and why he matters. And in these first lines lies – just under the surface – is a reminder of the nature of peace and how it truly works. I think in order to get the passage we need to talk for a moment about Mark’s gospel itself.This telling of Jesus’ life was ignored for a long, long time. Both Matthew and Luke use most of Mark in their gospels in a “cut and paste” method that uses the older Mark to make their own point. The ending of Mark is also a little funny; there is a shorter and longer ending to Mark and some experts have shown that both were written long after the original, because later scribes were so bothered by the resurrection story Mark has. The argument was that the Easter story from Mark was so disappointing that it needed “fixing,” which led to the different endings. History has been unkind to Mark’s version. Some people long held that it was a fragment, others that it was just poorly written, but in the past hundred or so years this has been reconsidered.I think to understand Mark’s gospel we have to start at the end, or at least that Mark insists on driving us to the end as fast as he can. Over and over again in the book we get the work, “immediately.” It seems that the whole thing moves from one act, one trip, one healing, one miracle, to another and all of it culminates with Jesus arrest and death; all the while the bumbling disciples get everything wrong. The day after the Sabbath the women come to the tomb and find it open. They are told to go and tell the others. Then we hear the closing words of Mark’s gospel, “and they ran away and told no one, for they were afraid.”Mark’s gospel, with what was likely an original ending, closes with disciples running away from the resurrection. By all counts, Mark has a low view of Jesus’ followers; if it were up to them (up to us) the story of who Jesus is and why Jesus matters would never get out.But, somehow for the grace of God, it does; and this story continues to change lives.This, I believe is the point Mark leads to at the end of his gospel and it is intimately connected to the opening words we have today. It all hinges, not on our power, or on things going right. Everything hinges on God. To trust this is to have real hope and peace.So there is our starting point. Mark’s gospel opens, not with a baby Jesus being born – not even the promise of his birth. It starts with the promise that someone will come to prepare the way. We meet John the Baptist before we meet Jesus, because we must be prepared. On the surface, John is the epitome of the feral prophet, a wild man with a wild heart trying to scare people into faith. But this image of him misses, I think, the truer picture.Once we get beyond the rough clothes and eccentric diet and calls for cleansing and repenting, beyond the frenetic nature of his work, is a man who knows exactly who he is, to whom he belongs, and is rooted in his purpose in this world. In a word, this man – John – is whole. He is complete. He is fully at peace. He stands there clearly pointing beyond himself to the one to come, the one who will wash us with the very spiritual presence of God so that we will never again need to be cleansed, never again be without the presence of the divine, never again feel something is missing. He is pointing us to the way of real peace.The problem, I think at least for me, is my understanding of peace; this is why I needed so much to have these words today. My view of peace is getting some downtime, a moment of calm like shown before, but peace, true peace is much closer to what our worship preparation says. Frederick Buechner is a Presbyterian pastor, famous writer and both an alum and former teacher at the Lawrenceville School here in New Jersey. He reminds us of one of my favorite words in all scripture, Shalom. Shalom is often the heart of our call “Peace be with you,” but means more than our common understanding of peace. This sort of peace means the wholeness, perfection, fulfillment, completeness of the divine fully present in this moment. It is kind of a big deal. In its essence, shalom is the very thing we Christians are after when we wait for Jesus; what is Kingdom Come? Shalom.John has experienced shalom, or at least he trusts that it is on the way. All his wild ways and living on the edge of things, all his crying out for us to turn around (repent) and be baptized (cleansed) are meant to get us back to the relationship with God that allows shalom: wholeness, perfection, fulfillment, peace.So often peace is confused with us wanting our conditions to change. If only: my co-worker would… my spouse would… my child would... things would be better for me. If only: I had a better job, house, car, fill in the blank… my life would be on track. If only! John shows up in the middle of a health crisis and economic crisis and socio-political crises to remind us that as important as all these may be, they are all distractions from the truest things. Because the truth is, peace – or at least our capacity for it – is already in us, just beneath the surface of our lives. Take a moment to think, “will obsessing over the news bring you peace?” Even if all the issues we face right now get resolved tomorrow, new problems needing report will arrive. This voice, John, calls to us from the wilderness, from the very fringes of society in a book often overlooked these days as passé, and he calls us back. “Turn around,” he says! “Stop. Hit the reset button on your life!” Find peace by focusing on a promise so much bigger than the collective distractions in your life that are clamoring for your attention.This advent season I wish you peace that surpasses all understanding, the peace that lies within every human heart and connects us to the very one for whom we wait.Peace be with you,Jeremy ................
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