Teaching | Ocean of Peace | Advent E02

Hello and welcome to the John Mark Homer Teachings Podcast. My name is Yinka Dawson and I'm your host. Each week we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space. It's wonderful to have you with us. As we continue our Advent series with our week on peace, we're sharing a recent teaching from John Mark while he was visiting Bridgetown Church. In the teaching, John Mark shares some of his story with anxiety and while he's learning about the importance of embodying

the peace of Christ, challenging us to grow in peace through prayer and surrender. Here's John Mark. Good evening, everybody. You sound as tired as I feel. that's a bad combination no it is great to see you uh what a joy and delight to be with you and back with you as a community We moved to California, some of you that are newer, and we just miss you terribly. And very rarely does a week go by where there isn't just a wave of...

ongoing grief and loss. But let's not talk about that. It's kind of depressing. It's really happy to be back with you and such a joy to just see you thriving in fidelity to Jesus under such phenomenal leadership. and bless you all. So Colossians chapter 3, if your Bible is not open already, it should be open in your lap. Let me just give you a moment to come to peace before we begin. I'm six weeks old, and I'm driving with my parents from our home in the Bay Area up to Lake Tahoe to go camping.

And my parents are chatting away in the front seat. I'm in a rear-facing car seat in the back, back in the day before the mirrors where you can see your kid. And as my parents are driving along, they hear this blood-curdling scream really loud from outside the car, which they interpret to be an angel. A clinical psychologist I worked with a few years ago said it was my spirit leaving the body. I'm not sure how that works like with physics, but I have no opinion in the matter.

And so they slam on the brakes and they pull over to the side of the road, jump out to check on me, make sure I'm okay. And I'm not. My eyes are glazed over. My face is purple. My lips are blue. I'm not breathing. I'm either dead or just at the tail end of asphyxiation, and I'm unconscious. Don't worry. I make it. It's okay. I can tell you're a little like on the edge of your seat right now. I make it. I'm alive. All right.

And so they do whatever they do, and they pat me on the back and pray and get me breathing again, and we go about our way and go camping. And I... It was the 80s. That's how you did parenting. You know? It was before, like, therapy and stuff. It was just, like, trauma. It's just every day. It's just Tuesday, you know?

And I honestly did not think much about the story. Obviously, I don't remember it at a conscious level. Until a few years ago, when I was doing a bit of work with an expert in body-based psychology. I now believe it was one of, if not the defining moment of my life. I have no conscious memory of that story, other than through my parents, but my body remembers it. My body refuses to forget or to forgive. Every single time I get in a car I feel a tightness in my chest.

I cannot for the life of me sleep on my back. I'm so sorry to any chiropractors in the room. I have tried and tried and tried. But the moment, I mean, God forbid, I've never slept on a plane in my life because the moment I start to lean back. I feel all this anxiety pulse through my body. You all know that I fidget, and you all make fun of me for it, and that is fair game. And it's honestly pretty embarrassing, and I can't stop it.

And that same psychologist said, you know all your fidgeting. I'm like, yes, I know. He said, you know, those are all movements of when you can't get enough breath, when you can't breathe, when you're dealing with constructed airway. And recently, I was through this process. If you're familiar with the Almond Clinic, which is a clinic down in Southern California, it's like a holistic psychiatry clinic. And they take you through this process that I did where they...

Part of the process is they do two brain scans in an fMRI machine. And they do one where you're kind of in a state of peace. So they kind of take, they create like a spa vibe kind of, and you do some mindfulness, and they scan your brain. And then you do another where they basically stress you out. They have you play this like... horrible video game thing and they play like our horrific music and they stress out your system and then they test you so to see kind of this is your brain at peace

And this is your brain under duress. And in most people, those are two very different brain scans. And the psychiatrist held mine up and said, look it, yours are basically identical. which they explained to me means, you know, all of us have some, I know just enough to be dangerous here, but some part in our brain.

put there by God to keep your body safe. That is always, 24-7, kind of scanning the environment for threats, just to make sure there's no saber-toothed tiger to jump out and eat you alive, or what it may be.

And if you're in a healthy body, in a healthy environment, like right here and right now, that part of your brain's at a low idle. It's like a one or a two. You're safe. You're just fine here. If the fire alarm were to go off and you were to turn around and see red flames and hear people screaming, your life, that part of your body would ratchet up to an eight or a nine to get your body to move and get you to safety. The way it was explained to me, my body is kind of...

always at a seven. Like that's the baseline. I can be on my Sabbath in contemplative prayer, basking in the Trinitarian love. And it's right, that part of my body is right there. which means just the smallest thing, a little comment, a moody teenager, of which I have three, whatever it may be, can just set that part of my nervous system off.

Now, forgive the biopic if you're thinking, what does this have to do with following Jesus? I felt just a need to mention that story, just to say, I'm likely the least qualified person in the room to talk to you this morning or this evening about peace. But I've spent the last five years walking what I think is the first leg in a... lifelong journey toward becoming a person of peace. About five years ago, I was on a retreat down actually just a few miles from where I now live.

And there was a spiritual director that was one of the teachers there. And it's somebody, I'd read all of his books, and I had kind of admired him from a distance. And there was an afternoon break, and he made himself available for one-time spiritual direction. You just had to sign up. It was like...

on clipboards in the back. I was like, only Christians would have clipboards still in like this era. And so I just made a beeline for the clipboard, signed up, first name, and we spent a lovely afternoon, kind of hour together.

And he did that thing, you know when non-charismatics prophesy over you, but they don't know what to call it? That thing where they're like, it's not like a prophetic word or something, and then they drop the prophetic destiny of God over your life or whatever. They're just chill about it. And he did that thing where he's like, you know, I just, as we're talking,

keep thinking of this line. And it was a line that at the time was unfamiliar to me, and now it's like an imprint on my heart. And it was a line from Saint Seraphim of Seraph. You may be familiar with him. He's widely venerated in the eastern stream of the church, a saint from about 300 years ago. And the line was, acquire inner peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.

That's just one of those moments where that's a beautiful line and a compelling idea, but it was more than that. It was a holy moment for me where I just felt that gentle weight of the Spirit on my heart say, This is the pathway that I have set before you. immediately my brain began to do what our brains do. It began to just be a chaotic monster of death and say, like, wait, you? Like, you with the broken brain, you with the nervous system that's all screwed up. I felt.

This deep resonance of the spirit in my heart of, yes, you. And of course, one of the gifts of following Jesus is as we disciple under him. bit by bit, yield more and more of ourself to him, our vices can become our virtues. Our points of weakness or even of wounding can become our particular... pathway.

to God's call on our life. And this is good news because obviously I'm not the only one in the room dealing with anxiety at some level. Last year, 43% of Americans reported feeling more anxious than the previous year. Last year, almost 20% of Americans were diagnosed with clinical anxiety disorder. 43%.

nearly half of Americans are on some form of medication for mental health, mostly for anxiety and depression. And of course, all these numbers ratchet up the younger you are for 20-somethings, and in particular for Gen Z. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt famously called Gen Z the anxious generation. My grandparents got the title the greatest generation. My kids got the title the anxious generation. What has...

gone wrong, but I am not alone at all. And when I first heard St. Seraphim's line, this idea of inner peace was honestly kind of a new concept to me. It sounds a little bit more like something you read on the shelf at Powell's on the end cap than in the library of the New Testament. But I've since discovered there is this rich story.

dream of Christian thought that goes all the way through 20 centuries of the Christian church back to the New Testament itself. And I just want to look at a thin thread of it. Look again with me at Colossians chapter 3, and again, forgive me for just, this is not how you should read the Bible, a line out of context at a time, but the really good-looking, smart Bible teacher will be back next week.

But again, Colossians 3, verse 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. I just want to meditate on this with you for just a little bit. This scripture, which I've read for most of my life, what was really set before my mind, actually right when COVID broke out. I just felt the Spirit say, I want you to contemplate this one line prayerfully.

every single morning. So I've been doing that pretty much every morning since that beginning of the pandemic. And I just want to meditate on it with you for just a few minutes. Let's pull it apart. So the opening line is let. It's an interesting command. It is a command, but it is passive. It's a command less to do something and more to let something be done to you.

You moms in the room, you know, if your little kid gets a splinter, what do you say? You say, come here, put out your finger, hold still, and let me take it out for you. Let the peace of Christ. Notice, not just peace, but the peace of Christ. Paul is not just saying, you know, hey, everybody, just relax, chill out. pour yourself a glass of wine, put on a good show, put on some sweatpants, like pop a gummy, just chill, okay? He's not referring. Clearly, Paul is not saying that. I just want to...

He's not referring to a generic peace that is available to all people by the grace of God in those fleeting moments where the stars align of the right mood and the right circumstance and the right setting. but to a very specific peace, the peace of Christ. The scholar John Walton defined it as transcendent God-given tranquility. Another as the quiet disposition.

which arises when people are committed to the lordship of Christ in their midst. It's a peace that we see in the person of Jesus, in story after story, where the... Storm is raging, and he's asleep on the boat. And another storm, and what's his line to the disciples? Why is it you are so afraid? When the mob is ratcheting up to a fever pitch, and you just...

quietly slips out the back. When he's being crucified and obscenities are being thrown into his face and he's there hanging, just, Father, forgive them. They know not what they are doing. And it's the peace of mind that we receive through the salvation of Christ when we know in the depth of our being that we are saved.

Our sins are forgiven. There is no more shame. We have nothing to fear. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. We are safe and secure in his love. We are buoyant in the hope of the age to come. And no matter what comes in the short term, I think of Jesus' words to Julian of Norwich, all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

We are to let this piece of Christ rule. Paul uses a unique word here that isn't found anywhere else in the New Testament. It's not the traditional word for rule, which is the kingdom imagery. In Greek, it's brabruo, and it was used for when a judge in an ancient court would issue a ruling, when a judge would rule and say guilty or innocent, or here's the verdict.

It was also used in the Olympic Games from when an umpire would rule and say inbounds or out of bounds or winner or loser or foul or no foul. And then one scholar I read said, let the peace of God be the umpire in your heart. To let the peace of God rule means to let it decide or direct your heart is the word used by Paul.

The heart and the biblical imagination is the seat of your innermost self, the core of your being. Some theologians frame it as three parts, your thinking and your feeling and your desiring. It's this kind of inner center, to borrow a cheesy analogy, I think of the movie Inside Out. Have you seen that?

Have you not seen that? You need to go see that. It was made by a Christian. It's based on internal family systems theory and subpersonality work. It's genius. But you know, there's a literal control room and inside out too, not to give it away, but anxiety gets the control room to herself. It does not go well. Watch the movie. But it's a comic, archetypal way of saying there is this part of you that is a bit of a jumble and a mess if you're anything like the rest of humanity.

but out of which all of your life flows this deep inner place. You are to let, we are to let the peace of God. Let it determine. Let it decide in the core of our being there. Since, as members of one body, you were called to peace. There's a shift here that's lost in the English translation from singular to plural.

That phrase, your hearts, is singular. So that's referring to like your heart, my heart, the inside of you. But you were called to peace. That's a plural you. That's the y'all in English. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts since y'all were called to peace. Paul, again, forgive me for dropping out of context here. Paul is writing to a community. And in context, he's writing about how we become a community of love, how we get along, how we live in harmony and not in fraction or tension with.

each other. And that begins in Paul's mind with each of us in the core of our being when we let the peace of Christ drive out all fear and let it...

And Paul here is tapping into one of Jesus' final and I think most important teachings. You'll likely recognize this line from John's gospel. Right before he goes to the cross, Jesus says this to his disciples. Peace I leave with you. Of all the things Jesus could have said, here is my parting gift. My peace I give you. Notice again, my peace, not generic peace, the peace of Christ. I give you, it's a gift. I do not give to you as the world gives. This is something else. Do not let your hearts.

Be troubled and do not be afraid. Just a few chapters later in John's gospel, Jesus' followers are cowering in a room with the doors locked right after Christ's death. For fear, the text reads, and then Jesus appears back from the dead, and the first words out of Jesus' mouth are, peace be with you. So interesting to me, not... Faith be with you or hope be with you or even love be with you, but peace be with you.

And for years, I just assumed that was just kind of a first century Hebraic greeting, a Jesus equivalent of hi, everybody, like I'm back from the dead. Great to see you. But then the very next line is, and with that, the greeting, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. This is more than just a greeting. It is a... gift of the Holy Spirit. Hence, the very next line, verse 21, is, peace be with you.

Then in the next story, just a few verses down, Jesus came and stood among them. This is his second appearing because Thomas wasn't there. And he said what? Peace be with you. You all know this in ancient manuscripts. You can't highlight or underline or put something in all caps. If you're a writer and you want to really emphasize a point, you repeat it once. Peace be with you. Twice, peace be with you. Three times in what? Six verses. Peace be with you.

John is saying, do not miss how important this is. The very first implication of Jesus' death and resurrection is peace. One of the main ways that Paul and the New Testament writers explain the atonement is through the lens of peace. Colossians 1, for God was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in him, in Christ, and through him to...

reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Or here's Ephesians 2, for he himself is our peace. who has made the two groups, referring here to Jews and Gentiles, with centuries of racial hate and violence between the two, made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. be thus making peace. The imagery is that we were enemies of God.

and of each other, but Christ through blood, through death, made peace. This is foreign imagery for a modern Western. We think of total warfare. We imagine World War II or Iraq or Afghanistan or special forces. But if you know anything about the way that tribal indigenous cultures work, the violence is much more reciprocal. It's tit for tat. You kill one of ours, we kill one of yours. And it's back and forth, often for centuries or millennia.

would have made really good sense to a first century mind. Christ gave blood to bring peace. And now we are no longer warring tribes, but we are one. family with God as our Father at peace. But this peace isn't just a theory of the atonement for us to believe with the left side of our brain. It is a gift from the Holy Spirit for all of Jesus' followers to experience in the core of our being. Philippians 4, the God of peace will be with you.

Romans 16, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. That is so intense. 2 Thessalonians 3, I love this. Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace.

at all times and in every way. And this is just a sampling. But the thing is, when you read the New Testament, it becomes very clear that whatever Jesus and Paul and the others mean by peace is not what I think of by peace. Jesus was beaten and stripped naked. And killed. Paul was arrested time and again and thrown in prison and stoned and left for dead and beat up and tortured and shipwrecked. And in the end, they cut off his head.

Not a very peaceful life, but par for the course for all of the early Christian leaders. As is often said, we think of peace as the absence of conflict. As an introverted dad with three teenagers, I regularly find myself saying, I just need a little peace and quiet. What I mean is get away from me. I want just a little time where the door is locked and there's no like rap music.

down the hallway, and nobody's asking me for money or to watch R-rated movies, and I can just go read Wendell Berry for 10 minutes by myself. Leave me alone. That's what I mean by peace. Or we pray for peace in Gaza or the Ukraine. And we don't mean like for a nice, warm feeling to rise up in people's hearts. We mean like for the politicians to repent. the tanks to turn around, and the violence to end. And this kind of peace is Jesus' will for our world, an end to all evil and injustice.

A world where, as the prophet Isaiah put it, the lion will lie down with the lamb, and we will turn those weapons, those swords, into plowshares. And one day this kind of world will come to pass at Jesus' final return to rule as the king of kings and lord of lords. And the government will be on his shoulders, a prince. president of peace. But the peace that Jesus is offering us now, what the biblical writers call a sign and a foretaste of the future world.

right in the middle of the chaos of the present one. It's like Jesus by the Spirit has dragged this... future reality for the whole universe into the present moment and made it available to the heart of hearts. That outer state... is mostly yet to come. It's here a lot more than we realize. Insert some podcast in your memory banks from a secular humanist about how because of the internet, we all think the world is getting worse and worse and worse, but actually it's... less violent than ever.

and then go read any historian worth their salt, and you realize, oh, that's true, and that's not because of secular humanism. That is because of the impact of Christ and his teachings. You don't have to be a Christian to believe that. You just need to be a student of history. The impact of Christ on decreasing the evil and injustice and violence for all of the mistakes of the church is profound.

So it's here in bits and pieces, but at an external level, that state is mostly yet to come. But the internal state is available now through Jesus. This new available interstate goes by many names in kind of the Christian stream of thought on this. St. Seraphim called it inner peace. Jacques Philippe calls it interior peace. John Calvin on the Protestant side called it peace of heart. Ancient Christians used this interesting word, apotheia.

It's very difficult to translate into English. We have no one-for-one equivalent. It's often translated peace or calm or tranquility or serenity. A number of scholars I've read on it argue the best translation is the word dispassion. It's a really weird word in particular for a modern American Christian. Because we use the word passion in a positive way as something we want more of. We want like more passion for God. What's that song lyric? Stir a passion in my heart, God. Let it overflow.

And what we mean is God like stir up more energy in my inner being for you. And that is beautiful. But it's a little weird when you read like dead Christians or like from back in the day.

Because they use passion almost primarily, almost exclusively in the negative sense. So if you read ancient Christian literature, the passions are their language for the deep strongholds of sin in your body where your heart... is most in bondage, what a modern psychologist would call our attachment, an ancient Christian would call our...

passions. And so because of that, they were highly suspicious of anything that worked you up too much emotionally because they thought it was really troublesome what the enemy could do and that kind of worked up. state. Their goal wasn't passion as much as it was dispassion. And that doesn't make them right and us wrong, but it does mean we should pause and take note.

One of the things we can learn here from our spiritual forebears is they saw the height of spiritual maturity not necessarily as somebody with a ton of emotional energy for God who's on fire. As much, some of that's more just personality. They saw it more as someone who was deeply calm, almost unperturbable, no matter what comes, who is...

really deeply at peace. We forget that passion is not a fruit of the Spirit, but peace is. Compare modern American revivalism with, say, ancient Christian art. You know, in most kind of ancient Christian iconography, the saints look very demur. For years, I did not like ancient Christian heart. I thought Jesus just looked so morose. And the saints just look like they've been fasting way too long. And not like Andrew Huberman fasting, like fasting, fasting.

And I was just like, man, if this is sainthood, sign me up for nominal Christianity, because that is just not appealing to me. But again, that's reading ancient Christian art with a modern brain. Like I come of age in a time when what? You smile for the camera. Smile for the camera, everybody. This actually rich symbolism, I'd really encourage you to go kind of research the meaning behind ancient Christian art. But what they're communicating with the kind of still face isn't...

somebody who's not happy or who's morose. Notice Jesus here is lit from the inside out. He's radiating light. What they're communicating is apotheia, that Christ or the saint. in the art has come to this place, no matter what is swirling all around this place of inner peace. In our family, we're big fans of the Kung Fu Panda series. And my son Moses, a few months ago, was needling me, giving me such a hard time. He's like, Dad, you want to be like Master Oogway? You remember this?

who's like the original master, who's like so calm. He has ruthlessly eliminated all hurry from his lies. so wise and happy. But then Moses said, but dad, you're actually more like Shifu, if you know him. So if you've seen this movie, he's like trying to be like that, but he's basically faking it, and he's actually just like...

On the inside, ready to kill, you know, Jack Black the moment he gets the chance. Totally stressed out, on the edge of anger all of the time. It's like, thank you, son, so much. And, you know, it's easy to laugh. But this kind of Hollywood cheesy archetype of like the Kung Fu master on top of the mountain. as old and serene, who's discovered the secret of inner peace and yet can kick butt of anybody. This is actually like a deeply Christian archetype.

that the oldest and most sagacious and powerful of the saints are simultaneously the most serene. Think, if you have the privilege of being in a relationship with any... Old followers of Jesus. I don't mean like Gerald. I mean, I don't mean old. I mean old, old, okay? I'm just kidding. You know I love this man more than almost anything.

But if you know anyone in their 80s or in their 90s who has been following Jesus, I don't mean a nominal Christian, I mean following Jesus for half hour, a century, you know, I would bet. good money, almost everyone you know are deeply calm. You remember when like COVID broke out and there was just like a year of our life that you could just summarize as freaking out?

And I remember every once in a while, I'd run into, like, old Christians, and they'd just be fine. Like, you can do that? Apparently you can't when you're over 70 or 80. But there is... There's a remarkable consistency of peacefulness. When you read the saints, the saints come from pretty much every walk of life, out of royal families and...

peasant slums. There are Enneagram 7s like St. Francis walking around preaching to the birds. There are serious intellectuals like Thomas Aquinas. There are Enneagram 4 bleeding hearts like St. Teresa. But you start to form this kind of composite picture of saintliness. And all I mean by that is just spiritual maturity. And even after you factor in for personality type and cultural context and era and history, you are struck by how remarkably peaceful they are. And if you read their writings...

by how much they talk about this idea of peace of heart. So many of the saints speak to this key role of cultivating... Peace of heart. Here's a small sampling. Juan de Bonilla said, take care to never let your heart be troubled, saddened. agitated, or involved in all that which can cause it to lose its peace. Rather, work, and it is a lot of work, always, every day, to remain tranquil.

Because the Lord says, happy are those who are at peace. Do this and the Lord will build in your soul the city of peace and he will make of you a house of delight. Francis Lieberman, the Orthodox Jew turned Catholic priest, said, pay attention to these words. Keep your soul at peace. The Reese of Lisieux, the... Little flower said in prayer, Jesus, may earthly things have no power to disturb the peace of my soul. Listen to this prayer. That peace is all I ask of you except love.

Now, why all of this emphasis in Scripture and in the saints? And this is just a thin sliver of a deep well. I could go on for hours with Scriptures and quotes. Why all of this emphasis on inner peace? Is it just to like satisfy our craving for psychological relief? I don't think so. And that is important.

Because there are a lot of counterfeits to peace out there, from drugs and alcohol and gummies to a thousand other cultural narcotics. And if we don't find peace in God, we will search for it in sin. So this matters. But ultimately, it is because, best I can tell, in Christian spirituality, love is the telos of the spiritual journey, and fear is the antithesis of love. You may or likely know the famous line from the Apostle John, there is no what? Fear in love.

Perfect love, that's a word used by Jesus, perfect, can be translated mature or whole or complete. It's reached its end destination, drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. Paraphrase, if there is still fear in your heart, in my heart, in our body, then we have yet to reach the goal of the spiritual journey in Christ. If you pay close attention, and much more could be said here.

but you can trace almost every single unloving act in your life back to fear. Just watch yourself in the coming days and weeks. Anytime that you find yourself needing to say, I'm sorry to somebody about something, likely in one of your closest relationships. Just reflect on it later, not in self-hate, but in curiosity, and see, and you will likely be able to trace that back to, oh. I was scared that my child would do this if I did not control them. I was scared that...

She would reject me. I was scared that he would. You can almost always find below the surface an animating fear that is sabotaging love. A few days ago, I was out walking our dog at night. We live up in the mountains. It's kind of semi-rural where we live. And so we know all of our neighbors. And I walk our dog off leash. And she's really lovely and well-behaved. But she's quite an anxious dog. We get along just great.

And I'm walking her, and all of a sudden, there's this guy walking up our road that we don't recognize. Not a neighbor. I don't know who this person is. And she freaks out and runs up to him barking. She's like a big kind of scary looking dog who's actually a total wimp and anxious child. But she looks like really scary.

And I just found myself like blurting out, no, no, no, no, it's just fine. She's just really anxious. To which the person's like, yeah, right. Here's this dog coming after me. I'm about to sue you. I just thought, that's so interesting. We all do that. These moments where we get anxious and then we behave in these ways that are so unloving, that sabotage the flow of love through our life.

Psychologists debate the right way to categorize emotions. This is a soft science. There's all sorts of debate in that kind of field of research. Most psychologists argue there are seven basic emotions, five survival emotions, two attachment emotions. Others say there are 15, others say 50, but some say there are really just two emotions. Everything else is just an iteration of the two, fear or love. And they move us in polar opposite directions.

Fear moves us to fight or flight, to rupture connection. But love moves us to open invulnerability to connection. Think of the implications of this for becoming people of love in God. Here's Jacques Philippe again. Only a peaceful heart can truly love. Thus, we must try our best. I love just the honesty of this language. Hey, everybody, just try your best to preserve peace of heart, struggling against worry, anxiety.

and spiritual agitation. Or here's Francis DeSales, who's just a deep well I've been drinking from lately. Because love resides only in peace. Be careful always to keep the holy peace of heart that I so often recommend to you. Or look at this from Padre Pio. Peace is the simplicity of spirit, the serenity of conscience, the tranquility of the soul, and the bond of love. Peace is the way to perfection.

Are you starting to see this idea come into focus? It is when we are at peace in our heart and the core of our being, when we are not anxious or agitated or... a hurry, stressed out, or overwhelmed, but walking in the easy yoke of the humble and gentle Christ. That not only do we feel better, but we... are better. We are more capable of love. Therefore, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Now, to move toward an ending.

How do we do this? Well, on one hand, it's not really something we do as much as it's something we let God do in us. The call to acquire inner peace in the anxious generation quickly takes me right to the limit of myself. I can't flip a switch. and deactivate my broken brain and just be zen all week long. If I could, I would. I can't. That doesn't mean I can't do anything.

I can arrange my life in such a way that at the center of it is Christ himself. I can attune to the peace of Christ. I can structure my day, my week. the interior architecture of my heart in such a way that it is intentionally designed to resist what Jesus called a troubled heart and to receive the peace of Christ in my heart.

Now, there's so much we could talk about here. Let me just offer you two very simple observations from Paul's command of the Colossians. One, peace comes when we just spend time. with the God of peace. Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. The Father is called the God of Peace. The Spirit is called the Spirit of Peace. The Trinity is pervaded at its core by peacefulness.

In the book of Revelation, we see behind kind of the curtain of the universe and into God's throne room. And we read that around the throne of God was a, quote, sea of glass. clear as crystal. The sea, as you likely know, in ancient Near Eastern mythology, was the place of chaos, not peace. It was the home of the chaos dragon, the Leviathan, the Satan. It was always... churning and never at rest. But here in the imagery of the revelation, the sea is like glass. It is still and calm around God.

Have any of you ever taken the train north from Portland to, I've done it tons of times from Portland to Seattle. And once you do it, you're like, I'm never driving to Seattle again. It's like the best way to go. It's so beautiful. But I'd never done the route from, you almost got an applause there. That's okay. I've never done the route from, that's how good it is.

from Seattle to Vancouver, BC, until a year ago. I was in Portland for something, went up to Seattle, and then I said, you know what, I just want to take the train. So I took the train from Seattle to Vancouver, BC. I want to believe that, like, Oregon's the most beautiful part of North America, and then you go to... Canada and you're like, this is not the 51st state, this is like Canada. This is beautiful up here.

And that route, if you've ever been, you know, you're all along the water and right near the Canadian border. It is a level of beautiful. And you're on all these ocean inlets. And I will never forget it. It was this. crystal clear, gorgeous blue sky day. And we go over this bridge. There's water all underneath the train, everywhere you can see. And I've never seen this in my whole life. It's the ocean. And it is perfect.

still. I mean, it's like an alpine lake that's a three-day backpacking trek up at 6 a.m. in the morning, like that kind of mirror glass level. You know, have you ever been like... camping or backpacking at a lake, and it's so still, like, you find yourself whispering because you don't want to, like, make sound waves to cause any disturbance. It's that beautiful and tranquil.

The ocean was like, I will never forget that until the day I die. That's what the atmosphere is like around God. You almost want to win. When we lived here, I would go see Father Rick for spiritual direction. You may know him, Jesuit priest over at the Loyola Center just in Southeast. And if you've ever been there, it's a lovely little chapel.

And, you know, I'd go in and spend an hour with him. And don't tell him this, but I don't really remember anything that we talked about other than one conversation that was life-changing. So thank you. What I most remember is I would go into those conversations. Nine times out of ten, anxious, that's my default state. And as I would just sit and visit with him prayerfully, I would literally just feel my central nervous system.

He was so calm. He was not in a hurry. He was pervaded by peacefulness. And by the end, I would walk out of that chapel feeling profoundly at peace. just by being, just by breathing the air around him. That's just, I think, a sliver of what it's like to breathe the air, so to speak, around God. And it's a sign of what it could be like to breathe the air around you or I when we're much older than we are now. That's just a glimpse. But prayer...

is the non-negotiable pathway to peace. It is the first and most important step that we can and must take to carve out time every single day just to sit. quietly before the God of peace, the edge of the sea of glass, clear as crystal, and just receive the gift of the Spirit. Again, Jacques Philippe, God is an ocean of peace.

And it is an intimate union with him through prayer that our hearts find peace. Secondly, and very quickly, peace comes when we surrender to the God of peace. The command is to let the peace of Christ, what? Rule. Another way to say that is surrender, yield to the direction of the peace of Christ. It's God, I am yours, direct my life.

Jesus was the most peaceful person to ever live. And he said, I only do what I see the Father doing. I only say what I hear the Father saying. I live for the pleasure of God. Back in the day, I used to watch reruns, I'm not that old, of the West Wing because I love Aaron Sorkin's stuff. And I love that line they would say walking around the White House, we serve at the pleasure of the president.

which is a way of saying whatever you want, you get, right? I just love that. Well, that's like a prayer. We serve at the pleasure of God, our Father. And so much of our anxiety... is because we are grasping for control rather than learning to surrender. It's not all bad to, quote, take control of your life. Some of you in the room need to hear that message because of where you're at and where you come from.

The problem is that the vast majority of our life, way more than we want to believe, is out of our control. You know that stat. I've used it before. The average American has 15% of the control over their life they think they do. That 85% is why we have therapists. Thank you so much. But even when our life is under our control and we can make it how we want.

We constantly self-sabotage peace with our self-will. The psychiatrist and spiritual director, Gerald May, used to talk about willfulness versus willingness. It said the spiritual journey in Christ is about moving from being a willful person, I want this, I want that, I don't want this, I don't want that, the wheel of suffering in Eastern language, to willingness. The language of Jesus, not my will, but yours be done. The language of Mary, may it be to me according to your word.

learning to just surrender, release the illusion of control, and yield to the rule of God and trust of his love. Every morning I wake up, and like a ton of you in the room, I spend an hour in the quiet prayerfully with Jesus and the Father and the Spirit. And I am a type A anxious perfectionist who has a list of about 49 things I want to do in that hour.

I want to lectio divina, prayerfully pray a psalm. I want to read through the New Testament. I want to meditate on a gospel passage. I want to meditate and memorize scripture. I want to do centering prayer. I want to pray for all of my kids. I want to pray for you. I forget you most mornings. but I want to remember you and pray for you. I want to pray for the world. I want to do a prayer walk. I want to do grounding on the rock outside. And I don't remember 90% of it or have time for it.

But there are two non-negotiable things for me, that if at all possible, I do not want to get up from my prayer mat and go to work until these two things have become true. One, I want to attune to God's peace and presence. Not just think about God, not just read about God as not a day goes by where I'm not in this library, but I want to attune.

to actually commune and connect, even if for a few fleeting moments, with the God of peace. And two, I want to surrender and yield my heart over to him again. and again, and again. After that, if those two things can happen in my heart, everything else is bonus. I have come to believe that living from the peace of Christ is one of the most important tasks of my apprenticeship to Jesus. I fail at this every single day.

And that is not false humility. That is embarrassing honesty. I failed at it yesterday. I failed at it the day before. I really failed at it the day before. Today I'm doing decent, but that's because I'm preaching on peace in front of a crowd. So it's like, I'm just, nothing else, I'm faking it pretty good today. And I feel good and happy to be here because I love all of you so much. I fail at this.

Every day. And it may take 50 more years. But I know this is the path. Because if I do not come to peace, and the same is true for all of you. All I will do is pass on, no matter what my intentions are, all I will actually do is pass on my anxiety and angst and add it to the toxic buildup of the world. And all you need to do is read the news or the comments on social media to know there's already plenty of chaos out there. We don't need any more.

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. That's from Eddie Hillesom. She was a Jewish spiritual writer who was executed at Auschwitz. She wrote that right before.

Yet another reminder that we must acquire inner peace no matter our external trouble, in the language of Jesus, that we face. This week, as Jesus said, you will face trouble. I really pray it's minor and not major. But you will certainly face minor troubles. You will get an upsetting email or an unexpected bill. You will be late or stuck in traffic. You will, if nothing else, have a moody child and too much to do and not enough time to do it. You will face trouble, and so will I.

In those moments, nothing else that you remember, just remember Jesus' words. Do not let your heart be troubled. Don't let it. Wall off your heart. Don't let it be troubled. Stay at peace. Stay attuned to the sea of glass as clear as crystal. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Let's stand together and pray.

I love John Mark's point that peace comes when we surrender to the God of peace. Often we're anxious because we haven't surrendered our cares to him, with a posture that declares, not my will, but yours be done. So to wrap up, I want to make space for you to surrender anything to God that you need to. Let's start by recentering our attention on God's presence and slowing down our minds.

Maybe take a deep breath or two and bring your attention to Jesus. And ask with me, Father, what do I need to surrender to you? It may be related to where you're experiencing anxiety in your life. I'll leave 30 seconds here for you to hear from God and respond however he might lead and close with amen.

Thanks for listening. This podcast has been Practicing the Way. We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus. Thanks to Little Thoughts for our show music. We're a crowdfunded nonprofit, so everything we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks today goes to Brad from Dallas, Texas.

Alexa from Tampa, Florida. Dan from Silverville, Pennsylvania. Andrew from Floyd's Knob, Indiana. And Heather from Camarillo, California. Thank you all very much. To join these friends in the circle or learn more about our resources, visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. be with you all.