Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Advent - "Peace on Earth-Peace in our Family"

Pastor Meyer’s Sermon

Advent Service, December 11, 2008

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our heavenly Father and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus, our Christ.

My wife, Lynn, as she was growing up, had a next door neighbor who had a wonderful picket fence in the front yard. The problem, though, for this neighbor was that the front yard bordered a sharp turn in a very busy state highway. So whenever there was bad weather, it was inevitable, whether it was snow, whether it was rain or sleet, there would be a driver who would lose control, miss that sharp turn, barrel down the front yard of our neighbor and crash right into the picket fence, damaging it beyond repair. And as I was dating Lynn, I remember seeing this neighbor out in the front yard all the time having to mend the fence.

And as I think about Advent services and our time together and this Advent season, we think about family. We think about our times of celebration, of when we’re going to get together with our family during the holiday. We have our Christmas parties where we have fun with our friends and we get connected and, to me, the term “mend fences” comes to mind. Because, you see, we all have fences.

I’m not just talking about our literal fence. I’m talking about the fences of relationships. For instance, I have a snippet of a relationship fence that I call my family fence. Now you see there are four pillars in this fence. The first one, of course, is me. I’m the first one. In order for me to have a relationship, I need to be part of that fence. But this one here, this represents my wife. My wife and I have been married for almost 14 years. We are husband and wife and we are bound together by family. We encourage each other. We support each other. We love each other and care for each other. When we have a situation, we work together and we do it because we are family.

But also we’re connected through obligation, an obligation in a good way. When Lynn and I stood up before God and before our friends and family and said that we love each other, we commit to each other, we are going to be faithful to one another, we will support each other through thick and thin, yes, we are connected by obligation.

This other pillar, this third one, is our kids. When Lynn and I talk about our kids and I’m sure many of you, when you look in your own lives, you will say that you can’t imagine your life without your kids. I know this past weekend, we went to a Christmas tree farm and brought a Christmas tree home and we had the Christmas music on and we were able to spend time around the Christmas tree putting ornaments up which meant so much to us because, hey, we’re family. We’re connected together in that way.

But, you know, we’re also connected, too, by obligation because, you see, God has given us the gift of these three children and it’s our responsibility, it’s our obligation to be sure we take care of them, be sure that we raise them up in the way of the Lord, to be sure they can become contributing members of society. And when you look at this fence, this fence with connection of family, connection of obligation, it’s pretty sturdy and it’s also kind of wobbly, too. And maybe when bad weather comes and there is ice or snow or rain on a relationship and there is that car that comes barreling down to hit the fence, sometimes the fence will break.

And that’s this fourth pillar here. You see, this fourth pillar represents my brother. There was a time when my brother and I didn’t talk. We didn’t communicate to each other. And, of course, when we would show up to family events because, after all, we are family but our obligations to each other to keep in contact just weren’t there and we started to drift apart. In fact, there was a time where we lost contact with one another. And you know, when I look at this fence, I see that I’m doing pretty well in some parts but, you know, the fence is broken and it needs to be mended. And I am a pursuer of peace, just like in the Psalm 34 reading, “Seek peace and pursue it,” and I certainly did pursue it and try to fix this fence. And my brother and I, we tried to sweep things under the rug and not talk about it. But when we got together, all it did, the resentment, just caused us to get even further apart.

I read somewhere if you want peace, you need to seek justice and so I went to my brother and I said, “These are the things that you’ve done wrong. Own up to them and maybe we can have peace. We could mend the fence.” But all it did was cause the damage to get even worse. And it seemed like no matter what I did, I couldn’t fix the fence. I couldn’t mend it. I couldn’t find the peace in our family. And then I hear about what Isaiah says about this coming Jesus who’s going to be a Prince of Peace. A Prince of Peace? Peace has nothing to do with my life, with the things that I’ve been trying to do. I don’t need a Prince of Peace in my life.

But you know, the apostle Paul picks up on this in Romans 5 and he says, “We have been justified. We have been forgiven through faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ for whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” We now have peace. You see, this Advent, as we look to Christmas, God has given us a gift, a wonderful gift, the gift of Jesus. And when we make Jesus the center of our family fence, we remember what He has to say about families. He says, “I have called you. You are my children.” And so we are attached to Him, with the attachment, with the relationship, with the connection of family. And also, He obligates Himself to us by saying that you are my family and I will always be with you. So we know that because of Jesus, the gift of Jesus, with Him being the center, the center of our fence, our family fence, we’re given another gift and that gift is here. Paul talks about it. It’s the gift of forgiveness and not only do we receive forgiveness because we are part of Jesus’ family but also that forgiveness that we receive, we can also make that a connection with those in our lives. And we can remember that, over here, with me, that I am certainly forgiven of all of my sins, that I am connected because of that forgiveness.

But you know, because of that forgiveness, I can mend this fence. It’s not my doing. It’s the gift that Jesus gives me, that I can mend this fence with my brother and through the connection of forgiveness, this fence becomes whole again, this fence becomes mended, this fence becomes even stronger. And my prayer is that this Advent season, as you are with your families and you see there is a fence that needs to be mended, that you’ll use the gifts God has given us, the gift of Jesus and, through Jesus, the gift of forgiveness to mend that fence. Amen.