Closets of Peace

Pastor Burcham's Sermon

Sunday, October 16, 2005

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

I don't know about your house but, at my house, it's closet cleaning time. It happens every fall. It happens every spring. Every fall it means we have to gather up all the summer clothes and put them into boxes and take them downstairs and all the winter clothes have to come back upstairs and get put into the closets. I know, with the weather lately, you think we don't need winter clothes but we all know it can't last, can it? No, it's going to turn cold on us. The snow will be flying before we really want it to. So it's time to clean out closets.

Now cleaning closets, in my opinion, is kind of an interesting thing. It's always kind of an adventure because things sort of get lost in the cracks in closets, things you sort of, all of a sudden, rediscover because they're back in the corner behind some shoe box or something. It's always an adventure.

I really found that to be true this past summer, going through my father's house and going through all of his closets and his records. I know some of you have had that task, too, and it's really quite amazing. As I went through, it was revealing. I really never noticed it when I was growing up, but it became abundantly clear he never found a piece of paper that was really worth throwing away. It was worth keeping. I found incredible stuff, check blanks, canceled checks from the 1950's. Yeah, the bank's going to call him up on that one someday. Grocery lists from the 1970's. I'm not kidding. A parts list when he went to the hardware store when he built our house in the 1960's. Incredible the things that were there, the stuff I found. Some of it was good. Some of it not so good. And some of it, frankly, I wish it would have been thrown out a long time ago.

That's what it means to clean out a closet. You find the good and you keep it and you cherish it. You find the garbage and you throw it away, never to be seen again.

In a real sense, our hearts are kind of like the closets of our soul. It's a place we keep things. It's a place we store up memories, good memories, bad memories, things we want to hold onto and cherish and other things that probably should have been thrown away a long time ago. Maybe you remember the gospel according to Luke when he tells the Christmas story. It talks about how the heart is like the closet where we keep things. After Jesus was born, scripture says this: “And Mary treasured and pondered all these things in her heart.” She kept them in the closet of her heart, kind of like a baby book put up on the shelf. She remembered his birth and she remembered Joseph and the shepherd. She pondered and kept all those things in her heart.

You and I ponder and keep things in our heart. This morning, what I'd like for us to do is open up the closet of our heart and start unpacking it and start bringing it all out into the light so you can really see what's there. You can see some of the stuff you want to keep that's good, but I guarantee you'll find some stuff you don't want to keep. You're going to find some memories back in the closet of your heart that you didn't think you still held. You're going to think about regrets from past decisions in your life. You're going to think about things probably that you're ashamed of. You never wanted to admit to anyone, in fact, you haven't admitted to anyone that you did them. You're going to have guilt feelings that are stored in the closet of your heart. What we need to do is bring all that stuff out. We need to bring it out so the good we can keep and all the regrets and all the shame and all the guilt, all that can be thrown away, never to be seen again. What we're really talking about here is we're after peace this morning. We want God's gift of peace. And when we have peace in our household and peace as sort of an atmosphere, we can enjoy it ourselves, too. But we will never have peace in our homes. We'll never have peace in our relationships unless we're at peace with ourselves, which means the closet has to be cleaned out. And we'll never have peace with ourselves unless we have peace with God. In other words, it takes God to throw away all the garbage.

Now it probably sounds a little bit strange to say we'll never have peace in our family if we're not at peace with ourselves. We like to think our own inner struggles, the things we wrestle with, really only concern us. So if you have something in the past that creeps up at 3:00 in the morning, something you're ashamed of, something you regret, some deed you've done or words that were spoken you wish you'd never said, if those are lingering around in your heart in the recesses of your closet, we like to make ourselves believe that really no one else is affected by that. It's our own personal battle. It's something we have to deal with only by ourselves. But what we fail to see is how much that really affects the entire family. Watch this and see what I mean. (Video.)

The question is what in your life is from before? And when does it find you? It's in the middle of the night when you wake up and, all of a sudden, you think about it. Family occasions when others come around and, all of a sudden, thoughts creep up into your mind. Maybe it's just out of the blue sometime when you're at the office. You think it's not important. You think it doesn't affect anybody else. You just have to deal with it on your own, to just leave it alone. But as you're struggling with that past regret, if you're dealing with that shame and that guilt, your emotions are heightened and, before you know it, you're biting the head off your wife. Then all of a sudden, you don't have time for the kids. If you're not at peace with yourself, if you haven't cleaned out the closets, you won't have peace in your family either.

It's time for us to open up the closet of our heart and dig back into the corners and really ask ourselves, “What am I holding onto?” What is it from your past you're holding onto? What is it that causes you to feel ashamed of something you've done? What is the action you did? What were the words you spoke? What circumstance? What bad decision? What are those things that bring up intense feelings of guilt? Because it's the guilt that will get you. It's the guilt that will overwhelm you. It's the guilt that will paralyze you because guilt tells you you're worthless. Guilt tells you that you have no self worth. Guilt tells you that you'll never live up to the expectations of your family, you'll never live up to the expectations of God, and you'll never live up to your own expectations. Guilt is a favorite tool of Satan. Satan loves to inflict guilt. One of his names is that of the accuser, so he likes to bring up past hurts. He likes to bring up those bad decisions. He likes to bring up those actions you want to forget, and he accuses you with those. And he makes you feel guilty, and that guilt infects you and it infects all of the family. You don't have peace with yourself, and you don't have peace with the other members in your family either.

You need to be at peace with yourself before you can have peace in your family, and the only way you can be at peace with yourself is to be at peace with God. The only way you can be at peace with your past and the things you regret and the things you've done is you need to know you have peace with God, that you're alright with Him, that you're in good standing with Him, and peace with God comes only through Christ Jesus.

Romans 5 says this to us: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Since we've been justified, made right with God, because of the faith He's given to us, we have peace with God because of what Jesus has done for us. It's our faith that makes the difference. It's our faith in Jesus, our belief, our conviction that Jesus is the Son of God. Your faith, your belief, your conviction that Jesus lived among us and, although He was sinless, He took on all of your sin. He took on all of your regrets, all of your shameful actions, all of your dirty words, all of the laundry you want to forget, every skeleton in the closet, He took that upon Himself and faith tells you when He died on the cross and He said, “It's finished,” that meant it's finished for you, too. It's done. It's been dealt with. The sin is forgiven.

Faith tells us, when Jesus died, He died for me, when He rose again, He rose for me. Faith tells us all the dirty secrets of the closet can really be gone forever. You see, it's through forgiveness that we attain peace, the forgiveness we have through Jesus. It's that forgiveness that sort of shines the light of the gospel on all of our life and makes us look at things a little bit differently. That's why Jesus says everything that's in the dark wants to stay there, but we need to bring it out into the light of day. Even the evil deeds we need to bring out into the light of day and let the gospel light shine on it. Did you hear what Jesus said in John 12? He said, “I have come into the world as a light so that no one who believes in me should stay in the darkness.” We don't have to live in the darkness of our past, of our secrets, of the things we're ashamed of, of our guilt. Bring them into the light. Unpack the closet, everything that's in our heart and lay it out there for the gospel to shine on. The things that are good, keep and cherish them. The things that are bad that you regret, let the love of God shine upon that, the love of God scripture attests to again and again and again. Because scripture says, “If you confess your sins, God is faithful and just and He will forgive you of all unrighteousness.” Jesus Himself said, “I have not come into the world to condemn the world. I've come to save the world and to give my life as a ransom for many.” St. Paul says, “While we were still yet sinners, Christ Jesus died for us.” Even the prophet Jeremiah, before Jesus was ever born, declares a new covenant is coming, a new relationship between God and man, a relationship in which God says, “I will remember your sins no more.” God says He chooses to remember your sins no more. No qualifications on that. No stipulations about which sins He will and which sins He won't. “I'll remember none of them.” How many sins do you remember that God has already chosen to forget? How much are you holding onto that Jesus has already paid for? How much garbage is in your closet that needs to be cleaned out? We clean out our closet through forgiveness and knowing of Jesus' forgiveness.

Later on today or this week, I want you to clean out your closet. Spend a few moments with God, maybe at the quiet time before you go to bed at night or when you first get up in the morning. Maybe you just take a drive and enjoy some of the colors. But empty out the closet of your heart and find peace with God. Maybe you need to verbalize it to someone else. I know that's not our history, it's not our tradition. Sometimes it's healthy. Maybe you need to find a friend. Maybe you need to look up one of our elders or one of the pastors of the congregation. Confess it to them. Let them assure you of God's love and forgiveness for you.

The great thing about cleaning out closets is, once you throw it away, you never have to deal with it again. Have peace with God. Because if you have peace with God, that means you can be at peace with yourself. And if you're at peace with yourself, then you can be at peace with the rest of the family as well. Amen.

Copyright 2005 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church