Easter 6 “Garden Walk: Peace”
May 22nd, 2022 – John 16:33
Receive from God the forgiveness you have not deserved, not the judgement you have, and peace be yours with God through the blood of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
He Is Risen!
Today is the last Sunday of our Garden Walk. We have been taking a metaphorical, imaginary, walk through the Garden of God’s good world. We have been walking with the idea that Jesus’ resurrection brings new life to the world. We walk seeing that Jesus has given us new life to hope for after death. We walk seeing the love and forgiveness God has given to all people. We walk seeing how God is restoring the whole world to the Garden of Eden where we will live forever. We will live forever in the garden at peace with God and each other. It will be lush. It will be beautiful. It will be soothing. It will be full of peace.
All this talk of what “will be” makes us thirty to have it right now.
Instead of a garden, we often walk through a world that is more of a desert.
Instead of new life, we often see death.
Instead of forgiveness, we see debts against us that we are owed.
Often this is due to all the things that are against us. Jesus tells his disciples, and he tells us, that in this world we will have tribulation. It is not a guess. Jesus Himself tells us this. It is a fact.
A Tribulation, by definition, is something that causes great trouble or suffering.
A tribulation is because something or someone is against you.
A few things that are against us, against you, are natural disasters, war, hatred, mean comments, slanderous gossip. Someone who works against you and what you think is right.
Although the word ‘tribulation’ would often describe something great and intense, it does not mean the chronic small things against you do not count. A tribulation can be as simple as living with all these things perpetually against you. Satan always tempting you to sin. People tempting you to sin. Your own body, betraying you, and working against God’s will.
You have a lack of peace. You have a lack of feeling ‘okay.’ You walk through this world in conflict – never at peace. Hurting others as they hurt you.
What Jesus is proclaiming to you in the face of this conflict, what Jesus gives you as someone slaps you in the face, betrays your trust, steals your time, money, or energy from you and those you love – Jesus gives you peace.
He says to you in John 16:33 “Have courage! Be bold! Be of good cheer!” Why? How can we have courage in the face of tribulation? How can we be of good cheer when our cheer is under attack? How can we be bold when the pressures make us feel meek?
Jesus says, have these things because “I have conquered the world.”
What Jesus is saying here is no small thing. He is saying, he has overcome the world and its attacks. He is not saying it will be easy to be cheerful in the face of hurt. He is not saying you can be bold when you are being crushed. He is not saying you can find the strength to do anything.
He is saying He has overcome the world for you. All the things in this world that are against you have been beaten and because of that you have peace.
He is saying you can walk in harmony with God. You can forgive with your words and actions those who He came to forgive. You can spread His good news of forgiveness because He has already given that precious gift to you – to have and to share.
You know that Jesus forgives you all your sins, yes? You know that as you walk through hard times Jesus is with you and will never let you go, right? You know that whether you live or die you are God’s and you will live again, yeah? That is peace. That is not something against you but is a promise from God that is always for you.
Not everybody has this peace. Not everybody knows Jesus died to cancel their debt. Not everybody dwells in the peace and security we have here in His church. God wants them to.
He wants you to walk in His peace in this Garden and be His instruments of forgiveness.
He wants to bring everyone into His Kingdom, walking side by side, in concord.
The name of our foundational book of writings, The Book of Concord, which explains the important core pieces of the Bible to us, is fundamentally a book of peace and harmony. It tells us of the peace with have with God through Jesus, and it tells us of the peace we can confess and share with those around us.
It is important to be disciples of God’s message. To sit at His feet and hear and live with the truth God tells us. We are all at different stages in our discipling. For Isabella, she has been washed at Jesus’ command this morning and sealed with the Holy Spirit and her life of faith is near its beginning. Her faith is really child-like, like she simply depends on her own parents for care.
For others, we dive deeply into the treasury of God’s Word to be fed with what He provides and what He gives us to understand wherever we are at.
No matter where you are, an overview to keep the grand picture in mind refreshes and reminds us of all God has done for us and promised to us.
Next week, we will celebrate the Ascension of our Lord. The time after He walked this earth in His resurrection body when He ascended to rule on high at God’s right hand. We celebrate His “coronation” as Lord of all heaven and earth. We will sing with the angels as we again remember this important part of God’s work for us – and that he will come back from where He went up to on the last day to judge the living and the dead.
The next Sunday after the Ascension, we will celebrate Jesus sending the Holy Spirit, the Comforter to be with us, good times and bad, at the day of Pentecost.
After this, we will start a new series that is more than sermons. On June 19th, we will start a 10-week series which includes, sermons, Sunday-school lessons, Bible-studies, and a VBS curriculum which takes us all, young and old, together through our history with God following the theme of “The Tree of Life.” We will start in the Garden of Eden, where we have been walking in this series with the “now-and-not-yet” of being in the Garden and travel together through ten highlights of history to see how God will lead us back into the Garden of Eden one day.
The place of peace God has promised us where nothing is against us. Where we will walk, talk, and live forever at peace with God and perfect unity with one another.