CALL TO WORSHIP:
I have not often preached from
the lectionary here at Trinity River, but today I will. With churches around
the world, we will look today Ephesians 2, verses 11-22. I encourage you to have your Bible open there,
where you will find the verse, “He is our peace.”
Do you remember the song “I’ve
Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart?”
When I was little, Mom taught me that song. When we got to the second verse, she used the
King James language that she had learned, singing “I’ve got the peace that
passeth understanding down in my heart.”
In my six-year-old mind, what I heard was: “I’ve got the peace that
passes thunder standing down in my heart.”
There is gospel in that. The
peace that passes thunder.
When we talk about “peace” in
church, we often focus on our horizontal relationships, how Jesus helps us all
get along better. I believe that is
true. Romans tells us, so long as it is up to us, to live at peace with all. I
believe that God makes us more loving and kinder and more compassionate as we
are transformed, and that makes the world a better place. That was a big part of Jim’s excellent sermon
last week.
That is important, but that is
not the peace that Jesus talks about and it is not what Paul is talking about
in Ephesians 2. We are today going to
talk about a fundamental gift that comes to God’s children, peace with God.
This is the principal meaning of peace
in scripture, and it is the one that is much harder to conceptualize, much
harder to grasp, much more mystical. But
it is of so much value. And it comes
because God lives within us, because the canyon we have created between
ourselves and God has been bridged by Jesus Christ.
In praying about and preparing
for this week, my mind has been brought back time and again to the great hymn
we will sing today, “Before the Throne of God Above.” Its words were written
150 years ago, so it is remarkable that it has become, in the last 15 years,
one of the most popular contemporary worship songs that our college students
and young adults share. Earlier this week, not knowing it would be a part of
our service today, my daughter Annessa began singing it at the piano, just
because. I can’t get away from it. It has been on my mind all week. As God has
directed me in how to preach about our access to Him, He has kept these lyrics
in the forefront of my heart and mind:
Before
the throne of God above I have a strong, a perfect plea:
A
great high priest whose name is Love who ever lives and pleads for me.
My
name is graven on His hands, My name is written on His heart.
I
know that, while in heaven He stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart.
When
Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within,
Upward
I look and see Him there, who made an end to all my sin.
Because
the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free,
For
God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.
Behold
Him there, the risen Lamb, my perfect spotless righteousness,
The
great unchangeable I AM, The King of glory and of grace.
One
with Himself I cannot die. My soul is purchased by His blood.
My
life is hid with Christ on high, with Christ my Savior and my God!
[Charitie
Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne,” 1863]
I look forward to our sharing it together as we
worship.
So, glorify the Lord with
me. Let
us exalt His name together.
SERMON audio begins here
Peace. Jesus brings us peace, but
not as the world gives. [John 14:27] What we get is not what we expect. It is
so much better. Those around us have a limited, earth-bound view of “peace,”
just hoping that the yelling will stop and all the skirmishing sides will go
back to their own corners. Jesus conveys so much more. The peace Jesus brings
is peace with God. It is the assurance that comes from knowing that our sins
are forgiven and our eternity is secure because God holds us in the palm of His
hand, that we need not worry because everything will be all right. Not as the
world gives, Jesus is moving and speaking and acting in an entirely different
dimension.
In 2004, the reigning
Emmy-winning best drama, consistently at the top of the ratings, was “The West
Wing.” In its fifth season, it aired an episode that portrayed a mock
documentary, a PBS-style behind-the-scenes interview with the White House staff,
taking its audience backstage to hear the whys and the hows and the unvarnished
“reality,” so to speak, of what the characters were really like. The name of
the episode was “Access.”
For 22 years, “Access Hollywood”
has found a home on your TV, reporting so-called news and gossip and inside
information on the entertainment industry. There is apparently a real audience
who wants to know this stuff. Last
December, the show shortened its name to just “Access.”
Have you noticed that your nose
never itches until your hands are full, until you don’t have access to scratch.
Access is addicting. We want
right of entry, an admission voucher, the key. Like Charlie in Roald Dahl’s
novel, we want the golden ticket to get into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. When
we have access, we are smiling. When access is denied, we are frustrated and
itchy, and we are far from at peace.
In the Old Testament, access to
God was a struggle. God spoke through law and prophets and donkeys and bushes
instead of interacting with the people directly. Moses at least got to go
inside the Tent of Meeting. But even Moses, when he asked to see the face of
God, was denied.
If you have been in church very
long, you know the story of the temple curtain. As Jim taught us a couple of
weeks ago, the most sacred part of Solomon’s temple was the Most Holy Place,
the Holy of Holies. This area, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, was
guarded by gilded cherubim and separated from the people by a massive curtain. The
curtain was both beautiful and heavy and was meant to divide God from the
people. The Ark – the presence of God – was
on one side; the worshipers were on the other. This was not an odd whim of
God’s; this was an image, an indication of the sin that separated all people
from holy God.
And then, when Jesus was
crucified, the curtain of the temple was “torn from top to bottom.” [Mark
15:38] The top of this thirty-foot-high curtain was beyond reach, so this split
did not begin with human hands. This emblem of the old ways, the partition between
God and His people, was ripped in two. Symbol of all symbols.
Jesus was, during His time on
earth, the Word made flesh [John1:14], the exact representation of the Father [Hebrews
1:3]. All there is of the Deity dwelt in Him [Colossians 2:9]. He told His
closest followers that when they saw Him, they saw the Father [John 14:9]. This
is the meaning of incarnation – God in a body. A singular importance of the
coming of Christ was to show us God, up close and personal. Max Lucado’s book
dedicated to the incarnation is called God
Came Near. Lucado says:
Pilgrims with no vision
of the promised land become proprietors of their own land. They set up camp. They exchange hiking boots for loafers and
trade in their staff for a new recliner. Instead of looking upward at Him, they
look inward at themselves and outward at each other. The result? Cabin fever. Quarreling families. Restless leaders. Fence-building.… Humans were never meant to dwell in the stale
fog of the lowlands with no vision of their Creator. That’s why God came near.
[Max Lucado, God Came Near, Multnomah Press, 1987,
pp. 160-161]
After His time on earth, Jesus
made sure that our intimate knowledge of God was permanent. In our scripture
for today, Paul teaches that the cross of Christ provides us access. First God
came near to us, now we have been brought near to God.
If I can leave you with one idea
today, let it be this: Peace with God results from access to God. The two are
inextricably intertwined. The reason that Jesus is our peace is that He has
destroyed what divided us from God. He has torn the curtain in two. He has demolished
the wall. He has bridged the gap.
Ephesians
2:11-22 :
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
It is tempting to read this Ephesians
passage solely as a call for a termination of tensions between the Jews and the
Gentiles. That is indeed a message of Paul, who consistently tells us
that, in Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female: for we are
all one in Christ Jesus. [Colossians 3:11; Galatians 3:28] The early church had
struggles between its Gentile Christians and its Jewish Christians, just as the
church today has struggles. Doubtless, part of Paul's message is pointing out
that through the cross, God has brought Jews and Gentiles together.
But that is not the primary point
of this passage.
It is tempting to read these
verses as an object lesson on immigration, on accepting the foreigner and
ending xenophobia. I believe that when the peace of God enters our lives, we
are changed. We look on others differently than we did before and see them not
for their labels but as children of God. That is a truth of scripture, but that
is not Paul’s focus in Ephesians 2, where he describes our citizenship in an
eternal kingdom, built on the cornerstone of Christ. Today’s scripture is not about national
borders and political asylum.
It is also tempting to read this half-chapter
as a call for what Miss America finalists speak of as “peace on earth.” Surely,
we may think, if Jesus came to preach peace, then His coming must mean that
hostilities will end, that bullets will stop flying, that politicians will quit
sniping, that bullies will quit bullying, that war in the Middle East – and
indeed around the world – will cease. But if that is what Paul meant, then he
was hopelessly wrong, and Jesus was a failure, for not a day has gone by since
Jesus set foot on earth without bloodshed and war. If that is what the angels meant when they
sang “peace to those on whom His favor rests” on the night of His birth, then
the angels were sadly incorrect. Not a day has gone by in the meantime that can
be classified as “peace in the Middle East.” If that is what Isaiah meant when
he declared the coming messiah to be the Prince of Peace, then Isaiah was terribly
misguided. Not an hour – indeed not a minute – has passed since Jesus came
without aggression and meanness and destruction somewhere on this planet. An eighth-grade
history student can tell you that the coming of Jesus did not make all nastiness
and cruelty stop, did not end all war, did not even put a measurable dent in
worldwide hostilities. If that is what Paul meant, then these verses amount to
no more than a fairy tale.
Yes, God’s peace means that the
lion and the lamb will lie down together one day, but that is not here and now;
that is on the Holy Mountain of the Lord after the creation of a new heaven and
a new earth. [Isaiah 65:17-25] Yes, they will beat their swords into plowshares
and study war no more, but the prophet tells us that too will be on God’s
mountain in the last days. [Isaiah 2:4]
None of that is what Paul is
getting at here. Paul is talking about something else, something much more
immediate. This scripture is about peace with God because we have access to
God. Peace comes because the presence of God is with us and inside us. That is
why Emmanuel – God with us – means peace on earth. The angels were
right. We are “no longer strangers” because He has broken down the wall,
bringing near all of us who were far away, giving us access to the Father by
the work of the Spirit through Jesus Christ.
The first half of this great
second chapter of Ephesians focuses on what we were – dead in our sins and
gratifying the cravings of the flesh – before God, who is rich in mercy, saved
us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ to do good works prepared in advance
for us. Then, in verse 11, the Apostle moves from discussing members of his audience
as individuals to discussing his Gentile Christian readers as a community. Just
as we were formerly dead in our sins, so too were the people of Ephesus, home
of the great pagan temple of Diana, formerly excluded from the children of God.
They were known as uncircumcised Gentiles. In that time and place, circumcision
was what the Jews thought of as the crucial distinction. Paul says the
Ephesians were hopeless, separated from Christ and without God. This is not
racial or ethnic commentary. This is a continuation of the first half of the
chapter, another way of saying that they were dead in their sins.
Paul hastens to verse 13, telling
the Ephesian church and, by extension, us – those who have been saved by grace
through faith - that they, and we, have been brought near by the blood of
Christ. No matter how far away they
were, the salvation of Christ is sufficient to bring them to God. No matter how
far away we are – no matter what we have done, what thoughts we have
cultivated, what words we have spoken in anger, what selfish ambitions we have
recklessly pursued, what greedy passions we have gorged – God’s saving grace
brings us near.
This is the good news. We were
not far away because of nationality or address. We were not far away because we
had been blown there by a typhoon. We were far away because we went running
full speed in the wrong direction, because our addiction to sin left us so
separated from our holy God that we could not even see Him from there. There
was so much more than a curtain between us and God. We had no sense of His
presence and no desire to walk with Him. We were so removed that there was no
way we could get back.
So, God reached through time and
across the chasm and brought us near.
Despite the disappointing recent
movie adaptation, I strongly recommend to you Madeline L’Engle’s classic novel A Wrinkle in Time. The title comes from
L’Engle’s explanation of the tesseract.
In higher geometry, a tesseract is a cube of a cube. If you think of the
first dimension as a line, and the second dimension as a square, then the third
dimension allows the cube. And squaring the square renders the fourth
dimension, called time; and cubing the cube – the tesseract – is the fifth
dimension. You cannot draw it with a
pencil.
The characters in the novel
explain how the tesseract allows them to whisk across the universe:
Mrs.
Whatsit sighed. “Explanations are not easy when they are about things for which
your civilization still has no words.” Mrs. Whatsit looked over at Mrs. Who.
“Take your skirt and show them.”
Mrs.
Who took a portion of her white robe in her hands and held it tight.
“You
see,” Mrs. Whatsit said, “if a very small insect were to move from the section
of skirt in Mrs. Who’s right hand to that in her left, it would be quite a long
walk for him if he had to walk straight across.”
Swiftly,
Mrs. Who brought her hands, still holding the skirt, together.
“Now,
you see,” Mrs. Whatsit said, “he would be there, without that long trip…. We
travel in the fifth dimension…. The fifth dimension’s a tesseract…. A straight
line is not the shortest distance between two points.”
[Madeline L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, (1962, Appreciation
edition, New York: Square Fish, 2007), pp. 85-88]
If the theoretical mathematics
are beyond you and if the science fiction language is not your cup of tea,
that’s ok. The point is this –through the work of Jesus, God moves in
dimensions for which we have no vocabulary to fold the laws of the universe, to
wrinkle time, if you will, to bring us near to Him. We are, by comparison, an
insect, so remote that we could never even map out the route. The line to get
us back extends way beyond what we could ever travel.
God has brought us near.
Verse 14 is critical to Paul’s
point. “He is our peace, who has made
the two groups one and destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”
Yes, Paul is saying that the Jew and the Gentile are reconciled as the wall
between them is torn down, but there is so much more here. He does not say that Jesus brings peace by
tearing down walls. He says that Jesus is our peace, and that one thing
that peace does is tear down walls. In other words, peace comes first and then peace
removes barriers, not the other way around. Jesus walks on water long before he
quiets the wind and waves.
Too many settle for asking Jesus
to be a subtractor, to take away what bothers us. We don’t achieve peace by
stopping our hostilities; we receive peace despite the surrounding hostilities.
Jesus has come to add to the world. The easy way out is to ask for the storm to
be calmed; the mature Christian finds Jesus in the midst of the storm and
understands peace even as the thunder rolls. The peace that passes thunder,
standing down in my heart.
Another song you learned in a long-ago
Sunday School class or perhaps Vacation Bible School was absolutely right: “With
Jesus in our boat, we can smile through the storm, as we go sailing home.”
Paul says that Jesus makes peace
within Himself, reconciling all of us to Christ. And doing so took a cross,
where God looked on Christ and pardoned us. We were brought near from far away,
across what my late friend Grant Cunningham called “The Great Divide.” God made
a way. There is a bridge to cross the great divide. There is a cross to bridge
the great divide. [Grant Cunningham and Matt Huesman, “The Great Divide,” BMG
Music Publishing, Inc.,1996]
As Jeremiah and Ezekiel warned
us, there are many in the world who proclaim “peace, peace,” when there is no
peace. [Jeremiah 6:14; Ezekiel 13:10] The best the world can offer is something
like the fantasy John Lennon sings about in “Imagine,” perhaps the worst song
of all time: people living in peace because they have imagined away all
countries, all possessions, all religion. The song is right about one thing –
he is a dreamer, but he and the world are so wrong about what brings
peace. The Dalai Lama is wrong when he says that peace is the manifestation of
human compassion. [https://www.oneindia.com/2007/01/31/peace-is-manifestation-of-human-compassion-dalai-lama-1170257607.html]
Please do not mishear me. I am happy for John Lennon to inspire people to be
nice and live in brotherhood. I understand that the Dalai Lama is tapping into
a universal truth about compassion. Jim challenged us last week to change the
world through friendship. I know many people whose entire life’s course has
been changed for the better because someone showed them kindness and
benevolence; but peace, the kind of peace that Paul is talking about and that
Jesus gives, is not something that we humans create. Peace is Jesus, tearing
down the wall between us and God.
Look at the birds of the air:
they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?... Consider the lilies of the
field…: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore, do not be anxious, saying,
‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ … Your
heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you…. Do not be
anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself…. [Matthew 6:26,
29, 31-34 (ESV)]
There is much in the world that
can bring worry, whether it is 110° days; or the news, with word of politics
and wildfires and hackers and tropical storms; or the latest report from your
doctor, with cautions and concerns and prescriptions and lists of things you
are not allowed to do anymore; or your bank statement or the silence when you
wish phone would ring or the state of our schools or those kids today or
whatever. And yet Jesus says, “Do not be anxious, Consider the lilies of the
field...” In Philippians, Paul says:
Do not be anxious about
anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. [Philippians
4:6-7, NIV]
The Living Bible paraphrases
that: “Don’t worry about anything. Pray
about everything…. [and] you will experience God’s peace, which is far more
wonderful than the human mind can understand.” [Philippians 4:6-7, TLB]
That is peace that passes all
understanding, and it is not what the world gives. Jesus is telling us that,
despite all those things that cause most people to worry, everything will be
all right because He is present. We revel in our access, in having been brought
near, as we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness – trust Jesus and have
faith in God - and it will be all right. That is peace.
In Ephesians 2, Paul says that
the cross means that all of us – Jew and Gentile, those far away and those near
– are reconciled to God in the here and now.
Think about how we use that word reconcile in other contexts. People get divorces because of
“irreconcilable differences.” We
reconcile our checkbook, or at least we are supposed to. When you reconcile it, you bring it into
balance, you make sure that your records match the bank’s, that there is
agreement.
When we are reconciled to God, we
are brought into equilibrium, into accord, even though our lives were a mess,
unbalanced and completely out of harmony with God. We are reconciled to the
Father, Paul says in verse 16, by the cross, where our hostilities with God
were ended. We have peace because we are no longer separated from God, for the
two have become one. He is our peace,
who has broken down the wall.
And if it were not clear enough,
Paul writes verse 18: “For through Him we both have access to the Father by one
Spirit.” How wonderful. All persons of the Trinity working together to be our
peace. Through Christ, to the Father, by the Spirit. The paragraph that begins
with “He is our peace” concludes with “we have access.”
Jesus said: “Very truly I tell
you, I am the gate for the sheep…. [W]hoever enters through me will be saved.
They will come in and go out and find pasture.” [John 10:7,9]
Why are peace and access inseparably woven together? Why does access bring us peace? When we frame
the question that way, then the answer jumps out at us. We are not at peace when
we are not near God. When we are brought near to God, we are at peace. The Psalmist
says:
Whom
have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My
flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and
my portion forever. Those
who are far from you will perish… but as for me, it is good to be near God. [Psalm
73:25-28]
Now, we get to the
punchline. Verse 19. We are no longer strangers to God. The NIV says we are no longer “foreigners and
strangers.” Other translations use words like “aliens,” “sojourners,” and
“outsiders.” The Message says, “wandering exiles.” Paul is not speaking
derisively of people from other lands; he is describing us, before we knew
Christ, as homeless, souls with nowhere to land, people condemned to a
peripatetic, rootless life of drifting, with nowhere to go and nobody waiting
for us when we get there. That is as good a description of hell as I know.
But that is no
more. We are no longer strangers;
but instead we are fellow citizens with God’s people and members of His
household. We have been brought near. We have access. We have been given the garage door code. We
can get in, and we don’t have to sneak. We have an engraved invitation and a
place set at the table.
And it does not
stop there. He is, with us as a part, building something better that is rising
to become a temple which will be God’s very home. “Fix in us Thy humble
dwelling.” [Charles Wesley, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”] Isaiah would
call that the Holy Mountain of the Lord.
The
verses we read responsively from Hebrews place the exclamation point on this
whole idea of peace and access. Just as the ancient High Priest could enter the
Most Holy Place, we approach the throne with confidence and, in words that echo
Paul, we “draw near to God” with a sincere heart and full assurance. Peace
comes because of that assurance, because it is here, before the throne of God
above, that we receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
John Lowe says:
Christ is the author of peace
between God and His people. Sin separates men from God; nor can any man, on his
own, make his peace with God; what he does, or can do, will not do it; and what
will, he cannot do. Christ is the only suitable person for this work, for He
stands between God and man, and is the only One able to bring it about, seeing that
he is God as well as man. His peace is a lasting one. [John Lowe, “The Peace
Which Christ Accomplished in His Death,” 5/9/18,
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/8-8-lesson-10-the-peace-which-christ-accomplished-in-his-death-john-lowe-sermon-on-law-of-commandments-230632?ref=SermonSeriesDetails]
Let
me tell you what peace means to me, in my life, as I live out my faith. Peace means that everything is going to be
all right. Yes, it will be all right eternally, in heaven, on the Holy Mountain
of the Lord. But it is more than even that. It will be all right right now. Peace
is not the absence of trouble. Peace is the presence of Christ in the middle of
my storm. Before the throne of God I stand. I have access to the one who is our
peace, who has broken down every wall, the wall between me and my God and the
walls between me and the people around me. I can hurt, but it will be all
right. I may not understand, but it will be all right. I can commit the same
sin again and again and again and know I am wrong and feel guilt and even shame
as the Holy Spirit convicts me, and I must work on that and repent because sin
robs me of some of the joy of my salvation, but it will be all right. I can be
abused, people I love can hurt and die, I can face disappointment, politics can
disillusion me, my wife can be mad at me, my kids can move away, work can be
unsatisfying for weeks on end, and this church can grow all too slowly as we
founder looking for a permanent place and time, but it will be all right.
It will be all right because I
have access to the Creator of the universe, to the savior of the world, to pure
love, to peace, to the One who has already accepted me and pardoned me and made
a way so that I am no longer a stranger, who brings me near and abides with me
and has given me the golden ticket to something much greater than a chocolate
factory. Come to think of it, it will be
a lot better than all right.
In
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
========================================================================
TIME OF
SILENCE, MEDITATION, REFLECTION, AND PRAYER
Many Christians, when they think
about peace, limit that to two things.
One is that if we are good Christians, we will be nice to each other and
inspire the world to less conflict. Of course, we should show kindness and
compassion. That was last week’s sermon. In Ephesians 2, Paul is going deeper,
talking about what is primary and what has to exist for there to be real world peace,
on God’s Holy Mountain, when every knee will bow and every tongue will
confess.
The
other way that many Christians think about peace is in relation to death. They
read passages about the peace of God as a comfort to themselves and others as
death approaches, and of course God offers a special measure of serenity to His
children as we walk through the valley of the shadow.
I am so grateful to
Russell for singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” We tend to think of that hymn as
a funeral song, a song about death. And indeed, it is a consolation at the end.
You may remember the string quartet playing it in the movie as the Titanic
sinks.
But death is not
really what that hymn is about. We do not have to wait to die to grow nearer to
our God – He has already done the work, already bridged the divide. Sarah Flower Adams actually wrote those words
about Jacob’s ladder at Bethel, thinking not about death but about new life
after an encounter with God. One stanza of the hymn that was not in the
arrangement Russell sang says this:
Then
with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise,
Out
of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise;
So by my woes to be nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to
Thee!
[Sarah Flower Adams, “Nearer My God to Thee”|
Jesus has come and
preached peace to those of us who were far away, for through Him we all have
access to the Father by the Spirit. And His peace, which passes all
understanding, is not limited to kindness and helpfulness and being able to
face the end. His peace breaks down every wall and brings us near to
God.
This
time of invitation is for anyone who has for the first time experienced God’s
grace through faith and is ready to share that faith with us all, anyone who is
ready to join our church, anyone who has renewed your faith and reveled once
again in that nearness. If that is you, you may come forward and share with me or
kneel at this altar as we sing or respond to God within your own heart as you
stay right where you are. However you respond, God is speaking to you. Don’t be a stranger.
