Human beings have needs. From simple physiological needs like air and food and water to safety and belonging and self-esteem and fulfilment. Some of these are expressed as instincts and some lead to desires. We have needs – but human beings are also fallen. And our sinful human nature can sometimes use our needs and instincts and desires to take our focus away from God. We can be tempted to use all our time and all our energy in satisfying our needs and instincts and desires, leaving us no time or energy to serve God and other people. We need to learn to say “no” to self and “yes” to God.

Francis of Assisi was a monk – the founder of the order of monks known as the Franciscans. We think of Francis primarily as a preacher and somebody who took care of the poor but in fact he devoted 75 percent of his time and energy to prayer and only 25 percent to preaching and other good works. The reason Francis was able to make such a significant mark on the whole world in a such small amount of time each week was that his prayer life transformed him to be more like Christ. “Biblical holiness means godliness. And true godliness is always rooted in God-centredness. Be holy: Why? “Because I the Lord am holy.” Today many churches have inverted the true spiritual values. We rate skills over sanctity, dynamism over deep devotion, programmes over prayer. So often we forget the words of the 19th Century Scottish preacher Robert Murray McCheyne who said, “It is not great talents God blesses, so much as great likeness to Jesus.” We do not take time to be holy. Saint Francis did!

Even though Francis didn’t write it, this prayer known as the prayer of St Francis has become perhaps the best known example of a “formation prayer”. The very act of praying these words will transform us as people as we as invite God to make us more like Jesus. It can be used as a meditation to help us to reflect on our own lives and our own experiences, and then ask God to form the character of Christ in us.

O divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

God’s Kingdom turns the world upside down. Or rather, the Kingdom of God turns this “wrong way up world” back the right way up again. It challenges our priorities. “Seek first God’s Kingdom and HIS righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

O divine Master
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

We all want people to console us. When we have problems and burdens we long to unload them on to other people and for them to look after us. God’s plan for us is different. God’s plan is that we should cast all our cares on HIM, that HE should bear our burdens.

Matt 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

God’s plan is that, when Christ has taken our burdens, then we can bear other people’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. We can then console others. Instead of looking for other people to look after us all the time, we can then look for other people we can console and comfort and support and strengthen.

1 Corinthians 1:3-6 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.

God wants to comfort us. God the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Counsellor, the Helper, lives inside us to comfort and console us. And when the Holy Spirit the Comforter gives us consolation, God then expects us to offer consolation to others who are in need.

As we become more like Christ we will not be so preoccupied with our own needs and our own sufferings – and think more about caring for the needs and sufferings of other people. This is how we can bring God’s peace, his shalom, his healing and wholeness to a troubled world.

Another prayer which Saint Francis of Assisi (C. 1181–1226) definitely did write says this.
“O God, Creator of mankind, I do not aspire to comprehend you or your creation, nor to understand pain or suffering. I aspire only to relieve the pain and suffering of others, and I trust in doing so I may understand more clearly your nature, that you are the Father of all mankind, and that the hairs of my head are numbered.”

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

-> silence for meditation

O divine Master
grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand;

We all want other people to understand us – we want them to agree that we are right all the time. We want them to be sympathetic to us and take our circumstances into account before they judge us or criticise us. There is another well-known prayer of formation which begins like this.

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, hear me. Deliver me, Jesus,
from the desire of being loved, from the desire of being extolled
from the desire of being honoured, from the desire of being praised
from the desire of being preferred to others, from the desire of being consulted, from the desire of being approved

Instead of wanting to be important – instead of wanting other people to understand us, we should work hard at understanding other people, at putting ourselves in their shoes. We should guard against judging others and criticising others – and seek to understand them instead.

Wherever in the world we find disagreement or conflict or hostility or confusion, it is usually based on a misunderstanding or a breakdown of communication. The path to true peace and reconciliation is frequently through understanding and bridge building and effective communication.

So instead of expecting the other person to understand me – I must learn to understand his or her point of view and his or her concerns. It is only when we understand another person’s needs and hurts that we can really begin to help them.

TWO obvious things I want to say about understanding other people:-

1. Understanding people demands listening to people:

James 1:19 ¶ My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to become angry,

Stephen Covey said “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Too often people listen in order to respond, when instead we should be listening in order to understand.

2. Listening to people takes TIME!

I have spoken a lot about making space in our busy lives and spending time with God in prayer. I want to say the same thing about making space and spending time with other people. The Christian psychiatrist Paul Tournier wrote, “Christians today are too busy. Nobody doubts their sincerity, but everybody doubts their love.” We need to take all time it needs to understand other people. Their hopes and aspirations and fears and anxieties. Instead of expecting people to understand us all the time, we should ask God to help us work hard at understanding other people.

Grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand;

-> silence for meditation

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be loved as to love.

We all want other people to love us. We all need other people to love us – to like us, to respect us, to care about us.

The miracle of the gospel of grace is that God DOES love us. God loves us so much that He forgives our sins and gives us eternal life and the happy certainty of heaven and victory over temptation and so many other blessings as His Holy Spirit lives inside us.
GOD LOVES US. And God’s intention is that we will feel so safe and secure in His love that we will not need other people to love us so much. As we receive God’s love we will be set free to love other people as much as God has loved us. If we are only loving people because they love us back, that is not God’s kind of love.

John 13:34 ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’

We need to learn to love other people with the kind of love that Jesus demonstrated for us on the cross. We need to let go of our need to be loved so that we can truly love other people. That is how we can become channels of God’s peace to them, as God shows His love to them THROUGH us.

And we need to remember that loving with God’s kind of love is not about feelings but about actions! It is about following the Servant King and learning to serve other people.

Mark 10:42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The prayer of Ignatius of Loyola:
Lord give us the grace to serve you as you deserve:
To give and not to count the cost;
To toil and not to seek for rest;
To fight and not to heed the wounds;
To labour and not to ask for any reward
Except that of knowing that we are doing your will.

grant that I may not so much seek to be loved as to love.

-> silence for meditation

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.

We live in a troubled world! Three weeks ago we began a series of sermons on prayer and we talked about peace. We saw that Peace, shalom is a very positive concept of calm, tranquillity, serenity, harmony, reconciliation, wholeness, completeness, well-being. And we saw how we can experience God’s peace in our own lives by fixing our minds on God.

You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is fixed on you, because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26:3 (RSV)

Two weeks ago we looked at the first section of this prayer.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;

Love instead of hatred, pardon for injury, faith in place of doubt. These are the blessings of God’s peace, which so many hurting people desperately need to receive.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

With the prayer of St Francis, we can spend time in prayer to help us overcome our own hatred and anger. We pray so that God will give us His love in this terrible situation. And then we pray so that God can use us to help other people to let go of their hatred and learn to love. “Where there is hatred, let me sow love.”

where there is injury, let me sow pardon;

When we receive God’s forgiveness, God then calls us to forgive others who have hurt us. Using the prayer of St. Francis, we can spend time in prayer to help us forgive those who have injured us. Then we pray so that God can use us to help others to forgive the injuries they have experienced. “Lord, where there is injury, let me sow pardon.”

where there is doubt, let me sow faith;

Using the prayer of St Francis, we can spend time in prayer bringing our own doubts and questions to God and listening for His answers. We pray so that our own faith is strengthened. And then we pray so that God can use us to help others overcome their doubts and find true faith. “Lord, where there is doubt let me sow faith.”

In Christ, God draws near to all who are consumed with hatred and overwhelmed by hurts and struggling with doubts. And God offers his love and pardon and peace. We have thought about these things before. This evening we continue in the Prayer of St. Francis.
Lord make me a channel of your peace.
where there is despair, let me bring hope;
where there is darkness, let me bring light;
and where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope;

A man can live for a few weeks without food. A man can live for a few days without water. A man can live for a few minutes without air. But a man cannot live for even a few seconds without hope.

Looking at the dreadful state the world is in we can easily fall into despair? When that happens the way forward is simple. We need to stop looking at our own circumstances and instead look at God. Somebody said, “A pessimist finds a problem in every opportunity, but an optimist finds opportunity in every problem.” Don’t despair! God is the answer!

Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through 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.
3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Our Christian hope looks beyond the suffering of the present to our glorious hope in Christ. Sometimes we have to let go of the past in order to enjoy the present, and be able to dream of the future.

Especially with those who are mourning and grieving, God calls us to share this hope we have in Christ.

REFLECTION – Where there is despair, let me bring hope

Are you in despair? Bring that despair to God. Find your hope in God.

Do you know anybody who is in despair?

What can you do this week to share God’s hope with them?

====================================================
Make me a channel of your peace:
where there is darkness, let me bring light;

Darkness stands for the Christless life
Darkness is hostile to the Light
Darkness stands for the ignorance of life apart from Christ
Darkness stands for the chaos of life without God
Darkness stands for the immorality of the Christless life.
Darkness is characteristically unfruitful.
Darkness is connected with lovelessness and hate
And darkness is the abode of the enemies of Christ and the final end of those who will not accept him.

1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as
he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light
shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

You sometimes hear it said of a person, “He brightens up the room” – we should be people who brighten up the room !!

REFLECTION – where there is darkness, let me bring light

Are you in darkness? Bring that darkness to God. Let God’s light shine into your life.

Do you know anybody who is in darkness?

What can you do this week to make God’s light shine into their lives

====================================================
Make me a channel of your peace:
and where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian. G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936)
Joy is the serious business of heaven. C. S. Lewis (1898–1963)

Happiness is caused by things that happen around me, and circumstances will mar it; but joy flows right on through trouble; joy flows on through the dark; joy flows in the night as well as in the day; joy flows all through persecution and opposition. It is an unceasing fountain bubbling up in the heart; a secret spring the world can’t see and doesn’t know anything about. The Lord gives his people perpetual joy when they walk in obedience to him. Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899)

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion. – Billy Sunday

There are often very good reasons to be sad. Especially in times of grief and bereavement it is right to mourn and to weep. Christians are called to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and weep with those who are weeping. And God calls us to share his joy with those who are sad.

1 Peter 1:3 ¶ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 ¶ In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

How can we know this joy? Joy comes from the presence of God – so to find true joy we must draw near to God. And we draw near to God through His Word. We draw near to God in worship. We draw near to God through prayer. And as we do so, God will fill us with His joy, the joy which nothing and no one in the world can take away.

John 16:24 Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.

Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

REFLECTION – where there is sadness, let me bring joy

Romans 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

Are you experiencing sadness? Bring that sadness to God. Find your joy in God.

Do you know anybody who is sad?

What can you do this week to share God’s joy with them?

Make me a channel of your peace:
where there is despair, let me bring hope;
where there is darkness, let me bring light;
and where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

We live in a troubled world! Last Sunday evening we began a series of sermons on prayer and we talked about peace. We saw that Peace is much more than just an end to war, an absence of conflict. In the Bible peace is not just a negative, an absence of something, but the Jewish and Christian idea of shalom is a very positive concept of calm, tranquillity, serenity, harmony, reconciliation, wholeness, completeness, soundness, well-being: very positive experiences. And we saw how we can experience God’s peace in our own lives by fixing our minds on God.

You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is fixed on you, because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26:3 (RSV)

And we fix our minds on God though prayer.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phil 4:6-7.
We all need to make time and space in our frenetic overcrowded lives to be in God’s presence and receive his peace, to set aside our busyness and noise to meet God in the silence.

God invites us to receive His peace, but then he also calls us to be peacemakers and peacebringers in this troubled world.
Matthew 5 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

So we pray, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.” “Make me a channel of your peace.” Use me as you choose. Lord live through me to bring your peace to this troubled world. And our world needs peace! In Syria. In Israel and Palestine. In Ukraine and Crimea. With the breakdown of the peace process, now again in Northern Ireland. In so many places the world needs Christians to be channels of God’s peace!

This series of evening sermons on prayer is based around the famous prayer known as the Prayer of Saint Francis, which we often sing in the song “Make me a channel of your peace.” “Make me an instrument of your peace.” One purpose of praying this prayer is to ask God to bless us and give us his peace. Another purpose is to ask God to bless other people and to give them His peace. But another purpose in praying St. Francis’s prayer is so that the very act of praying will change us as people as we as invite God to make us more like Jesus. The prayer of St Francis is a “formation prayer”. It can be used as a meditation to help us to reflect on our own lives and our own experiences. Then we are asking God to form the character of Christ in us. The prayer begins like this.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith;

Love instead of hatred, pardon for injury, faith in place of doubt. These are the blessings of God’s peace, which so many hurting people desperately need to receive.

I begin by stating the obvious. We cannot share God’s blessings with other people unless we have first experienced them ourselves. So the first step to being a channel of God’s peace is to experience that peace in our own lives. We cannot ourselves be channels of love if we are consumed with hatred. We cannot help other people to find pardon and to give pardon if we have not experienced God’s forgiveness or if refuse to forgive those who have injured us. And we cannot share faith if we are full of doubts. So the purpose of using the prayer of St Francis in our personal prayers is firstly so that we can experience God’s peace for ourselves. Only then will God be able to use us to bring His peace to other people.

Lord, make me a channel of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Our world is full of hatred. I could ask us to think about people we ourselves hate – but that could be too personal and too painful for all of us. So instead I want us to think more generally about hatred in our world, and leave us to apply the principles to our own lives in our own time. At different times in history, different groups of people have been the objects of hatred but perhaps the most widely hated group of people in the world today are terrorists.

Tuesday 11th September 2001 is one of those dates which sticks in everybody’s mind. It is often remembered as 9/11. Most people remember what they were doing on that day when the first of four jets hijacked by terrorists crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, followed by a second jet reducing both towers to rubble. 2996 people were murdered and over 6000 others were injured. Another hijacked aircraft severely damaged the Pentagon in Washington, killing 189 people. A fourth jet crashed in Pennsylvania with the loss of 45 lives. Although money in insignificant in comparison to the lives lost, the material damage on that day is estimated at $10 billion with $3 trillion in consequent damage. One commentator that week correctly observed,
“Tuesday 11th September will go down in history as the day the world woke up.”

In the fifteen years since that attack by al-Quaeda led by Osama Bin Laden, the West has seen a number of terrorist attacks, in particular over the last three years by so-called Islamic State. We probably remember the shootings and bombings in Paris in November 2015 which killed 130 people, or the 49 murdered in a night-club in Orlando last June, and the murder of a priest in his church in Normandy in July of last year, or the 12 people mown down by a stolen truck in Berlin the week before Christmas. The tragic fact is that, even without including the many atrocities in Syria and Iraq, Islamic State have so far claimed responsibility for more than 70 terrorist attacks, which have taken more than 3600 lives and injured more than 8100 people. So you see why I say that terrorists are among the most hated people in the world today.

There is a lot of hatred in the world! What should happen to the people who have plotted these hijacks and shootings and bombings and massacres. What ought to happen to the murderers, and to the guilty parties in terrorist organizations, and to the regimes that shelter them? The international community continues to take urgent and decisive action against such people. But the motivation for such action must be clear. It is morally right to act to bring these people to justice. It is morally right to take such actions as would successfully prevent these groups from acting in the future. And it is morally right to take actions which would then be a deterrent against other potential terrorists who might plot such atrocities. It is morally right to act out of a concern for justice. It is always morally wrong to act out of hatred. It is never right to strike out merely as an act of revenge or anger or hatred. The jury is still out on whether it was right to simply execute Osama bin Laden, rather than capture him alive and bring him to trial. We wait to see what will happen to the leaders of so-called Islamic State. But hatred is always wrong!

Listen to these words of Jesus Christ from the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:21-22 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, `Do not
murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.

Matthew 5:38 “You have heard that it was said, `Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’
39 But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also 43 ¶ “You have heard that it was said, `Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

There is a tightrope to walk between a concern for justice and a desire for revenge born out of hatred.

Romans 12:17-21 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

All these terrorist attacks have been the actions of small groups of very evil men and women. The nations of the world must make sure that their responses are measured and appropriate. In most cases those who are most guilty, the hijackers and the shooters and the bombers themselves, are already dead. Innocent people have already been murdered – it is vitally important that more innocent people do not die needlessly. We hope there will be justice, prevention, and deterrence, but not hatred, not revenge, not vengeance.

Since 9/11 and especially over the last few years across Europe we have seen many who have tried to stir up hatred and fear – people who have exploited the acts of terrorists and extremists to fuel racial and religious intolerance. They have tried to spread the guilt of the few on to entire nations or religious communities or particularly on to migrants and refugees. We must make sure that we do not harbour such false ideas. And we must seek to help other people whose lives will only be destroyed by hatred to find God’s love for themselves. Time and time again the Bible teaches us to let go of hate and show God’s kind of love. The Christians of Uganda suffered terribly under Idi Amin. But their Archbishop Festo Kivingere could still write a book entitled “I love Idi Amin”. Christians in Uganda and Christians who suffered under communist persecution in Eastern Europe have so much to teach us about letting go of hatred and bringing God’s love.

I have pointed to terrorists indiscriminately murdering innocent men, women and children to help put our own hatred and anger into context. But there may well be people in our own lives who have hurt us deeply and painfully. It is understandable when we feel anger and bitterness towards such people. There may be people who, we have to admit it, we hate. In many ways it is easier to forgive terrorists we don’t know than people we do know whose actions have wrecked our lives. But for each of us this is where the rubber really hits the road. “Where there is hatred, let me sow love.”

With the prayer of St Francis, we can spend time in prayer to help us overcome our own hatred and anger. We pray so that God will give us His love whatever has happened to us and whatever situations we now find ourselves in. And then we pray so that God can use us to help other people to let go of their hatred and learn to love. “Where there is hatred, let me sow love.”

Make me a channel of your peace:
where there is injury, let me sow pardon;

It is not our place to forgive people for the injuries they have caused to somebody else. It is not for us to declare, “they are forgiven”. Only the person who has been injured has the right to declare that forgiveness. Only those who lost loved ones in 9/11 or in Paris or Berlin have the right to forgive their murderers. And there is no moral obligation on those mourning relatives and friends to show forgiveness to anyone, ever. I do not want to suggest that we should forgive terrorists and their supporters. It is not our place to do so.

But I do want to proclaim the gospel of grace. I do want to say that the Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) And the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) And Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved (Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13). The gospel we proclaim says that Jesus Christ has died to save sinners and that NO sin is too great for God to forgive.

So we can pray that those who have plotted these terrible attacks on the civilised world will be brought to justice. But we should also pray that God, by his grace, will bring them to repentance. I heard somebody say “no torments in hell will be too awful for those terrorists – they deserve the very worst!” That is true. But the Bible says that the Lord is patient with us all, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9) God’s heart is to offer forgiveness to all, even the worst of sinners.

And when we have received God’s forgiveness, then God call us to forgive others who have hurt us. Once again Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Lord’s prayer,

Matthew 6:12 Forgive us our trespasses, our sins, as we also have forgiven those who trespass against us, who sin against us. …. 14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

This is hard teaching! It is not that we earn our forgiveness by forgiving others. Rather it is that as we realise how wonderful it is that God has forgiven us, miserable sinners, so God puts his love in our hearts so that we can forgive other people who have injured us.
We are hearing so many cries for justice this week. The gospel holds out the offer of forgiveness.

Using the prayer of St. Francis, we can spend time in prayer to help us forgive those who have injured us. Then we pray so that God can use us to help others to forgive the injuries they have experienced. “Lord, where there is injury, let me sow pardon.”

Make me a channel of your peace:
where there is doubt, let me sow faith;

Terrorist murders are just another example of “man’s inhumanity to man” which cause many people to doubt the existence of God. Why did God allow this terrible tragedy to happen? Why didn’t God stop it from happening? Is God not almighty? Is God not all-loving? These are important questions. You may recall I dealt with this issue in a sermon just over a year ago, “How can we believe in God in a world so full of suffering?” The answer I gave forms chapter 10 of my book, “Prepared To Give An Answer”.

Many people have doubts. Does God exist? Is God all-powerful? Is God all-loving? Especially in the face of terrorist attacks but also with all the suffering in the world we need to be there to help people overcome their doubts and put their trust in God. In Jesus Christ, God has drawn near to everyone who is consumed with hatred and overwhelmed by hurts and struggling with doubts. Even to these, God offers his love and his pardon and his peace.

Using the prayer of St Francis, we can spend time in prayer bringing our own doubts and questions to God and listening for His answers. We pray so that our own faith is strengthened. And then we pray so that God can use us to help others overcome their doubts and find true faith. “Lord, where there is doubt let me sow faith.”
When we experience hatred or injury or doubt, we can pray, “Lord, make me a channel of your peace.” And any time when we meet other people who are grieving, or are struggling with hatred or injury or doubt, we can pray, “Lord, make me a channel of your peace.” Lord, use me to help these people today! Use me to spread love and forgiveness and faith.

This week, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, let me sow pardon;
where there is doubt, let me sow faith; AMEN

Lord,
make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

This is often called the Prayer of the 13th century Saint Francis of Assisi. In fact it probably started life in 1912 in Paris printed in French in a small spiritual magazine. Around 1920 a Franciscan priest printed the French prayer on the back of Saint Francis. It was copyrighted in English in 1927 in a Quaker magazine which wrongly entitled it “Prayer of Saint Francis.” Actually it is quite similar to a saying attributed to a companion of Francis’s called Blessed Giles of Assisi. The song we sing was written by a South African called Sebastian Temple in 1967.

We will look at this prayer over the next five sermons and use it as a starting point for our own reflections and prayers.

1. Make me a channel of your peace

One of my favourite jokes of all time comes Disney’s Musical, “The Lion King.” It stars
Simba the young lion born to be the Lion King and his friends Pumba the Warthog and Timon the Meercat.
One day Simba was unhappy and grouchy and depressed.
“What’s eating him?” Pumba asked.
“Nothing,” Timon replied. “He’s on top of the food chain!”

There is this assumption that people who are “on top” will have a comfortable safe easy life. In reality the opposite is often the case. So many people are struggling to “get on top” and their lives seem more pressured and stressful because of that.

Vinoth Ramachandra in “Gods that fail”
“The people of the modern West (and the middle class of non-Western cultures) are better fed, better housed, better equipped with health care than those in any previous age in human history. But paradoxically, they also seem to be the most fearful, the most divided, the most superstitious and the most bored generation in human history. All the labour-saving devices of modern technology have only enhanced human stress, and modern life is characterised by restless movement from place to place, from one experience to another, in a frenetic whirl of purposeless activity.”

What most people are desperately seeking, but few are finding, can be summed up in one word – peace.

What does peace mean?

We often think of peace as just the end of war, or the absence of conflict. But in the Bible peace is not just a negative, an absence of something. Rather peace is something very positive: a condition of calm, tranquillity, serenity, harmony, reconciliation.
Peace in HEBREW is shalom – a concept embracing wholeness, completeness, soundness, well-being: all very positive experiences.

Our world is desperately lacking in this peace. So many of the folk we meet in daily life are deeply troubled. Many Christians are struggling with great problems. And there is so much conflict! All around the world many people are working hard to bring peace and reconciliation: Syria and the Middle East, Israel and Palestine, Ukraine and the Crimea, North and South Korea.

All these situations remind us that there is much more to peace than a cease fire or a peace process. Deep and lasting peace demands healing and forgiveness.

Fifteen years ago I had the privilege of spending six weeks on Sabbatical Leave in Uganda. For a few days I stayed at the Africa Inland Mission guest house Matoke Inn in Kampala . There I met Joanna, aCanadian Christian social scientist speaking at an International Conference on Reconciliation and doing research interviewing members of parliament, police and academics, looking at the process of reconciliation and healing in Uganda following the rule of Idi Amin.

Joanna’s thesis is that reconciliation will only be effective and lead to true and lasting peace if there is acknowledgement by those people who have murdered and stolen and abused power that they have done wrong. Until such people are willing to acknowledge their wrongdoing then the people who have been hurt will not be able to move on – there cannot be “closure”. She argues that the problem with most peace processes going on around the world are not working very well because those who have done wrong are usually NOT willing to put their hands up and admit what they have done! The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa led by Archbishop Tutu is being successful because people ARE showing genuine forgiveness. Joanna believes that this is because it is rooted in true Christian forgiveness.

The Bible shows us that this gospel of peace which Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace has brought is the ONLY hope to bring peace to this sin-spoiled world. Christ came to bring us peace. Peace is God’s gift to us through Christ’s death and resurrection.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5
The most important peace any of us can ever experience is peace with God. Reconciliation with our Creator and Heavenly Father, forgiveness of our sins and a restored relationship with God. But status of peace should also bring us a sense of peace, a consciousness of God’s peace which fills our hearts, quietens our restlessness and sooths our pains.

The way to experience peace in the middle of our frenetic lives is to fix our minds on God

Isaiah 26:3 3 You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. 4 Trust in the LORD for ever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal. (NIV)
3 You, Lord, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in you. 4 Trust in the LORD for ever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal. (GNB)

You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is fixed on you, because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26:3 (RSV)

And we fix our minds on God in prayer.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7
Paul is not saying, “Whatever your problems, one quick prayer and everything will be alright.” It is an invitation to continuous prayer, to pray without ceasing! Paul is saying “keep on presenting your requests to God”. And as you keep on bringing your situation to God in prayer, God will keep on meeting your needs and so you will continue to experience that peace which passes all understanding, which only God can give.

And this peace will only come by making time to be with God, by making space for God’s peace to fill our lives. As we were saying this morning, progress in our Christian lives is all about giving God opportunity to reveal Himself in our lives and breathe His peace into our situations.

For all their problems with water supply and health and transport and survival hand to mouth from day to day, the Christians in Uganda know much more of the peace God gives than most English Christians. Even though many of them suffered terribly at the hands of Idi Amin’s regime, these Christians experience God’s peace. They depend on God for their daily bread and for all their day to day needs much more than we think we need to. Their lives are not filled with mindless entertainment on radio and television. Their thoughts aren’t continually interrupted by telephones and “muzak”. They have space in their lives to commune with God and experience His peace.

In contrast, we like to be busy and active. Sometimes we hide from God in busyness and activity. We surround ourselves with noise. What we need is silence and space to meet with God. It’s all about how we use our time.

And then as we experience the peace God gives, we must not keep it to ourselves! In the beatitudes we hear the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.” The Bible calls US to be peacemakers, to be peace-bringers, to share God’s peace with all that we meet in this troubled world.

The starting point is that each of us needs to experience God’s peace in our own lives. And then we are called to become CHANNELS of God’s peace to others – sharing the peace we have experienced – this is our witness to the world. We don’t have anything of ourselves to offer our hurting neighbours. But we can become channels of the blessings we ourselves have received – as Jesus Christ lives IN us and THROUGH us by His Holy Spirit.

“Make me a channel of your peace.” This prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi is one example of what we could call a “formation” prayer. A prayer and meditation which helps form the character of Christ in us. For many years I used this prayer every evening just before I went to sleep. And over the next few weeks we will look at this prayer as a pattern of the kind of life God calls us to lead, and as a prayer we can use to invite God to transform us.

But to begin with tonight I want to share with you something else that I found tremendously helpful from Richard Foster’s book on prayer as I studies it in Uganda. It is a form of prayer which is a way of bringing God into every part of our lives. It’s a kind of prayer which helps us fix our minds on God and so experience His perfect peace. It’s called a breath prayer, which simply means it’s a very short prayer which you can say in a single breath. It’s a prayer you could breath many many times through the day.

One breath prayer has been used by Christians for centuries. “Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” I used this prayer many times each day during my time in Uganda.
But here is a suggestion of a different breath prayer. “Make me a channel of your peace.” A simple prayer we can use first thing when we wake up. “Make me a channel of your peace.”
Last thing before we go to sleep. “Make me a channel of your peace.” Inviting God to take and use us tomorrow.

It’s a prayer we can use whenever it comes into our minds during the day, as a way to help us focus on God whenever we have a moment to pause. “Make me a channel of your peace.”
It’s a prayer we can use during the day whenever anything worries or troubles us.
“Make me a channel of your peace.” May I experience your peace!
And any time when we face conflict, or meet other people who are struggling with pain. “Make me a channel of your peace.” Lord, use me to help these people today!

So I invite you to use the whole of this formation prayer in your devotions every day. And I invite you to use the first line as a breath prayer. “Make me a channel of your peace.”