Matt Chandler - The Peace Jesus Brings

If you have your Bibles, Luke Chapter 2 is where we’re going to camp out during our time together today. Several years ago, about four or five years ago, I was invited by a dear friend of mine who pastors a church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to come and preach at his church. My wife often travels with me when I go to interesting places, but she might not join me if I’m going to Houston. If you’re from Houston, it’s a beautiful part of the country, but I would rather not live there. So she would say, «No, thank you,» for that, but for D.C., she would definitely want to come. We made a few days of it, visited all the monuments, and then I began to get ready to preach. I was a little intimidated preaching there on Capitol Hill; in fact, the pastor has not just a doctorate but a Ph.D. from Cambridge, so I’m way out of my league in terms of intellect and style. My style is quite different from what that church is used to, and I am definitely not on the same intellectual plane as some of those scholars. So I was a bit excited and nervous about what the Lord might do.

After seeing the sights, I showed up for church that Sunday morning. The church is on the hill in every way imaginable; it is conservative and old school. In fact, even its architecture demands a certain way of doing church. If you’re not a student of history, historically, churches have been built in a specific way since the Reformation. When you walked into an auditorium, it likely had high ceilings and lots of windows. The pulpit was the central theme of the gathering because it was meant to convey honor to the Word of God—this is a post-Reformation tradition. Nowadays, because of technology, churches often resemble boxes. We don’t want light in because you certainly cannot do any congregational singing, as my grandmother calls it, in a church built like 18th or 19th-century churches where too much light would get in. You’re not interested in controlling sound a hundred years ago because nobody was playing drums in church; the predominant sound of the gathering of the saints was voices. A piano and voices were typically heard—not even the organ yet, for those who consider themselves old school; even the organ was considered new school.

They have a very traditional model and a very traditional way of doing things. When I showed up at church that morning, they presented the order of service, which I had never seen before. Here’s what it looked like: the service would begin with a welcome from the pastor, who would not only welcome the congregation but then enter into what was essentially an 8 to 10-minute homily or pre-sermon. It was the sermon before the sermon. I was now a little more nervous because what if the pre-sermon was actually better than my full sermon? What was I supposed to do then? If the pastor knocked it out of the park, should I just refer back to him and repeat, «What that guy said earlier was awesome. Let’s think about that a little more»? I mean, how do I handle that?

So he gave this homily, a little 8 to 10-minute pre-sermon, and then he led the congregation in an extended period of prayers of confession. The congregation spent 8 to 10 minutes just confessing their sins before God, and the pastor guided them through this, giving them examples and allowing them space to confess their own personal sins before the Lord. Then they sang a hymn. You know, grab your hymnals and turn to this page. They don’t have a worship pastor; they have a song leader or service leader who leads the congregational singing, so what you hear is the voices of the people. Even the instrumentation is pushed way into the background. Don’t think you know hymns like «The Old Rugged Cross»; no, you’re still in the wrong century—they’re not progressive like that. They sing old Puritan hymns—not a lot of melody but really rich, beautiful lyrics.

After that, another pastor got up and led in another long block of prayers; this time, it was prayers of pardon. He spent a lot of time praying prayers of confession, and then he came back up and led in prayers of pardon, where we rejoiced in the fact that God has forgiven us of everything we confessed. Then, they sang another hymn, and after that, a guy got up and read the text that I was going to be preaching from. We stood and read that text together, and then I got up to preach. There was only one service, no clock, no camera, and so, man, I…