I want to tell you a little bit about this idea of using the path in order to find peace.
When my sister and I were younger and we were, well, any time would have been when we were younger, technically,
with that, though, is we were riding along with my mom in this neighborhood near our school.
And as we're going along these speed bumps, my sister says, why are we going this way? This is a dead end.
And my mom and I were looking at each other, we're looking down the road, we're looking the other way,
we're looking around, and we're like, where is this dead end?
We had absolutely no idea, but my sister's like, I saw it on the sign.
It says, this is a dead end. So we were really, really confused.
So we went ahead and we turned around and we went back to try to find the sign.
And there was the sign, just as my sister said, which said in clear English, road humps.
Which is when we discovered my sister needed glasses.
You see, it's fascinating that oftentimes we can be going down a street and completely miss what it is that the signs are saying is up ahead.
And we can oftentimes not even realize where we're even going, or even ask the question, is that actually where we want to go?
You see, that's also what we end up seeing in regards to peace.
This is our second Sunday of Advent. But the thing with peace is that oftentimes we try to find it in different ways.
Oftentimes by political paths or economic paths or sometimes social or even social media paths.
Somehow we think we're going to find it in our TikTok feed, whatever it might be.
Is that there are lots of different ways that we try to find a sense of peace.
And yet, they still leave us lacking.
I want to tell you a little bit about a neighborhood in North Houston called Independence Heights.
Have you heard of Independence Heights before?
Okay, a few. Maybe not all of you though. I see one or two people like this.
And truth be told, is that it's an easily overlooked neighborhood.
When I was getting my urban planning degree, we studied about it because it was originally the first black town in Texas.
It was the first one that was actually incorporated. And historically, this was the early part of the 20th century.
It was at a time during segregation.
And so being able to have their own town, their own city, was a very important thing at that time.
And it was just north of, just outside of the Houston city limits.
So if you think about I-45, north, and then 610 north, think about the northwest corner right there.
That's Independence Heights. Right next to a place you may be more familiar with, Garden Oaks Oak Forest.
Now, with that though, is that after about two decades, it was no longer its own city.
Independence Heights got annexed by Houston. Many different reasons.
But many of which was that they were unable to get their roads paved.
They were unable to get infrastructure and good plumbing and lights and everything else that you could go just below what we see now as 610 and find it.
But the buses that would take people back and forth across the city with those who are working throughout the city, as soon as they would get there, would stop just outside of it and not go in.
And with so many things facing this community, it became practically impossible for them to continue as a city to the point where finally they said toward the end of the 30s,
yes, we'll go ahead and be annexed by Houston.
But you see, the reality was that Houston wasn't really looking to annex them because they wanted to make it a better neighborhood.
At the time, Houston was doing everything it could to become the largest city in Texas.
So they could stand out in the census, which we know eventually they were.
But with that, though, is we have seen over time then freeways coming up all around it to the point where people don't even know of the neighborhood there as a whole.
But other problems like flooding and a lack of development in the area has made a real struggle.
With all these things that happen, what we would end up seeing is that while the scripture may say to make the mountains level of the hills level and the valleys filled in,
we sometimes forget about, yeah, but did you pave the roads?
See, making straight the way of the Lord.
It's a tricky thing sometimes.
You see, oftentimes we're looking at things for peace that are just more of a ignoring what may be there at hand.
See, many of the issues that we faced economically for a long time, we saw that many things were just kind of brushed over for many, many decades.
And so even to the point of instead of saying our whole system needs to change because our entire economy has now shifted a century and a half ago,
instead, it's just saying, well, as long as you just work hard enough, I'm sure everything will work out just fine.
But here's the difficulty with this.
Peace doesn't just happen.
Peace never just happens.
It's never easy.
See, even right now, if you were to actually look at a floodplain map, you actually see that a lot of northern Houston doesn't actually have a major issue with that except this one pocket right there where there's poor irrigation next to these freeways,
a place that ended up being paved over because of freeways that didn't exist before.
And one thing that's interesting is when you look at cities that have loops that go around them like 610, historically they were developed because they were meant to be an opportunity that during warfare,
military vehicles could go around an entire city to get anywhere they needed to go and to take building resources anywhere they were needed.
But what was the one neighborhood that wasn't included when that loop was developed?
The neighborhood that was just north of it.
The thing with it is that many of these things, they don't just naturally fix themselves.
You have to make the effort to figure out how to include everyone when a city is thriving the same way that our city has been.
But more than that is that we end up seeing the same thing in our spiritual lives.
Our spiritual lives don't just flourish just because we hope that they do.
We put in our time on Sunday or we made sure that the kids got confirmed.
But rather is it an ongoing process.
It doesn't stop.
That was the thing that John the Baptist ended up discovering.
He couldn't just end up proclaiming the way of the Lord by just living a regular everyday life like anyone in the Jewish community.
He couldn't just go be a Pharisee or a Sadducee or a scribe or any of those others.
He had to leave everything he knew and get away to discover the path that would be cleared for God.
Imagine that you're out there in the middle of nowhere and all you have is maybe some dead camel that you can skin and make as your own clothing.
And let's be honest, honey back then did not come in little bottles that are shaped like a bear.
There are no honey pots. There's no winnie, but you probably had to reach in and you probably got stung quite a bit by those bees.
The thing with this is that trying to find the path oftentimes takes true reflection inside because we are so often the problem.
We're the ones who end up causing so much struggle and God is not wanting us to start the path by figuring out everybody else that needs to get it right, but he's starting with us.
See, that's the thing about this is that we can easily overlook these things because of everything else that distracts us in life.
If you look, there's actually a Whole Foods that's right there on 610.
And if you were to look over there today, you can see it's beautiful, like bright and colorful and everything, and that there are these murals that they're on the side.
It is the Whole Foods, independent sites.
It was not originally going to be Whole Foods, independent sites.
It was going to be Whole Foods, garden oaks.
It's not in garden oaks. It's in independent sites.
But the natural automatic way of labeling it was to make sure that it was geared toward the closest wealthy neighborhood you could find.
And people had to stand up and say, no, it's independent sites.
And now you can even go in there and buy the fixings that would go towards Soul Food, which is very popular in the neighborhood there.
But it didn't just happen automatically.
It wasn't the original business plan. It had to take effort.
See, oftentimes that's the thing whenever we're looking for a sense of peace.
See, we have a lot of things like hatred and hurt that may come up in our lives.
There are things where people have genuinely harmed us in different ways.
Ways in which we have genuinely been put at a disadvantage.
There are people around us who genuinely deserve worse than what they get.
And yet that ends up destroying us on the inside because it consumes us.
And we become less focused on making the world better and more focused on making sure that someone gets what they need, what they deserve.
How does that bring peace? It doesn't.
See, that's the thing with this is that when we looked at John the Baptist and he is proclaiming comfort,
comfort wasn't a nice bed. Comfort wasn't an easy job.
Comfort wasn't just fitting in with his friends.
Comfort was not just somehow hoping that everything would work out.
Comfort took years of even wondering what was going to happen before the Messiah walks up
and he's able to say, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
The truth is that as we're in this season, this wintery season, this time of cold, this time of dark,
you probably have many opportunities to reflect back on what's been happening this year, five years, ten years.
And to wonder what is all this even leading to?
But you see, the peace that we're looking for isn't just hoping that maybe the garland and the ornaments and everything else
would somehow brighten our hearts, but rather knowing who it is that they proclaim to come into this world for us.
Which is good because my Christmas tree still isn't up yet, by the way. No idea. I know.
I'll get it up before the party, I promise.
But you see, the thing is that oftentimes we don't know what that next step may be.
Independence Heights? No idea the future of Independence Heights.
The 45 expansion, there's a good possibility that it may be threatening to take over land from one of the oldest churches in all of Houston.
And bit by bit, instead of raising up families' homes or creating better irrigation,
more likely they're going to be bought out and forced to leave the neighborhood as a whole.
The future of the first black town in Texas.
We oftentimes don't know for sure how to handle the issues that are facing us.
And we know that they are not just here, but the issues that are facing in Europe and Middle East, Asia,
much of the economic downturn, the one child system that had been set up for so long
and that now the workforce in second biggest economy in the world, maybe the first,
doesn't even have enough people to work in it.
Africa and many of the issues facing Kenya, we don't have easy answers.
But the piece that we're looking for doesn't just come from finishing the article and turning off the news,
and it doesn't come by just hoping and wishing that something would change it.
But we have to start and look to see what systems, what actions have we had in place here
that need to change for the world that we have around us.
And the piece is never easy.
When we see Christ Jesus coming into this world, it doesn't stop at the manger.
That's already hard enough as it is, being born in a barn.
But more than that is to be able to look and to say, you've got the next three decades to go through so much
that's going to finish with a sacrifice for us.
See, we here, I'm not here to offer you something that's easy or cushy or gentle.
That's not why I'm asking you to be here with the church. That's not why I'm asking you to know Jesus.
I'm sorry. That's not the final part of this.
The final part is not the easy answer or the quiet reflection.
The answer is you've already been given everything in Christ. Now what are we meant to do with it?
See, peace is never easy, but it always starts with us.
Because Christ came for us to die for us, to change us, and to send us into that world.
So this morning, as we think of the peace of God, may we baptize in Christ and looking to Him for hope,
bring His peace into a world that needs someone who can see beyond themselves to God who actually has loved us first.
Thanks be to God.