"The Peace Christ Gives"  John 14:23-29

A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

Sixth Sunday of Easter,  May 16, 2004

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY  13214 

Phone:  315-446-0960

                                                                                    phillchu@twcny.rr.com

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid."

Peace, or the lack of it, is much on our minds these days. It’s hard to know what the word means anymore. Even if there were no active military conflicts between nations (the way we used to understand war and peace), those who define their enemy from the perspective of ideology rather than nationality would find those against whom to wage war. Peace is declared, or at least military victory is declared, and insurgency arises from among those who were thought to be liberated. And the liberators, whose leaders claim the highest moral ground, are revealed to be engaging in highly immoral and degrading acts against at least some of the very people whose hearts and minds we claim to want to "win over," adding fuel to an already raging fire. The children of Abraham remain at each other’s throats in Israel and Palestine, with one atrocity following another. Ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, civil war in Chechnya - and it goes on and on. Peace, as the world gives peace, is at best an ambiguous thing. We cannot be sure we’d recognize it, even if we saw it.

This side of God’s kingdom the most we can hope for, the best that we can pray for, is that the world would find ways short of violence to settle conflicts, and recognize that poverty and injustice remain the primary impediments to peace. Realities of the present day remind us that we are a long way from fulfilling that hope, or from that recognition being translated into policy. Despite astounding advancements in science and technology and the means to significantly reduce human suffering, with some significant success, still the explosion of rage, the practice of deceit, demonizing the enemy - these are the things that seem to determine the course of the world, overshadowing the good, stifling hope.

But yet we cannot live as if this were the only thing. Even in the midst of the chaos and turmoil of war people do all they can to maintain some semblance of normal life. The other day I heard an old broadcast of Edward R. Morrow from London, I believe, as it was being bombed night in and night out by the Germans early in World War II. He told of how a man sat at a desk out in front of his bombed-out place of business, carrying on, doing his work, as best he could. Connection to the basic things of life - family, work, relationships - this is what is referred to when people say in the face of turmoil, "We only want to live in peace" - a chance to live a normal life. But peace, we discover, is just as illusive, just as ambiguous here as well, because it is often based on what is fleeting, what is temporary, on what so often changes in midstream.

There is a Chinese parable about a man and his son who are riding their donkey to market in order to sell it. Along the way the donkey falls into a ditch and the son breaks his leg. The son curses his fate, and the father stoically says: "Perhaps bad, perhaps good, we shall see." The next day a messenger comes to declare that the emperor is conscripting all able men to fight in an upcoming battle. The son is exempted because of his broken leg. The son rejoices at his luck, but the father again is stoic: "Perhaps good, perhaps bad. We shall see." A week later the news goes around town that the battle is won, and that all returning soldiers will inherit the fertile conquered land. "Perhaps bad, perhaps good, we shall see" the father says. A year later the soldier-farmers are stricken with a blight on their new land, and starve.*

Our claims to peace in the present order can never be assured by the things that happen to us. We are often told to "count our blessings" - and maybe that piece of common wisdom got started because their number can increase or decrease at any time. How often do we rest in the knowledge that something temporarily good has befallen us or those we love, even take these experiences as signs of divine favor? Job learned the hard way that a life of this sort of peace is temporary. It may be the case that we are reasonably secure financially, that we and our children are healthy, that we maintain a good home and job, and so forth. Certainly these things help us to feel a sense of peace in our daily lives. And we are right to seek a just order in which all people can enjoy the benefits of these goods. But Jesus reminds us that this sort of peace is not the peace that God gives us.

One of the things that is so troubling to me about the revelations of the abuse at the Abu Gibrain prison in Iraq - and it troubles me for theological reasons - beyond the initial shock of it, is the swiftness with which people want to declare this as an aberration, limited to a few bad apples - that this is not reflective of who we are or how we are as a nation. While this is not a surprising reaction, for nations, no less than individuals, do not want our good intentions or the nobility of our causes to be doubted by others - just saying it does not make it so. I have no doubt that this is how we want to think of ourselves, but if caught in the same system, can we definitely say we would not do the same things? Friends and teachers of those young soldiers speak about their kindness and compassion, how they couldn’t imagine them doing such a thing as the pictures reflect. But look at the society from which they come. We treasure our hard-won freedoms, our religious tolerance. We’re proud of the struggle for equal rights for every citizen, a political system, as imperfect as it is, that with due diligence, will not permit - because the people will not permit it - domination by one branch of government over another. But this does not mean that we are immune from a collective moral sickness that focuses so much on physical appearance and physical experience - weight, looks, sex - on being entertained and constantly distracted from deeper experience – experience of community, experiences of genuine relationship, of the wholeness of life, the value of patience, of not needing everything you want right when you want it.

It should not be surprising that the methods of abuse that have we have seen in the pictures from Abu Gibrain were of such a sexual nature. It was not because they would be so offensive and degrading to those from conservative Islamic societies, but so accessible to us, just a push over the edge of our society’s obsession with just a part of the life of God’s good creation.

We are so very prone to deny the darkness within ourselves and to place it on others - yet to confess this is so is how we are to be human, as God intends for us to be human. We all feel stained because of what we saw in those pictures. This is not to minimize or lessen the stain that those who have declared us their enemies have made on the soul of humankind by their atrocities. It is simply to say that to receive the peace that Christ gives, peace that is not as the world gives, at least in part means to acknowledge that we are not whole within ourselves - even at our best, even at our most successful, even at our most fortunate, even at our most "blessed." History shows that the mighty have fallen of their own weight, from an emptiness inside massive structures of wealth and power.

"My peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not let them be afraid." These are not "sentimental imperatives" that Jesus gives his disciples before he leaves them, telling them not to worry, that everything will be all right in the end. Rather he is calling the disciples - calling us - to find strength to face the new circumstances in which his departure places them. His peace is not a resting, passive peace. It is not the absence of conflict or freedom from circumstances that try us and test us. It is the presence of something more, not less. The gift of his peace is a life that is shaped and formed not by his absence - not as if to say, "I’m leaving you now, so here is some final words, some final advice now that you’re on your own, words of inspiration you can call upon when the going gets tough." It is a life shaped not by his absence but by the unending presence of God. He gives them back their future, a future shaped not by fear, but by love.

This is the peace that Jesus gives to those who love him, the very same peace that he knew in his Father’s love. It was his life and his joy. He knew no worldly security. In his active ministry, from what we know, he never enjoyed the peace of home and family. He never had a savings account or an IRA. His only peace was in his faith-filled relationship with the Father.

We all have a relationship with God, but do we know his peace? It is nothing less than this that he wants to give us. We won’t find it in guaranteeing our physical security, as if we ever could. We won’t find it securing our financial future (not a sure thing), or in getting ourselves into the most highly regarded social or vocational position. All of these are filled with uncertainty and with ambiguity. The peace that they bring is temporary at best, and when we throw our lives into them as if this is all there were we come up empty in the end. The life we build around them tends to crack and to crumble from its own weight.

With the peace that Christ gives, the peace of God’s heart, our foundation is sure. Though the peace the world gives may be filled with ambiguity and uncertainty, in this there is an end to ambiguity and a fulfillment of our longing for peace. There are no cracks in this foundation because it is not ours to build. It is Christ who gives it, Christ who builds it. Once again this morning he invites our faith and our love, so that we might receive this most blessed gift, the gift of his peace.    Amen.

*As told by Timothy P. Muldoon in "Lectionary Homiletics," April-May, 2004

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