The Sixth Sunday of Easter-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
The Sixth Sunday of Easter-Year C
May 22, 2022
As I’ve been preparing to go on
sabbatical, I’ve been thinking about peace a lot lately—thinking about what
peace is in general and what it is specifically to me. Many people think that peace is the absence
of conflict; it can be equated with tranquility, and for people with small
children, it is often coupled with “quiet” (as in “Can I, please, just get five
minutes of peace and quiet?”). As we watch
from afar the 12 week war between Russia and Ukraine, peace may even feel like
an unachievable dream for us and for our world.
I
asked our Wednesday group what peace means for them. One spoke about how peace is the opposite of
fear. Another spoke of how it is a
deepening in God. Another referred to a
Martin Luther King Jr quote: "We
must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a
society that can live with its conscience." For me, both physically and spiritually,
peace is a kind of deep breathing that dispels the tightness in my chest and
belly and even the tightness in my soul that is anxiety, stress, striving, and
a fearful and troubled heart.
In our gospel reading for today, we see
Jesus speaking to his disciples in the gospel of John’s long farewell
discourse. He is responding to a
question from one of the disciples, and even as he gives them the bad news that
he is not going to be with them for much longer, he gives them the good news
that God will be sending the Holy Spirit to teach and remind them. He also gives them the gift of his peace
saying: “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.”
As I was thinking about this peace that
Jesus gives his disciples (both his disciples then and us, his disciples now),
I began to wonder…Is Jesus saying that his gift of peace is an antidote for
troubled and fearful hearts? Or is he
giving them the gift of his peace coupled with a command to them: “do not let your hearts be troubled…[or]
afraid”? Is peace a free gift that will
strengthen our hearts through its reception or is it an either/or situation—Jesus
gives us peace in which we can choose to dwell or we can allow our hearts to be
troubled and afraid?
At
its heart, peace is a free gift of Jesus, what Jesus offers and wants for each
one of us, and it comes into our hearts when they are undefended and longing for peace
The Anglican priest Herbert O’Driscoll
writes this about Jesus’s gift of peace in John 14:27: “The word Jesus would have used at that
moment is shalom, a much richer and more complex term. ‘Peace’ in this sense
does not mean tranquility, lack of challenge, or restfulness. We can experience the peace of Christ without
any of these things. Experiencing the
shalom of Christ is to taste moments when in an almost inexpressible way things
seem to come together for us. The shalom
of Christ comes when we experience the conviction that in Christ everything
somehow makes sense.”[i]
The story from Acts gives us a picture
of what this peace, this shalom of Jesus looks like, a coming together of
things to spread the good news of the resurrection throughout the world. In the story, we see Paul being obedient to a
vision that he has that compels him to travel to Europe. He ends up in Philippi, and seemingly by
chance, he finds himself on the outside of town near the river. There he encounters some women who’ve
gathered there, and he sits down with them and begins to teach them. Among this group of women is Lydia, who is a
wealthy, successful head of her own household in Philippi. She is a dealer in purple cloth which only
the wealthy could afford, so she has access to most of the movers and shakers
in town and perhaps beyond. As she is
listening to Paul, the writer of Acts says that “God opened her heart to listen
eagerly to what was said by Paul.” She
and her whole household get baptized and then she urges Paul and his companions
to come stay at her home with her.
What this story tells me is that in
God’s shalom, nothing is a coincidence.
It also shows me that when Lydia’s longing for a relationship with God
encounters the grace of God, the offspring of that union are both peace and an
abundance of generosity.
So what does that mean for us this
day?
We too are offered the gift of Jesus’s
peace, Jesus’s shalom into our hearts and lives. That does not mean that our lives will be
conflict free. And it does not mean that
we will always be perfectly tranquil.
What it does mean is that we can rest in the assurance that in Christ,
everything somehow makes sense. And it
means that when our longing for God encounters the gift of God’s grace, then
the results are both peace and generosity.
In that way, we are made whole.
In closing, as I prepare to be away from
you for nine weeks on sabbatical, I’d like to share with you an old favorite
song. It’s called Deep Peace by Kirk Dearmen, and it’s a Celtic blessing
that brings me a little closer to this mystery that is peace. It goes:
“Deep peace of the running wave to you, Deep peace of the silent
starts/Deep peace of the flowing air to you. Deep peace of the quite Earth./
May peace, may peace, may peace fill your soul,/ Let peace, let peace, let
peace make you whole.”[ii]
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