A two-year-old shot by her five-year-old brother this week
here in Kentucky. The recent bombings in Boston. The threat of war with North
Korea and now with Syria. The worst bloodshed in Iraq in years. Stories about
domestic violence…As I listened to the news and read the papers this week, I
joined with you in your yearning for peace, as you asked God: Why can’t we have
peace on earth? Will there be peace? How can we work toward peace? Will all in
the world live in peace? Perhaps it was the contrast with the fun and
lighthearted festivities of Derby, but the world seemed to be especially
fraught this week with threats of violence all around.
We joke, of course, about the empty-headed beauty pageant
contestant who is coached to simper, “World peace,” when asked what issue she
cares most about. The seeming impossibility of “world peace” makes wishing for
it almost a farce; the vagueness of it is overwhelming. What is “peace,” after
all? Is it merely an absence of violence, an end to war? Or does it have
concrete, positive qualities of its own? Or does it flow from an inner kind of
calm within individual hearts? I was talking with the Preschoolers about Jesus’
peace several weeks ago, and after talking for awhile, I asked them what peace
is. One little girl raised her hand confidently: “It’s a piece, like a piece of
pie,” she proclaimed, as if nothing could be more obvious. Before we can pray
for it—or work for it—we need to know what it is!
For the Old Testament prophets, who often speak of peace, it
is “shalom,” a wholeness, a kind of right relationship that comes to us when
God dwells among and with us here on earth. It includes peace among the nations,
the absence of war, stemming from God’s justice and righteousness being carried
out on earth. Listen to those famous and beautiful words from the prophet
Micah: “God shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat
their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but
they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no
one shall make them afraid.” Here, God’s peace comes from right and fair
division of resources in a world where fear is no more. I certainly long for
that kind of peace, and Micah’s words prod and encourage me to want to work for
a more just world in which everyone can live without fear. It is no accident
that we have “Peace and Justice” commissions in our churches: the two
are inseparable. This kind of peace sounds satisfyingly concrete, if
challenging to achieve—something that we can try to attain through social work,
politics, and economics, as well as prayer.
Jesus, however, seems to tell us in today’s Gospel lesson
that he has already given us peace: “Peace is my farewell to you,” he plainly
says. “My peace is my gift to you, and I do not give it to you as the world gives
it. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be fearful.” Once again, we
hear peace being associated with an absence of fear … but what kind of peace is
Jesus talking about here? It doesn’t seem to be real-life farms and fig trees
or even real-life lack of violence. Christians have known violence since the
crucifixion itself, and the lives of the disciples are anything but peaceful! Yet
over two thousand years later, after crusades and wars, conflicts and power
struggles, we joyously continue to offer this peace to one another every
Sunday: “The peace of Christ be always with you!” we cry.
In today’s reading from John, the disciples are far from peace-filled.
They have just heard that Jesus, their Lord, their teacher, the one whom they
have left home and livelihood to follow, is about to go away. They will be left
alone. His own heart breaking, too, Jesus gives his friends a parting gift, a
heartfelt and valuable bequest, like grandma’s ring, or dad’s letters from war,
or even a rich uncle’s pile of money in the bank—something meant to continue on
in the world with us after a loved-one’s departure. Except Jesus’ bequest
cannot be held in the palm of the hand; it is not given “as the world gives.”
It comes by way of the Holy Spirit—an intangible bequest of peace, peace that
will ease fearful and troubled hearts.
I wonder if the disciples understand what Jesus is offering
them any better than we do. The little boy with whom I read every week at
Zachary Taylor was doing a reading comprehension exercise this week with me
about a little girl whose grandmother down in Louisiana gives her an injured
bird to keep, telling her that it will be her bird. When the bird’s leg is
healed, the grandmother then tells her to let it go. The little girl balks. “I
thought that you gave me this bird to keep!” she cries. The grandmother
explains that she will always have the memory of the bird, but that the real
bird needs to get back to its life in the bayou. At the end of the story, the
little girl rather suddenly appears happy to have a mere feather from that bird
to take home with her from her travels. My young reading student just didn’t
understand why that little girl was supposed to be happy with a dumb old
feather, when she really wanted the bird. He just couldn’t wrap his head around
this story. If I were one of the disciples, I think that I might have felt the
same way about this gift of peace that Jesus is promising. This promise of
peace would seem like a mere feather of the fullness of life that I had enjoyed
in Jesus’ presence.
When I think about it, though, I can
see that while the gift of peace that Jesus offers us is not a singing bird that
we can hold in our hands, it still has profound value as the silent place marked
by a delicate feather. I once wrote a poem about the Trinity, in which I expressed
a longing to hold onto God:
I hold out stiff
and awkward arms
but all I catch
are sweaty handfuls
of images that drift
like lonely feathers
from my fingers,
spinning slowly,
slipping softly
to that secret space
between thought and word
where Three can be One
That secret space, too, is the home
of Peace. Rowan Williams points out that Christ’s peace enters most easily into
places that we leave empty and silent. Think of Jesus meeting the woman who has
been caught in adultery. She is about to be stoned to death for her sin—a
violent punishment if ever there was one. Jesus stops the violence not by
hollering at her accusers or by pushing them away or by reasoning with them or
by using more clever language than they do. He merely kneels down and starts
writing in the dust. He takes a “breathing space” for God’s peace to enter in.
Williams says that he is hesitating in order to root himself in God’s peace. He
does not draw a line in the sand or fix an interpretation. He does not tell the
woman who she is and what her fate should be. He waits long enough for her to
see herself differently, and “when he lifts his head, there is both judgment
and release.”[1]
God’s
peace, brought to us by the Holy Spirit and bequeathed to us by Jesus, is
indeed an active peace, a peace as active as Jesus’ own presence in the world. It
is a peace that is stealthily pulling compassion and forgiveness and joy out
from underneath pain and injustice and condemnation, just like Jesus did. Rick
Morley describes this gift of peace beautifully: “Jesus brings … the kind of
peace that walks on water, that stills the storm, and fills our jars to the
brim with the finest of wines. The kind of peace that brings sight to the
blind, restores hearing to the deaf, and tells the lame to get up and go home.
The kind of peace that comes to a tomb and renders it empty. That
kind of peace.”[2] By
sharing his peace with us, Jesus shares his power to transform from the inside out.
Williams
points out that violence is a communication of hatred, fear, or contempt. If we
are to be bearers of the peace of Christ, a space that offers forgiveness and
compassion, then our communication needs “breathing spaces.” Can we learn to
stop drawing lines in the sand? To breathe before we retaliate? To pause before
we condemn? There is a confession of faith from the Reformed Church of France that
reads:
“Christ is
risen. He is present among all people, and to serve them, he recruits his Church,
without taking into account our differences. He acts through humankind in history,
in order to lead it to its End, to a universe reconciled in love. Thus, I believe
neither in fatalism nor in war, nor in hatred, nor in catastrophe, nor in death,
because I believe that Jesus frees us to make free decisions. Thanks to him, my
life has meaning, as does the universe.”[3]
The gift of Peace, like God, creates Something out of Nothing; it transforms
with a whisper. It is the most powerful of Gifts.
No comments:
Post a Comment