Easter 6C sermon

Easter 6C
May 9, 2010

When the weather is nice, I like to sit out on the shoo-fly to write my sermons. I often find myself looking out over the hundreds of cars driving by on Hwy 90, all that life that goes streaming by, and I look out at the broad, smooth expanse of the water. It’s a peaceful, holy place for me in spite of or perhaps in part because of all the traffic flowing by.
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 those of us with small children, it is often coupled with “quiet” (as in “Can I please just get five minutes of peace and quiet?”), and it is in short supply, especially at the end of the day. 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, 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 rather 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?
As I was pondering this out on the shoo-fly, I thought about how I could banish the fear and trouble from my heart to make room for Jesus’s peace, and I began to imagine going after the fear and anxiety with a stick. I quickly realized that that’s not peace!
And then I remembered one of my new favorite songs from my Happening experience. It’s called Deep Peace by Kirk Dearmen; it’s a Celtic blessing and it 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.” [1]
Peace is a free gift of Jesus 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.”[2]
Or, our hymnal says it slightly differently in hymn 661: “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing—the marvelous peace of God.”
The story from Acts gives us a picture of what this peace, this shalom of Jesus looks like. 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 Phillippi, 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 Phillippi. She is a dealer in purple cloth which only the wealthy could afford, so she had 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 encountered the grace of God, the offspring of that union were 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.
“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.” [3]

[1] From Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi’s Camp Bratton Green Songbook: 1999 Expressions of Praise Music; CCLI song no. 2198338; CCLI license no. 2260158
[2] O’ Driscoll, Herbert. Prayers for the Breaking of Bread. Cowley: Cambridge, 1991. p 87.
[3] From Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi’s Camp Bratton Green Songbook: 1999 Expressions of Praise Music; CCLI song no. 2198338; CCLI license no. 2260158