Tag Archives: Inner Peace

Peace Be With You!

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A Sermon for 23 April 2017 – 2nd Sunday of Easter

 

A reading from the gospel of John 20:19-31 (NRSV).  And remember, according to the gospel of John’s telling of things, this story takes place the same day Mary Magdalene had been to the tomb then gone and told the others she had seen the Lord.  Listen for God’s word to us.

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”  After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.  So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.”  But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.  Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”  Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt but believe.”  Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”  Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

This is the word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God!

 

Brother Roger was an amazing man.  As a young adult, he founded the ecumenical monastic community of Taizé.  He brought this community into being in France while Europe was again under siege in the Second World War.   At the age of twenty-five, Brother Roger started this intentional community on the Christian principles he tenaciously saw in his grandmother during the First World War:  “welcoming those in need and seeking reconciliation among Christians” (Brother Roger of Taizé:  Essential Writings, “Introduction,” p. 13).  You may know something of the Taizé community from songs in our new Glory to God hymnal.  Songs like “Wait for the Lord” based on Psalm 27.  And “My Soul is at Rest” from Psalm 62.  And the round “Prepare the Way of the Lord,” sung during Advent.  And “Stay with Me,” sung during Lent by our very own choir.  The Good Friday song “Jesus Remember Me, When you come into Your Kingdom.”  And the one that may be best known, but perhaps not linked by all to Taizé:  “Ubi Caritas.  Live in charity and steadfast love.  Live in charity; God will dwell with you.”  . . .  Because worship in the Taizé community is all about peace, the community creates these chant-like, repetitive songs often based on the poetry of the Psalms and other scriptural phrases.  A deep commitment to prayers for all the world pervades the community and its worship.  Perhaps that’s why young people from around the globe still flock to the community in France on pilgrimage to be a part of things – even if only for a week.  When the community gathers for daily worship, scripture and silence weave round the simple songs to transport worshippers to a centered quiet.  That calm clearing inside in which the Spirit of God has an opportunity to work.  If we are able to imagine entering that sacred space daily, perhaps we would expect spiritual profundity, like the kind of deep wisdom that exudes from Brother Roger.  Listen to his words about the presence of Christians in the world today.  He writes:  “The peace of your heart makes life beautiful for those around you.  Being wracked with worry has never been a way of living the gospel.  Founding your faith on torment would mean building a house on sand (Mt. 7:26-27).  At every moment, do you hear these words of Jesus the Christ:  ‘Peace I leave you; my peace I give you.  Let your hearts cease to be troubled and afraid’ (Jn. 14:27)?”  Brother Roger continues:  “This deep-seated peace provides the lightness needed to set out once again, when failure or discouragements weigh on your shoulders” (Ibid., p. 34).

Peace . . .  earlier in the gospel of John – before his resurrection, before his crucifixion, actually right after he washes their feet on that fatal night – Jesus seeks to cultivate peace in his disciples.  He knows what’s about to happen.  And while they don’t understand much of it, certainly they suspected by that time too.  He’s told them already that he will die because of the path he’s following.  AND he’s told them to still their troubled hearts.  Cease any fear!  . . .  At that beautiful final banquet, Jesus prays for his followers.  He does all he can to comfort them.  He wants them to know that “being wracked with worry” is not the way of living the gospel (Ibid.).  He expects the peace of their hearts to make life beautiful for those around them.  . . .

Just as fear is contagious, peace can be as well.  Think about the last time you spent time around someone who was deeply centered.  Not fretting all about, but relaxed in themselves.  Totally calm and attentive only to you.  In their presence, our own blood pressure begins to settle.  We can move more deeply into ourselves.  Breathing all the way into our toes perhaps, because it’s like the fragrance of their peace enters into us.  . . .  That’s the gift Christ seeks to give to his followers.

In the gospel reading before us today, three times Jesus speaks the words:  “Peace be with you!” (Jn. 20:19).  Now, it makes sense that he might start his first appearance among them again with such words.  But after their excitement over him, he says it again:  “Peace be with you!” (Jn. 20:21).  This time sounding a little bit more like a command than a common greeting connoting God’s blessed shalom.  And again he’ll speak the very same words to troubled Thomas when at last Thomas is present among them all and the Risen Christ again returns with the very same message:  “Peace be with you!” (Jn. 20:26).  . . .  It’s helpful for us to know that three is kinda significant in this part of John’s gospel.  You might remember that three times Peter is going to deny Jesus while he’s being held captive.  Then, upon the third time he shows himself to his followers, three times the Risen Christ will ask Peter if Peter indeed loves him.  And here:  three times the Risen Christ commands:  “Peace be with you!”  . . .  Since his first time at the supper telling them he’s leaving his peace with them until now when the Risen Christ comes again among them, their hearts have known everything else but peace.  How could they cease any troubled and fear-filled spirits during his arrest, execution, and burial?  Jesus told them he was leaving his peace with them and after three days of anything but, he returns pleading:  “Peace be with you!”

Think about the powerful witness peace in them would be.  I mean, when they finally left that locked upper room, what would others be wondering to encounter in them such amazing, abiding peace?  Panic would proclaim to others that nothing extraordinary happened after his death.  Fear would confirm the lies others were telling.  Angst never would lead others to waste any time listening.  Peace in them was the only way.  . . .  Peace that everything was not as expected.  Peace that another Way had been made.  Peace that all he said and did was not in vain.  . . .  Peace would flower to change the world all around them.  The peace of their hearts would make life beautiful for them and for rest of the world forevermore.

Let those with ears to hear, heed.  Peace is the gift we’ve been given.  Peace remaining in us forever.  For Christ is risen!  God miraculously made a Way.  Wouldn’t you agree that we could use a little more peace in this world now?  Peace that begins with us.  Peace that reverberates from us to those all around.  Peace:  inner calm, steady trust, quiet strength no matter the headlines that cry for our attention or the chaos that swirls all about.  The world needs peace today – just like the world around Jesus’ disciples needed peace in the days following his crucifixion and resurrection.  Peace that ripples beyond the boundaries of our souls to bring ease to those around us.

Brothers and sisters of the Risen Christ, blessed are all who have come to believe; for the peace of our hearts now makes life beautiful for all and forever.  Sent out abiding in such peace, the whole world will experience our amazing God!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2017  (All rights reserved.)

Guide Our Feet Into the Way of Peace

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A Sermon for 6 December 2015 – 2nd Sunday of Advent

A reading from the gospel of Luke 1:68-79. Listen for God’s word to us as we hear this proclamation from the priest Zechariah on the birth of his son John the Baptist. Listen.

“”Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. God has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus God has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.””

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God!

 

A Washington Post article appeared early this week that I found very disturbing. (The Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham, “There have been 334 days and 351 mass shootings so far this Year,” 30 Nov. 2015). It came out Monday, before the event at the special needs facility in San Bernardino, California. The article was a piece on mass shootings in America in 2015. The article defined mass shootings as “incidents in which four or more people, including the gunman, are killed or injured by gunfire.” According to the article, it’s a definition a bit broader than some sources that reduce the definition of mass shootings to incidents that only count deaths and not injuries by shooters. And while I’m sure there are good reasons why the difference is delineated, four or more killed or injured, versus four or more killed seems unnecessary hairsplitting really when we’re talking about such unacceptable degradation of human life. You probably remember the shooting at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs Thanksgiving week. And maybe you remember the shooting at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June when nine people were ruthlessly killed while at a Wednesday night prayer meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. Maybe you even remember the last school shooting this year on October 1 at a small community college in Roseburg, Oregon where ten people were killed and seven others injured before the shooter killed himself. If you remember only those, then you might be shocked to learn that according to the article in The Washington Post, as of November 30; there have been 351 mass shootings in America in 2015’s 334 days. That’s an average of more than one a day – a number that already has surpassed the total number of shootings in 2014 and is well above how many took place in 2013. Though we only may have heard of the one shooting in Colorado Springs the day after Thanksgiving, the article reported that there actually were twelve mass shootings in our country during the week of Thanksgiving. . . . Could the poetry of Zechariah have fallen upon us at a more opportune time, so that we might join our prayers with his words in calling out to God: “Guide our feet into the way of Peace!” (Luke 1:79).

Peace.

Ten years ago, one pastor sent me these words and since receiving them, I have kept them close: “Peace. It’s not the absence of conflict or an enemy threatened or pummeled into submission. Not a boot squarely and securely placed on the neck slowly squeezing life from a hostile windpipe. It is the overwhelming desire for and commitment to overcoming violent differences via communication, risk, trust. A reciprocal recognition of inherent worth and mutuality; the bell that tolls for the demise of ego, pride, greed, and, most of all, fear” (“Peace,” by Todd Jenkins, 2005). Peace.

Might it be possible that the opposite of peace isn’t violence but ego, pride, greed, and most of all, fear? . . . Zechariah gave great thanks to God for a history of rescuing the people from the hands of their enemies in order to serve God without fear. In other words, in peace. More than once, according to the long history of their people which we come to know in Scripture as our own history too. God sets us free in order to serve the LORD without fear – in peace. The prophet Isaiah long ago spoke for God to the people reminding of the way we are to be repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in (Isaiah 58:12). Healing springs up quickly, the prophet proclaims (Isaiah 58:8), when we live in ways that bear our name: repairs of the breach – those broken places. Restorers of streets to live in. . . . We are to be people who live peace – that overwhelming desire for and commitment to overcoming violent differences via communication, risk, and trust. It is like that beloved Christmas carol charges: Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with us!

But how? We can’t storm into everyone’s homes and take away weapons. We can’t round up all the troubled young men – as seems to be the profile of those who commit these mass shootings – we can’t round up anyone we might suspect as a potential threat and suddenly fix whatever’s broken in them that would conceive such destructive violence. What can we – a little ban of followers of the Prince of Peace do as we seek to serve God without fear? What can we do that all feet might be guided into the way of Peace?

I think the first thing all of us must do is pray –because prayer changes things – it has the power to change the very energy in the atmosphere around us. . . . Sometimes I wonder if the world around us is getting more violent because the world inside us all is becoming more violent. It is as if the very air we breathe has become toxic. It seeps into our bodies, minds, and spirits until we don’t want to talk to those who are different from us. We don’t dare risk and we definitely find it difficult to trust. While twenty minute segments work best, even five minutes a day seeking to cultivate interior quiet allows the Spirit of God to work in us. To pull out the negativity that gets in from outside and pops up from inside too. It’s like the silence just rakes that all away for the beautiful calm of God to pervade us instead. We must start there because we serve the One who started there all the time. According to the gospels, all the time, Jesus was out somewhere communing in quiet with God. Some churches have begun weekly centering prayer groups as part of their peacemaking ministry efforts. The groups cultivate inner peace as a first step in affecting any sort of peace between families and communities and countries. Anyone can do this – this simple act of peace through quiet, centering prayer. And if you want to give it a try but don’t know how, or feel like you haven’t been successful at it in the past, then let me know and we’ll learn and practice together.

From such a place of inner peace, we can begin praying for others who need peace. 351 mass shootings, and a few more this week too –if it’s just the minimum number of people killed or injured in each shooting, that means that at least 1,500 families all across this nation this year are trying to figure out how to go through these holidays for the first time since losing their loved one to the unspeakable violence done to them at the hand of another person. That’s a lot of grieving parents – a lot of hurting siblings – a lot of grandparents whose hearts are breaking this year over the loss of their loved one.

You know the story of the peace crane, I’m sure. Tomorrow marks the anniversary of our nation being bombed at Pearl Harbor. Well, the peace crane is a paper crane one little girl in Hiroshima, Japan lifted up on her deathbed as a way to work for peace in the world. She started out hoping to make 1,000 of them to bring about her own wish for healing from the cancer she developed, which was believed to be a result of her exposure to the atomic bomb. Upon her death, her classmates took up her cause. The children collected enough money to build a statue in her honor that reads: “This is our cry, this is our prayer: Peace in the world” (www.budddhistcouncil.org). . . . What child doesn’t want to grow up in a world free from violence? There are easy instructions online of how to make the origami peace cranes and wouldn’t it be an interesting Advent practice to make a crane each day as you pray for peace and for those reeling from the loss these mass murders have brought? You even might consider making a paper peace crane each day with the name of a child you know on it – maybe even with the name of one of the children of this church or of the children of the community who are coming to be with us on Wednesday nights – as you pray for their daily safety and self-esteem as they seek to grow in the world we’re giving them.

I know not everyone gets excited about peacemaking – because after all, memories of “peace protests” in our nation’s history can leave a bitter taste. But did you know that the Presbyterian Church has a long history of peacemaking ministries? Since 1983, more than 4,500 PCUSA congregations around the United States have signed the Commitment to Peacemaking. Because, as a denomination, we believe that “peacemaking is not a peripheral issue but a central declaration of the gospel” of Jesus Christ (www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/peacemaking/pdf/commitment.pdf; p. 3). Congregations commitment to everything from worship expressing God’s desire for our peace, to peacemaking pledges offered to families as guides for how to live together at home, to study of global issues that affect human rights, to being a part of local peacemaking ministries however the church chooses to define such efforts. Congregations who take the pledge begin to see that everything they do to build relationships and uplift the needs of the downtrodden and learn about living together is done as ways of making peace. As ones praying to God to guide our feet into the way of peace.

It’s not enough for us to turn off the news. Or helplessly wring our hands when we hear of another shooting. Or shake our heads naively believing it could never happen here. It is our call to join our best efforts – to use our hearts and minds and creative imaginations as we call out to God to guide our feet into the way of Peace! Guide our feet into the way of Peace. Teach us, LORD, show us this Advent the way we are to walk as the ones who follow the great gift of Peace. . . . Let peace be our prayer, our commitment, our overwhelming desire.

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2015  (All rights reserved.)