Easter 6 “The Peace of Christ”

(5/13/07)

It was the night in which he was betrayed. Jesus ate with his disciples and talked with them about what was to come. The mood, I imagine, was somber; the disciples didn’t really understand what was happening, but they understood enough that they were frightened, and strangely lonely. They had the feeling that Jesus, their friend, was about to leave them. They couldn’t shake the feeling.

He spoke with them: “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.” Words about peace, his peace. What did that mean for the disciples? What does it mean for us?

We have a pretty limited understanding of what peace is all about. In our language, “peace” is usually understood as the “absence of war” or, in one’s personal life, the “absence of conflict or trouble.” But the peace of God is very different. When the Bible speaks of peace, it generally means a positive thing—not the absence of something bad, but the presence of something good. The Hebrew word for it was shalom, and it meant a very powerful, steady sense of well-being and happiness. It was understood to be the quality of life led by those who followed God; it was, indeed, a gift of God.

Jesus promised his disciples that his peace would be his gift to them. “My peace I give to you.” It is his gift to us as well. The peace of God is something that you and I have, or can have, in our lives. It is what enables us to face all the challenges that confront us each day. It is God’s peace, to quote St. Paul, that protects our hearts and minds and keeps us close to Christ.

Let’s try to understand something of God’s peace by looking at some situations or difficulties that we face, each of us, at different times in our lives. Let’s start with loneliness. A noted sociologist wrote a book some time ago called The Lonely Crowd. His thesis was that our modern society throws millions of us together in close proximity, and yet we have never been more isolated from one another. You sense this if you look at the freeway during rush hour in any city: thousands of people, going in the same direction on the same road, but each trapped in his or her own little compartment, not speaking, not smiling, not relating to another human being (unless it is the disembodied voice on the other end of a cell phone!).

Another sociologist, Phillip Koon, did an experiment in which he picked 600 names at random from phone directories around the country, and sent all 600 of them Christmas cards. These were all perfect strangers, people he had never met before. In response, he received 117 Christmas cards, most with letters telling all about children and pets and events of the past year. One person wrote, “It was so good to hear from you because we see so little of you any more.” Others proposed getting together during their vacation next summer. It’s a funny story, but tragic—tragic that so many people are so incredibly lonely that they respond so eagerly to a greeting from a total stranger.

But it’s tragic because it reflects us! There’s not a person among us who has not known, at one time or another, the gnawing feeling of loneliness. There are old friends who have moved away; loved ones who have died; neighbors whom we’ve never met.

Of course we are not the first people to experience loneliness! King David knew about it—the Psalms echo with his agony: “I lie awake on my bed, I am like a lonely bird on a housetop . . . Turn to me and be gracious, for I am lonely and afflicted.” Jesus knew about it—he died alone, wondering if even God had forsaken him. The disciples knew about it, too. That night they felt the pain that comes when a close friend is leaving; and after the crucifixion, they huddled in their room, lonely, empty, aching from grief.

But Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” And the peace of God is, first of all, the assurance that God is with us every moment of our lives. “I will not leave you desolate”—Jesus spoke these words just a few verses before our text this morning. It is the promise of his peace: we will not be left alone! When we know his peace, we know his presence. The Psalmist puts it so beautifully: “Where can I go then from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.” And so it is that the peace of God, the peace Jesus promised to give us, is the assurance that, even when we feel the pains of loneliness creeping into our hearts, we are not alone. He is with us, and will remain with us.

Loneliness comes from within, but sometimes the threat to our peace comes from outside. We live in a world of conflict, and our world is often a place of fear. We read about terrorist attacks, about senseless gun sprees, about crime, about war, and we are frightened. And so we lock our doors and trust people a little less. So much in our world makes us afraid.

And again, we are not the first to experience this kind of fear. The Psalmist knew it: “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck! I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold.” The disciples knew fear—remember, just a few weeks back, the story of the disciples on the evening of Easter day, hiding in their room with the doors locked out of fear, terrified that what had happened to Jesus might happen to them?

But Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” The peace of God is the confidence that God is by our side, and that we need not fear. The peace of God is that gift that enables us to say, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

Howard Thurman, the great African-American preacher who founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, has told about the experience he had as a child with Haley’s Comet. He was just a tiny boy at the time. The coming of the comet had caused great excitement, and no little anxiety. This was early in the 20^th century, before our mania about space, and before there was much knowledge. People were selling and buying “comet pills” that would protect you from disaster if the comet’s tail swept the earth. The comet was visible each night for several days, but Howard always was in bed before it appeared. One night his mother awakened him and took him out into the backyard. There in the sky he saw the incredible sight. Struck with awe, and mindful of all he had been hearing, he turned to his mother and asked, “Momma, what will happen to us if that thing falls out of the sky?”

There was as long pause, and when she didn’t answer, he looked up at her. Her face looked as he had seen it only once before, when he had come into her room to find her on her knees deep in prayer. Finally she said, “Nothing will happen to us, Howard. God will take care of us.”

We face so many fears in life—some of them quite real, most of them products of our own minds. But the peace of God, the peace the Jesus promised to give us, is the strength and power that comes from knowing that the “Lord is our refuge and our shield, a very present help in time of danger. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” And though we face fears, conflicts, loneliness, even death, we will not tremble; for the peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, keeps our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God.