The Rev. Margaret Watson
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
Joel 2:21-27 | Psalm 67:1-7 | Acts 14:8-18 | John 14:23-29
"Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you." This Gospel is in Easter and yet again this Sunday we are hearing a story that is pre-passion, pre-resurrection, pre-Easter. And yet even here, pre-Easter, we have been promised and assured of the peace of God. Picture this, it is just before Passover. We have eaten our fill. Jesus has washed our feet. But now he is talking about going away and coming again, going away and coming again. Wait a minute! And in the midst of this troubled city and troubled times, he talks about peace? What is this peace?
If we ponder the reading from Joel, peace is what happens when rain happens at just the right amount, at just the right time which makes the harvest plentiful. Our pantries become full and there is no shame in all the land! The nation can be proud. Yes, that would be peace, wouldn't it? Our divisions ended, poverty obliterated.
Peace in the reading of the Acts of the Apostles includes turning away from "these worthless things." What worthless things are we to turn from? The sacrifices we make to the gods of plenty, to good health, to restoration, to the gods of comfort? Turn away from these worldly things and enjoy the living God? Am I wicked woman to ask, isn't peace the obliteration of want? Is the world, and all that is in it, so bad that we are to turn away from it? Didn't God make this world? Why didn't Jesus come and fix it for us so we could get on with the Kingdom?
Then there is this Gospel when Jesus says, "My Peace I give to you, not as the world gives." The reaction from the disciples must have been strong since the next thing Jesus says is, "Don't be troubled. Don't be afraid." What were the disciples afraid of? Maybe they had questions like mine. My comfort is that Jesus did not deny the troubling questions. Instead, he gave his assurance by saying, `don't be afraid. It is not like you think.'
So what is this Peace? It is the peace Jesus assures us of before the passion on the cross. He prepares us and Jesus says, `My Peace I give to you no matter what. No matter what might come.' It is the Peace Jesus gives when he suddenly entered in the midst of the disciples in that upper room after the Passion, once without Thomas, and once when Thomas places his fingers on the wounds. It is the Peace Jesus gives when he suddenly enters our lives.
I was trying to find an example of this Peace. I have experienced this Peace in small and fleeting ways many times in my life. I do have one time I would like to share with you.
I am the fourth kid out of five. The first three have boxes and boxes of pictures and mementos, baptismal invitations and birthdays. The fourth baby _ Not a thing. I kid you not. The fifth baby _ Oh yea, he was the "baby" and he has boxes of stuff. This was an issue for me when I was twelve. And a relief for me when I was sixteen since there were none of those naked pictures of me as a baby. Again an issue when I was twenty-one. Who was I? Did they even know I was in the house? It wasn't very long ago when my Mom gave me some outrageous gifts. One was a picture, hand drawn by a neighbor of ours, of my Mom sitting next to a painting easel and me sitting at her feet. A hand drawn illustration with me in it, front and center. Granted it is the back of my head, but there I am! It is the only image I have of myself as an infant.
The second item she gave me was a letter one of my sisters wrote to my grandmother, which Grandma must have put away in an upper drawer, and my mother also put it away in an upper drawer, until just the right time. It is written two weeks after my birth. It says, "Dear Grandma & Grandpa. Thank you for the nice Easter dresses. We are going to wear them to church on Sunday and there Mother will give our baby a bath. I hope you will come see her soon." My baptismal announcement! Yea! I was there! I had these things all along, and did not even know it.
This Peace that Jesus gives is not the absence of something, the absence I tried to practice faithfully as the fourth child, the absence of any documentation of me as an infant. This Peace is not the absence of the wounds Thomas touched. This Peace is not the absence of poverty nor even of wealth in our world. It is not the absence of conflict, troublesome questions, and certainly not the absence of the cross or the passion in a Godly life. The Peace is not the absence of pain or suffering. It is not the absence of anything. It is the presence of God. It is the presence, the gift of the Spirit. It is Shalom, the word with which Jesus entered into the upper room. The Peace of heart, delight, joy and awe. It is a constant abiding Peace which is not of this world. The word John uses there is "cosmos" which is an even bigger concept of what it is not a part. It is a deep, deep pool of presence, beyond time, beyond place. It is that living water which is accessible to us at all times and in all places and to all people. This gift is the presence of Christ dwelling in us. This gift is the presence of God making his home with us. It is not a feast which is a goal out there as a future event. It is not something won or earned; it is given to us. It has been given to us already, because in baptism we are immersed in that deep pool of living water and drawn out of it into new life. We have been given the key and entered the door to that upper room where disciples eat and gather, doubt and believe. And like the saints of Emmaus, most of us usually do not recognize the presence, the coming of our Lord until he vanishes from our eyes.
Become known to us Lord in the sharing of bread and wine. God with us, God within us, Emmanuel. In his going he comes to us and the realization of his eternal presence remains with us always to teach us all things and to remind us what is already ours and what we already know.
So do let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. His coming and his going are both alike; the light and the dark are both alike. Do not be afraid, and let us join in proclaiming to the whole cosmos, let us proclaim this reconciling Peace of God, about his abiding presence with us, no matter what now, and always.