Scripture: Acts 16:9-15; John 14:23-29

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

-- John 14:27

It is timely that our reading for today directs us to reflect on the peace that Christ gives, because our nation has now been at war for two and a half years, on three fronts, has made several false claims of victory, and is sinking deeper by the day into endless warfare. There is the overarching war against terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq. All three are going on despite the claims made that two are over and won. The Taliban is coming back strong in Afghanistan, the victory in Iraq proclaimed from the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln a year ago last week now seems a bit clueless, and the terrorists are far from beaten, as the inhabitants of Madrid and the Saudi Arabian oil terminal bombed last week, would be able to tell us with fresh conviction. As gasoline approaches three dollars a gallon and the duty tours of military personnel are extended and extended, we know we are still at war, and that the peace we claim in Iraq and Afghanistan is far from real.  The peace of Jesus is not like this. Its first and definitive qualification is that it not of this world, but is rather his own personal peace. “My very own peace I give you, not as the world gives you, give I,” says the Lord.  Before we unpack the meaning of this special peace I suggest we follow our opening hints and take a brief look at what the peace of the world might be.

There is a good description of it by a chieftain of the Celtic tribe of the Albanii as reported by the Roman historian Tacitus in the first century. The chieftain is defeated and facing his Roman conquerors in a treaty making council responds as follows to their offer of peace, “What do you mean by peace? You Romans make a desert and call it peace.” This is the peace of the world in a military sense, it is also the peace of the cemetery, or the peace of the smoking ruin, or the peace of the crushed and cowering losers. This is the peace characteristic of the successful work of the great empires. You may be sure that those Roman generals thought that they were bringing the benefits of Roman law, Roman order, Roman justice, Roman roads, centrally heated Roman villas, and warm Roman baths, to the hairy, smelly, rained on Scottish Celts. It is sheer stubbornness on their part not to welcome a Roman makeover of their culture and society, which would fit them snugly into Rome’s imperial plans for worldwide domination.

There are many variations on this peace of the world, but basically it is a peace based on force, linked always with the word “security.” The mottos on most imperial Roman coins used to read, “Pax et Securitas.” In this fallen world the peace and security of necessary force is, within proper moral limits, a good and necessary thing. We must have a defense against those who wish to force us to do their wills rather than our own. So there is such a thing as a just war and a morally legitimate peace based on force. It becomes illegitimate when it is imposed for nefarious reasons and bolstered with lies, and, as is usually the case, becomes the means by which the strong and cunning use the weak and innocent to serve their ambitions. Jesus says that the peace he gives us is not this worldly peace, but something else.

The second kind of worldly peace I think of is the peace of denial. This is more psychological and personal than public and political, but it is presently rampant on both levels. There is a public neurosis of denial about our government’s immorality and a private neurosis of denial about our personal complicity in that immorality.  Someone said to me recently, “I don’t do politics,” and many people I encounter seem to be in denial about the tragically bad judgment of our leaders and still believing that a victory by military force is possible if only the politicians would unleash the generals. One can understand the need for this denial, like security it is a necessary accommodation to an emotionally cruel world. If one were to speak the truth politically one would have to put in work to be informed, and one would risk losing friends who are not interested in the facts because their minds are made up, and one would risk losing self-esteem.

Let us now approach the question of the difference between the peace of the world, marked by force and denial, tragically characteristic of our human situation and demanding a great effort to counteract, and the peace of Christ.  “These are hard things you are saying but strangely, they make the heart light,” someone said to me two Sundays ago. Hearing hard things that ring of truth does make the heart light, because the truth sets us free. It is only self-serving falsehood that makes us heavy-hearted. To explain this further one might recall the relief of confession, when at last one tells the other, oneself and God the truth about something bad one has done, some act or situation of which one is ashamed. Confession is good for the soul, and the harder the things one is able to say and hear the more thorough the healing and relief. This peace is the peace of the truth, the truth about oneself and one’s responsibility, and about one’s world. The peace of truth is the bedrock assumption of psychotherapies of many kinds, and is integral to the penitential discipline of the church.

So we are already on the way to understanding what we can of the miraculous, divine peace of Jesus. It is the peace of truth, as Jesus himself says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:31-32).” It is also and most importantly the paradoxical peace of controversy. We take our cue here from the hymn by William Percy that we shall sing after the sermon, “They cast their nets in Galilee (Pilgrim Hymnal, 340).” The hymn describes the call of the first disciples, “Contented, peaceful fishermen, / Before they ever knew, / The peace of God that filled their hearts/ Brimful and broke them too/…The peace of God, it is no peace, But strife closed in the sod. / Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing: / The marvelous peace of God.” This peace of God is “strife closed in the sod,” the struggle inside us, us who are only earth of the earth, barely able to contain the mighty conflict of peace and war in our world and in ourselves. This is a marvelous image; we are only a sod of earth and yet in us the eternal strife of good and evil goes on. That fact is clear and unsurprising; the surprise comes when Percy tells us that that strife itself is our peace, that the peace of Christ is a peace in the midst of controversy. Peace is not the relief that comes after the controversy is over, it is the controversy itself.

What can this mean? I find this hymn a great comfort because I seem to live a lot in controversy, and I often wonder if the cause is just the curse of a contrarian personality, or has some more profound root. I hope the cause is rooted at least partly in the paradoxical peace of Christ, the peace of controversy which is the peace of the Cross. Christ is at peace in the very act of doing his Father’s will against sadistic opposition, in constant conflict with opponents human and demonic. Christ’s peace is the satisfaction of doing God’s costly will and it suffuses and transforms the conflicts and contradictions of the life under the Cross that we Christians unavoidably must live in this world. If the gospels are to be believed, Christ’s peace is only real when we take up our Cross and follow him. The peace of Christ that is unlike anything in this world, is the peace of participation in the Cross, and the joy of that great privilege.

So “…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12: 1-2).”

“Peace I leave with you; my own peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).”

Amen.