Jesus' Kind of Peace 5/5/13

Leave-takings are often difficult.  We hurt when someone we love has to leave, and it’s also hard when we’re the one that has to leave - especially when we are good friends and have
shared meaningful times. Say we go on a special trip - we anticipate arriving at our friend's place and seeing them, then we enjoy good times together, then we find ourselves starting to count down - only 2 more days, only 1 more day, then that last day and it’s time to leave – it’s hard. Same with visiting a favorite spot, a favorite summer camp, a favorite relative’s house, seeing our grown children or grandchildren, moving from a house where we’ve spent happy years. Of course, it’s really only difficult to part when it’s been a good, enriching time, with good friends, with happy memories - we’re happy to leave when it’s that other kind of visit!
       Jesus knows what’s coming for him, knowing the difficult tests he will endure, and how his followers will feel bereft at his leaving. So he’s preparing himself and his followers for his approaching death, so they don’t lose their faith, so they won’t feel the bottom drop out of everything they had envisioned and imagined during their years together on the road, and in ministry. We've pointed out before that they really don’t get what he’s saying, so the tragedy of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion do strike them to the core – and God raising him from the dead stuns them again. But they have his words to recall to mind, and more than that, they have Jesus’ very Spirit to keep the relationship going.

My peace I give you - & the Spirit
       Have peace, Jesus says, ahead of time. I’m not going to leave you orphaned. I’m saying this while I’m with you, and later you’ll have the Spirit, the Advocate, the Counselor, the One who walks alongside to help – and you’ll be reminded and taught even more. Don’t fear – I give you my peace. Don’t be troubled or afraid.
       Of course, they ARE troubled and afraid; confused, perhaps overwhelmed. They DO feel bereft, not understanding. Jesus’ death is a big shock, even though reading about it these 2,000 years later, we can see in the gospels that Jesus tried to tell them about it. But they had a different picture in mind, they expected a different outcome - Jesus triumphant, Israel reborn. So Jesus’ words didn't click beforehand.
       Then they began remembering, then Jesus breathed on them and gave his Spirit. Then that Day of Pentecost came, that we will celebrate in a couple weeks, with the explosion of God’s power and the beginning of the spread of the gospel. Jesus was still with them.

Scary things happen in this world
       Certainly if we had to face the challenges of life alone, it would be a fearsome thing. Scary things happen in the world and in life – they fill our headlines and our social media. A random maladjusted person takes out their feelings of helplessness and wrath on a grade school. A couple foreign students plant bombs at a great community event like the Boston Marathon. Angry people highjack planes, or send poisons through the mail. Trusted people high in reliable organizations decide to get rich in some nefarious and careless ways, and plunge the whole world into financial chaos. A parent can’t handle the stress in their life and take it out on their children, abusing them and scarring their souls for their life. A nice family dog attacks a kid out of the blue. Cancer happens. Sudden death happens. People we think are friends turn on us in scathing abuse. Cars wreck. Jobs get eliminated. Children experiment with drugs and get hooked. Freak accidents happen. Houses get robbed. Fires sweep through the nearby forests and take one house while leaving those on either side. 

There's varieties of what 'peace' means...
      What does Jesus mean about giving us peace? What kind of peace is it?
      We use the word peace is various ways. Our country calls its missiles “peacemakers” – in the sense that we have enough power to clobber you, so don’t rebel. I guess that's peace of a sort - no overt war, anyway....but it’s not a thriving situation for the powerless. And there’s the other sense that we’ll wipe you out and then you won’t be a bother and we’ll have peace. Some parents punish their children so severely that the kids live in fear of putting a foot wrong – not really a healthy relationship, although I guess there’s a peace of sorts. Not a peace where the children thrive.
       Politically, we call Peace the absence of war. Whatever else is hurting people, however else people are suffering, if there’s no war, it’s peacetime. Back in the hippie days, we wore peace symbols and everyone talked about peace, kind of an Utopian dream of everyone getting along, mainly because they were enjoying the rounded off edges with marijuana. Forget your troubles with an artificial high, drugs or booze whatever, and just be, man.

What Jesus' peace isn't
       The peace Jesus gives isn't about carrying the biggest stick, nor being the victims of those with the biggest sticks. The peace Jesus gives isn't about a sentimental or drug-induced version of peace, either. And certainly the peace Jesus gives doesn't mean the absence of trouble in our lives, or the psychological tension we feel when we wrestle with things. Christians certainly have as much human trouble as the next guy. Believing in God doesn't put a shield around us that trouble can’t get through, although sometimes we don't understand that.  Look at the Bible - The folks in the Bible stories certainly didn't live trouble-free lives – even King David, the great King of Israel’s glory. Our adult Sunday School class has been reading in 2 Samuel about David’s life – although he was a man of God and a great King, he certainly had his difficult times. Jacob, the founder of the Hebrew tribe known as Israel, had his named changed TO Israel because he “strived with God.” His son Joseph, also important to the story of God’s people, was thrown out by his own brothers, thrown in prison and lied about – he landed on his feet, but he had troubles. The disciples were beaten, stoned, imprisoned, and some were martyred. Jesus himself was betrayed, lied about and killed by the state.
       I know there are some preachers and churches that seem to tell people that if only they’d come to God, get right with God, all their troubles would be over. That illness and trouble come because of sins. That’s just simply not true. We don’t cease being humans and participants in the human condition just because we have trusted in God. There’s a verse in the OT that says that when it rains, it rains on the just and the unjust. You can take that 2 ways – one, that when God sends the blessing of rain, it helps the crops of the bad guys as well as the good guys. Two, when trouble comes, it doesn't just affect the bad guys. In any event, it seems to say we are all part of humanity, and prone to the things that befall humanity.

So...what IS Jesus' peace?
       Like those other fruits of the Spirit, love and joy and kindness and long-suffering, the peace Jesus gives is a deep inner certainty that we are God’s beloved, and in God’s hands. The Hebrew word “Shalom,” which is often translated “peace,” actually carries a concept of wholeness, well-being, and inner security that we know the One who is the Beginning and the End – and everything in between.
       So in troubles, we know that we are not out of God’s hands, and we have not been abandoned. We remember that God is with us, and even if things are dire, our lives are safe in God’s larger plan. The peace of God is a deep-seated sense of well-being that comes from one’s experience of the Divine in daily life. Our hearts are not perturbed, even if the seas roar around us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. We do not live in existential loneliness - rather our reality is that place where God’s will is being done and God’s promises are being fulfilled, where the Spirit of God lives in us and connects us to the ultimate reality of Being Itself. Jesus’ peace emerges from a sense of God’s nearness and an experience of the Spirit’s illumination. Peace enlivens the soul and widens our sense of self beyond the fragile and defensive self to embrace the Spirit of God moving in all things. The fearful self, worried about its survival, gives way to a self that sees all things in God, including its individual unfolding, and God in all things. We remain mortal and finite, but our mortality is no longer demoralizing; our mortality is embraced in our relationship to a trustworthy and faithful God. (from Bruce Epperly’s blog, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/ 2013/ 05/the-adventurous-lectionary-the-sixth-sunday-of-easter/)

God makes a home in us
       Jesus promises in these verses that we who love God will keep God’s words, and God will come and make a home within us. John’s word for this is often translated, “abide.” God will abide in us if we abide in God. The gospel of John uses this word 40 times, so it’s a significant concept in John. Abide signifies to stay, to remain, to dwell, to lodge, to last, to persist, and/or to continue. At the spiritual level, it describes what God does in our lives. God abides in Jesus and Jesus abides in God (14:10). Jesus abides in and with us (6:56). We bear fruit because Jesus abides in us (15:5). Jesus' words abide (15:7). The Holy Spirit abides with Jesus (1:32-33). Therefore disciples abide with or in Jesus (8:31, 35, 12:46, 15:4-5, 7, 9-10). (from webpage blog, http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Home-Alone-Alyce-McKenzie-04-29-2013)
       God makes a home within us. Isn’t that a delightful promise? No wonder we can have the peace of God – we are in an ongoing relationship with the Divine. We live together with the God of the universe. Not only does that give us peace, it also says we are never alone when we face the troubles of the world. God is with us. What a remarkable assurance – and a remarkable peace. AMEN.

Text - John 14: 23-29