Readings
for Easter 6C:
Acts 14:8-18 or Joel 2:21-27; Psalm 67; Revelation 21-22-22:5; John 14:23-2
May 16, 2004
The Rev. Robert J. Mayer
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
Age for age each of us has a different understanding of peace. In high school peace meant my parents would leave me alone. Later I had served in Korea, and peace meant something else. I had finished college. Joanna and I married. We began to have children, and moved here in 1961 from the San Fernando Valley, I to work at Lockheed as a computer engineer. The Santa Clara Valley was much more peaceful then than either my native Boston, or the Southern California freeways. Seeking peace is still on my mind now.
While peace may mean the absence of war, peace to me also means more than being in a condition where we are not in conflict with one another. 'Make me an instrument of peace' is more of what I mean, being involved. Peacemakers calm their environment, any environment: Home, Family, Work, School, Church, and even the environment of nature. Peacemakers infuse their environments by connecting its pieces into a greater whole. At the end of many a service of worship we are often blessed with "the peace that passes all understanding" and are asked to "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord."
As God's servants, we are called to go from here in peace, to work in peace, and to live in peace. Wherever we are, with our families, in public places … let us notice those around us. Stop. Look. And Listen. Let us listen to people, even to what they are not saying. Let us look at those who are not animated. Look at their faces and their bodies. Observe how they move. Who is at peace and who is not? Turn toward yourself. Are you at peace within yourself? Here can be an oasis for peace. … Stop. Look. And Listen.
There is a wonderful game, now a popular book and a movie. It is called "Five…" or "Six Degrees of Freedom." The game is to identify someone, anyone in the world to whom you can link through six people or less. ( It had its origin in how one was related as a pupil of a particular professor of mathematics.) Using this game as a tool, ask yourself for each of these links, if you are at peace with one another even when you have linked with the intended person. So, pick someone. Anyone.
You get the idea. Using this serious game, Are we at peace with one another? This is a method to evaluate if your world and if mine is peaceful right now. Living in peace is a reasonable objective, and each of us can sow such seeds for peace whenever we pray, whenever -- as we soon will -- say the Prayers of the People. Living in peace means to be with another in peace, acting it out.
Living in peace also means to be with one's own self in peace. To be sure, sometimes I am troubled, at war with myself. Sometimes I could walk into an empty room and have an argument. I am not so good and not so great that I can get through my life living by myself, for myself, and bringing about my own salvation. I must go beyond myself. I must breach the walls I build around myself. I cannot do that alone. None of us can breach the walls we build around ourselves. By God's grace and as creatures of God, we can make peace. With God's help, we can be at peace.
Peace is a verb, an active verb, as well as a state of being. Moreover, to continually seek and be at peace we need to make peace, to use every method and means that we can. What DID Jesus do? Jesus used Passive Resistance during his own trial and at his crucifixion. However, before that, he also ACTED many, many times: he taught, he healed, he fed, and he cleaned house at the Temple in Jerusalem. Peace occurs when we are in union, at one with God and at one with all of God's creation.
God does not abandon us. We are continually reassured, no matter how agonized we are. In today's Gospel of John our spiritual ancestors gathered with Jesus one last time. They were agonizing about Jesus leaving them, abandoning them. He had provided peace in their lives, and yet they thought that by losing him they would loose all meaning in their lives. So, Jesus said to them and thus to us, " … (the advocate) the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have taught you." (John 14:26.) Paul may well have understood this portion of the Gospel of John when wrote years later to the Church in Rome (Romans 8:38-39) " … I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths -- nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Finally, let me share the lyrics of a hymn that gives me peace, (Hymn 694):
God be in my head and in my understanding.
God be in my eyes and in my looking.
God be in my mouth and in my speaking.
God be in my heart and in my thinking.
God be at mine end and at my departing.
| Updated 05/19/04 |
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