My Peace I Give to You
I found out a few weeks ago that a close colleague and mentor of mine is leaving the area at the beginning of June for a new job on the West Coast. As she described what she would be doing, it sounded like an amazing opportunity and a perfect fit for her gifts. I could tell she was thrilled and I was thrilled for her, so I shared my heartfelt congratulations and starting grilling her enthusiastically about all her next steps. After a short time, we both fell silent and I could feel the "but what does this mean for me?" pit opening in my guts. I’ve only known this woman for 4 or 5 years, but she’s one of those people from whom I learn something lasting and important every time I’m with her. She’s been a rock for me at times when I’ve felt shaky. As importantly, she’s challenged me to feel shaky at times when I’ve felt like a rock! I started to pout for a bit as I selfishly pondered the impending loss. And then, with God’s help I’m sure of it, I was able to force a surprisingly genuine dose of courage and calm down my throat, sort of like when I was a kid eating broccoli. I did not want to swallow it! Doing so meant accepting the fact that she was leaving and that one of my key go-to people when the going gets tough would not be around. Though the taste was decidedly unpleasant going down, once it was in my belly, I had a sense that was going to be okay, even good for me, and not only because I knew it was good for her and for those with whom she would work.
I wonder if the disciples knew the feeling when their risen teacher told them he’d be leaving, again. On the church’s calendar, it’s still the season of Easter and the risen Christ has one more week before he leaves and ascends to prepare a place for us in the eternal home and presence of God. No more breakfasts on the beach or walks on the Emmaus Road. Just when the disciples and we get used to having him around again, he’s off. In this so-called farewell discourse in John though, Jesus offers a few partings words of peace and promise to his followers. Truth to tell, the words sound like a bunch of broccoli to me, like something hard to swallow, then as now. In fact, I think the words are so hard to swallow that the church is still chewing on them after all these years. Before we talk about the words themselves though, I need to describe the scene a bit more.
Do you see what’s going on here in John? As one commentator has noted, Jesus is standing here like a mother with her hand on the doorknob about to leave her children on the floor. She knows she’ll see them again. She knows the caregiver is capable. The caregiver knows he can handle the situation. But the children are all left asking the same question: What about me?
Think about it with me. When was the last time you found yourself asking that question in a sincere way: what about me? The church is probably the last place you’d expect to hear encouragement of a question like that but let’s try it and see it where it leads. Kids ask it all the time. How ‘bout you mothers though? Let’s hope "what about me?" is not a question you’re asking today! And yet I know that weeks can go by when the weight of work, family and community commitments can bury that question so deep in your soul that you may not dare to ask it. What about me? For those who have endured a job loss or some prolonged financial insecurity, the question may be familiar to you too, if not necessary. What about me? What will happen to me and my family? Those who are growing old, those with an increasingly tenuous hold on pension plans and social security are asking these questions too. What about me? Who will take care of me? People across our country are asking it more and more as the gap between the rich and poor grows wider and wider. "What about me?" is not merely a cry of selfishness or entitlement. It can be a cry of loneliness and fear. It can also be a rallying cry for justice or equality.
It seems Jesus is responding to something like this question throughout this chapter in John’s Gospel. He says to his friends and followers just before the passage I read: I will not leave you orphaned! Apparently, some were worried about the possibility. They were anticipating a sense of abandonment. How can you leave us now, Jesus? What will happen to us without? He answers them with his usual authority. Speaking to his disciples, to us and to every troubled heart, he offers these simple words: "Peace I leave with you! My Peace I give to you."
At first glance, these words sound like pure comfort. They go down easily and without fuss. They even roll off our tongues when we greet each other with peace as we did just a few minutes ago. Peace be with you! No harm in saying that, right? But when we really take these words in, when we let them sit in our bellies for awhile, they offer more than mere consolation and more than some dynamic camaraderie on a Sunday morning. Ultimately, these words are a challenge and an exhortation to all of us! They are an invitation to ask our "what about me’s?" in a new and decidedly more empowered light! Far from marking the end of Christ’s ministry on earth, they signal a new beginning of our own ministry in Christ’s name.
Remember, we are meeting the disciples here at a moment when they’re considering what their lives and community will be like without their beloved mentor, rabbi and risen Lord. Though they don’t fully realize it, they are going through an extraordinary transformation that’s been underway since Easter morning. They are about to go from being followers of Christ to being leaders in the early church, from being disciples to being apostles! Jesus is not merely speaking words of assurance when he says, "my peace I leave with you". He’s passing them and us a mantel - the very mantel of his leadership! He’s passing the mantel of God’s peace to their hearts so that they will, along with the Spirit, have what it takes to finish what he started. To follow him, to want to be like Jesus, to want to have his peace in our heart, is to want to be a leader ourselves. We’re called not to be passive recipients of it or to follow blindly. We are called to be initiators of and ambassadors for this peace in the world!
Maybe now we can begin to imagine the new spin this puts on our "what about me?" questions. Imagine that anytime we ask it, we encounter Jesus through the Spirit asking the question right back to us. "Yes, I was wondering the same thing!" he might say. "What about you? Are you ready? Are you ready to ask that question not only for yourselves and for your own pain? Are you ready to ask that question also for and with the poor, for and with the sick, for and with the enemy? Are you ready to ask not merely ‘what about me?’ but also, the decidedly more political question, ‘what about us?’?" Imagine that it’s in precisely these moments when we feel left alone, orphaned, like no one is hearing our cause, that Holy Spirit is beginning to work a great transformation in our hearts. God knows that in these moments of our vulnerability and suffering there is an invitation to know solidarity with all those who suffer in the world. Rest assured. The consolation comes to us first, right where we need it. Peace I leave with you! But God does not stop there. Christ says it twice! The exhortation follows the consolation: My Peace I give to you. My peace, which means it’s a peace for sharing. My peace which means it’s a peace you won’t know in its fullness until the entire whole world knows it. My peace which means it’s already with us, but not yet fully, so I’m passing this baton to you to carry on the work. In the moment of vulnerability, loneliness and confusion, God’s peace enters in and starts disturbing and agitating our lives, changing the way we look at the lives of others. We begin to consider not only what is being done to and for us, but also what is being done to and for others, and what we can do for others and ourselves with God’s help. I ask you…have you known a moment of transformation like this in your life? Have you considered yourself not merely a follower of Christ, as a recipient of the peace he gives, but as a leader for Christ, one with the responsibility and the calling to share his peace with those around you?
There’s a wonderful and timely example of this kind of transformation in the story of the very first Mother’s Day, proclaimed as such by a woman named Julia Ward Howe in 1870. It’s a story I’m sure many of you have heard before. It bears repeating. (I wonder if the small group of First Church bird watchers who gathered at Mt. Auburn this morning visited her grave there.) An abolitionist, a pacifist, and a poet, Howe is most famous for penning the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". However, in the aftermath of the Civil War, and in the face of mounting casualties from the Franco-Prussian war, she also wrote a powerful manifesto entitled "Mother’s Day Proclamation". If you haven’t heard it yet, I guarantee it will change the way you of think of Mother’s Day for years to come. Howe writes:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God…
A mother speaking out of loneliness and fear, with the threat of family being killed, asks first for her fellow sisters to meet, as women, to mourn and to cry out together. What began with a focus on one person’s heartache became a rallying cry for all mothers, for all children and for peace itself. Talk about a transformation! Howe was an early Unitarian. My guess is she could surely relate to Jesus’ call to take up that mantel of leadership, and to proclaim God’s peace in the world.
Friends, the peace that Christ leaves us is not merely for the taking. While we may need to wait another two weeks for the Advocate to arrive at Pentecost in order to be fully caught up in this process of transformation, Christ’s peace calls us away from waiting and wondering when our leaders will answer our "what about me?" questions. The peace of Christ is an exhortation for us not merely to follow his way, but to lead the charge in his absence. I ask you…what have you done lately to be a leader for peace in this world? Waiting for other leaders to step up does not count. Fortunately for us though, the little things do.
I saw a story in the Globe recently about a few local leaders for peace. Our own Jean Miller was featured. "Meet the Raging Grannies," the article begins, "feisty women of a certain age who protest war, nuclear power, bio hazards, degradation of the environment, and a panoply of other causes. They protest with a smile while wearing outlandish hats and singing self-composed ditties that take biting, acerbic aim at the powerful."… "I know for a fact I was born with a gene for justice," said Susan Gracey, a 72-year-old grandmother of two from Brookline."
Sisters and brothers in Christ, whether our baptisms be of water or tears, I know for a fact that we are all born with ‘a gene for justice’. It’s a gene that can be awakened in moments when we least expect it, when we find ourselves vulnerable and wondering "what will happen to me and to us?" and "who will take care of us now?".
On this Mother’s Day, we remember the words of Julia Ward Howe exhorting us to peace. We remember the promise of our Lord that he is leaving us the Holy Spirit as an advocate for all. As always, we remember Jesus. Let us hear his call to God’s peace as a disturbance of our peace, disrupting our complacency, drawing us into solidarity and action. Jesus has set the stage for us to be leaders for peace, emissaries of God’s grace, and we find through our own lived experience our deepest appetite for change. Feed your hearts on these words then. Peace I leave with you! Swallow them whole if you dare! My Peace I give to you! It’s a peace the world cannot give. Amen.