The Grace of God, the Peace of God
Luke 6:17-26
They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were
cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for
power came out from him and healed all of them.
What do you think of as your greatest need? Your most pressing
desire? Is it to be safe? To be secure? To be loved
and accepted? Free of pain? Free of worry? To have
abundance of food? Of money, of things?
It was an idle conversation – there’s an oxymoron.
Con-verse -– to talk with… There can be idle talking, words
rattling out of our mouth without thought behind them. There can
be idle listening, words passing through our hearing without meaning,
without registry. But conversation implies meaningful interaction
– even if the meaning isn’t readily apparent.
The young man at the checkout asked about the quantity of coffee I was
buying and I mentioned the drive and my wish to economize on travel to
the store. That led to him telling me that he also had to make
that drive – daily. He then went on to explain that he lived in
such & such an apartment – not the ‘bad’ apartments nearby, where
drug dealing and police presence were an everyday occurrence, but in
the nicer, safer apartments just down the street.
I was reminded of a highly publicized and controversial land
development project near the poorest area of Waco, Texas. All
cities have them. There, near the city park with the Brazos River
running through it and in near proximity to Baylor University, the
property was attractive for upscale apartments – except for the nearby
project housing, crime-ridden and peopled by poor blacks. The
solution? Walls of course, gated communities.
A question immediately arises as to whether walls keep the dangerous,
uncertain, uncultured world out or trap the accomplished, refined,
relatively wealthy residents within.
In the liturgical season after the Epiphany, we focus on the origins of
this endeavor we call the church – the kingdom of God revealed in the
presence of Jesus the Christ and planted to unfold on Earth. From
Jesus’ baptism to his revealing himself as God’s Son to the call of
disciples to enter into and live out that Kingdom alongside him, we
follow his footsteps through Galilee and see how people react or
respond to him.
Last week, we heard Jesus call Peter and James and John to leave their
boats and follow him. Today the multitudes have gathered around
him, seeking healing, assurance, peace, security. And we hear the
stories of healing power flowing from his presence. We also hear
a sermon with which he introduces them to the ‘peaceable’ Kingdom of
God.
Hymn 661 in our Hymnal, They Cast Their Nets in Galilee, was
written by the Mississippi poet/planter/lawyer, William Alexander
Percy. Percy knew something about unrest, about a dangerous and
unsettled world. Will was a graduate of University of the South
and Harvard Law School but was rejected by his father and the
upper-class people in his hometown of Greenville. As the Great
War raged in Europe, he worked for the Commission for Relief in
Belgium, trying to feed millions cut off from food supplies by the
war. When America entered the war, he joined the infantry and
rose to the rank of Captain, earning the French Croix de Guerre and a Silver Star. His decorations earned him a measure of acceptance
from his father.
After the war, Percy returned to Mississippi and joined his father, a
U.S. Senator, in opposing the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in their
hometown of Greenville. It was during this time that he wrote a
poem “His Peace,” published in 1924, which gives the text for the hymn.
Will Percy, the war hero who had fancied himself an idealist, was
dismissed as a sissy, a lover of Blacks (most of you are old enough to
know the expression used), rejected by his fellow Mississippians.
They cast their nets in Galilee
just off the hills of brown;
such happy, simple fisherfolk,
before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen,
before they ever knew the peace of God
hath filled their hearts brimful,
and broke them too.
When we make safety and personal security our highest
priority, we need build walls around our lives, construct locked gates
to our souls, withdraw from the rabble, those whose lives are messy and
made painful through illness, hunger, poverty, lack of education, bad
choices.
Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, called The Message, does a good job on today’s reading from Luke:
You're blessed when you've lost it all.
God's kingdom is there for the finding.
You're blessed when you're ravenously hungry.
Then you're ready for the Messianic meal.
You're blessed when the tears flow freely.
Joy comes with the morning.
Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down
or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to
discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for
comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. … And know that you are
in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated
like this.
But it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made.
What you have is all you'll ever get.
And it's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself.
Your self will not satisfy you for long.
And it's trouble ahead if you think life's all fun and games.
There's suffering to be met, and you're going to meet it.
There's trouble ahead when you live only for the
approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges
them. … Your task is to be true, not popular.
Young John who trimmed the flapping sail,
homeless, in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
head down, was crucified.
The peace of God, it is no peace,
but strife closed in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing --
the marvelous peace of God.
Text: William A. Percy, 1924, © William Percy.
There is one more short paragraph in Jesus' sermon which is
too closely tied to the words we have heard to sever them and have a
good conversation -- they speak of a way of responding to the good news
of God's grace:
To you who are ready for the truth, I say
this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not
the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the
energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the
face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, gift
wrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes
unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant
life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
Luke 6:17-30 (The Message), Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson
The healing stories that attend Jesus’ teaching reflect his
intimate relationship with God and his great compassion. Jesus
healed with words, with touch, with presence. And the stories beg
the question:
How does our relationship with God enable us to be a compassionate and healing presence for people today?
We will never have the fullness of peace, of well-being and wholeness
until everyone else has it too. Those people who frustrate us
need God. Those people at work who drive us crazy needs
God. The person who gossips about us needs God. Those
people who live in bad apartments need God as surely as those who live
behind protective walls.
And what is it that those of us of faith have that the rest
don’t? We don’t have better lives or cars or nicer houses.
We don’t have easier lives, more fulfilling jobs, or perfect
children. We don’t have all the peace we wish for.
What we have is a relationship with the God who is working to redeem
the world one life at a time. What we have is the knowledge that
what we see and experience is not all there is – there is more.
What we Christians have is hope. Hope. Hope that comes from
recognizing our own insufficiency accompanied by the experience of the
grace of God.
That’s what all those people who don’t have God need. People who
feel like they have everything under control and life is just perfect
without God will come to the day when they need that hope. I’ve
been there. Lives crash and we try to find hope in drugs,
alcohol, bad relationships, and a myriad number of dead-end
paths. But it is God’s peace that gives the hope we need to rise
up from the ashes of failure, from the grave of loss.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, a German theologian noted for his complexity of
thought and writing, said with clarity: “The church is the community of
those who by baptism, faith, and eucharistic communion share in the
ministry and death of Jesus Christ and thereupon live in the hope for
the new life of his resurrection.” (An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Eerdmans, 1991).
The peace of God, it is no peace. The peace of God will not clear
all the problems out of your life and make everything hunky dory
again. The peace of God is strength, health, wholeness and well
being in the face of trouble and trial; it is the hope of the
resurrection.
Let us pray for that help of God’s grace so we might no more engage in tit-for-tat but rather love generously, live generously.
The Rev. Dcn. John Burton
February 11, 2007
Return to St. James' Home
Page 02.07