May 22, 2022
Jesus says, ‘my peace I give you’, and I think how much have you got? Is there a subscription plan? The very syllables have me reaching for him, but also for whatever suggests it might offer a bit more serenity. Looking around my life – I have tokens of that desire for more peace: a lavender plant outside my door, lavender tea, lavender spray for my house and my car, lavender oil, and a humongous photograph of a lavender field. I apparently want to be able to acquire tokens of peace in the Costco size option! Maybe you have a token, a habit, a love, something you reach for to move away from the frantic too.
These lessons we heard are of God’s peace, but also, not contemplative, ‘be still and know that I am God’, kinds of lessons. There is a constant motion and activity and just barely below the surface a sense of thrill, but mostly, unease. It is still Easter, a season during which we focus on stories of the complicatedness of new life and resurrection. Our gospel lesson says, ‘Peace I leave with you’. Not because everything is calm and settled, but because things are amazing and unsettled. The gospel lesson is part of the last things Jesus says before his arrest in John. In the translation I use the most (Common English Bible), the english word peace appears 348 times. For comparison, self is 74 times, and love is 792. In Hebrew peace is most often connected to the word we hear transliterated as shalom, in Greek it comes to us in the name Irene.
Peace in the biblical sense is not what my lavender collection offers. Peace in the biblical sense can be the eternal ceasing of conflict, but more often it is focused on the wholeness of community, God, and creation. Peace is the echo of that river of God’s wild breath washing over us. It is the song of the miracle of the molecules that make us, the quarks that makes the trees and the neighbors in an endless cycle of God bringing life out of death. The peace of Jesus is being bathed in the deepest reality of a life-giving cycle of Love and Mercy. It is real and it is powerful and growing and present. Christ offers us his presence in the hard duty of his peace, whether it be the seeking of Peace that is close at hand, or in the bigger picture.
There is good research about the healing value of tokens for hearts and minds in panic. They can actually do what our bodies tell us we want them to do. Yet not necessarily in the magical thinking we sometimes hope. That same data tells a story it maybe didn’t mean to tell, about why the very matter of sacraments matter and can grow us toward God’s reign. How do we become who God has made us to be? Tokens of trust in community: bread, wine, water oil. How do we grow toward God’s peace when the bullies won’t stop and the news is so dreadful? Tokens of trust in a community that supports us as we don’t stay tamed behind lies fronted by evil itself. We trust that somehow someway Jesus, his risen life is truly present alive in us through the tokens of he gives us. Jesus is the gardener and baker and winemaker of peace by being not a clown, but our challenger and our truthteller. Jesus who we know is alive and right here . Feel it, imagine just for a moment that you feel it. Take a deep breath. Feel God’s love like jumping in a river of life when you are crusted with the days difficulties. Feel it, feel Jesus next to you, Offering you himself, Body to body, a head on a shoulder.
The two sacred tokens of God’s peace are Baptism and Eucharist. The center sacraments – outward signs of inner holy realities are two parts that go together – baptism and eucharist. Baptism is buying the lavender plant, Eucharist is watering it, keeping it in the good soil, enough sun, etc. Today we welcome two young friends into this way of life, its challenges and its blessings. They begin with Baptism, they will continue again and again with the token of peace in the Eucharist.
The immersion in Jesus’ peace is learned and practiced over time, not just scratch and sniff. Jesus invites all to his forever token of his peace that is belongingness and forgiveness and truthfulness and belovedness. God is materially committed to you, dedicated to our growth in peace which is belongingness, forgiveness, truthfulness and knowing the whole creation’s belovedness. It is a way of life that we can know and feel in the dampness of our heads and the tingle of food in our bellies. It is knowing feeling smelling touching trusting that we are deeply loved by the original power of all that is, the One that is committed to our growing in peace.