Sunday, May 1, 2016 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

Peace? Peace.

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 67
John 14:23–27

Maybe peace isn’t an absence of something, but instead is its own presence.

David Lose

For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush. Jeremiah 6:13–14 (NRSV)

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. John 14:27 (NRSV)

I have been thinking about peace this week, meditating on what it is and what it is not. Perhaps that is because the delicate cease-fire in Syria has basically collapsed and innocent children and civilians are caught in the crossfire again. What is peace for those in the middle of war? Or perhaps it is because the one-year anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray just passed. What is peace when mixed with protest?

Undoubtedly part of my rumination on peace has been prompted by the continual rhetorical battling between all of our presidential candidates. In so much of our national discourse we now hear a constant weaving together of a narrative defined by threat and fear. After watching what has been going on in California this weekend—plenty of troubling behavior on all sides—it seems there is little of “peace” in the story of fear and threat that we are telling ourselves these days.

Or maybe I’ve been thinking about what peace is or is not because I’ve recently read this same passage from John’s Gospel at two different memorial services within the past three weeks, when we thanked God for the lives of two women not much older than I. What is peace in the face of cancer, of death and loss? More than likely it is for all of these reasons and more that I have been thinking about, ruminating on, peace. And as I have done so, the two voices I just read—the voices of Jeremiah and Jesus—have dominated the discussion.

First we heard the voice of the righteously angry prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah, called by God while still in the womb, was a prophet God told to speak difficult words of challenge to his own people. Don’t make me do it, Jeremiah continually asked of God. But God always responded with “Go” and Jeremiah reluctantly would. The leaders of his people, his nation, had fallen away from God and the covenant. According to Jeremiah’s words of prosecutorial accusation in chapter 5, those leaders “know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan . . . and they do not defend the rights of the needy.”

Because the leaders of God’s people continually turned their backs on God’s dream for creation, God’s work of shalom, of peace, Jeremiah spoke to them words of destruction and judgment. His warnings of false peace make up only one small part of his prophetic tirade. “Don’t you tell me about peace,” Jeremiah cried out to those in power. “Peace. What peace! You use up my people. You have no respect for their lives. All of you—from those in charge of the state house to those in charge of the church house—all of you have dealt falsely with everyone and you only look out for yourselves. Yet then you say to those you wound or just plain neglect, ‘Shhh. Everything’s OK. Relax. Peace. Peace. It’s all under control.”

Jeremiah knew the peace those leaders proclaimed was anything but honest peace. So he railed against it. “Don’t whisper peace to those you have wounded. There is no peace for them, only for you,” Jeremiah’s words challenged. “Don’t promise your fake security and pretend empathy to the vulnerable ones, the ones you choose not to see as you seek peace only for yourselves.” They cry out “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” That is one voice, one perspective of peace, that has camped out in my imagination this week.

And then there is Jesus, also speaking to us of peace, but in a different context than the prophet. He, as Jeremiah did, was about to come face-to-face with violence, with deception. It is the night of his betrayal, the evening when he will be handed over to those who hate him and who will take him away to be executed (David Lose, from his weekly blog www.inthemeantime.org). Yet in the middle of that, Jesus chooses to speak words of peace.

Now, we do remember that throughout his ministry he had, like the prophet, also spoken words of challenge, words of invitation, for those who followed him: “Don’t forget who and whose you are,” he would say, “and all that implies.” He issued commands for his disciples to do love and to seek justice, commands that Jeremiah certainly would have rallied behind and supported.

But on that night, at that time, Jesus chose to share dinner with his friends and to make promises to them. Promises like “In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” And other promises like “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.”

And then, looking them straight in the eyes, he makes one of the most profound promises of all. In the midst of impending violence against him, in the midst of betrayal and deep fear, Jesus offers them peace. Peace I leave with you, Jesus said. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.

Peace. Peace, peace, when there is no peace. My peace I give to you. Same word, different meanings. Two voices—one voice warning of what peace is not and one voice promising what peace can be. With which peace are we most familiar? To which peace do we aspire?

Let’s differentiate between them even more. In his book A Longing for Home, Frederick Buechner also wrestled with these two voices of peace, trying to understand the difference between them. Here is how he put it: “The kind of peace that the world gives is the peace we experience when for a little time the world happens to be peaceful. It is a peace that lasts for only as long as the peaceful time lasts because as soon as the peaceful time ends, the peace ends with it” (Frederick Buechner, The Longing for Home, p. 110). Buechner’s description of that worldly peace sounds like what Jeremiah had grown so wary of: peace as a promise of worldly safety, a peace that comes and goes depending on one’s current circumstance or, in Jeremiah’s case, depending on the whims of the those in charge of your circumstances. “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Certainly no peace that abides, Jeremiah might argue. No peace that lasts.

Again, Buechner:

The peace that Jesus offers, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the things that are going on at the moment he offers it, which are for the most part tragic and terrible things. It is a profound and inward peace that sees with unflinching clarity the tragic and terrible things that are happening and yet [the peace Jesus offers] is not shattered by them. . . . His peace comes not from the world but from something whole and holy because deep beneath all the broken and unholy things that are happening in it even as he speaks, Jesus sees what he calls the kingdom of God . . . the ultimate mystery of God’s presence buried in [the world] like a treasure buried in a field. (Longing for Home, pp. 110–111)

Whereas the peace decried by Jeremiah comes and goes and is primarily dependent upon those with power and on what they choose to do with that power, the peace promised by Jesus is grounded only in this acknowledgement of and dependence on divine presence—the presence of the holy that is deep and constant even in the middle of tumult, in the middle of all that is tragic and terrible. Even in personal and worldly crisis and chaos, Jesus promises, I am giving you my peace, the fullness of my presence, the reality that through me, God has already made a home in you and will not leave you, no matter what.

Jesus’ words are astounding, honestly. Remember, Jesus was eating dinner with those who were on the cusp of betraying him, denying him, and fleeing from him in his greatest hour of need. And yet even to them, and to us, he gives peace—a constant, unflinching sense of God’s presence placed within us, within the world, buried like a treasure in a field.

A peace, an unflinching sense of divine presence, that will not flee in the middle of crisis or chaos, in the middle of violence or disease, in the middle of national and personal narratives of fear and threat. It camps out. It makes a home. It stays. And to me, this highlights the primary difference between the peace Jeremiah warns us about and the peace Jesus promises.

The peace Jeremiah decries has nothing to do with divine presence. It has nothing to do with any kind of presence. The thin peace Jeremiah lashes out against has only to do with absence. It is a sense of peace that only comes about if there is an absence of conflict, an absence of trouble, an absence of vulnerability. Only when there is an absence of every kind of chaos does one experience the peace against which Jeremiah warns. We might wonder if that ever really happens for anyone. It is difficult to imagine.

But the peace promised by Jesus is all about presence, not absence. The presence of a God who intimately knows all the tragic and terrible things about what it is like to be human, to be creature, and who has chosen to make a home in all of that, in order to make a home in all of us. God’s continual, unflinching presence is what provides the thick peace for which we long. It is the peace that says, “I’ve got you and I am not letting you go. My peace, my presence, I give to you.” It is an Easter peace, a peace that remembers God does some of God’s best work in the darkness of a tomb and in the chaos of our world.

Last summer, when Greg and I met Congressman John Lewis, one of the questions someone asked him in our presence was how he managed to survive all that he endured. The questioner wanted to know how, after all of the beatings he received, after all the times in which he was imprisoned, after hearing all the insults and names hurled at him, how did his spirit survive all of that? How had he not been destroyed or made angry and bitter? Congressman Lewis responded that he survived because he always had peace in the middle of it all.

Even when he was angry, even when his soul was tired and he was discouraged—in the middle of all the terrible and tragic things—Congressman Lewis claimed he had an abiding sense of peace. He said something like: That is because I know who I am. I know I am a child of God. And I knew God was always right there with me, sustaining me, healing me, giving me a song and a fresh infusion of courage as needed. I knew I was never alone. Nothing they could do to me would ever change that, so I wasn’t afraid. I was at peace, he said. (Congressman Lewis also speaks of his courage and sense of peace in his book Across That Bridge.)

Congressman Lewis experienced the peace Jesus promised because the congressman trusted that God made a home in him and God would never leave, no matter what. He knew God’s presence. And part of that is because he had spent his life nurturing that sense of presence within him by reading scripture, by being a part of worship, by praying ceaselessly. With that deep grounding, he was able to rest in God’s peace, even in the middle of all the terrible and tragic things that came at him in the struggle. I felt in awe of him when I heard his response, and I watched his face light up as he said it.

I wonder if sometimes we get so focused in going after the peace that Jeremiah spoke out about—the peace primarily defined as an absence of trouble, a peace that, frankly, we don’t have much control over—that we tend to overlook the honest peace we have already received: the promise of the continual, unflinching presence of God who makes a home in us and in this world, who does God’s best work in the darkness of the tomb and in the middle of the chaos. I wonder if we were to follow John Lewis’s example and pay particular attention to nurturing that sense of God’s continual, unflinching presence in us, would we also find ourselves resting in God’s peace, regardless if our own circumstances are calm or in a time of tumult?

Peace I leave with you, Jesus promised. My peace I give to you. I don’t give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled. And do not let them be afraid. Even in the middle of the terrible and tragic things, I’ve got you and I’m not letting you go. Amen.