Preacher ~ George Thompson

With the advent of the internet and the proliferation of E-mail communications, we are inundated with words. Thus, we have experienced a devaluation of our language. Halford Luccock, a beloved professor at Yale Divinity, once related a personal incident from his childhood in which he was instructed in the importance of words. At the ripe age of eight, he had decided to become an atheist. He and his best friend plotted to do the most wicked thing imaginable: to burn a Bible. So, they crept into the ministerial study of Halford’s devout father and took a large, leather-bound volume. The two boys prepared a celebrative bond-fire in the backyard. But, as fate would have it, the party ended when, upon the smell of smoke, his father arrived and put out the damaging fire. To add insult to their demonic injury, Hal’s father gently pointed out that what was being roasted was not holy writ, but a dictionary. These rowdy youngsters had not defied the Almighty, but had insulted Noah Webster. Luccock enjoyed telling this story in order to illustrate the close relationship between the Bible and the dictionary; for the dictionary is indeed dependent upon the context of scripture for many of its most accurate definitions.

Few biblical words have been so distorted as the word repeated in the today’s Gospel lesson: peace. Jesus speaks the word many times in the gospel narratives; and, when he addressed his disciples in risen form in John’s gospel, his primary word of greeting was eirana – peace.

The setting for his risen appearance was the familiar room in which they had gathered on the fateful night of his last supper with the disciples. They were now saturated with grief and guilt. They had heard the report of an emotional, irrational woman, Mary Magdalene. She and other women had gone to the tomb that morning and discovered that the body of Jesus was missing. The men considered this report to be the hysterical response of emotional women. These troubled men discounted the notion that Christ was alive. They remained behind closed doors, fearing that they would be arrested. In a moment of maximum consternation, the risen Lord entered their room and spoke the one word, peace.

On this Sunday after Easter, we are prone to ask, “What sort of peace does Jesus bring to the world?” Certainly that peace is not now experienced in the city in which he appeared. Ariel Sharon is now the Prime Minister of Israel. This is the same Sharon who played a key role in the 1983 massacres in the Lebanese villages of Sabra and Shatila. He resigned as Defense Minister after a commission held that the Israeli army was indirectly responsible for the deaths of over 1000 Palestinian civilians in that year. Peace will not likely come to the land that three faiths call holy as long as leadership of the Israelis and the Palestinians is committed to genocide and terrorism.

The peace of Christ has not come to Northern Ireland this Easter. Irish people of Protestant and Catholic heritage continue to commit acts of recurring violence, without renouncing their identity as Christian.

The peace of Christ has not even come to many homes within Charlotte this Easter where fearful citizens continue to use handguns as a corrective to their fears.

Terrible things often happen to people who advocate the peace of Christ. Just ask the family of Kim Thomas. Kim labored on behalf of the rights of children and women in our beloved city. She was the Charlotte president of NOW, the National Organization of Women. Kim was brutally murdered here in our city back in 1990. The Shelter for Battered Women is a memorial to her labors on behalf of peace. Domestic violence continues to plague our city, as demonstrated by yet another homicide just days before Easter. The assailant—the woman’s husband--delivered his wife’s body to the emergency room at Presbyterian Hospital. Criminal justice officials tell us that battering is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44, more common than automobile accidents, muggings and rapes combined! 1

The sort of Easter peace that Christ gives to his faithful disciples is always in conflict with the fears and violence of this world. The structures of this world are built upon the foundations of racial profiling, economic stratification, the separation of social classes, and religious persecution. Anyone who contests these structures of injustice will find himself or herself in conflict with the prevailing culture. Thus, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus makes it very clear that he has come to initiate a revolution through the peace of God. In the region of the Galilee, he announced, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”2 The Easter peace that Christ offers is not passive. It is aggressive. It often elicits conflict and violent response.

Easter peace comes to us in moments of authentic worship. Not the sleep of a spiritual peace planted by platitudes from the pulpit. The resurrection message is not a placebo, swallowed like a sedative. The Christ who entered the upper room on Easter evening sent his disciples upon the most aggressive mission the world has ever encountered. We who have felt the risen Christ in our midst are, likewise sent into the arena of Charlotte’s public school education. We are called to be advocates for equity and qualitative education for every student, especially those that have been neglected through indifference or white flight. We are called to be the church of the towel and washbasin, as illustrated by Wilton Parr’s magnificent sculpture at the entrance to our Atrium. Jesus repeated these words to his disciples, “Peace be with you.” Then he added, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”3

A couple of generations ago the pundit G. K. Chesterton insightfully stated, “The peace promised in the churches is less attractive to the human spirit than the war that is promised outside. For one [person] who wants to be comforted, there are a hundred who want to be stirred. For what [people] want in the last resort is not death but drums.”4

The peace of Easter is, therefore, the fruit of reconciliation. We cannot be at peace with ourselves and remain in a broken relationship with God and neighbor.

The peace of Christ is also the fruit of responsibility. It is the result of facing evil, not fleeing from it. Jesus told his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”5 There are times in the lives of each of us when peace of mind is not a possibility. To seek such private inner peace would be sinful. When we witnessed the suffering of our brethren in eastern North Carolina after Hurricane Floyd, for example, how could we maintain the stance of peaceful inertia?

The peace that Christ gives is the fruit of righteousness. This is why we saw such restlessness in the life of Henri Nouwen. No contemporary Christian has been more associated with the word peace than Henri. A posthumous book containing a collection of his unpublished writings was entitled, The Road to Peace. Yet, his life seemed to be anything but peaceful. In 1965 he was involved in the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. Before he could settle into a prestigious position at Yale Divinity School, he departed as a missionary into Latin America in order to live among peasants. When Harvard University assumed they had secured a famous author on their faculty, he departed to care for Adam, a mentally and physically handicapped adult.

In his brief 64 years, Henri Nouwen embodied the peace of Christ through a life of intense prayer and restless devotion to matters of justice and reconciliation. He warned those who joined the so-called peace movement that, unless they understood the role of prayer, they would become a “fearful, angry people trying to convince others of the urgency of their protest. Thus the tragedy is that peacemakers often reveal more of the demons they are fighting than of the peace they want to bring.”6

This week following Easter Sunday has been a tranquil time here at Providence Church. The schools were out. Meetings were postponed. This was a week for catching our breath. Outside our sanctuary, traffic has passed a stately cross with a white shroud and garland of flowers representing Christ’s victory over death. When I meditated upon the meaning of this poignant symbol, I thought of these lines composed by Georgia Harkness:

“The vision fades; the Easter joy is past;

Again in dull drab paths our lot is cast.

The heavens no longer sing. The war clouds lower.

O Lord, where art thou in Thy risen power?

The calm voice speaks—it answers all I ask,

‘I am beside you in the daily task.’”7

May the peace of Christ, which surpasses understanding, be yours within the daily tasks of following him.

Footnotes:

1. These statistics are supplied by the United Family Services of Charlotte.

2. Luke 12:51 NRSV

3. John 20:21 NRSV

4. Quote taken from its use by J. Wallace Hamilton, Serendipity (New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1965), p. 70.

5. John 14: 27a NRSV

6. Henri Nouwen, The Road to Peace: Writings on Peace and Justice, edited by John Dear (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1998), p. xxix.

7. Georgia Harkness, poem contained in The Living Pulpit (Volume 7, No. 1, January-March, 1998), p. 32.