"Peace"
The power of the Holy Spirit grants us peace when we are confronted with adversity.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Text: Matthew 10:34-39
Francis Bacon, the British philosopher, once said: “It is miserable to have a state of mind when you have few desires, but many fears.” Bacon is suggesting that fear is indeed a very real force in human existence. It is so powerful that it can alter one's whole perception of life, so that one does not enjoy desires and pleasures when they come along; the fears that come at night and prevent us from sleeping; the fears that dominate our attitudes towards others and to the world; the fears that can permeate the very depths of our souls. It is a miserable state of mind to have that many fears, and therefore, few really good desires.
This became very evident to me last Sunday. As you know, I was privileged to preach at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church as part of the Churches-on-the-Hill pulpit exchange. It was an exceedingly cold and bitter morning. I arrived early to preach to that congregation, but my throat was dry, and my body and my hands were cold, and since I had a few minutes, I decided to walk down Yonge Street and pop into a coffee shop for a hot cup of coffee to nestle towards my chest for a few minutes. I went in and ordered my double-double, and of course a little doughnut on the side, and in no time I was warmed up with a glow that went from the bottom of my toes to the top of my head. I felt ready.
As I walked out, I could see a man huddled with his back towards one of the newspaper stands. He had a blanket wrapped around himself and a rather dark cap on and a scarf tied tightly around his neck, as he sat on the ground looking lonesome and cold. I asked him if he would like a cup of coffee, and he said he would love one. So, I asked him what he took. I went in, got it, brought it out, and gave it to him, but then I thought, “You know, this man really should not be in this state.” I said to him “On a cold morning like this (it was -30°C), you should be in a shelter. Is there anything that I can do or someone that I can call right now to help you find a place where you can go?”
A look of utter fear came across his face. He said, “No, Father, please don't do that! I don't want to go to a shelter!”
I said, “Fine, we won't do that, but why not? It is so cold and this is so dangerous, and I am worried for you.”
He told me his reason, as if to unburden himself about the state of his life. He said, “Actually, I am a recovering alcoholic, and I think I have beaten it. I think I have done it, thanks to AA. I am grateful I am no longer an alcoholic.”
I said, “That's wonderful! I am very glad for you. May God be praised!”
Then he said, “But there's another problem: I also have an addiction to gambling, and that is why I am in the state I am now. A lot of gambling goes on underground in the shelters. In some of them, you gamble for the best beds or the best food or the next packet of cigarettes, or the next drink or a little extra protection. I don't think most people realize that this goes on, not in all, but in some of the shelters. I dare not for one minute go to a place where I might get caught up in gambling, for I would probably lose even the clothes that I have right now.”
It was obvious from the look on his face that even though I persisted in saying, “Still you should,” that he wouldn't go.
He stopped me in my tracks and said, “There's no 'still' about it, I cannot go.” The fear in his eyes was so strong and so powerful that it caused him to sit on the ground on Yonge Street in -30°C temperatures.
Fear, my friends, will make us do incredible things. John Berryman, who in 1964 won the Pulitzer Prize for his brilliant book, Dream Song, had to wrestle with many demons in his life. One of them was alcoholism. In his battle with alcoholism, he finally succumbed to the depression that sometimes comes with it.
One day, he flung himself off a bridge over the Mississippi and died. Before he did, he wrote something fascinating: “We must travel in the direction of our fears.” Now, I have wondered what Berryman meant. If he meant that we should confront our fears, to use a quote from David MacLennan, written in a sermon he preached here many years ago, he said there was a need to exteriorize our fears. In other words, to not repress them, but to name them, to speak them and to let them be known.
Then, I would say we should walk in the direction of our fears. We should not run away from them. But, if it should mean that those fears dominate us, that we allow those fears to set the agenda or the path of our lives, then clearly to Berryman I would say “No!”
In today's reading from the Gospel of St. John, Jesus is dealing with fear and with peace. He is dealing with the fears of his disciples as he looks into their eyes at the time before his departure, before his crucifixion. He looks them in the eyes and he can tell that they are stressed and they are worried and they are frightened, for they have no idea what life will be like without him, so much so that they ask him questions like “Where are you going?” and “Can we go with you?” and “Where is the way?”
They want to go with Jesus, but he is talking about leaving, and so in the midst of their fears, in the midst of their confusion, in the midst of their sense of everything coming to a head after having followed him for three years, Jesus says, “My peace I leave with you, not as the world gives, give I unto you, let not your hearts be troubled.” With the promise of the Holy Spirit, Jesus believes he has given the disciples everything that they need to face the days and the weeks that will follow.
So I asked myself, “What did those words mean to Jesus' disciples then, and what do they mean for us now?” When Jesus said, “My peace I leave with you,” can you and I grasp that same peace even in the midst of our own fears, and can we share that peace with those who experience fear in their own lives? The answer, of course, is “Yes,” but what did Jesus really mean?
Clearly, he meant something unique. He said, “My peace I leave with you.” Not a peace alongside a group of other therapies; not a peace of a temporary respite from the stresses of life. This is not a peace that just gives you a balm for your soul once in a while. Jesus is not offering a spa or a health club membership to get you through the cold days of winter. He is giving something greater: he says, “My peace I leave with you.”
However, when you look at the word peace, you can see that there is even greater depth and meaning. I know sometimes we preachers quote Greek as if it somehow drips off the back of a box of cereal in the morning, a common word used here and there. But sometimes there is a meaning to a Greek word that really does capture the nuance of what is said. It does in this case. Jesus says to them, “I leave with you my eirene” and the word “eirene” has as its equivalent in Hebrew the word “shalom.” It is the same word. I leave with you shalom; I leave with you eirene; I leave with you my peace. Shalom and eirene mean an actual state of being. I am leaving you a state of being, and it is a state of being that is different from another Greek word, “polemos,” from which we get the word “polemic,” a time of disturbance, a state of conflict, or a state of aggravation.
In other words, Jesus is not just offering them a temporary respite from the trouble of the world, he is offering them a new state of being. He is saying to these disciples that he will leave this for them, in such a way that only he can give it, because what he is going to do is bear the cross. What he is going to do is rise from the dead through the power of the Father, and through that very gift of his death and resurrection they are going to have a new state of being in which to live: a new way of existing, so if hardships come, they will be reconciled with God and with one another, through what Jesus is doing. “My peace I leave with you.”
It is unique, but it is also, as you can see as the text continues, universal. It is a universal peace. Jesus not only says “My peace I leave with you,” but he also promises to send them the comforter, and that through the power of the Father, this comforter will be left with the disciples. The power of the Holy Spirit, in other words, will continue to give them this peace.
Now, for those of us who do not have Jesus around to sit with us in our time of sorrow, who do not have him physically right there next to us to hold our hand and to comfort us when we have fears, we now have the power of the same Spirit, and as Jesus said to the disciples, this Spirit will remind us of everything that he has said. “You will recall what I have done by the very power and gift of this Spirit.” As believers today, we have exactly that same source of strength: the Spirit is the presence of the living Christ with us now. We are not left comfortless. Our hearts need not be troubled. The new state of being is life lived through and by the very power of that comforter, the Holy Spirit. When we face our travails, and when we face our challenges, and we look eye to eye with our fears, the Spirit of that living Christ is with us.
Sometimes, my friends, our fears do control the way that we live our lives. Sometimes we really do need the power of that Spirit to help us through. John Broder, one of my favorite writers in the New York Times, wrote an article a few years ago about a problem that teenagers were having in the 1980s. They were taking bags and spraying an aerosol into it, which they would sniff to get high. The manufacturers of this aerosol product were terrified of liability suits, because these young people could die if they inhaled too much of their product. The chemical in the aerosol that produced the high was called 1-1-1 trichloroethane. The manufacturers wanted to stop people from sniffing trichloroethane, so they put on warnings on the cans that it can kill you, but it made no difference; teenagers still sniffed it. Eventually, the manufacturers hired a lawyer from Washington DC to advise them as to what kind of language they could put on the can to stop teenagers from sniffing it.
They suggested they put bigger warnings, citing even greater dangers, but the lawyer said, “No, you don't understand teenagers. If you tell them that it is more dangerous, they will assume there is more of the drug in it and that they will be able to get higher; you'll only make it more attractive.” Instead, he advised them to appeal to what teenagers fear the most. So they came out with a warning label that said, “This product may cause your hair to fall out and your face to be disfigured.” Well, I think we are all vain, and the younger we are, the vainer we are. Strange as it sounds, teenagers are more afraid of being ugly than of dying. Now, this warning wasn't strictly true: Your hair does not fall out if you sniff trichloroethane, and you will not have an ugly face, but I suppose once you are dead your hair does fall out and your face doesn't look great, so it is true in the end. At any rate, the warning worked, and teenagers all around the world stopped sniffing trichloroethane for fear of being disfigured and losing their hair.
Sometimes you need to address the fears that control your life, and it is the Spirit of God that enables us to confront them in a meaningful way. Some time ago, I met a woman who was faced with a very difficult decision. She had been diagnosed with cancer, and it was so bad that if she was to defeat the cancer, she would require an operation that would disfigure her for life. It was the most horrible situation. She said, “I am really struggling with this, Andrew. I don't know what to do. All I would ask is for you to pray for me throughout this ordeal until I decide what to do.”
It was a no-win situation. I covenanted with her to pray for her from then until she made the decision. Just before it was time for her to go to the doctor, she phoned me and said, “I just want to let you know that I have decided to have the operation.” She continued, “You know why? A great peace has come upon me. I have realized that when I get to Heaven, God will not look at me in my disfigurement, for the disfigurement will have gone. He will only look at me and wonder whether I loved and cared for my family; whether I embraced the life he gave me; whether I lived my life for him.” Such is the power of the spirit. Even when facing the most terrible fears and the most awful decisions in life, the power of the Spirit transforms those fears in a way that is beyond our understanding.
Sometimes, my friends, our fears come from within, and sometimes our fears come from without, from other people and other situations. As I watched the ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz last week, there was a moment at the beginning, when the trains came along the tracks and the wheels were squeaking. The camera panned over those who were in attendance, and you could tell that some of them had been there 60 years ago, had heard the brakes on the wheels on those tracks before, from the fear you could see in their eyes. It was just like the man I saw on the street last Sunday: fear of the other, fear of the world, fear of life. Those fears are powerful things. The only force that can help overcome them in a meaningful and substantial way is the new state of being, the peace, the eirene that Jesus brings: the power of the Spirit.
Does this mean that all things now are good, that we live in a state of Utopia and bliss? By no means! Not only is the peace of Jesus unique and universal, it is also sometimes unsettling.
When I read our text from Matthew, I wondered whether this was the same Jesus that I had seen and heard in other passages of the Bible. He said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” It is like reading a sign and wondering whether you have read it right. It is like the sign in Kruger National Park that used to read “Elephants! Please stay in your cars.” Or the farmer who had a notice in a field outside London saying that people could walk through his field free, but the bull charges! You wonder, “Have I read this right?”
When I read the passage from Matthew, and I compare it to the passage in John, I wonder if this is the same Jesus talking, whether I have read this right. I have not come to bring peace, eirene (same word, by the way), I have come to bring a sword. Then I think of it again in the light of the Cross, and both passages make sense. In the light of the Cross, the new state of being is the state of peace in a new and reconciled relationship with God that only Christ can give. But as disciples, this peace might at times cause us to be in conflict with the spirit of the world. The peace that Christ gives is not the peace that the world gives, at all.
Sometime, by taking up that cross and believing, as you stand in the face of the difficulties of life, even when they terrify you, you still have peace. Jesus knew that following him, and following the cross, meant a whole new family relationship. It might mean conflict with family members; it might mean conflict with people who are around you, even within your own household. It sounds difficult, but sometimes just standing up for what is right and what in the end causes peace is a difficult thing to do and to bear, but it is still girded by the peace that Christ brings.
So, yes, in the world you may have conflict. Yes, you might find that there is disharmony in the world around you, but in the midst of that, the power of Christ gives you the courage to deal with fears and challenges.
Two Sundays ago, right here on this pulpit, I quoted a Pastor Zhang from China, and how he had been beaten and tortured for his faith and his convictions, but even in the midst of his imprisonment, still kept his faith, and still held on to the power of God's spirit. Well, this week I went on the website of Amnesty International, and to my great shock, I find that this man, whose book I had read a few months ago, is once again in prison - the fifth time in 12 years.
Why? Because he has been distributing DVDs of Christian music; he has been distributing Bibles to his friends; and the house churches that are part of the congregation that he helps serve have been growing and expanding; and all of this is opposed by the state. Pastor Zhang, despite all that he has gone through, all the torture and the pain and the misery, confronting all the fears of even his death, still believes so strongly in Christ and the peace he brings, that he is willing to bear the sword for his faith. Sometimes the peace that Christ gives causes us to stand in the face of the things we fear the most. To quote Berryman, sometimes it causes us “to travel towards those fears.” As Jesus knew so well himself, and as he shared with the disciples with his whole heart, when you walk towards those fears, his peace will be with you. “My peace will be with you.” Surely, that is the good news! Amen
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.