The Prince of Peace

August 15, 2004 (Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost -- Proper 15)

  by The Rev. Linda Yeager, Deacon

- Jeremiah 23:23-29
- Psalm 82
- Hebrews 12:1-14
- Luke 12:49-56

(From The Lectionary Page)

Wonderful. Counselor. The Mighty God. The Everlasting Father. The Prince of Peace. Those wonderful phrases from Handel's Messiah can stir us emotionally, the words of praise escalating until the climactic phrase is reached: The Prince of Peace.

So Jesus' words in today's gospel passage are jarring: "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!"  Startling words from the Prince of Peace -- or are they? When we look at what Jesus really had to say about peace, we come to understand that peace, for Jesus, does not mean peace that comes with the acceptance of the status quo. For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you." The peace that comes from God is not the peace that we find in the world. It is a deeper peace, but does not always come quietly or without division.

God's peace comes for us, however, even in the midst of conflict, for peace in that sense is certainly more than the absence of conflict or the presence of quietness. It is a peace that can be neither earned nor deserved. It is a gift when we become free of the world. Our heavenly parent, through Jesus Christ, offers us unconditional love and forgiveness through grace, but Christ reminds us that this love and forgiveness do not mean that we should live complacent and non-confrontational lives. Christ tells us that "five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three." He reminds us that we must care enough to be willing to stand up for that which we believe. He tells us that he came to earth to challenge our commitment. He commands us to not only believe in him but also to testify for him, to stand up for our beliefs. He wants us to do what is right, even if it makes life uncomfortable for us or for others. He means for us to be intolerant of prejudice and to defend the dignity of all. He offers us unconditional love and expects us to offer that same love to others. If that means that we disengage ourselves from that which prevents us from serving God, whether that be people or situations, so be it. Peace comes with a price and a responsibility. And sometimes that peace may come amid division -- of families, as well as of nations and cultures.

The word "peace" appears in the Bible 325 times. Over one hundred of the times that peace is mentioned, it relates to justice. Justice first, then peace.

W. Paul Jones, a former seminary professor in Kansas City, has a deep understanding of both justice and peace. During the 60s he established an inner city parish, dedicated to outreach, to fulfilling the needs of those in the neighborhood-for food, for education, for safety. Feeling a hypocrite by living in a comfortable suburb miles from his church, Jones moved his family into the ghetto. Finding homes, schools, and safety inadequate, he began to understand why people resort to violence -- out of frustration and inequality. He realized that the primary goal of the schools, the police, and the social services was to keep peace. He saw that for the people of the inner city, "peace is experienced as suppression of change." Jones had firsthand experience and clearly understood that "peace without justice betrays the poor, dooming them to their present condition."

Justice is crucial to peace in the world, corporate peace. But personal peace, inner peace, is necessary if we are to work for justice. Once we truly understand and accept the great gift of the peace that passes understanding, we can no longer tolerate the inequalities that come from the need for prestige, possessions and power. True inner peace allows us the freedom we need to see and care and work to dissolve the inequalities in the world.

Remember Rosa Parks? Here is a woman who had a strong sense of inner peace, of communion with Christ. She also understood that justice comes before peace. Mrs. Parks worked as a seamstress at a Montgomery, Alabama, department store in 1955. On December 1 of that year she boarded a city bus and sat in a row at the front of what was termed the "colored" section. The whites only section in the front of the bus filled up and a white man was left standing. The bus driver demanded that Mrs. Parks and three other patrons in the colored section give up their seats so the white man could sit. The other three people moved but Mrs. Parks had been pushed around enough and refused to yield her seat. She was arrested when the bus driver contacted the police and filed charges against her. Four days later she was found guilty of disorderly conduct and the Montgomery bus boycott began.

Over a year later the city was served with papers declaring segregation of bus service unconstitutional. The next day Mrs. Parks boarded a bus and for the first time was allowed to sit in any unoccupied seat. Her ordeal however was not over. She had lost her seamstress job and was unable to find work. Her family was harassed and threatened. In 1957, she moved along with her mother and husband to Detroit where her younger brother Sylvester lived. In 1965 she joined the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan and worked there until her retirement in 1988, traveling the country extensively, lecturing on civil rights. On April 22, 1998, she attended the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Troy State University Montgomery Rosa Parks Library and Museum to be located on the spot she was arrested over forty years ago. With a strong sense of inner peace, Mrs. Parks had the courage to confront the inequality, the injustice, that she faced.

We, too, must address the evils of the status quo, of the materialism, the greed, and the vanity of those who have, and the suffering and persecution of those who have not. We must not avoid conflict at all costs. Peace at any price is really no peace at all. But as long as we continue to buy products that have come at the sacrifice of underpaid and overworked employees, as long as we continue to stock our cupboards in rampant consumerism, as long as we are unwilling to share from our abundance, as long as we continue to turn our eyes and ears from the suffering present in our own country, in our own community, there is no peace.

At the end of every Eucharist, the deacon dismisses the congregation from the church door, often saying, "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord." When we come together to share in God's holy sacrament, when we worship together, we are invited to accept the inner peace that is God's gift to us. This same peace goes with us when we return to the world. We leave in peace to both love and serve the Lord.

We cannot be complacent; we must not be part of that ocean of lives who sits back when we know that Christ would not sit back. We must be a divisive force when we believe that justice is not being considered. We are reminded by this gospel passage of the paradox that the peacemaker may, despite all his efforts, be the occasion of conflict. Jesus is the Prince of Peace -- indeed, he is above all the peacemaker, the reconciler -- and yet he can say that the effect of his coming is not to give peace on earth but to act as an arouser.

Wherever we are in life, Christ calls us to see the injustice. He expects us to do everything possible to reflect his love in this world, to fight for the rights of all individuals who are suffering, to promote the dignity of all his children, to uphold justice and -- then -- peace. Are we watching? Are we responding? With God's help, we can be peacemakers in the midst of conflict.