Sermon

Fr. Ray Kasch                                                                                                     6 Easter C 2010

When I was in college, one of my favorite groups was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I loved their tight harmonies and I loved their message. They told us that our parents got it all wrong with their uptight morality and their commitment to materialism that only fueled the fires of unrest around the world. They taught us that the haves and the have-nots were always going to be at war until our generation came along to set things straight. We were the dreamers who were going to get it done primarily through our idealism. What was our message? “All you need is love, all you need is love, all you need is love, love, love is all you need.” “We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get back to the garden.” “Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too. Imagine all the people. Living life in peace” So with that philosophy we were going to usher in a universal peace that would be the dawning of age of Aquarius or Aqua Velva or something like that.

Question. So how did we do? Today we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have shoe bombers and underwear bombers and Time Square bombers who represent tens of thousands, if not millions of people who want to see us dead. We are not in a World War that will last 4 years or so like WWII. We are in a war that will go on for generations. So when it comes to ushering in universal peace, I give my generation an F.
What about personal peace? How did my generation do in attaining personal peace if not peace between nations? We found ways to alter our minds. We looked to the East to tap into their religious traditions. We took individualism to a new height in seeking and achieving all kinds of personal rights. We even created an environment where we could take away another person’s rights if what they were doing or saying or believing offended us. Have all of these efforts created a significant amount of personal peace and love? A woman a generation behind me said last week in Christian Education that she cannot think of one of her friends whose parents are still together. Child abuse is in epidemic proportions. There is so much angst in our world today that even our kids are experiencing what used to be adult stress. So again, I would give my generation an F.

But still there is hope! Jesus speaks of a peace that He says is unlike what the world has to offer, and that is a good thing since the world’s peace isn’t working. What does that peace look like and how do we get it? I think the usual blessing at the end of the Mass, from the Book of Common Pray, which actually is a paraphrase of Philippians 4:7, gives us insight into the kind of peace of which Jesus spoke. It begins, “The peace OF GOD which passes all understanding….”

This blessing tells us the source of our peace. Peace does not come from political organizations like the United Nations, even though their leaders have some really cool names. I don’t think you get any cooler than Butros Butros Ghali but even old Butros Butros has not been able to give us peace. Nor does peace come from dropping out of society like the Woodstock Generation tried, nor does peace from teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony while passing out cokes. Peace comes from God and that is where it has to start because as long as man is at war with God, he will always be at war within himself and with one another. It is through the propitiation of Jesus that we are reconciled to the Father and knowing His love and forgiveness empowers us to love and forgive ourselves, to love and forgive others, even to love and forgive our enemies.
Next it says that this peace from God PASSES HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. This means that it is not a kind of peace that you achieve through logic nor is it something that you can talk yourself into by taking a positive thinking approach. One way that we see how God’s peace passes human understanding is that God’s peace is not defined like the world’s peace, which is an absence of conflict. God’s peace goes deeper than that. God’s peace is not the absence of storms in your lives; rather God’s peace is what sustains you when you are right in the midst of a raging storm.

I heard a remarkable interview last week of a woman who 50 years ago was on a rented sailboat with her family. The Captain of the sailboat murdered his wife and then he killed every member of the 11 year old girl’s family and he left her on the sinking boat, assuming that she would drown. After the killer left in a dingy, she found a life raft and was adrift for 4 days without food or water. When asked what was going through her mind for those 4 days she said that she was never afraid. The interviewer could hardly believe his ears and asked how that was possible. She said that even as a girl she had a strong faith and trusted in God that He would take care of her. That is a peace that surpasses human understanding.

I like the next line of the blessing because it seems like one of those Gospel contradictions, like the last shall be first.  Just after saying that God’s peace passes human understanding, it says that this peace will “keep your hearts and minds.” How can something that is beyond our understanding keep or affect our hearts and minds?
But if you think about it you will realize that this is not a contradiction at all. In essence it is saying God’s peace will keep you because God’s peace is bigger than you. The real contradiction is when you try to create your own peace. That’s like trying to get yourself out of a hole by grabbing yourself by your own collar and then lifting. It won’t work and that’s why all the efforts to create peace in my generation failed. We were doing it under our own power rather than seeking God’s peace that is beyond human understanding.

The next line completes the thought. God’s peace keeps our hearts in minds in what? “In the knowledge and love of God and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Here we see that love and peace are connected. It is not an accident that we are commanded to love God with all of our heart and soul and mind and that God’s peace keeps our hearts and our minds. Love produces peace and peace is the environment in which love grows. Let me say that again. Love produces peace and peace is the environment in which love grows.
But it is important to emphasize that the love the God spoken of here is not some vacuous emotion. In the Gospel lesson, before Jesus promises the peace that is not like the peace of the world, He says that if we love Him we will keep His commandments. So love and peace are linked by obedience. How can I not, on Mother’s Day of all days, use our Moms as an illustration of this point? Fill in the blank. “When Momma ain’t happy……” “When Momma ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy. That saying is so true it must be somewhere in the Bible.

So Momma slaves over a hot stove and yells, “Everyone wash up and come to dinner.” What’s going to happen if nobody washes up and comes to dinner? Will Momma be happy? I don’t think so. Will that affect the rest of the family? You had better believe it. So how do we make Momma happy? By showing her that we love her and are grateful for her and one way that we do that is by doing what she tells us to do. So to paraphrase Jesus, “if you love me you will wash up and come to dinner.” Actually that’s not a bad expression when it comes to Holy Communion. And what happens when we wash up and come to dinner? There is peace in the house. So love is demonstrated in obedience and that produces peace.

Here again we can see a distinct difference between worldly peace and God’s peace. The world defines love as unconditional acceptance and it is through unconditional acceptance that we are at peace with one another. But there is a vast difference between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance. I will always love my son no matter what, but that does not mean that I accept all his decisions in life, particularly if he follows a path that is contrary to God’s Word. God’s definition of love is that it is keeping His word and as you and I both strive to keep His word that we are at peace with Him and therefore with one another. God’s peace therefore is linked with obedience to God’s words and we keep His words because we love Him.

If we were to stop here however we would be in some real trouble. As true and as simple as it is to link love and obedience, when it is lived out on a day to day basis, it inevitably slips into legalism. And when it comes to legalism we tend to either rebel against it or we become the Pharisee of Pharisees. I have done both, sometimes in the same day! To keep this from happening Jesus says in this Gospel account that He is going to send us the Holy Spirit to teach us and to remind us of all that He has said. Since the first fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Ephesians is love, we learn that it is Spirit inspired love that leads to Spirit inspired obedience and that is what keeps us from either lawlessness or legalism. After Jesus gave the disciples the Great Commission, rather than sending them out to obey under their own power, He told them to first wait in Jerusalem to be empowered by the Spirit. Once empowered then they were to go. In two weeks we will celebrate Pentecost which is the sending of the Holy Spirit to the Church so that we serve in Spirit filled obedience.

Last week I visited a shut-in to take her the Sacrament. When I arrived she was so addled that she did not remember that I was coming even though we had spoken on the phone less than 3 hours earlier. We spoke for awhile and then the topic of death came up. She said that she did not want to die a violent death but that she would be happy to fall asleep and wake up making her way to heaven. Then she asked me a pointed question. She asked, “Father do you think that we have to pay for our sins before we can enter heaven or have we experienced enough of hell in this life to be allowed entrance.”  I said to her “Neither is true. Recall how we say in the Mass, ‘And He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world.’” I didn’t even get a chance to add any commentary. Her face lit up and she said, “Of course, He did not die for His sins, He died for our sins. I guess somehow I forgot that and that’s what has been bothering me so much lately.”  The peace and joy on her face was a marked difference from the addled woman who had met me earlier. Then she said to me, “I’m really glad you came today.”  I said, “Just doing my job, mam, just doing my job.”

She experienced the peace that Jesus spoke of and it truly is a peace that the world cannot give. It is a peace that is offered to each of us as well and it is mediated by the Person of the Holy Spirit to those who love Him and keep His commandments. “May the peace of the Lord be always with you.” Amen.

Fr. Ray Kasch