John 14:23-29
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God our rock and our redeemer.
Good morning everyone.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Charlie Stang. I’m married to Sarabinh, who preached last week. She is a tough act to follow, so bear with me. Why am I up here? I’m usually down there in that corner, in that part of the sanctuary that doubles as a nursery and preschool. I’m up here today because, as I think many of you know, I’m in the discernment process; that means a group of five parishioners and I are discerning whether I have a call to ordained ministry, in other words, whether I might become a priest. The members of that committee thought that, as part of this discernment process, they’d like to hear me preach. And so here I am – and happy to be.
Truth is, I’ve done it before: I preach a couple times a year, usually at services at Harvard Divinity School, where I teach the theology and history of Christianity.This means, among other things, that I have a captive audience at least three times a week. But as I’ve come to learn, preaching is very different than lecturing – and aren’t you glad that it is! I preach just infrequently enough that it always feels new, like a fragile enterprise, something of an adventure.
So here goes: I’d like to focus our attention on today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Chapter 14. This passage comes from a long speech Jesus gives to the apostles after having washed their feet—what we celebrate as Maundy Thursday. Jesus has just dismissed Judas Iscariot from the gathering, and is now entertaining questions from the remaining eleven apostles. In our passage, Jesus is speaking to different apostle with the same, very common name, Judas.
I would like to dig in right in the middle of the passage, where Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” What does this mean?
“Peace I leave with you” – Peace, or in Hebrew, shalom – the commonplace way to say hello and goodbye, then as now. Jesus is telling his disciples, as he has been for pages at this point, that he is about to leave. What he is effect saying here is, “I now take my leave of you, and wish you ‘shalom.’”
But he then goes to say, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” How does the world give? In this context, I think “as the world gives” means that the world says shalom vainly, meaninglessly. We all know the sorts of pleasantries with which we pepper our speech but that we rarely pause to mean. Like ‘How are you?’ How many times a day do we say this to each other, all the while knowing that if we pause and answer that question honestly, we will likely be met with an awkward silence as our interlocutor wonders we were breaking the conventions of superficial speech. The same goes for shalom – Jesus suggests that the world says “peace” but does not pause to mean it. But Jesus intends to mean what he says: “My peace I give to you.” That’s the key to this passage, I think. But let’s put that on hold for a moment, and instead take a short excursus.
I’ve had peace on my mind for some weeks now. Mind you – not peace of mind, but peace on my mind. Haven’t we all? Two weeks ago we emerged from a citywide lockdown, an unprecedented manhunt, and a terrifying attack. Throughout that ordeal, and well after it, I’ve been thinking a lot about peace, and its fragility—including how we take it for granted. I’ve also been thinking about justice, and our desire to see it done. Before we knew who they were, knew that they were our own, President Obama promised that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. Less measured forms of that same call for justice spread over Facebook and other social media—with some fantasizing about meting out that justice with their own hands. I’ve never really understood what the phrase means, “brought to justice.” If it means that the perpetrators are caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced according to the law, then I can say ‘yes,’ I hope they are brought to justice. But how is that justice, exactly? Are they made any more ‘just’ or ‘righteous’ for having been caught, or we any more ‘just’ or ‘righteous’ for having caught them? Is there any punishment that we might mete out that would be just or adequate to the pain and horror they inflicted?
We’ve had peace restored, and the perpetrators have been brought to justice, right? I don’t think so, and today’s reading is forcing me to keep thinking about peace and its correlate, justice. I’d like to ask you to think along with me. But I’ll meet you half way by telling a story.
Many of you know that Sarabinh and I and the girls were living in Jerusalem last year. What almost none of you know is that I had lived there once before, in the summer of 2000. It was a momentous summer: the Camp David peace talks took place while I was there, with President Clinton trying to strong arm an agreement from Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat. I was in Jerusalem doing a couple things: I was studying colloquial Palestinian Arabic in the mornings, and in the afternoons I was volunteering for a Christian Palestinian organization called Sabeel. Sabeel was famous—or infamous, depending on your view of the conflict—for bringing so-called ‘liberation theology’ to bear on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The leader of Sabeel was an Episcopal priest by the name of Naim Ateek, and he wrote a manifesto called Justice, and Only Justice. The title comes from Deuteronomy 16:20: “You shall pursue justice, and only justice, so that you may live and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
In the context of the conflict, the title meant that whatever peaceful resolution might be worked out between the Israelis and Palestinians, that peace had to be built on justice—justice, and only justice. In other words, if the agreement was not just, then there could be, there should be, no peace. I remember vividly worshipping with a small group of Sabeel workers and volunteers, during the most intense period of the Camp David talks. I remember vividly listening to Naim Ateek offer up a prayer during the prayers of the people, a prayer that the talks would fail. Why did he pray for this? Because of course in his opinion the agreement under consideration was so grossly unjust that any peace based on such an agreement would be no better than a festering wound, closed only on the surface but continuing to poison the body from within.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pray for the failure of the peace talks. I understood, but disagreed, with Naim Ateek’s position. More to the point, however, I wonder whether we ever get justice, and only justice. In his book, Naim Ateek cites the biblical prophets, who plead for God to do justice to the Israelites, and bring to justice their enemies. The problem is that this justice that the prophets are waiting on is a perfect justice delivered only at the end of time. But if peace depends on justice and only justice, and if justice arrives only at the end of time, then what chance does peace have here and now? In the words of John Lennon, why can’t we give peace a chance?
I think we have to and I think that’s what Jesus is telling us in Chapter 14 of the Gospel of John. Jesus doesn’t just say peace, he doles it out. “My peace I give to you”—that’s what Jesus says to his apostles. But where is your peace, Jesus, that peace you gave to us? Have we misplaced it? Have we ever had it? I think the answer to these questions requires looking at one other very strange sentence from this passage. Jesus reminds Judas: “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” Look at that sentence: it’s strange. Jesus doesn’t say, “I’m going to go away, but then I’ll come back to you.” No, the going and the coming is simultaneous, they’re both happening at the same time. It seems like a riddle, or a paradox: I am going away, and I am coming; I am departing, and I am arriving. But I think this gives us just the hint we need. Jesus goes away, but his peace comes. Precisely by going away, Jesus remains with us. His peace remains with us. But his peace is not some invisible substance or ethereal quality. His peace is upon us, He is with us, only when we work for peace.
Much earlier in this Gospel, John the Baptist says of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” In other words, John’s moon must sun so that Jesus’ sun might rise. When Jesus says to his apostles, “My peace I give to you,” I think he is borrowing from the Baptist’s playbook: I Jesus must decrease, I must leave you, but you my apostles must increase, must rise from the tragedy of my death, and keep me with you, as if resurrected from the dead, because if you have my peace, which only dies if you let it die, which peace is always between people, here and now, on this side of the end of time, imperfect but restless for perfection.
Did it matter that I held back, that I did not pray for the peace talks to fail? I’m not sure, but the talks did fail and, as we all know, that region still waits on peace and justice. I’ll conclude by bringing this meditation back home, from the land of Israel and Palestine to our own communities. Quite apart from the bombing, lockdown and manhunt, I’ve had occasion in the past two weeks to be in the midst of another community that is very much in need of peace and justice, and I have felt both in short supply. I have felt acutely the sense that to strive for one often asks a sacrifice of the other. It has been an exhausting, a bruising two weeks, and this community (of which I have been a part for seven years) is not out of the woods yet – will it ever? But we have also seen gains, both in peace and in justice. It has been a great consolation these two weeks to have Jesus’ words from John 14 on my mind, some measure of a peace of mind. Because he reminds me not only that the call to seek peace is his call, but also that the power to make peace is not entirely mine, or yours, but also in some measure his. It is his peace that he gave us, and that peace is greater than us, and enables us to be better than we are, than I am, when I wish only to prevail and not also to heal. I need to know that there is something greater than I am, someone greater than I am, who helps me to meet the infinite and impossible demand of peace.
Over and over again, I have heard from members of the Commission on Ministry that in this discernment process they want to hear, loud and clear, who I believe Jesus Christ is. I didn’t set out this morning to answer that question, but I think I just have, so I’ll say it again: he is that someone, greater than I, who helps me to meet the infinite and impossible demand of peace. Amen.
A Sermon For St. John’s Episcopal Church
Charlestown, Massachusetts
Preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter
By Dr. Charles Stang
May 5, 2013