Peace Be With You!

Sermon for Sunday, May 11, 2008

1. Good Morning.  Let’s pray.  O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

2.  Opening Comments:  Today is Pentecost Sunday – the Sunday that we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit.  It always occurs 50 days after Resurrection or Easter Sunday when our Lord rose victorious from the dead!

On the Feast of Pentecost people from all over the region had gathered in Jerusalem to give thanks to God for the gift of the land and its produce but God had something else in mind for it was on this particular Day of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit fell to earth and birthed the Christian Church!  Truly the Christian Church was formed on that day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon those early Christian disciples in such an unusual and powerful way!

Now there are a number of key themes that came immediately to mind as I pondered over what our Lord might want us to focus in upon today. 

The most obvious that we Charismatics immediately resonate with is that the Holy Spirit came with power – dunamis power!  The power gifts came with the Spirit - Speaking in tongues, gifts of wisdom, discernment, prophesy, healing, and so on!  Power to establish the Kingdom of God on earth – “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done – on earth!!! As it is in heaven!!!

Power is a key theme of Pentecost but the ancient church has also recognized that when the Holy Spirit fell on the first day of Pentecost it marked a reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel. 

Some of us may remember the story of the Tower of Babel.  At the beginning of civilization people were of one tongue – they could all understand one another.  There was only one language.

So one day they decided to build a tower that would reach all the way to heaven. 

God became concerned about the ambitious arrogance of the human race and sent a spirit of confusion over His creation.  Suddenly everyone was speaking a different language and no one could understand the other. 

Confusion reigned!  And so when on that first day of Pentecost when this morning’s readings chronicled “each one heard them speaking in his own language” we witnessed the beginning of a reversal of that spirit of confusion that came so many thousands of years before!

Ah!  The confusion that was birthed at Babel had been replaced by a spirit of unity on the Day of Pentecost!

So the unifying element of the Holy Spirit is a key theme of the Pentecost reality!

The unifying spirit is incidentally the key behind the formation of the Christian Church.  The Holy Spirit not only gathers us together but also “binds” us together.

Verses like the following come to mind as I reflected upon this theme of unity and the formation of the Church:

Eph. 4:3

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.  4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—  5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism;  6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

The bond of peace is our goal and it’s ontological reality – it’s reality at the core of our very being - is found in the fact that we have one Lord, one faith, one Baptism – One God and Father of us all!

The bond of peace holds us together as the Body of Christ!

It’s this reality that I believe our Lord wants us to linger on for a few minutes this morning.

Peace –peace!  The unity of peace!  The Bond of peace!  The precious Bond of Peace!

We don’t feel bound – like prisoners – by the bonds of peace.  Peace is not bondage.  But there is a constraint implicit in the experience of peace but it’s a constraint that we seem to submit to willingly.

Let me read once again our readings from 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and our Gospel reading John 20.  Listen for this them of unity and peace.  Here we go:

1Cor. 12:3  “Brothers and sisters, no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. 4  There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.  5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.  6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.  Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 12  The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.  13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

The recurring theme in these verses is the unity that should mark Christian community and the great Unifyer at the center of all of this unity is who?  Yes, Jesus Christ as Lord!  When He is obeyed as Lord unity will inevitably come about!

And now for the theme of peace:

John 20:19  On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

Now I want us to notice that there is an exclamation point after that statement. 

The Greek if very clearly telling us that Jesus said that sentence with power and with great conviction! 

It was not a suggestion but a statement of fact and a command to action!  This verse is controlled by the very “to be” and in this sentence the verbs conjugation is: “aorist, active and indicative.”  In other words, it’s a command to take a hold on what is an accomplished fact.  Jesus is clearly challenging His disciples to take a firm hold of the Peace that he has acquired for them!

What Jesus is inferring here is that this peace if now an accomplished fact – take hold of it – take a hold of it and don’t let it go

He’s just gone through a horrendous trial and He has purchased “peace” – “His peace” for us – but we must take a hold of it!!!!

St. Paul tells us in Eph. 2:14  “For Jesus himself is our peace,”

Jesus established this covenant of peace with His Father by His sacrifice on the Cross.  He has forged the bond of peace between us and God!  We can now come boldly before our God in the name of Jesus Christ.  There’s now no separation between us and our Father God!  Peace is ours!    Let’s read on – beginning at verse 20:

20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 21  Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.23If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

“Peace be with you!”  Jesus said.

Let me ask us all a very very fundamental question:

Are you peaceful?  When was the last time you felt peace – real calming peace?

Do we know what real peace is?  Perhaps we would know it when we experienced it.  I think we would and I say this because I’m convinced that because we’re made in the image of God there’s something deep deep down in the DNA, as it were, of our very beings that “cries” out for the peace we lost in the beginning when we chose to rebel against God – when we chose to be as Gods!  And in making that choice we lost our peace with God and from that moment onwards “peace” has been a very very elusive thing for us! 

Oh, we’ve found touches of it.  You can probably remember fleeting moments of peace. 

I can remember a morning on the beautiful powder white beach of Surfer’s Paradise.  It was just as the sun was rising over the waves and I was 17 and I remember being overwhelmed with a sense of well-being and perfect peace.

This was soon to be rudely interrupted when a rather beautiful young woman walked by in a skimpy bathing suit!  The peace I was feeling was pushed aside by other feelings which will go unnamed!

Hmmmm – how fleeting is this sense of peace and yet how poignant it is – how we crave it.  And yet how easily we allow it be subverted by other compelling titivations. 

Do you crave peace?  Do you yearn for peace – a permanent sort of peace.  Not one that is quickly overwhelmed by the stimulations – the distractions - of our all too glitzy world!

Peace – how important is it to you?

How important should it be to you?

How much peace is there in your life?

How much more peace could you experience with a few fundamental changes in your life?

You understand don’t you that we lost “peace” at the Fall.  And with that loss we lost any sense of “rest.”

Let’s be clear about what we’re really talking about here shall we?

Peace – what is it?

ei˙rh/nh eirene; from ei¶rw which means: to join. It means: a state of concord or harmony.

The meaning of ‘peace’ or ‘tranquility’ may be expressed in some languages in a negative form, for example, ‘to be without trouble’ or ‘to have no worries’ or ‘to sit down in one’s heart.’  One is not standing up at attention but rather sitting down in one’s heart!  It’s a state of well being – a heart restedness!

It’s that perpetual state that the citizens of the Kingdom of God are promised to live in. 

It’s what you and I are heading towards and it’s that state that we get to experience albeit on special occasions here and now if we want it!

As we’ve already noted, St. Paul tells us:  “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. . .” Eph. 2:14

C.S. Lewis wisely once wrote, “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it’s not there. There’s no such thing.”  And so we return to the idea – the reality, that Jesus Himself is – “IS” our peace and He comes to us by His Holy Spirit today and every day after that one Great Day called Pentecost Sunday!

As Lewis wrote in his paper entitled, “On Stories,”

The Christian story affirms that in one human being that other and more real world has entered our history, that we need not transcend our finitude in order to find that more real world. The universal is particularized, located in time and space. The author has written himself into the play. As Augustine found the Word made flesh in the gospel but not in the Platonists, so here too Lewis has turned from myth to story and found the story which promises to satisfy the longing of the restless heart while yet acknowledging, even affirming, the relentless temporality of a pilgrim existence.

It’s in Jesus Christ that we find our peace within the restless temporality of a pilgrim existence.

Jesus Christ is our peace.  On this day of Pentecost Jesus Christ invites us once again to enter into His peace by inviting His Holy Spirit once again into our hearts to renew and enliven us and not only remind us of His peace but in fact and in reality to BE OUR peace right her and right now! 

Now how do you get a hold onto that?

I can almost hear some of your thoughts!  OK – I want that peace – how do I get it?

Remember – Jesus Christ IS our peace!  So it’s by inviting the resurrected Jesus to establish or reestablish His PEACE in our hearts!  It’s that ridiculously simple!  If Jesus Christ is real!  If He was an historical reality and did in fact die and then rise again then it’s conceivable that He is what He said He is – OUR PEACE!

May I humbly invite you to kneel and invite the Holy Spirit to accomplish this reality once again in you today?

Please kneel and let me pray for us all . . .

Let us pray . . . amen!