Sixth Sunday of Easter, 2010

John 14: 23-29

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.


‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.’

Do you go through rough times when, no matter how much you pray and how much you try to believe and trust in order to not let your heart be troubled, you are still disturbed and anxious? It’s not that you don’t believe the Lord is in control of your life but it’s so difficult to bring your emotions in line with your beliefs. Well, don’t feel too badly. In this week’s gospel, the disciples are told by Jesus himself, face to face and in the flesh, not to let their hearts be troubled yet we know that the disciples not only continued to be deeply troubled and distressed but, as events unfolded, they became absolutely terrified. Even though Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” peace was the last thing the disciples experienced throughout the crucifixion and the days leading up to Pentecost. After the crucifixion, even though they knew Jesus had risen, had seen him and spoken with him, Pentecost still found them hiding out for fear of the authorities.

If the disciples, who knew Jesus intimately, had trouble grasping and holding onto peace and courage, then perhaps we shouldn’t feel so guilty and upset with ourselves when our hearts are anxious. Anxiety is hard enough. We don’t need to be anxious about being anxious on top of it. What we need is to understand a little more about the peace Jesus is speaking about.

“Not as the world gives do I give.” When you think of the word ‘peace’, what comes into your mind? What images are there? It will be something a little different for each of us but, in essence, we all have visions of a place or state with no worries. And, of course, in order for there to be no worries we would have to find resolutions to all the things that make us worry: lack of money, illness, broken relationships, unrealized desires, unmet needs…the list is long, so long that most of us could spend the rest of our lives trying to find solutions to everything that’s broken or is going to be broken.

Every once in a while we get exactly what we want in the way that we want it but most of the time it feels like there’s always something or someone else in control dictating how things go. When we do get what we want in the way we want it, are we happy? Certainly. For a while. Then gradually another crisis pops up and something else needs to be gotten under control. If we become too closely attentive to the world’s idea of peace, we start to feel that life is lacking in inner calmness and confidence and this, in itself, makes our spirits feel disordered and faulty.

We can’t really be blamed for perceiving peace in this way. From the moment of birth, we are immersed in the world’s attitudes and perceptions about how to find peace. Not all solutions that the world proposes as answers to our anxieties are evil or false but what the world gives are surface solutions. Many problems may be cleared up and lots of difficulties may be successfully resolved by following the world’s wisdom and intelligence but as we face continual challenges that spark anxiety and stress, we suspect that finding solutions does not necessarily mean finding peace.

“Not as the world gives do I give.” How does the world give? By convincing us that it is our right to be completely in control and by promising us the opportunity to attain complete control. Think about it for a moment. Think of anything society values as good for the individual. Now see if you can pin point how ‘being in control’ is a part of the process of making that desired goal a reality. There’s actually nothing wrong with being in control of our lives as we endeavor to make healthy, balanced and wise decisions and follow through on them. As followers of Jesus, we are indeed called to exercise wise control - without being controlling of everyone and everything around us. The mistake we make is in thinking that if we are in complete control, we will be peaceful. Life can become a scramble of trying to bring into control all that is out of control.

Jesus didn’t say, “I give you a life that’s completely in control.” He said, “I give you peace.” We subconsciously think both are the same because that’s the world’s perception of peace and it’s very difficult to disentangle ourselves from that idea. The beginning of disentanglement is to learn and accept Jesus’ definition of peace. It obviously does not mean that we are never in pain, confusion or anxiety. What it does mean is that when we are in pain, confusion and anxiety, we can know that this is all right and we are not failures or inadequate in our spirituality.

Most of us have no idea how much of our inner turmoil is not only coming from outer circumstances that are out of our control but also from the free floating anxiety of feeling we should be more in control or more confident as good Christians. Sometimes this translates into us having conscious thoughts that maybe we should try to change things through aggressive stubbornness and manipulative willpower but not always; often it means that we feel we have not prayed right, haven’t trusted enough, haven’t learned the spiritual lessons we should have learned, haven’t been as good as we should have been or have made wrong choices when we were trying very hard to make good choices. We feel like it’s our fault that peaceful feelings elude us; if we were more spiritual we wouldn’t feel so tense and distressed. These inner anxieties arise especially when we can see that we have no capability of controlling circumstances but our prayers aren’t effectively procuring our desired results either. We feel as though it has to be our fault. We must have done something wrong or are particularly dense. We feel like we’re deaf and blind to God with no idea how to make ourselves see and hear.

“Not as the world gives do I give.” The peace of Christ is the peace of not having to be in control all the time. The peace of Christ is the peace of knowing that in spite of what we suffer from being brokenly human in a broken human world, he will bring us through. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or won’t suffer fear and uncertainty when things are difficult. Certainly, there are times when God will grace you with ‘peace that passes understanding’, a sheer gift based on nothing that you have done but in other circumstances, you might find yourself in deep turmoil in spite of all your prayers and sincere attempts to trust in God.

This too is gift.

Neither state is better than the other spiritually. Each state is given in God’s wisdom and each state can cause us to grow in the ways we need to grow. Our response is to be present to him, to be honest about our fears and uncertainties, to seek him constantly and to offer sacrifices of praise and gratitude. That’s why it’s called “a sacrifice of praise”. It’s sacrificial because it’s hard. It’s painful to give praise when you’re not in control. You’d rather feel in control first – then praise him.

Jesus also said in this week’s gospel: “I am coming to you.” He is coming to you. He is coming to me. The peace of this knowledge is always with us; if it suddenly left us, then we would really know what it means to have no peace.

That in itself is enough for gratitude for a lifetime.


*Note: there will most likely be no blog next week as we will be on the road for a few days.
         J