Peace Be With You

Twenty years ago I preached for the first time, on the Second Sunday of Easter. It was a remarkable experience. In that parish it was unusual for a layperson to be given the pulpit, and I didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect. At coffee hour afterwards one of the stiffer members of the congregation approached me and I prepared to weather some criticism. Instead he simply said, “That was a good sermon – although it was seventeen minutes long.”

I still have that sermon. It was about Thomas, of course; he appears every year on the Second Sunday of Easter, the so-called “Low Sunday” (as though Easter is exhausting, not energizing). But it was also about the community in which the sermon was preached. Thomas’ faith was given to him in company with the other disciples; so too our personal relationship with Christ comes to us within a community. That particular parish, I noted, had a wide range of viewpoints (and probably still does), all of which were important to our collective understanding of who Jesus revealed God to be.

It’s often said that clergy preach to themselves. It’s true that twenty years ago I was caught up in the idea of Christian community. I still am, but in a different way. Perhaps that’s because one of the functions of preaching is to urge people to continue to grow in Christ, and each parish requires a different kind of urging. That first parish was struggling with decisions made by the national church which some people lauded and others rejected. In that context it was important to emphasize the importance of everyone’s views.

Now I would do the same thing in a different way. I tend to describe the Episcopal Church as a big tent that is able to hold a wide variety of ways of understanding faith. Sometimes a group in one corner of the tent discovers a group in another corner that they really don’t like. That’s when conflict begins. The leader’s role is to manage the conflict so that it becomes a means of growth rather than a cause for rejection. The goal is to have both sides accept the presence of the other while still disagreeing.

Thomas provides a model for that. For whatever reason, he wasn’t present on Easter Day when Jesus appeared to the disciples. So he does not share their experience of fear turned to joy, of being sent by the One who was sent from God. The disciples try to convince him, but he won’t be convinced unless he sees for himself. Sure enough, a week later, Jesus reappears. This time they are all together, and Thomas gets what he asks for and more, when Jesus says “Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas could have rejected the witness of the other disciples. He could have decided that they were all misled and left. Instead, he stayed with them and became a model for all who are tempted to walk away. “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Jesus asks. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That community of disciples would not have existed unless it first had been called together by Jesus. It continued to exist because of the presence of Christ, a presence that initially came through the resurrection appearances, then through the gift of the Holy Spirit in word and Sacrament. In the midst of all of the fear and turmoil created by his betrayal, abandonment, and death, Jesus came to them and said “Peace be with you.” In the same way Jesus comes to us in the midst of our own trials, our own conflict, and says “Peace be with you.” It is not a peace such as the world gives, a capitulation of one side to the power of the other. Rather, it is the kind of peace where people who strongly disagree with one another can sit and worship together. It’s a peace that creates a big tent in which all are welcome. It’s a peace that reflects the unmerited love of God for a world redeemed by the death and resurrection of the Son of God. As William Alexander has written,
The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing – the marvelous peace of God.

[Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31. Alexander’s poem is set to the tune Georgetown in Hymn 661 of The Hymnal 1982.]

Listen to this as preached on the Second Sunday of Easter.