“Peace of Mind and Heart”
John 14:23-27 (14:27) – May 22, 2022
The world is in powerful need of peace right now! Isn’t it? Just think of the many places in the world today, right now, where there is strife, conflict, fighting, and even outright warfare. The gift of Jesus that He speaks of here in today’s reading, peace of mind and heart, is something truly to wish for! Even, to clasp tightly to our minds and hearts!
Here in John, chapters 14 through 17, is His Farewell Discourse. These are the last words that Jesus gave to His friends before His arrest and crucifixion. Important words, indeed!
Even at this point, on the night before Jesus was betrayed, His disciples needed some further explanation of what Jesus was saying to them. First Peter (John 13:36), then Thomas (14:5), then Phillip (14:8), and then Judas (not Iscariot) (14:22) ask for clarification about exactly what Jesus is telling them. Jesus packs a whole lot into just a few short verses.
I would like to highlight one particular verse: John 14:27. Jesus said, 27 “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” There is so much conflict, fighting, mass shootings, and attacks of one kind or another happening in this world right now. We need peace badly!
David Lose, one of my favorite commentators, wants us to think more deeply about this word “peace.” I hear Jesus say this word. But why? How do we understand peace? What do we imagine Jesus means? “Too often, I think, we think of peace as simply the cessation of conflict. And clearly an end to violence is a good thing. Many of us have prayed for peace in the Middle East, [peace in the Ukraine,] peace in our community, perhaps even peace in our homes. But I think the peace Jesus offers is more than the absence of something negative.” [1]
But, wait a minute, some people say! I know the world needs peace in the Middle East, and peace in Ukraine, and peace in lots of other places worldwide. But, what about me? What about my house, my neighborhood? I am not experiencing much peace in my personal life!
Rev. Janet Hunt agrees just this past week that peace is regularly shattered in her neighborhood in the town of Dekalb, in the community where she lives and serves. She mourns the fact that “peace of mind, heart and body are too hard to find; so many needs, physical and otherwise, go unmet. And even if all else seems to be going well, still we struggle through our personal, sometimes private heartaches which threaten our peace, our sense of wellbeing.” [2]
Looking at Chicago, I was just on the spot of a mass shooting on Friday, just a few blocks west of the Water Tower, off of Michigan Avenue. The police activity was still very present as they investigated that evening shooting and the aftermath. I needed to be in the area for my job, to visit a patient for the hospice I work for. Yet, I saw firsthand the very real conflict and disruption in the city center, in one of the most affluent parts of the city.
When someone reports feeling calm and “at peace,” so often people scoff, or are jealous, or disbelieve. That is, at first. Why is this? Is peace so rare or so unusual?
I want us to go back to the Upper Room, back to the Farewell Discourse. “Think, again, of the timing of Jesus’ promise: it is the night of his betrayal, the evening when he will be handed over to those who hate him and who will take him away to be executed. And yet in that moment, he not only senses peace but gives it to others.” [3]
Yes, Jesus knows He doesn’t live in a peaceful world, and Jesus knows very well that His personal life is going to be rocked to the core in just a few hours. Yet, Jesus tells His disciples that He gives them His peace. And, guess what? We can access that same peace! That peace which the world does not understand, that the world cannot give.
When someone reports feeling “at peace,” that person “instead testifies to a sense of wholeness, even rightness, of and in one’s very being It’s a sense of harmony with those persons and things around us. Peace connotes a sense of contentment, but even more fulfillment, a sense that in this moment one is basking in God’s pleasure.” [4]
Even when you and I are in the midst of hardship, struggle, even conflict or disruption, we can access Jesus and His peace! Countless believers have clung to this blessed promise, even through great difficulty, horrific tragedy, and deadly conflict. Through personal tragedies or nationwide devastation, it does not matter. Jesus still offers His peace, freely! That peace is not only to be embraced in some far distant future, but it is already ours!
God’s promise of peace is not maybe, or perhaps, or just in case. God loves us with an everlasting love! God has already gifted us with that peace that passes all understanding. God has already laid claim to us! With that claim comes peace that is truly beyond our understanding, peace that is always ours for the receiving.
With Rev. Janet, I can affirm that in the hardest of times, in the hugest of challenges, when my heart is most tender, God’s peace is right there for me, and for you, too. Both when faith runs deep, and when it’s hard to believe, too. And when it’s a challenge for you to have faith alone, that is what the church is for – to believe together, in community.
Jesus said, “the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” This gift of peace is truly for us all. Alleluia, amen!
(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!
(Thanks to Rev. Janet Hunt and her excellent commentary on this Gospel reading for the 6th week of Easter, https://dancingwiththeword.com/when-peace-like-a-river/. I have used several ideas and quotes from this post in this sermon. And, thanks to Rev. David Lose as well. I owe much to him, from http://www.davidlose.net/2016/04/easter-6-c-peace-the-world-cannot-give/)
[1] http://www.davidlose.net/2016/04/easter-6-c-peace-the-world-cannot-give/
[2] https://dancingwiththeword.com/when-peace-like-a-river/
[3] http://www.davidlose.net/2016/04/easter-6-c-peace-the-world-cannot-give/
[4] http://www.davidlose.net/2016/04/easter-6-c-peace-the-world-cannot-give/
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