St. Michael and All Angels
We seek to be a light of Christ in the community, where all are welcome to experience God's love and blessings.

July 3, 2022 - Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9)

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’” (Lk 10:5) May peace be among us and remain with us. Amen.

It seems like whenever we turn on the news lately, we hear of some massacre. And those are just the tragedies that make the news. There are others that don’t make the headlines, though they are no less important, no less painful, and no less tragic. Some are global, some are national, and some are personal.

If these events have left US heartbroken and weeping, imagine what God must be seeing and feeling — God, the Creator, who entrusts us with creation, with one another’s lives. Each day, the Creator and the created stand together weeping and brokenhearted.

But you know what? These tragedies can no longer be seen as problems to be fixed or behaviors to be corrected. That approach hasn’t gotten us very far. Instead, I think these tragedies are symptoms pointing to a deeper issue, and until we are willing to deal with the deeper issue, things aren’t likely to change; and the deeper issue is the human heart. Whether by a terrorist attack, through prejudice and discrimination against the oppressed, or in our personal relationships, the violence and mistreatment we perpetrate on one another arise from an inner violence that poisons the human heart. And so we need a change of heart. We need a heart at peace.

And I can’t help but ask, where is God’s peace today? I think it’s a question many are asking. It’s a question that God might also be asking.

While we wrestle with this question, let’s not project our failings and human imperfections onto God. Let’s not wait for and expect God to fill the void and fix the problems. This is not about God failing or being imperfect. It is our failings and our imperfections, and the blood of the victims, the tears of the mourners, and the pain of the world are crying and begging for a different answer, so let’s not give the same old answers. Let’s not use the same old excuses. Let’s not offer the same old solutions. Let’s not meet the world with the same old beliefs.

Instead, let’s number ourselves among the seventy sent to every town and place where Christ himself goes. Let us enter every house, first saying, “Peace to this house.” Let’s become people with hearts at peace, not at war. Isn’t that what you want for yourself? For your children and grandchildren? For your family and friends? For the world? I do. That’s what I want. I think we all do. But I think we also struggle with what peace means, what it looks like, and how we attain and keep it. If the events of today’s world offer us anything it’s the opportunity to rethink what peace means and re-orient our hearts.

So let me ask: What does peace mean to you? What comes to mind when you think of peace? What does it look like? What shape does it take? 

And then we get to the harder questions: Are you willing to let go of that understanding of peace? Are you willing to change your understanding and consider something else? Are you willing to pay the price for peace? I am not asking about our willingness to risk the lives of our military men and women or increase the military’s budget. We’ve already proven our willingness to do that. I am asking about our willingness — yours and mine — to change our understanding and practice of peace.

It’s fitting that this week, we celebrate Independence Day, a day when the infant United States rose up against the factions that governed and controlled us and declared a new way of being. When the initial battles in the Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, few colonists desired complete independence from Great Britain, and those who did were considered radical. By the middle of the following year, however, many more colonists had come to favor independence, thanks to growing hostility against Britain and the spread of revolutionary sentiments such as those expressed in the bestselling pamphlet “Common Sense,” published by Thomas Paine in early 1776.

On June 7, when the Continental Congress met at the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, the Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies’ independence. Amid heated debate, Congress postponed the vote on Lee’s resolution but appointed a five-man committee to draft a formal statement justifying the break with Great Britain. On July 2nd, the Continental Congress voted in favor of Lee’s resolution for independence in a near-unanimous vote (the New York delegation abstained, but later voted affirmatively). On July 4th, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, which had been written largely by Jefferson. Though the vote for actual independence took place on July 2nd, from then on the 4th became the day that was celebrated as the birth of American independence.

Now here’s why I asked that second set of questions. I think most of us have an understanding of peace that is too small and too narrow. We limit peace to a particular set of behaviors; usually, they are the behaviors we expect or want from the other person. We think of peace as an ideal to be attained and more often than not we define it as the absence or elimination of conflict. We’ve convinced ourselves that peace will come when this person or that group changes or stops doing something. And ultimately, we condition peace on our ability to change or control another. We let them determine whether our hearts are at peace or at war. That’s craziness and it doesn’t work. By that definition, the fledgling United States of America was not a peaceful nation!

The reality is that we don’t have the power to change another. And when we do change one another, it is not peace we achieve, but more violence. There is a reason so many of us feel powerless in the midst of our world’s tragedies. We ARE. The only person over whom we have any power or ability to change is ourselves. You and I are each responsible for choosing whether we live with a heart at peace or a heart at war.

Jesus did not send the seventy out to change the towns and places they would go but to simply offer his peace. How often does Jesus instruct us to go and change other people? He doesn’t. That may be our way but it’s not his way. Jesus does, however, spend a lot of time teaching us to change ourselves and our way of being toward another. That’s the change of heart that is at the core of peace.

The struggle for peace begins not between me and another but within me. So let’s consider what a heart at peace might look like.

What if a heart at peace is about loving our neighbor as ourselves? (Mk 12:31) It would mean that the other person, regardless of who she is, counts and matters as much as we do. A heart at peace refuses to lump masses of unknown people into lifeless categories such as Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, gay or lesbian, Muslim, or NRA member, and make them objects to be dealt with or enemies to be defeated. A heart at peace encounters everyone as a person; it looks another in the face and recognizes itself. So tell me, what do you see when you look in the face of another?

What if a heart at peace is about loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us (Lk 6:27), turning the other cheek, giving our shirt to the one who has taken our coat, and doing to others as we would have them do to us (Lk 6:29-31)? If that’s about peace I have to wonder whether I really want peace and whether I am willing to pay the price. Some days my answer is yes and other days not so much. What about you?

What if a heart at peace means being merciful and not judging (Lk 6:36-37), refusing to throw the first stone (Jn 8:7), and taking care of the log in my own eye rather than the speck in the eye of another (Mt 7:3)?

What if a heart at peace offers forgiveness not seven times but seventy times seven (Mt 18:21-22)? Are we willing to do that?

What if a heart at peace means feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and imprisoned (Mt 26:35-37)? Before we can ever do that we must first regard the life, needs, and desires of another as important as our own.

What if a heart at peace means choosing not to become and act like a wolf when we stand in the midst of wolves (Lk 10:3)? It means we must refuse to betray ourselves and refuse to villify others.

All these “what ifs” about peace are not so much prescribing behaviors as they are describing ways of being. Peace does not begin with our behaviors toward each other but with our way of being toward each other, our seeing each other as human beings created in the image and likeness of God.

Our behavior toward one another will be determined by our way of being toward one another. It is a matter of the heart — your heart and my heart. If our hearts are at war it makes no difference how polite or nice we are to each other. Violence is present.

Offering the peace of Christ is more than a friendly handshake, a warm hug, or a “How are you? It’s good to see you.” It’s the recognition of another’s existence and that person’s value as a human being, regardless of whether he or she is family, friend, stranger, or enemy.

When Jesus sent out the seventy he did not condition their offers of peace on who the recipients might be, their worthiness, what they had done, or what their response might be. Neither can we condition our offers of peace. Some will receive the peace and others will not. But either way, “the kingdom of God has come near” if our hearts are at peace.

The peace of Christ is not defined by the absence of conflict and it is not an ideal to be attained. It is a practice to be lived every moment of every day of our lives, a continual setting of our faces to go to Jerusalem. That means practicing peace with our friends and family. It means practicing peace with our enemies. It means practicing peace with the stranger, with those who are different from us, and with those who scare us.

And let’s not forget that when Jesus sent the seventy they went without a purse, bag, or sandals. Now don’t literalize that. It’s a metaphor for the baggage we carry, the baggage that continues to trip us up and deny us a heart at peace. It is the baggage of our past experiences, fears and wounds, grudges and resentments, pre-judgments and assumptions about others, old solutions and beliefs, our need to be right or to be better than the other, and sometimes our desire to play the victim.

So let me ask you one last question. What baggage might you need to leave behind to go into the world fully equipped with a heart at peace?

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’”