Peace & the Sword (Trinity 10)

Peace & Sword

10th Sunday after Trinity
Jer 23.23-29; Heb 11.29.12.2; Luke 12.49-56

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3

Was I the only one to notice that last Thursday, the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis, the appointed reading for the day began “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews in – wait for it – Memphis!” How much of a co-incidence was that? Or was God telling us that Elvis is not really dead?

It’s amazing what people can get out of selectively reading the Bible. Scripture is very slippery at times and in today’s Gospel we have Jesus, the prince of peace, telling his disciples that he did not come to bring peace but division, or as Matthew puts it even more graphically, ‘not peace but the sword’. (Matt 10.34)

Similarly that same Isaiah who has just re-assured us about being kept in perfect peace, rails against the false prophets who cry ‘peace, peace’ when there is none.

And in today’s first reading, Jeremiah condemns those prophets who have comfortable dreams about the future of God’s people when all he sees is fire and destruction.

Perhaps we need to spend a few minutes re-evaluating the Christian teaching about inner peace?

Striving for peace of mind is not a modern obsession, although contemporary adverts play heavily on it to prize open our wallets. It appears to be a concern running through the millennia of human consciousness.

As soon as we developed the ability for self-reflection, we became anxious, or more importantly, we knew we were anxious. Animals appear to demonstrate anxiety, although presumably without reflecting on it.

The baboon pacing up and down in his cage and showing all the signs of worry is unlikely to be pondering universal angst and the pointlessness of existence without a fixed cosmic referent. Indeed that particular issue doesn’t keep many of us awake at night. It is more likely to be our family, our health or the gas bill.

The Bible, in both Old and New Testaments, constantly addresses the tendency of the human spirit to be anxious, to be troubled. And its message is consistent although expressed in different ways.

The changes and chances of living in a frail body, on a delicate planet, in an unpredictable society, are enough to make anyone anxious. And there is no fixed point in this earthly realm which can give us security.

But, as the Apostle Paul puts it, ‘our citizenship is in heaven’. (Phil 3.20) Our point of reference is heaven, which is why today’s epistle urges us to remember that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”

Isaiah, in our text, expresses it in a different way - ‘whose mind is fixed on thee’ - our point of reference is the eternal and unchanging God. That is our fulcrum, our anchor.

And this is part of the mystery of faith, testified to by the lives of countless millions down through the ages; by the men and women of faith that the letter to the Hebrews catalogues: that such a seemingly ephemeral thing - belief in God - can provide so firm a foundation that it gives us peace of mind.

One of the purposes or liturgy and Bible reading, of mass and the daily offices, of priests and the religious; is to bring us back to that quiet centre; to recall us to the peace of God which passes all understanding.

But of course, nothing is ever as simple as that, and we come back to those apparent contradictions in Scripture which we pondered a few minutes ago.

There’s a dialogue between Lucy & Good Ol’ Charlie Brown which illustrates our dilemma.

Charlie Brown is irritable and restless and Lucy says to him: “I thought you had inner peace.” “I do” replies Charlie, “but I still have outer obnoxiousness”.

There is an inbuilt tension in our human make-up. The strength of that tension will vary with our personality and with the circumstances of our life. So even Jesus says in today’s Gospel “what stress I am under” – not a very good advert for being kept in perfect peace!

But this is because, the degree to which we can be at perfect peace and show it by our outward demeanour, is moderated by another, probably evolutionary force, which disturbs our equilibrium and leaves us dissatisfied with the cheap answers of religion.

It is most likely this creative tension which urges the human spirit to its greatest feats of love, beauty and creativity, as well as its depths of destruction and depravity.

This is the life force which we need constantly to temper by trying to reflect the goodness of the Giver of life.

George Herbert picks up this tension in the title of his poem The Pulley - will we be lifted up to God and peace, or drawn down to earth - to Pandora and chaos. - for there is also a Christian reworking of the Pandora myth in the poem. At risk of turning this sermon into an edition of Poetry Please let me read you The Pulley.

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by—
"Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can;
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span."

So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

"For if I should," said he,
"Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in nature, not the God of nature:
So both should losers be.

"Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.

George Herbert 1593 1632

Those words of Augustine readily spring to mind:

Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee. (Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Chapter 1)

As we pursue God, and try our best to trust in him, we do indeed achieve a good measure of peace of mind. But in order to keep alive the divine spark within us, we will also experience a divine restlessness, even divisions, and, God forbid, at times, the sword.

For we cannot be disciples of Christ without provoking divisions. We cannot bring into being that prophetic vision of a just and compassionate world without facing dissent and fighting evil and injustice.

But, if we don’t want the restlessness, the struggles within and strife without, to overwhelm us, then we must put in place those structures that enable our inner life to come back, again and again to the hope of the Gospel; to be stayed on God.

Let this Bread & Wine be such a recollection for you.

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3