The Wild Peace of God

Wild Peace, by Vonda Drees

Propers: The Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete), AD 2021 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near! Do not worry about anything. But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Peace is such an elusive thing, isn’t it? We all claim to want it, yet few of us would know what to do with it if we got it. Buddhists call it enlightenment, Hindus call it liberation, and Christians call it salvation. But what it really boils down to is peace: a deep, abiding, spiritual peace, a place or state of rest for our souls.

Human beings like to play games, status games. We’re always measuring ourselves against others: our siblings, our neighbors, our colleagues, our enemies. We’re always trying to figure out whether we’re doing better or worse than everyone else, how high up the ladder of life we have climbed. Are we hotter, stronger, richer, smarter, more popular, more famous, more respected? See, we’re looking for self-worth, and the only way we know how to do that is by measuring ourselves against others, against other selves. It’s a zero-sum game.

At the heart of this vicious cycle is pride, ego. Or in an Eastern vein, attachment; same basic idea. We think that we are what we do. We define ourselves by our achievements and our attributes. We think that if we just do a little more, earn a little more, buy a little more—get a little stronger, get a little skinnier, get a little lover—then at last we’ll be happy. We’ll find that missing piece of our puzzle, the one that’s shaped like a heart.

But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t. No matter how strong or rich or pretty or famous or smart we may think we’ve become, it does not make us happy. It doesn’t bring us peace. If it did, then all of our celebrities would be joyful, thankful, wonderful people. Yet they who have too much of everything seem to be the most miserable of all. And so we talk about the rat-race. And we talk about dog-eat-dog. And we talk about pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps. And it’s all just so much noise.

And deep down we know it, don’t we? We’re just loath to admit it.

One of the lessons of age, it seems to me, is that much of life consists in making peace with one’s failures. You cannot earn self-worth. And you cannot take it from others. It can only be given. It can only be grace. We all long to be loved for who we are, rather than just for what we can do.

There is beneath the surface of this war-torn weary world an endless font of being, an ocean of awareness; that Western philosophy calls the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; that Eastern philosophy calls Consciousness, Being, and Bliss; and that all people of faith have come to call God.

And to know this God, to know this infinite, eternal Source of everything and everyone who has ever been or could ever be, is to be flooded with grace, love, mercy, compassion, and selfless self-giving—the very roots of reality—such that we know our ultimate unity with all of Creation and even with the Creator Himself, in whom we all live and move and have our being. And when we all are One in Him—then and only then shall we be individuals at the last.

The world of the finite, the visible, the material, enfolds a spiritual core that is infinite and eternal, beyond the limitations of space and of time. That is within us. God is within us—His Image, His Spirit, His Word—because we are all in Him. There’s nowhere you can go to escape the presence of God. If you fly up to the heavens, He’s there; if you fall down into hell, He is there. Nothing and no-one escapes His awareness, His power, His love.

And you don’t need to climb up to Heaven to find this out. It isn’t some special, secret knowledge for the chosen or elect. All you have to do is strip away your pride, strip away your ego, strip away your attachments and your selfish expectations. And there you will find the Son of God, the Image of God, the Adam whom we were all meant to be, waiting within us, implanted within us, so that we are as pregnant with God as Mary once was, and as the world shall be once more.

Jesus Christ is God come down to earth as human being. And this is possible because human beings already subsist in God, who shines through us as light through a glass. Were it otherwise, Christ would be some strange chimera, half-human and half-divine, like Herakles or the giants of Genesis 6—weird abominations. Rather, it is because Jesus Christ is a true and perfect human that He is also truly God. He shows us what it is for a person to live in perfect union with our Father, so that Heaven blazes through His flesh, the Creator incarnate through and in Creation.

And only thus shall we know peace, for only thus are we made whole. There’s an emptiness in our hearts that we try to fill with finite things—with drink and sex and cash and pride and anything that makes us feel just that much better than someone else—and none of it can work. None of it can satisfy. Because that chasm inside us is really our longing, our infinite hunger, for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. And only God can satisfy that. “Our hearts, O Lord, are restless, until they rest in You.” Only then can we know peace.

And where might we find this peace of God within our world today? Why, in Jesus, of course: in His Word rightly preached, that the Good News find root in our souls; in Baptism, whereby we die to ourselves and rise in Christ, with His Spirit the breath in our lungs; in the Eucharist, which is Heaven on earth, where we are given His Body, given His Blood, so that we become Jesus together; and in this community of sainted sinners, in the needs of our neighbors, for Christ is revealed in the beggar at the door as surely as He’s present in the chalice.

Here we are given His peace on a platter, purely by grace, purely as gift, filling us up to overflowing so that Christians may go out as springs of life-giving water, ceaseless and superabundant, bringing peace and joy to all this fallen, broken, beautiful world. We are foretastes of the feast to come, eternity present in time.

And we fail, it’s true. We stumble; we fall. But that’s why we come back: back to Church each Sunday, back to prayer at the opening and closing of every day. For as exhausted as we may become, Jesus’ love in us remains inexhaustible. Here there is always forgiveness. Here there is always new life. Here it is always the dawn of God’s new day, the Eighth Day of the New Creation.

I want every one of you here to be mystics. I want every one of you to become increasingly aware of the wondrous presence of God around you, above you, below you, within you, beyond you. I want each of us to read God’s Word with a mind open to the guidance of the Spirit. I want us to serve our neighbors as we ought to serve Christ Himself. I want everyone to treat every morning like it’s the first day of Creation and every evening as though it were the end of the world.

I want us to let go of our attachments to all that is not God—not so that we stand aloft and aloof from the needs of others, but so that freed from selfish expectations we can be attentive and open to love every person in this present moment—which is really the only moment that we have—to address the needs we find before us. Live like this, O Christian, and you shall know the peace of God in Christ.

Our Gospel reading this morning sounds more like Law than Gospel, more like war than peace. John the Baptist tells us to bear fruits worthy of repentance, that is, worthy of new life in God. And he says, “Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. Don’t threaten. Give what you can. And know that the Lord is at hand.” Simple rules. A simple Law.

But one man’s Law is another man’s Gospel. John isn’t telling us what we have to do in order to earn grace, earn Heaven, earn the love of God. All of this is freely given in Christ! Rather, He’s telling us what freedom looks like, what peace looks like. God’s peace doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen. Terrible things happen, to Jesus and to John. But the peace of God means that we are never alone, never abandoned, never unknown, never unloved. God is always and ever with us.

His peace is the power for us to love others regardless of what happens, regardless of pain or persecution, sorrow or sin. For Jesus Christ is coming! And in Him shall all be made right. In Him shall no good thing be lost. In Him we find our forgiveness, and peace for all our souls.

What then can flesh do to me?

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.