August 17, 2007
Surgery
Pent 12/15C (Lk 12.49-56)
Luke said that Jesus said, “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?” (Lk 12.51a) and Matthew added, as if for good measure, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10.34).
From the way these two figured it, the Prince of Peace had had it. “You want peace? I’ll show you peace.” Anybody who’d thought it was all rock and roll from there on out had to have got another think coming. It reminds me of the critic whose ire was also up when she reviewed a complete dramatic production in only one sentence. “The scenery in the play was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it.”
Peace and justice and love makes for splendid scenery, indeed. And there’ve been moments of late when we can almost sense its breaking through into action. But then we Christians can’t handle it and get in front of it to make our point. Like Gandhi said, “I’ve no brief with Christianity. It’s the Christians I cannot abide.”
If Jesus doesn’t just plain zap us soon, then it makes one wonder if he’s even paying attention. No, I take that back. It’s just that maybe you can, but I simply cannot understand grace and love. I know it couldn’t be the sweeping paternalism and mindless offers of tranquility that masquerade for so much of the Christian religion in our day and time. It’s certainly not the schmarmy patronage and goody-two-shoes father-knows-best-ism of the Anglican Network panderers. But I trust and I’m confident the scenery of the Good News is back there somewhere if these pretenders would just clear the stage.
Dorothy Sayers lamented how this Jesus is so often made into a “household pet for little old ladies and pale curates,” reminding us of those bucolic portraits that line the walls and counters of so many so-called “Christian” bookstores. I can’t imagine Jesus would have a lot of patience with his peace being conjectured as such a serene, chicken-soup caprice of the gospel.
Peace on earth and good will to all? Were the angels smoking dope? Prince of Peace? Is this simply a misnomer? “The peace of the Lord be with you… ” Is it all mere liturgical fakery?
Well, yes. Until we realize, as Frederick Buechner put so well. “(T)he contradiction is resolved when you realize that for Jesus peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle but the presence of love.” Our new Presiding Bishop hails us so often with the ancient Judaeo-Christian salutation “Shalom” which means the fullness and strength of having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself. Maybe Jesus is suggesting that if not a sword, then at least a scalpel and some major spiritual surgery to bring that to pass.
The church can be such a presence and simply and devastatingly recall us to the beautiful scenery of loving God and neighbor and self, then firmly remind us to let God… let go, and then get out of the way, singing the old hymn that got it so right. “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” (1982 Hymnal # 661).
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