Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 14:23-29
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
I remember when I heard it—maybe not for the first time but for the first time really heard it—this hymn which we sung just before the gospel reading: “They cast their nets in Galilee” (Hymnal 661).
It was at a vocations retreat in summer of 1994 to which Cindy and I had gone as part of the vetting process to become a priest. The priest who gave the talk used the hymn as a guide to the challenges, which can be faced in priestly ministry, but he could just as well have used it as a talk to vet anyone who thought they might want to become a Christian.
The hymn begins with reference to “simple fisher folk” who were happy, contented, and peaceful just the way they were. They no doubt had family, friends, a decent education, and a good job. Life was sweet enough, filled with value and meaning that most of us, if we are at all reflective, desire.
Then along comes this Galilean carpenter who calls out to us and invites us to follow him, to watch with amazement as he teaches with authority, casts out demons, heals the lame, proclaims the God’s favor, bestows peace.
What was pretty darn good now seems to get even better. It’s seems that it is much like Coca-Cola: everything goes better with Jesus.
Though once contented, we now have something more: hearts that are “brimful.” Cups filled to overflowing. Eyes opened to see signs here, there, and everywhere that God is in his heaven and all’s right with the world.
From June 1998 to February 1999, my life seemed very much that way.
After years of desire and work, signs--material and spiritual, palpable and concrete—seemed clear to me. In a period of less than a year I had graduated from seminary, was ordained deacon and priest, and after eight years of marriage Cindy and I had our first child.
I was the beloved curate at a remarkably beautiful church and had the prettiest baby girl you could imagine . . . who by God’s design was totally bald and looked just like me!
A retired nurse in that parish came to me and said, “Chris, you need to be careful. I saw it all the time with newly minted doctors, fresh from medical school and happy they had finally achieved their dream. Then depression set in.”
I understood her point and was even appreciative of her sagacious counsel, but—like the priest’s talk at the vocation’s retreat—in my euphoria her advice was easily tucked away, a seed planted for perhaps another day.
This peace of God that filled the apostles’ hearts brimful is that very peace that breaks them wide open. The hymn refers to just two—John dying old and homeless and Peter crucified upside down. Certainly the hymn could have listed all the other apostles who in following Jesus earned a martyr’s death.
In giving his talk on vocation, the priest shared pictures of the homes in which he and his wife had lived over his years of ordained ministry. Some rectories were beautiful, even palatial, but what caught my attention was the tiny camp trailer in Wichita Falls where he and his wife had lived for many months following the F4 tornado on 10 April 1979 that leveled church and rectory and took the lives of 42 people.
Little did I know then in 1994 that in short seven years and fresh from Manhattan after 9/11, I would become the vicar of that church in Wichita Falls and serve a people still bearing the scars of that tragic day in 1979.
My own experience of ministry has not yet been tested by natural disasters, but it has been, as through fire, tested by the conflicts that so easily erupt within parish churches. Most of us go to great lengths to avoid conflict, which in churches seem to be particularly painful and disconcerting, maybe precisely because we speak so glibly about the peace. In churches even petty differences like the color of the carpet can take on the freight of Ultimate Concern.
We should be cautious about assigning eternal consequences to our points of view. In churches—of all places!—we would do well to remember that even and especially when we differ with each other, we are to remember the commandment that we are to love one another and Jesus has loved us.
I know that sounds straightforward enough, but it is always interesting to see how that reminder to love each other comes as something of a surprise. When you and I focus on just winning a given battle, it is all too easy to lose our focus on loving the other as Jesus loves us.
Whether it is through challenges emanating from natural disaster or through the disasters of our human devising, we soon come to know that this peace of God really is not as the world understands, let alone gives, peace.
The peace of God is not the absence of conflict. Being a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ does not give a Teflon coating to insulate us from the hardships of life. Nor does it magically vanquish the “devil who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour” (as Peter writes in his epistle).
Indeed the opposite seems more like it. As disciples of Jesus our hearts and our lives can never be far from the cross. As disciples of Jesus our hearts are taken and blessed, broken and given to the real needs and concerns, even the ills and the hardships, of this world. Jesus didn’t leave heaven and come to earth so that we don’t have to live in this world which “God so loves.”
Jesus came and Jesus comes so that we in fact can live here more . . . more openly, more courageously, more faithfully, believing and knowing that whatever comes our way, we are never alone. God is with us. God sustains us. God will bring us through all this so that we can come to drink from the river of the water of life that flows from the very throne of God and of the Lamb.
So it may not be pretty. It almost certainly won’t be easy. But let your hearts not be troubled, let them not be afraid:
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.