Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
I hope you will agree with me, I hope you will agree with me to leave, for a moment anyway, that disconcerting image with which our gospel reading has just left us, the boorish man who slipped into the wedding party in a T-shirt and booty shorts now bound hand and foot in the outer darkness, where there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Because I would like us to turn to that “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding that guards are hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” which Paul proclaims, even as he bids us focus on whatever is true, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, so that if there be any excellence, anything worthy of praise, we should think about these things.”
“That we should keep on doing the things that we have learned and received and heard and seen in Paul, so that the God of peace will be with you.”
This peace is so much more pleasant, is it not, than that gnashing of teeth in a darkness that yields no solace?
We want peace, so Emmanuel Jal sings, and he should know.
Now about 34 years old, he was only about seven when his father joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and soldiers killed his mother, when he joined thousands of children leaving Sudan for Ethiopia in hope of education and opportunity.
But on the way the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, pretending to offer a school, tricked thousands of children into becoming child soldiers, to fight in Ethiopia and Sudan, until he and others decided to run away.
Over the next three months, so many died along that way to freedom, shot, blown up, starved.
But somehow Emmanuel made it to Nairobi, where he began school thanks to Emma McCune, a British Aid worker, who adopted him. Emma died only months later and her husband kicked Emmanuel out of the house.
But there in the slums, Emma’s friends helped Emmanuel continue his studies, and after a number of years he got to a refugee camp where his humanitarian concern for child soldiers and street children took off even as his career as hip hop artist soared, eventually being among those invited to sing at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday party.
In January 2011, the morning after 150 plus youth of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia led a hundred or so adults in a Stop Hunger Now pack of 120,000 meals for South Sudan, the emotion and excitement at the Sunday eucharist could not have been higher, when Emmanuel Jal surprised us at the offertory by leading us in his best known hit,
We want peace,
we’ve had enough of war.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m look for some people who’s looking for peace
Maybe together we could make the war cease
And we cannot change the way people act
And we cannot change the way people think
So if we sit back, chill out and relax we’ll soon be extinct
That’s why I am
I’m calling on, I’m calling on the whole wide world
On the whole wide world
Come on people, would you help me?
Let's scream and shout, let's scream and shout cause we want peace
I want peace and you want peace, stand up
You want peace and I want peace, stand up
Come on, stand up, stand up, stand up
We want peace, we want peace, we want peace, we want peace
I suspect that when we listen to the news 24/7—if we can bear it—that’s what our soul cries too.
We want peace, we want peace, we want peace.
Human shields little protecting the hospitals and schools we bomb. Extermination of all Christians in Mosul.
When Al Qaeda is outraged at the barbarism of ISIL, we want peace.
Paul’s little letter to the Philippians seems almost naïve in its suggestion that we can already rejoice in a peace which passeth all understanding.
Hearing this morning’s lesson from Philippians we might be tempted to think of Paul as the Norman Vincent Peale or Joel Osteen of his day, a Pollyanna optimist with his head buried deep in the sand, crying “peace, peace, when there is no peace.”
That is until we actually read Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi—and at four chapters it’s not very long—and there we find him . . .
In prison again. . . .
Wondering if the gig is almost up, if he is about to be poured out as a libation.
Wondering if these conflicts in the church will ever cease. Even in this morning’s little slice of Philippians we find conflict weighing on his mind.
“I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.”
These women whose respective names ironically mean to “live well” and “common fate” are at odds with one another, again, quarrelling over things that perhaps hold significant meaning for them but at the end of the day leave the church unhappy and smaller because these women, focused on their own interests, cannot be of “the same mind in the Lord.”
These who have been co-workers with Paul on behalf the gospel are now in their selfishness besmirching that good news.
This encouragement for these ladies to be of the same mind takes us back to the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians and that incomparable passage where he urges all Christians to
be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
For only when we empty ourselves for good of all will Paul’s joy be, as he says, “complete,” so that just as Jesus bids us, we will “love one another as he loved us,” even giving up his life for us.
We find in the brief pages of Philippians a serious strife between members of the church and false teachers—“dogs” he call them—eager to lead people away from that truth Paul has both taught and shown.
But even so, Paul now bound in chains, bids them and us
“Rejoice. And again I will say, Rejoice.”
“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests—the concerns and hopes of your heart—be made known to God. And then . . . and then and only then will the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
No, Paul has not recently joined the Optimist Club to increase personal satisfaction or even church attendance.
Paul is a realist, a realist who has had a real encounter with Jesus Christ. Paul, right here in this difficult and troubled world, has encountered resurrection joy and love that has power to rise from the dead to new life.
For this relationship with Jesus Christ brings us into the marriage feast of the lamb, where we are freely given new clothes, of righteousness and everlasting joy, and of that peace which—even in the midst of profound hardship—can never be taken away . . .
New clothes of life and peace.
Let's scream and shout, let's scream and shout cause we want peace, Emmanuel Jal sings
I want peace and you want peace, stand up
You want peace and I want peace, stand up
Come on, stand up, stand up, stand up
We want peace, we want peace, we want peace, we want peace
We want peace . . . and Paul tells us that today and forever we can have that peace . . . that is if . . . if we will wear the new clothes of peace which Jesus freely gives . . . and not insist on staying in the all too familiar rags of our own T-shirt and booty shorts which lead only to weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Amen.