In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus says that those who love him will keep his word; and those who don’t love him won’t keep it. Those who keep his word will be filled with the Holy Spirit, who will teach us and guide us according to the will of the Father.
This is one of the few Gospel passages that show us the Trinity in action: three separate persons, acting as one entity.
And we need to participate to gain the benefit of Christ’s promise. We need to keep his word — in normal English that means “obey.” We need to obey Jesus. He tells us that the word is from the Father, not him. So he’s not making it up as he goes along — the word had already come from the Father in the Old Testament. Jesus merely clarified it for us; he didn’t change it.
But we can understand it only through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, it makes no sense to us and seems, as the Apostle Paul has mentioned, like foolishness to those who are perishing.
We have to be willing instead of willful. We have to follow God’s will instead of our own. And that is incredibly difficult for believers. It’s almost impossible for those people who refuse to believe.
That’s why when we talk about our faith with an atheist, our most logical, even brilliant, arguments seem to fall on deaf ears. The Holy Spirit in this case as a theological “secret decoder ring.”
Those of us old enough to remember the days when boxes of cold cereal contained a prize inside them, may remember that “secret decoder rings” were some of the most sought after prizes, because they let you discover the secret message written on the back of the box.
The message was usually something like “Tell your parents to buy more Sugar Frosted Toasties” or some similar marketing ploy, but the idea was that every child wanted to know what the writing on the back of the box meant, and they could only interpret it correctly with the secret decoder ring inside.
In our society, it seems that more people want to know what’s written on the cereal box, inside of what’s written in our hearts. The Bible has outsold every other book in the world. Many people chalk that up to the Bible being around so long that accumulated sales make it impossible to beat. True enough. But it also outsells every other book, every single year. Nearly every household in the United States has a Bible, and the average home has four of them.
Yet most people here never read them. Not even a few books or chapters here and there. The Bibles sit on shelves or coffee tables collecting dust.
If most people haven’t read God’s word, they aren’t seeing Christ’s command, and there’s nothing in their hearts for the Holy Spirit to help them understand. So the peace that Jesus promises us is lost for the lack of trying.
What does Jesus tell us to do, above everything else? Love God, and love each other. The two are inseparable, because if we truly love God, we must love each other because we each are made in his image. Not that God has two arms and two legs, skin, hair, teeth, etc.
It’s the thing that makes us different from everything else, our souls, what makes us “us” — that is what is godlike about us. So if we reject God, we’re rejecting a part of ourselves too.
And that godlike part of us is what the Holy Spirit is able to work with to make us understand how to draw closer to God, and become even more like God.
Not in power — I want to make that totally clear — we do not become “God.” What we become is holy. The closer we draw toward God’s will and away from ours, the holier we become, and the more we understand how God can work in our lives.
Too many of us view salvation as a type of fire insurance. It’s not about where we go when we die. It’s about where we are while we live. Jesus says that if we obey him, he and the Father will love us and make their home with us.
That’s the true peace of Christ. It’s the indwelling of God within us.
Jesus offers us his peace, not the same peace offered by the world. During the most difficult times in the Gospels Jesus showed peace while others around him panicked.
Think about it. During his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus was at peace when confronted by Satan face-to-face. He sent Satan away by rebuking Satan’s offers with the promises of the Father in Holy Scripture.
In the synagogues, Jesus would teach and the crowds would often turn violent, yet he would calmly pass through the crowd because he knew and followed the father’s will.
During storms at sea that had professional fishermen scared out of their minds, Jesus was so much at peace that he was asleep in the back of the boat.
And even during the horror and agony of his execution on the cross, Jesus remained at peace and prayed to the Father to forgive his murderers.
That is the peace of Christ.
Compare that to the peace of this world, which is more accurately described not as peace, but rather as “temporary non-hostility.”
According to a former president of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and historians from England, Egypt, Germany, and India peace has been a transient prospect at best:
• Since 3,600 B.C., the world has had only 292 years of peace! During the rest of the 5,315 years of recorded history, there have been 14,351 wars, both large and small.
• In those wars 3.64 billion people have been killed. The historians estimate that the value of the property that has been destroyed by war would pay for a golden belt around the world measuring 97.2 miles wide and 33 feet thick.
• Since 650 B.C. there have also been 1,656 arms races, only 16 of which have not ended in war. The remainder ended in the economic collapse of the countries involved.
• Also, more than 8,000 peace treaties have been made and broken. The past 3 centuries have brought 286 wars — just in Europe alone!
The peace that this world provides is fleeting. The peace that our Lord provides is fulfilling. God’s peace gives us joy during difficult times. Joy is different from happiness. Happiness requires an external stimulus to which we react happily: a joke, a kind word or deed, something outside us happens, and we react with happiness.
Joy is an intrinsic, or internal, feeling that is with us even in sadness. Anyone who has felt the joy of the Lord at a harrowing time understands this difference. It is brought by the Holy Spirit, and can’t really be explained.
It’s kind of like explaining what Jell-O is like to someone who has never seen it or tasted it. You can’t describe it well enough so that that person can really experience it. They have to experience it themselves to fully comprehend it. The same with God’s peace and joy. Once you’ve felt it, you know the difference.
The words of this hymn from Annie Johnson Flint, called “What God Hath Promised,” offer some perspective:
God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower strewn pathways all our lives through;
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.
God hath not promised we shall not know
Toil and temptation, trouble and woe;
He hath not told us we shall not bear
Many a burden, many a care.
God hath not promised smooth roads and wide,
Swift, easy travel, needing no guide;
Never a mountain rocky and steep,
Never a river turbid and deep.
But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.
Jesus can promise us peace because he is peace.
In 1962, a missionary couple named Don and Carol Richardson, were trying to share Jesus with the Sawi people of New Guinea. The Sawi were head-hunting cannibals who lived in relative isolation. Two rival Sawi tribes were fascinated by the Richardsons and moved their villages around the missionaries’ jungle home.
But Don became frustrated by his inability to find a point of contact. He was also discouraged by the 14 civil wars he had already counted right outside his front door now that the two tribes lived side by side. So the Richardsons decided to leave. However, the Sawi response surprised them. They told the Richardons, "If you’ll stay, we promise we’ll make peace in the morning."
The next morning the Richardsons awoke to see the most amazing ritual they had ever witnessed. The two tribes were lined up outside their houses, on each side of the clearing. Finally, one man dashed into his hut, grabbed his newborn son, and ran across the meadow towards the other tribe. His expression betrayed absolute agony. His wife ran after him, screaming and begging him to give the baby back to her.
But her husband wouldn’t stop. He ran over to the other tribe and presented the boy to them. "Plead the peace child for me. I give you my son, and I give you my name," he said. Moments later, someone from that tribe performed the same agonizing sacrifice with the same intensity and passion.
Richardson found out later that as long as those two children remained alive, the tribes were bound to peace. If they died, then literally all hell would break loose--cannibalism, murder, civil war.
While this amazing scene unfolded before him, Don suddenly realized that this was the analogy he needed to communicate Christ. The next time he spoke to the Sawi elders he told them of the perfect Peace Child, Jesus. Eventually, droves of Sawi became followers of Christ.
Several years later, on Christmas day, hundreds of Sawi from every tribe - tribes that had warred and cannibalized each other for many years - gathered together for a feast for the first time.
A Sawi preacher stood up and read in his own language a scripture that few people in the history of the world have ever understood so clearly: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders, and He shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
SOURCE: Adapted from "Peace Child" by Don Richardson (Regal, 1976) in Mars Hill Review, Fall 1994. Pages 62-63. http://www.preachhim.org/3wisewomen.htm
We can only understand the peace that Jesus offers us if we open our hearts to him. If we put aside our own pride, our own desires, our own will, and let Jesus love us. That requires obedience.
Our Gospel reading today has shows three aspects of the relationship between love and obedience:
1. Love involves obedience, or, to put it another way, obedience is naturally included in love. In verse 23, Jesus says “Those who love me will keep my word…”
2. Obedience is the proof of love. If those who love Jesus will keep his word, then keeping his word is evidence of their love for him.
3. The absence or negation of love seems to prohibit or limit obedience. In verse 24, Jesus says, “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.”
Jesus offers us such an amazing gift, true peace. And all we have to do is love our Lord. For more than 5,315 years we’ve been trying to create peace on our own and we’ve failed miserably.
Today, when we offer each other a sign of Christ’s peace, and wish each other Christ’s peace, let’s commit ourselves to finally take him up on his offer.
Amen.
