Peace Of the Community

John 14:27

Last week, reading from the oldest writing in our New Testament about the first known community that would become Christians and “the Church”, we were reminded that those who first answered their call to gather together in Jesus’ name were never intended to be a “commodity” – a set of properties with a group of managers whose main concern was numbers. Those who first answered their call to gather together in Jesus’ name and follow his Way were intended to be a “community” – a group of people that never stops “encouraging and admonishing, rejoicing and praying, giving thanks and being patient with one another”. From the very beginning this community, our community – the Body of Christ, the Church – has had some pretty peculiar characteristics, or features. Things that set the Church apart from other communities we may be part of. We’re going to explore a few of those things this month. Maybe we can get a better understanding of why we’re here on Sunday morning and not at home with coffee in front to the television, or taking a morning walk with our favorite podcast. We … need to be here. Why?

Response number one: because there is a “peace” in this community, the peace of this community.  Not any normal kind of peace. Plenty of organizations and communities have peace and are peaceful. That morning walk and coffee can be peaceful. But in this community we have “the peace of GOD … which passes all understanding” ^{Ph 4:7} here. The peace that Jesus gives to us – from the first communities in the first century to the present, to the last ones whenever that time may come. Our scripture reading this morning is the verse in which we are gifted this peace. One powerful and provocative verse that we read rather passively most of the time. I’m hoping not this time. And in an effort to keep it from being passive, I’m going to challenge you to hear this verse differently, so maybe … just perhaps, you can live your life a bit differently when you leave here this morning.

Pray with me first:

GOD, you are speaking, you are preaching, you are listening, you are proclaiming, and we are praying … that the words of my mouth and the mediations of all of our hearts in these fleeting moments may not only be acceptable in your sight, but may reveal your will and Christ’s Way.  You are our rock and our redeemer – the source of our Peace.  Ground us and make us bold to be worthy of the new life you offer.  Amen. 

And listen for the Word of GOD …

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. ^{Jn 14:27}

Ukraine's military launched a wide-ranging drone attack on Russia overnight on Aug. 4. Governor Andrey Vorobyov reported that several drone strikes were recorded and that five people were killed and six others injured in the attack.

Peace I leave with you …

During his Presidency, President Biden misled the American people about the pain his failed economic policies inflicted. Inflation soared nearly 20 percent and families continued to struggle under the weight of high prices, spurred by over-regulation and out-of-control spending.

… my peace I give to you.

The LGBTQ+ community continues to face a storm of attacks both federally and in state legislatures across the country. Legal challenges to anti-LGBTQ+ actions are set to shape the future of the fight for equality, putting the freedom to live authentically and the ability to access health care without discrimination at risk.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

In his second administration, President Donald J. Trump has focused intensely on immigration. Through a series of executive orders (EO), policy memoranda, and other actions, the Administration has taken major steps to fundamentally reshape immigration policy and practice that test the limits of executive power, often with the blessing of the Supreme Court.

Do not let your hearts be troubled,

At their 227^th General Assembly in Milwaukee this summer, Commissioners of the Presbyterian Church (USA) approved RIW-04, declaring that the Israeli government has violated international law prohibiting genocide in its war in Gaza and encouraging members to avoid products from Israeli companies linked to violations of international law.

… and do not let them be afraid. ^{Jn 14:27}

This is the Word of our Lord. Thanks be to GOD.

Every one of those worldly headlines makes us either anxious, angry or otherwise unsettled.  But for every worldly headline that stokes our anxieties, fears and prejudices, the Peace of GOD that passes all understanding is ours as a community of faith to have, to hold, and to share. Does it make any difference in your life? This Peace of Christ? How might we understand it just enough to allow it to actually enter into our hearts, our heads, and our community to quell the anxieties we face every other hour of the week,  so that its transformative power can have an effect on us and so on the world when we leave this place? Let’s try to get a bit closer this morning.

In verse twenty-seven, as Jesus “gifts” us Peace, he says “I do not give to you as the world gives.”  That’s the deep wisdom, and the true power, of this offering.  But, what does he mean?  Peace is peace, right?  How does the way the world gives peace differ from the Peace of Christ?  I think we know it does, but it’s hard to articulate. To begin with, somewhere in your heads you’re thinking, “Easy for you to say, Jesus. You didn’t have it as tough as we do today.” But, from the time he was a child through his death by crucifixion on a cross Jesus witnessed and experienced the world’s way of creating “peace”, a way every bit as violent in the first century as the twenty-first.

Right about the time Mary and Joseph were wrapping him in swaddling clothes, a Jewish rebellion against Herod’s rule was brutally put down by the Romans in the town of Sepphoris, believed to be the birthplace of Mary, Jesus’ mother. The city was  captured, burned, and its inhabitants enslaved.  The town of Nazareth where Jesus grew up was just over the ridge and across the valley floor about four miles, a walk of an hour or so, away.  It doesn’t take much imagination to consider that the major stories Jesus would have heard while growing up in Nazareth would have been about the “year the Romans came” putting to the sword hundreds of Jewish men and youth, friends and relatives we may imagine, making prisoners of women and children, plundering the property and setting fires to burn what remained ... all in order to keep “the peace”.  Pushing the speculation a bit, we may imagine that at some chosen moment, Mary brought her young son Jesus to the top of the Nazareth ridge to point out Sepphoris, her hometown, and talk about the cruelty of the Roman Empire and the “Pax Romana” in the hopes that Jesus would stay far from the fury of imperial violence – this “making of peace through victory and violence”, anger and partisanship.

He learned early how the world gave peace. He knew and felt all the anger and hatred, and worry and fear that we do. And yet, when the time came for him, as the leader of a multitude himself, to consider how he would engage the world, he did not give peace to us as the world gives it. “No, put away your sword,” he said, and was obedient to the will of GOD, the Pax Divina, even to his death on the cross. ^{PH 2:8}

From a lifetime of experiencing attempts by governments, and royalty, and religious authorities to bring their peace to the world – from memories and images of Sepphoris from his childhood; the experience of the death of his contemporaries, including his cousin John the Baptist by King Herod; and, with an increasingly clear understanding of his own death in the days ahead, Jesus realized that lasting peace does not, and will never, come through violence and war, punishment or wrath.  Human “peace through violence” – be it the violence of the battlefield, a cross, a courtroom, a legislative chamber or an Oval Office – will never be a lasting peace. And, neither will  the “wrath of an angry GOD” offer lasting peace.  The peace of GOD must be a nonviolent, “just” love lived out in community. Jesus’ words of assurance to us in the one verse we’ve shared this morning contains a promise of this kind of peace for this kind of community.

GOD, Jesus preached – in spite of what the Church began saying three centuries later and continues to say today – the true GOD does smite the powers of this world with fire and hail to destroy it.  That feels so satisfying to us in our righteousness – Divine wrath.  But how can peace come, even – maybe especially from “GOD” – through the destruction of what is loved.  GOD, Jesus realized – Jesus taught and lived – has to offer something different. GOD, he said (he taught, he lived) overwhelms the powers of this world not with death and destruction, but with justice and love, to redeem it.  GOD’s reconciliation of the world, GOD’s “kin-dom on earth,” can only “come to be” through a Way of life absolutely opposite to the way of life offered by the world’s Empires.

In this community, as a community of Jesus followers, we aren’t immune to the headlines, talking heads, and social media algorithms that bombard us 24/7. Let alone the personal experiences we have of hatred, fear and violence. We just re-frame all those anxious responses. Because we are a Christian community, we are supposed to hear those headlines and experience all those algorithms through the lens of our faith. And in that way of seeing the world, we know – not just hope and pray – we know that all that is wrong in this world and in our lives can be and will be changed, transformed and replaced by all that is good and right and just and peace-full. We know it. We affirm it every week as one of our first responses to the proclamations of the morning. We’ll affirm it again in a few moments through one of the most ancient creeds this community has. But do we really believe it?

Or, does all this really “pass our understanding”? And have we just given up? Because … I mean, the world … our country, those headlines, our own lives. How are we to be the Peace of Christ in such a reality as this? Because … it’s what being in this community requires of us. “The Kin-dom of God is here in this world,” Jesus said. “Among us,” he said. Not far off, or far away, or up there and beyond. Here … within us, among us, here on earth in the Peace of the Community we are a part of and the community we are supposed to provide for others. Because that’s how the Kin-dom comes even more fully on earth. That’s the only way it will come.

“My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”

With this Peace, we are moved beyond the present, anxious, fearful moments in which we are living into a future that is grounded in the promise of new life, resurrection life, a life in which GOD is complete and the world is the Community we share in this place.

So … now it’s time to pass that Peace we so lightly do every week with a little deeper understanding of what we’re sharing: We’re not just recognizing the present. We’re sharing the future.

The Peace of Christ is with you. (And also with you.) And now before we sing, please rise as you are able, turn to your left and your right, before and behind you, and pass the future to one another with the Peace of this community.

Amen.  (Let’s sing together.)

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / August 9, 2026