ACTS 14:8-18

PSALM 67

REVELATION 21:22-22:5

JOHN 14:23-29

(8:30 Service)

Sermon – May 16, 2004

Jesus said to his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”

Well, we might ask, “Where is it?” Did the disciples leave it behind in the Upper Room that night and forget to take it with them – and bequeath it to us, and to the world? Where is Christ’s peace now, in a world which seems so dominated by violence?

The disciples did take Christ’s peace with them, and that, plus guidance and strength from the Holy Spirit (in fulfillment of Christ’s promise in today’s Gospel) made it possible for them to believe, to endure and to persevere through times of violence and conflict every bit as dangerous as what the world sees now.

Christ’s peace does not always mean “peace and quiet”, certainly not the kind temporarily produced by yielding to domination by violent earthly powers. Rather, I believe that the peace of Christ is an inner serenity, strength and well-being in one’s self and in those relationships of ours most under Christ’s influence – a Shalom in Hebrew – which makes it possible for a Christian to be or become a good Christian in whatever circumstances she or he may face.

Christ’s peace offers us healing, community, strength and hope – as illustrated in our other scriptures for this morning.

Today’s dramatic reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes how “the apostles Barnabas and Paul” – note the title now given to both of them and the order in which they are listed by the author – made their first missionary journey to a totally pagan town. Up to this point, Barnabas and Paul’s modus operandi had been to visit the local Synagogue in any town they came to and preach to their fellow Jews that the long-awaited Messiah had come and his name is Jesus, etc. Their sermons had won some adherents among their fellow Jews, much interest among Gentiles who were sympathetic to Judaism and fierce opposition from some other Jews and Gentiles.

Suddenly, however, they hit a town away from the cosmopolitan coast of Asia Minor (in what is now the country of Turkey) where there were no Jews at all – and therefore no one who was a monotheist. When, by the power of God, Paul heals a cripple, instead of detecting an invasion by The Peace of Christ or The Kingdom of God in their town, the people of Lystra think Barnabas and Paul are the Greek divinities Zeus and Hermes.

Since the apostles didn’t speak the local language, they apparently didn’t realize this until the local pagan priest came out and started to worship them – which absolutely appalled the apostles.

(A good thing too; if you’ve ever read Rudyard Kipling’s story “The Man Who Would Be King” or seen the movie with Sean Connery based on it, you know that people who accept being worshiped as divine come to a gruesome end when the locals discover that they aren’t.)

Paul, in his usually “diplomatic” way, tells the people of Lystra that not only are he and Barnabas not Hermes and Zeus, but that Hermes and Zeus don’t exist, the people have followed a bogus religion all their lives, and he wants to tell them about the real God.

Now let’s hear...the rest of the story. Our selection just read ends at that moment. Afterwards, angry opponents from the last town Barnabas and Paul had been in show up and incite the crowd of disappointed and insulted pagans to attack the apostles. They threw so many stones at Paul that they left him for dead.

Thank God, and fortunately for the future of Christianity, he wasn’t. Followers of Jesus came and rescued him. Paul, Luke tells us, “got up and went into the city. The next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.”

Many people who had been through what Paul and Barnabas had endured would not have gone right back to where they had been attacked; that may have amazed the Lystrans more than Paul healing the cripple did. A lot of people who had been through all that would have simply quit altogether.

But Paul had what he called “the peace of God which passes all understanding” which kept his heart and his mind in the knowledge and love of God, and of Christ Jesus.” Not only did the apostles go back to Lystra that day, but after their trip to Derbe they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch and “strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying ‘It is through many persecutions that we must enter the Kingdom of God.’”

You got that right.

Luke continues, “And after they had appointed elders for them in each church with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they have come to believe.”

So Paul and Barnabas experienced what seemed at first to be a disaster – in fact almost a lethal disaster. But with the peace of Christ in them, they picked themselves up and kept going.

And because of their faith, strength and perseverance, they succeeded, leaving behind clusters of believers in those towns.

As the bumper sticker says “Know Jesus, Know Peace. No Jesus, No Peace.”

We will have challenges too – hopefully not quite like that, but you never know.

Our fellow parishioner Steve Skinner doubtless did not expect a year ago that today he’d be marking the end of his third month working in Baghdad, with danger all around, but judging from his e-mails, his faith – and the peace of Christ – has been a huge support to him in perilous times.

The example of the perseverance and faith of the apostles can hearten us when we face our own challenges – and the vision John of Patmos describes in today’s reading from the Book of Revelation can fill our hearts with hope.

The utter banishment of evil, the living presence of God with the saved, the water of life flowing from the Heavenly Jerusalem and the leaves of the tree of life “which are for the healing of the nations” – all these glorious visions can give us hope, and reminders of how things ultimately will end up.

Jesus gives his peace to us, now. May we receive it, marinate in his peace, and by it transform our lives and reach out in his peace to others.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church