Sermon 6 Easter C

Sermon Sixth Sunday of Easter C

John 14:23-29

Revelations 21:10, 22-22:5

May 26, 2019

Valerie Ann Hart

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”

What a beautiful promise. Peace.

Who doesn’t long for peace. The frantic parents juggling work and children. The employee who’s trying to make ends meet and hoping the job remains. The senior contemplating retirement and wondering if the money will last. The patient digesting the last doctor’s report and seeing life transformed.

Who doesn’t long for peace, for a quiet mind, for a good night’s sleep, for a deep sense of inner satisfaction.

Who doesn’t long for peace.

Yet here it is. Christ offers us peace. Not the peace of the world, but his peace.

He goes on, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

But we are afraid. Afraid of the future, afraid we’ll run out of money, afraid our children will be hurt, afraid we will let someone down, afraid we’re not enough. We all have our own fears.

Yet Jesus tells us not to be afraid. 

Jesus offers us his peace.

How are we to know this wonderful peace?

He gives us some clear directions

“Those who love me will keep my word.”

So we are to love him. We are to respond to his love by loving him in return. This is not the kind of warm fuzzy love for your child. It’s a love that involves surrender, a love that sacrifices for the other, a deep longing to serve. We are to love him.

And keep his word.

What is his word? What does he tell us to do?

Forgive – It’s right there in the Lord’s prayer. We are to forgive others. Not for their sake, but for our own. When we forgive we are not saying that what the other person did was right. When we forgive we are making the choice to not hold on to the pain any more. We let go of the burden of the hurt and the anger.

When we forgive, we find some peace. We are no longer haunted by the past.

What is his word? What does Christ tell us to do?

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

Love one another, everyone, starting with those closest to us. When we open our hearts to Christ, when we love him, we begin to see Christ in others. We love the image Christ we see there. The image of Christ in the poor, the ill, the destitute, the homeless. The image of Christ in “The least of these.”

To love one another means to be in right relationship. It means we are working together for a better world for everyone. There’s no need to fight with someone you love, there’s no desire to hurt someone you love, there is peace. As we learn to love more we fall deeper into peace.

And when we love and keep Christ’s word, he and the father will come and make their their home with us.

What a beautiful image. To have God, Father and Son, dwelling with us. With us at all times. Not distant. Not up there somewhere. Not in the future. Not someday I’ll meet God. But here, with us, right now.

Christ’s love, God’s love, is with us. Here. Now. Closer than our own breath. 

Christ’s love, God’s love, surrounds us, interpenetrates our being. That love is in the deepest part of our souls.

But we are so busy, so distracted, we don’t even notice it.

We need to take time to be still. Not just to pray to God, but to listen to God. To find the time, carve out the time, to sit quietly and listen. To make the search for God’s love within us a top priority. 

Perhaps you can engage in some kind of contemplative, meditative practice each day such as following your breath, Centering Prayer, praying with a rosary, or sitting quietly and listening to the birds.

Do something, regularly, that will open you to the presence of God. 

Something that welcomes the Holy Spirit. 

Something that takes you deep within, where you will find God dwells. 

Something that takes you deep within to discover the peace we are promised.

Something that gives you a few minutes free of fear.

It’s not always easy to find that peace. Sometimes we first find demons of unresolved grief, long held resentments, unhealed wounds. Sometimes we have to deal with these before we know that peace.

That’s what I think the book of Revelation is about. The struggle within that we have to go through, the demons within ourselves that we must fight, before we live in that wonderful Holy City described in the reading today. 

The Book of Revelation is full of dramatic battles, but after all the struggle it ends with a city of peace, a city of light, a city of abundance. Pure running water, trees that not only give fruit all year round, but whose leaves are healing. 

A place where there is no fear. A place where our hearts can sing.

A place where we dwell with God.

A place of peace.

Christ offers us his peace.

May you seek that peace.

May you find that peace.

May you live in that peace.

And may you share that peace with others.

Proper 7 B

When we encounter a Goliath in our lives, when the wind and the waves of everyday living feel like they will sink us, Jesus says, "Peace, be still."

Proper 7 B 

Transcribed from

A sermon given by

Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

June 24, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

In that rather long first reading we got to hear the story of David and Goliath. Now Goliath was obviously a very large man. Whether he was quite as big as he is described in scripture is unknown, but he was obviously a much bigger man than any of the Israelites. You can imagine the fear, the confusion and the concern among the Israelite fighters. Remember, back then it was all hand to hand fighting so if someone was that much larger you, you were at a great disadvantage. But what was there about David that he didn’t get caught up in the fear and the concern.? What was it about him that he was able to keep his head and come up with a unique solution to that problem of Goliath? 

We can imagine what it was like then, with the yelling and shouting and the cacophony of the soldiers cheering on their people. The waves of fear that must have gone through the camp as they realized they were going into war. So much chaos and confusion and anxiety, yet David responded with clarity and calmness. 

That confusion and waves of chaos that David encountered were not unlike what the sailors with Jesus encountered. The Sea of Galilee is actually a rather shallow lake. I don’t know the physics of it, but the shallower the lake is, the bigger the waves are. So the Sea of Galilee, or lake Tiberius to the Romans, tends to suddenly have storms where the waves get very high. It is quite unpredictable. It is dangerous and it can be overwhelming. 

Let’s think about the disciples. They were fisherman. Now a fisherman stays pretty much along the coast. He doesn’t go too far out into the lake because most of the fish are caught close to the edge. The disciples would be used to fishing so if there was a big storm they would close to shore and able to come in. But Jesus had them going straight across quite a distance, far out from shore. So, even though these were experienced fishermen they were terrified by the storm. 

We can imagine being caught out on a boat in a huge storm with big waves. The water is rolling in over the boat and we think we are going to die. Then we look around, and our passenger is comfortably sleeping on the cushions in the back. 

The disciples say to him, “Aren’t you afraid that we are going to perish?” 

Now what was Jesus going to do. He doesn’t know anything about running a boat. He’s a carpenter. They, as fishermen, know much better what to do. Jesus wouldn’t be able to help them. What is going to, bail the boat? What do they expect from him? 

They seem bothered by the fact that he was so calm amidst this storm. They seem to want his attention. “Don’t you care about us? Don’t you care that we are about to perish?” 

“Actually not really too much,” is sort of Jesus’s response.

I have in my mind this image of Jesus kind of sleepily waking up and going, “Peace, be still.”

Then the waves stop and everything clams down. 

Now this is one of his miracles where the disciples began to realize that Jesus wasn’t just a healer, but he could control nature – the wind and the waves. But to me there is a deeper level to this story and that’s the “Peace, be still” comment. 

The real problem on that boat wasn’t the waves or the wind, but the fear, anxiety and confusion of the disciples. We all know what that is like. We all have times in our lives when the waves seem to be crashing over us. When there is so much stuff going on. When the fear of being able to pay the bills, worry about losing a job, concern that our children are acting out, or our parents are acting out, or we’re dealing with physical illness, with grief or loss. When the waves of pain, the waves of grief, come over us we feel it is going to sink us. It is coming from every direction, it is uncontrollable and our minds get obsessed. We all know what it is like when our minds are in great chaos. When it seems like we can’t think rationally anymore. 

Like the soldiers when they were confronting this giant Goliath. It didn’t occur to them that there might be some other way of defeating him. They were just overwhelmed with fear. 

But when we can quiet our minds a little bit, even for a short period, maybe we will see a way of getting through, of coping. 

So I think that when Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” he might have been talking to the disciples as much as he was talking to the wind and the waves. “Peace. Peace be still.” What a gift that is – to find peace and stillness within the chaos of our lives. 

That’s one of the reasons that it is traditional in many, many religions to have some regular practice of prayer and quiet. For me it is Centering Prayer. Some people do some form of meditation or relaxation. It is the idea of practicing peace and the stillness. If you practice that when life is going along okay, then when the waves start to feel like they are going to overwhelm you, you have something to go back to.

Of course what it really is asking Christ to be there with us, to give us that peace. Even if it is just 5 minutes a day. Even if it is less than that, just some time of quiet. 

Just to give us a little taste of that, I’d like to invite you all to close your eyes and just notice your breathing.

(The sermon ends with a brief meditative exercise.)

5 Easter A

"Do not let your hearts be troubled." But there is so much to disturb our hearts and minds. How are we to find peace in such troubling times?

5 Easter A

May 2, 1999

The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

John 14:1-14

            “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Do not let your hearts be troubled? That sounds easy. These are beautiful comforting words from Jesus, but sometimes in the context of life, it is not so easy. Do not let your hearts be troubled? As if we could stop our hearts from sometimes being troubled. As if we could listen to the news and not let our hearts be troubled. As if we think about my children and all they have to deal with and not let our hearts be troubled. As if we could deal with grief, and loss, and arguments, and random violence, and warfare, and running out of money and, and, and, and not let our hearts be troubled. Maybe a monk off in a cave could let his heart not be troubled, but in real life, in the context of real life, it’s not that easy.

            It wasn’t that easy for the disciples either, in the context of their lives. The placement of this passage, this call from Christ to not let their hearts be troubled, comes in an odd place in the Gospel of John. It is during the last supper, Jesus has washed their feet and then told that that one of the disciples will betray him. Judas has left and just before this line Peter is told that he will betray Jesus three times. After all that, after hearing of betrayal and death and losing their teacher, Jesus says to them “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” How could they possibly have not had troubled hearts, yet Jesus says to them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

            Is Jesus completely out of touch with reality here. How could they possibly not have troubled hearts? Of course Jesus knows how troubled their hearts are, what he is trying to do is give them a broader picture that can free them from the suffering they are experiencing. How are they to not have troubled hearts? By believing in God and believing in Christ. The way to an untroubled heart is to trust in Jesus. To trust that even though he is going away, he is going to prepare a place for for them. To trust that there is so much more that they don’t understand. He tells them that they know the way, yet they don’t think that they do. "How can we know the way when we don’t even know where you are going?" they respond. The disciples are caught in the physical realm, in their day to day reality. In that reality, things were looking pretty bleak. There were plenty of reasons for a troubled heart. But Jesus wanted them to look at another reality, the reality that is beyond physical limitations. The reality in which Jesus and the Father are one. The reality in which all that is happening around them is part of a larger plan for the salvation of the world. Rather than being something to be troubled by, it is something to be anticipated and to accept with peace in the heart. From the questions of the disciples it is clear that they were not yet ready to accept this other understanding of reality, and in fact they were extremely troubled of heart, hiding away in fear, until they experienced the resurrection.

            But after the resurrection, there was a transformation. Those living in fear with troubled hearts, lived a fearless life. Those whose hearts were troubled lived with hearts that were free and filled with joy. It is not as if the world suddenly became easy. The early Christians were persecuted. It was only after the resurrection they too were able to see the broader perspective.

            Take a look at the life that Paul was living as described in the reading from Acts. Paul would go into a city, preach, convert a few while disturbing a lot of other people. These people would then form a mob, attack the home Paul was staying at and quite literally drag Paul or his friends before the judges. At this point Paul would escape and run to the next city to do it all over again. During his teaching missions, Paul was threatened with stoning, arrested numerous times, ship wrecked, lowered over the city wall at night in a basket, jeered at, harassed, betrayed, abandoned and all the while he was suffering from an ongoing physical disorder. He heard that the communities he established were getting into all kinds of trouble, with in fighting, back biting, and questionable theologies. If you think your life is tough, look at what Paul went through. Yet, he would have been able to say that his heart was not troubled. He knew the secret of how to have an untroubled heart while living in real life. He had the broader perspective. He knew that Jesus and the Father were one, and that Jesus was there with him, supporting him, aiding him. He knew that there was a place prepared for him. From this larger perspective, what happened to him in his daily life was minor. For example in 2 Corinthians, after having detailed the sufferings of his ministry, including beatings and imprisonments, he describes Christ’s response to his prayers to be free of an continuing problem (12:9-10) “but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

            To be content with insults, hardship, persecutions, to be able to boast of one’s weaknesses, to know that true strength is found in weakness - these are the statements of an untroubled heart. To be able to live a life of difficulties, losses, pain, fear, and yet remain inwardly at peace, that is the life that Christ offers. To believe in Christ, to believe in the father, to be confident of Christ’s resurrection and that he is waiting for us, that is the source of true peace of mind - an untroubled heart. If we look for peace of mind in the outside world, we will never find it. If we trust in guns, or money, or walls, or a ‘safe’ suburban home for our security , we will never find it. Our hearts will remain troubled. But if we seek our security in Christ. If we learn to trust that he is the way, the way to God, the way to Love, the way to Peace, then we will discover that we can have an untroubled heart, even in the midst of pain and suffering. We will find that our security is no longer based on the things of the world, but on the one who created this world. We indeed will be able to follow, for we will know the way, the truth and the life.