I is for
Incarnate
which is where Christ plants his peace, "in the flesh," in us, in the world, making a new creation.
IN THE BEGINNING was the Word. All things were made through him. And the Word became flesh, crucified and risen from the dead (Jn 1:1, 3, 14).
According to St. John a new creation began on Easter night when Jesus showed his wounds to a little huddle of terrified men. "Peace be with you," said the Word; and it was so. For then the disciples saw the Lord, and they were glad (Jn 20:19-20; Gen. 1:7c et al).
That night our Lord Jesus anointed those newly happy men as agents of his new creation. He filled them with the Holy Spirit, the power of God to embrace each other in his all-surpassing peace and to extend the joy of it to others. "If you forgive the sins of any," said the Word, "they are forgiven." To this he added a defense against the assaults of the evil one. "If you retain the sins of any, they are retained (Jn 20:22-23).
God's new creation continues. True to his promise not to leave us desolate (Jn 14:18), the Word incarnate keeps appearing to people who are huddled in his name. "Wherever two or three are so gathered," Jesus told us, "there am I in the midst of them" (Mt 18:20); and it is so. The huddles these days are everywhere. They come in all shapes and sizes-some big enough to fill a stadium, others small enough to fit around a breakfast table. Many, like the congregations we belong to, are regular, established outcroppings of the one, holy Church. Others are huddles of the moment: a youth convention; a knot of people praying at a sickbed; a city-wide hymn fest.
Yet wherever and however the huddle may happen, Jesus' promise holds true. When people gather in his name, Jesus appears. He appears through the reading of his Church's Bible, that wondrous library of prophetic and apostolic testimony to the word and will of God in Jesus Christ. He appears through countless echoes of that testimony in sermon, song, and prayer. He appears as a mother gently retraces the cross of Holy Baptism on her sleepy child's forehead. Sometimes in some huddles Jesus displays his wounds and graciously invites his disciples to touch them. "Take and eat," he says: "my body, my blood, truly present and given for you in this bread, this wine."
To this day when Jesus appears, he does so always with the first word of that first Easter night. "Peace be with you," says the Word; and it is so. It is so in this huddle of ours this evening. You can tell, because the disciples are glad. Listen to the voices around you as they sing and shout the Church's joy in Jesus' new creation. What you are hearing is the sound of peace-the earthly overture of an all-surpassing peace.
Listen too as happy saints pour out the Church's constant prayer for the power of God that Jesus gave them. "O Holy Spirit, enter in!" So saints have begged in every age, asking for the strength and confidence to exercise their authority as Jesus' agents. We seek the will to forgive freely and thoroughly, as God in Christ has forgiven us. We seek the faith to confess our own sins and to keep Christ's peace among ourselves. We seek passion and courage to spread that peace to others. In this dark and troubled age we seek the wisdom to recognize the devil's lies, and for the sake of Jesus' peace to oppose them. We pray above all that God our mighty fortress will keep his Church in peace with him until that glorious day when all Christ's saints will see their Savior face to face. In that day the first Word will be the last and the last Word the first. "Peace be with you," Christ will say; and you and I will sing forever with all-surpassing joy.
GOD'S PEACE, LIKE a symphony, is a succession of movements. The gift of peace is a mission of peace. Again we recall that first Easter night, when Jesus made this plain. "Peace be with you," he said; to which he added, without skipping a beat: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (Jn 20:21). Here in ten brief words is the path of peace that our song tonight is tracing: from God the Father to the cross of his Son, the Peacemaker, through gatherings of people who enjoy the peace and presence of the risen Lord and on from there to God's all-surpassing goal: the entire world, still restless and dying; a world God loves with a passion beyond words.
"It is your will, O God," says a liturgical prayer, "to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace." Tonight we sing in sturdy confidence that the good and gracious will of God will at last be done even without our prayer.
We sing our prayer even so. We sing it as an anthem for the missionaries we are, sent by Christ as the Father sent him to spend ourselves freely in the cause of peace.
"You will be my witnesses," said Jesus, "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). And so we are.
The ends of the earth are as far and foreign as Timbuktu. They're as near and familiar as the office down the hall. Whether near or far, the Author of peace sends us there. As St. Paul writes, he himself "came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to you who were near" (Eph 2:17). And again, "He is our peace, who came to reconcile both near and far to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing hostility to an end" (Eph 2:14a, 16; adapted).
Hostility still roils the ends of the earth, near and far alike. So does hunger and disease, loneliness and cruelty. Every end of the earth teems with people who fear death and despise God. They have yet to guess that an all-surpassing peace is on its way.
Again our Lord Jesus: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
In a moment our song for peace will praise its lovely messengers. Hear this as a pat on your own saintly back, a nudge to push you forward. To each are given talents for the mission. Within this very hall those talents are abundant, their variety profuse. By the Spirit's grace those talents have already taken the message of peace to countless places both far and near. But God asks still more of us. Much more. To each are also given tongues and holy words of reconciliation with which to keep them busy. Let us employ them. Necessity is laid on us in this angry age. Woe to us if we do not speak and live the Gospel! (I Cor 9:16). Woe again if we fail to speed it on its way with song and prayer.
A final thought: the mission of peace is a high adventure, full of peril. To be sent as Christ was sent means sacrifice and scorn. It entails a cross. Hence the song with which we close, a great cadenza of praise to the God beyond praising. With Paul, the greatest of missionaries, we gladly count all things as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord and being found in him (Phil 3:8-9). For God raised this Jesus from the dead. In Christ we too shall one day rise to the wonder of a new heaven and a new earth, both held forever in a single, all-surpassing harmony, the peace of God beyond all praise and understanding. We are breathing its air as we sing tonight.
And when the song ends, go in peace. Serve the Lord. Thanks be to God!
jerry burce