I Thessalonians 5:16-24
What is your image of peace? It can mean coexistence among countries or
groups. It could be a world without
terrorism or where people are not afraid of their own governments. It can be people within a home living
side-by-side without squabbling. It
could be a workplace where nobody is trying to get ahead by undermining
everybody else. It could be a few
minutes to sit down quietly and do a crossword puzzle.
One of my favorite movies is The Lion in Winter, which is about the
fighting among Richard the Lionheart and his brothers, but even more the
struggle between their parents, Henry and Eleanor. At one point in their arguments, Eleanor says
to her husband,
“What would you have me
do? Give out? Give up?
Give in?”
He replies, “Give me a
little peace.”
She says, “A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there’s a thought.”
This
is a movie that shows people who really, really, really want peace but are
afraid to give out, give up, or give in, all of which are needed to make
peace. There’s another scene where the
future King John goes running to his mother because his brother the future King
Richard has drawn a dagger on him, shouting, “A knife! He’s got a knife!” to which their mother
responds,
“Of course he has a
knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war:
not history’s forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor
causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because
the living ones are rotten. For the love
of God, can’t we love one another just a little – that’s how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.”
That exclamation of hers in the
midst of that wider speech, “For the love of God, can’t we love one another
just a little”, is the key to it all.
Human beings, on our own, are pretty much incapable of living in peace. I think that history and personal experience
bears that out for most of us. We may be
the most gentle people in the world, but the next door neighbor or the driver
in the car behind us may, for whatever reason, be wanting to pick a fight. At one point in the letter to the Romans
[12:18], Paul advises,
“If it is possible, so far as it depends on
you, live peaceably with all.”
On
the whole, though, peace comes when people act for the love of God rather than
for the love of self.
In the passage from Paul’s first
letter to the Thessalonians that we heard this morning, there are a lot of
directions for living. It’s almost like
one of those silly lists that fly around the internet, “Eight Simple Steps to
Happiness”, or “Eight Life Hacks” if you want to sound cool:
“Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances; for this
is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise the words of prophets,
but test everything;
hold fast to what is good;
abstain from every form of evil.” [I Thessalonians 5:16-22]
Still,
all of that comes from us, and our powers are limited. If they are to happen, and I do believe they
can, it all depends on what Paul prays for in the very next breath:
“May the God of peace himself sanctify you
entirely”.
[I Thessalonians 5:23]
Peace, whether
it’s peace with God, peace among people, or peace within yourself, comes when
we “give out, give up, and give in” to God’s Spirit on the deepest levels of
our lives. It isn’t simply a matter of
passivity. It’s a matter of letting God
channel all that is in us in better ways than we do it. We all have within us an assortment of
motives and emotions and experiences, and all of them can be used in ways that
do not destroy or harm, but help and build up.
Before he became a wandering friar, Francis of Assisi was a
knight who took part in the continual wars among the Italian city-states. God took his sense of command and used it to
organize for the protection of the poor instead of the search for fame and
fortune. He came to understand that God
works through human beings to address human need. What makes peace is when “the
God of peace himself sanctif[ies]you entirely”. It’s when you can pray, like Francis did,
“Make me a
channel of your peace:
Where there
is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there
is injury, pardon;
Where there
is doubt, faith;
Where there
is despair, hope;
Where there
is darkness, light;
And where
there is sadness, joy.
O Divine
Master,
Grant that
I may not so much seek
To be
consoled as to console;
To be
understood as to understand;
To be
loved, as to love;
For it is
in giving that we receive,
It is in
pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is
in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
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