Pass the Peace

Sermon for Easter morning, April 4, 2021
John 20:1-18

Welcome to Easter worship at St. Andrew’s!  You all look beautiful to me.  It’s wonderful to be together in this latest manifestation of being God’s people in this place.  Some of us are here in the nave – masked and distanced, but at least in the same room again – and some of us are at home.  But all of it “counts.”  All of you there at home on your couches:  You’re just as much at worship as the folks here.  My hunch is that this hybrid approach is just how church is going to be – which is great.  It is so good to begin this next chapter in the story of God’s resurrection people.

And yet … in this moment of celebration, so much still plagues us.  In our community and our nation, we’re not yet out of the woods with COVID-19.  In Minneapolis, the trial of Derek Chauvin is underway, and I fear violence will follow whichever way the verdict goes.  On the southern border, children are still being held in what NBC News described as “prison-like facilities.”¹  In the halls of government, and on social media, and around the dinner table, dysfunction still reigns as we struggle to talk with each other, not at each other – or we just don’t talk at all.  Given all this, how can we come together – we, who are now part of the minority of Americans who actually belong to a community of faith² – how can we come together and glibly proclaim the power of resurrected life?

Well, death seemed to prevail on Easter morning 2,000 years ago, too.  In the darkness, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb to do the dirty work, tending to the body of her friend, her teacher, her Lord.  As if that weren’t bad enough, once she gets to the tomb, she sees the body’s gone, probably stolen.  As far as she knows, that’s truly the end of the story.  Just as life feels so often for us, so it was for Mary that morning – insult added to injury, anxiety compounding grief.  Just when you think it can’t get worse, it gets worse.  Welcome to Mary’s Easter morning – and our last 12 months.

Then Mary looks into the tomb, and she sees two strangers staring back at her.  They’re not supposed to be in this scene, and they only make her anxiety rise, the way surreal details complicate a bad dream.  Then she turns from the tomb only to have another strange encounter – one more out-of-place character in this theater of the absurd.  She thinks it’s the gardener and that he must have taken the body away.  But this isn’t the gardener; it’s Jesus, the one she’s been looking for.  And he speaks a word of peace to cast out the anxiety of her moment.  He speaks to her heart, and he calls her by name.

And in that moment, as Mary is filled with the love of the living God, fear and anxiety melt away.  She doesn’t yet understand, but she gets something better: the peace that surpasses understanding.  Empowered by the peace Jesus brings her, Mary passes it on to the other disciples hiding out in fear.  And the darkness that began in weeping gives way to resurrection’s dawn.

Think about what Mary did with that gift of God’s peace.  Now, when we think of “peace,” our minds may go to a pretty passive place.  Maybe peace feels like a long walk in the woods.  Maybe peace feels like a bucket of beers at the beach.  Now, don’t get me wrong; I’d be happy with either one of those this afternoon.  But notice what the Gospel story doesn’t say.  When Jesus appeared to Mary, assuring her that he’d soon ascend to the Father and that all’s right with the world, Mary could have taken it easy.  She could have gone to Starbucks, gotten a latte, and sat on the corner watching the people go by.  She could have said to herself, “Great, Jesus is alive!  Now he’ll make everything go back to normal.”  Mary could have breathed a huge sigh of relief and checked out, now that the Son of God was back in business.

But Mary felt her heart stir.  She found her voice.  She’d seen the Lord, and she was filled with the power of peace.  So, instead of putting her feet up, Mary hit the road, heading out to find the other disciples and share with them the power of peace.  God’s peace doesn’t just give us blessed rest.  It awakens our hearts – and then our hands, and our feet, and our voices, too. 

God’s peace may seem like a rare commodity these days.  Often, the closest thing we get is suppressed conflict.  Anymore, it’s a good day when we manage to avoid an argument.  But that is not peace.  That is not resurrection.  That’s a just a pause in the culture wars raging around us.

God’s peace is not the absence of conflict.  Peace is the knowledge, the trust, the certainty that, in the end – no matter how ugly things may feel right now – in the end, life defeats death.  Hope defeats despair.  Possibility defeats stagnation.  “The light shines in the darkness,” as John’s Gospel says, “and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:5).

Now, for us, maybe we’ve never found ourselves in a moment when we thought we had the power to change the world.  But I would say Mary Magdalene shows us that the power of peace does just that:  It changes the world.

In our worship this morning, we’ll be doing something we haven’t done in months.  We will share the peace of the Lord, the peace of the King, the peace of resurrected life.  We’ll turn to each other and exchange that ancient greeting, “The peace of the Lord be always with you” – a countercultural proclamation of what resurrected life brings us.  Whether you’re here in the nave, or in the Jewell Room, or over at HJ’s, or on the couch at home, I want you to feel what Mary Magdalene felt – that the peace of the Lord is the power to change our world. 

And, you know, we’re not the only people who are passing along this holy power of resurrected life in a broken world.  Let me give you a little backstory.  A couple of weeks ago, I preached about God calling us to walk together even as we disagree with each other, and I mentioned a webinar I’d seen featuring former Sen. John Danforth.  In the webinar, the senator, who’s also an Episcopal priest, was calling the nation and our Church to strive for unity.  He was arguing that the Church has a particular role to play in modeling reconciliation – showing how we truly can be, out of many, one.  Well, as it turned out, our senior warden, Bill Aliber, and I had the chance to have a personal conversation with Sen. Danforth a few days later, and the senator had more to say about that call to reconciliation he was giving the Church.

He described an effort he’s putting together with our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and other faith leaders, a push to unify people of different political perspectives under the banner, “I choose kindness.”  We’ll be hearing more about choosing kindness in the months to come, I’m sure.  But Sen. Danforth said something else that I think can move us forward even today as we try to figure out how to follow in the powerful footsteps of Mary Magdalene. 

The senator said he sees the ministry of reconciliation as the particular spiritual gift that The Episcopal Church can offer our nation in this polarized time.  Here’s how Sen. Danforth put it:  “People in our Church understand what it means to exchange the peace.  Well, what if we identified ourselves that way?  What if we said, ‘We exchange the peace – that’s who we are’?  What if we said, ‘We exchange the peace – here and there,’ in the church and in the world?  This is our ministry: to exchange the peace with people we disagree with.  Yes, our country is fractured, but we are not powerless to change this.”

We are not powerless to change this.  In fact, our worship gives us the model – it shows us the power we can bring in service to the world.  Every Sunday, in person or online, we gather in the darkness of the toll life can take.  Every Sunday, we join with hundreds of others bearing those same burdens.  Every Sunday, we ache for our hearts, and our society, to be made whole.  Every Sunday, we hear the good news that this healing and wholeness is exactly what God wants, too – even what Jesus gave his life for.  Every Sunday, we gather with other people who believe very different things than we do, but we share this healing meal of Holy Communion, in which Jesus gives himself so we can live – truly live – now and forever.  And every Sunday, we get the opportunity to pass this peace of our Lord to anybody and everybody around us, regardless of their point of view. 

These days, that’s a countercultural witness.  That’s a lifegiving witness.  That’s what living in the kingdom of God looks like: The peace of the Lord be always with you, regardless of your favorite candidate.  The peace of the Lord be always with you, regardless of your immigration policy.  The peace of the Lord be always with you, for you are a beloved child, made in God’s image and likeness.  And Jesus Christ defeated sin and death for you. 

The peace of the Lord is not politely silent, for it stared down political and religious oppression.  The peace of the Lord does not avoid conflict, for it took on evil and won.  Instead, the peace of the Lord seeks the common ground of God’s holy ground.  The peace of the Lord seeks hard conversations.  The peace of the Lord asks questions – not to score points but to go deep, to find out, “What makes you believe that with such passion?”  The peace of the Lord brings healing, restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ (BCP 855).

So, when Deacon Bruce stands up at the end of our worship and tells you to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” I want you to take him seriously.  Jesus has defeated sin and death, and he’s given you the same power he gave to Mary Magdalene – the power to heal the world.  What if we believed we could actually do it?  Well, we can.  Just pass the peace. 

1.      NBC Nightly News, March 29, 2021.  Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news-netcast/video/nightly-news-full-broadcast-march-29th-109346885605.  Accessed April 1, 2021.

2.      Stunson, Mike.  “Majority of Americans don’t belong to a place of worship in historic decline, poll finds” [sic].  Kansas City Star.  March 29, 2021.  Available at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/article250289895.html.  Accessed April 1, 2021.