Sermon:

“Peace – I Leave With You.”

If there is anything we long for in this time and age it is peace. We truly long for peace.

Sadly, wars are raging in the world with rising deathly casualties in Ukraine, in Palestine, Gaza, and in Myanmar, Sudan and Nigeria. Just to name a few places were ongoing wars between sovereign nations, civil wars, terrorist insurgencies, or drug wars rage our beautiful planet.

Jesus says in the gospel today: Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.

And on the compassionate sermon on the mount, he said: Blessed are the peacemakers they will be called Gods children.

Sadly, we must ask what kid of peace did Jesus leave with us? Certainly not the kind of peace that negotiate ceasefire and protect the children of the earth. Because that kind of peace is absent in so many corners of our world. The powerful of the nations are sadly not peacemakers but deadly warriors.

When peace like a river attended my soul…… we just sang. This beautiful old hymn is indeed like a deep river of prayer for peace that can soothe our soul and wash away all tensions, troubles and tanks.

It is a beautiful hymn describing peace like a river that can roll and wash all sorrows, fears and wars with it. Then it will be well with our soul.

This old hymn has a very moving and tragic story. Late in 1873 Horatio Spafford and his family had scheduled to travel from the US to Europe. Delayed by pressing business, Spafford sent his wife and daughters ahead on the French liner Ville Du Havre.

The ship collided with an English ship on November 22 and sank in just 12 minutes. Spafford’s wife was saved, but their daughters perished in the sea.

After arriving in Wales, Mrs. Spafford cabled her husband with the words “Saved Alone.” The grieving father left by boat to meet her and near the tragic scene on the high seas, he wrote this text.

On this tragic background the hymn conveys a sense of trust and deep peace with God’s plan for our lives. Even in the face of sorrows and storms, he confesses his faith. “It is well with my soul.” The hymn manifests the deep faith in God’s plan and comfort, even when we do not understand the “whys.”

Spafford had a hard life. The death of this daughters in 1873, heavy losses in the Chicago fire in 1871 and the death of his son in 1880. All of this hardship caused members of his strict uncharitable church to accuse him of some kind of secret sin to explain his burdens of sorrow. So, finally in 1881, he and his wife and some good friends moved from Chicago to Jerusalem and founded an American colony and found some peace in the holy land.

In some divine way this old hymn takes us to Jerusalem and Israel, a place in desperate need of peace, healing, and reconciliation. We just witnessed a sad act of violence in Washington DC where two young Jews were killed.

I hate war. I despise war. The horrific trample of the bloody booths of soldiers, the bombs dropped on village and families, make me sad as weapons of war are made to kill and hurt. To take away the baby from the parents, just like the dangerous waves on the sea.

So today we pray for peace. As we do every time we pray. We pray that we will choose the path of peace and not the path of war. We pray that we will be made instruments of peace and love, not war and hate.

We pray to God of peace and justice.

We pray for the people in Jerusalem, Israel and Gaza. We pray for the people in Ukraine. We pray for every place in our troubled world where wars and violence run over all goodness, kindness and humanity.

We pray that we may put aside the weapons, put them down and have cease fire.

We pray for everyone that is afraid for tomorrow.

We pray for the ones with power, position, weapons and war plans to be open to wisdom, compassion and commitment. To be powerful peacemakers.

Jesus says in the gospel today: Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.

In the compassionate sermon on the mount, he said: Blessed are the peacemakers they will be called Gods children.

The deep spiritual peace that Jesus gives us, that spirit of unity, humanity and compassion, - continue to urge us to let this inner peace be transformed into compassion and peace in the world.

The amazing young poet Amanda Gorman writes in “Call us what we carry”:

We lay down our arms.

So, we can reach out our arms.

To one another

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Lost as we feel, there is no better

Compass than compassion.

This young poet, prophet and profound peace maker though words, continues:

To anyone out there:

I only ask that you care before it is too late,

That you live aware and awake,

That you lead with love in hours of hate.

I challenge you to heed this call,

I dare you to shape our fate.

Above all, I dare you to do good,

so that the world might be great.

Peace, I leave with you, Jesus said. And in those words, and in that promise, there is a deep deep hope. To restore, to rebuild, to reimagine.

We pray to God to create in us a good heart and turn our mind away from hate to reconciliation, so peace will be. Peace is not only the cease of war with time to rebuild, mourn and reconcile. A lasting peace is a time where we will live together in harmony and seek to harm none, as the poet wrote.

A just peace that with time will dissolve and wash away all the causes of hatred and war.

When we pray for peace, we are reminded that that is the intention. Gods good will of creation. Peace, Unity, Harmony, Brotherhood. To Jesus violence and war could never be the intention or meaning. Jesus himself was crucified by the same evil forces and rose from the grave only by love.

When we pray our Lord’s Prayer, we pray that gods will, and his kingdom will come. We pray that the peace given by Jesus will emerge, grow and stay.

The prayer for peace is not only for the wars of the time, but also for our own society. We who are privileged to live in peace must remember that all wars and all violence begin in the small: with contempt for each other, with abuse and neglect, with lack of compassion and ability to care for the least, the most vulnerable and least desirable. Even in our time and age, in our country the division and mistrust and despise for others can grow into violence and hatred. War and violence begin with the fact that we call each other for inhumane, for animals, for pests.

Peace begins with us recognizing each other as siblings, in shared humanity despite everything that might separate us.