In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.
What
is peace? That’s a question that I asked on Facebook this week and I received a
number of responses: quiet, being in nature, time with family, painting, music,
reading, gardening, and, of course, ice cream. Peace is one of those words that
we throw around without ever stopping to consider its meaning. I find it
fascinating, and telling, that no one answered that peace is the cessation of
hostility, nor did anyone respond with an understanding of peace that is rooted
in possessions, prestige, or wealth. And yet, it seems that our lives are all
built around the pursuit of material things, winning, and earning money. The
things that we innately know are the most life-giving and important to us are
the very things that we sacrifice to chase after the idols of money and
materiality.
In
the Gospel text from John, Jesus says the Holy Spirit will come and notes that “Peace
I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” But what is peace? Perhaps you’ve
heard of the Hebrew word shalom,
which is what Jesus is speaking of. This understanding of peace is related to
ideas like wholeness and harmony. The peace of shalom is about things being as they should – enveloped in God’s
grace and love. And to ensure that we know this peace, Jesus says that the Holy
Spirit, whom he calls “the Advocate,” will come to teach us this peace.
The
term “advocate,” is an interesting one. In the time of the New Testament, this
term meant “attorney.” In essence, Jesus is giving us representation to face
the world. The word “advocate” in Greek literally means “to call along beside.”
The Advocate is someone who is near to us, who knows us, who knows our
situation, and then will offer sound advice about how to negotiate life. I
think it is God as our Advocate that helps us to see peace in things like
children playing, in drinking tea while reading a good book, in the sound of
rain. The world says that these are trivial pleasures – no one is paid for
doing these things, those are not “billable hours;” nor do those things
increase the gross domestic product, and yet, instinctively, we know that those
are some of the holiest moments of life. We would do well to pay more attention
to this Advocate who is here to remind us that Jesus told us to live like the lilies
of the field.
It
does need to be said, however, that this peace of God is not the same as
freedom from conflict. A great hymn of the church says “The peace of God, it is
no peace / but strife closed in the sod, // Yet let us pray for but one thing: /
the marvelous peace of God.” If we put more stock in time with family than we
do in the Dow or S&P, we’ll encounter some resistance. If we emphasize the
dignity of every human being instead of dismissing them, we’ll find that people
will be suspicious of our motives. If we seek first the Kingdom of God, knowing
that we cannot serve two masters, we will find the masters of the world may
feel scorned as we reject conformity.
I say this to be honest
about what will happen to us if we seek the peace of God. Though we often think
of the Holy Spirit as a great comforter, the Holy Spirit is also a great
disturber. Christianity is not a plan for self-improvement, or worldly success,
or understandings of peace that are rooted in security, safety, or contentment.
Remember that Jesus’ ultimate victory over sin and death on Easter doesn’t come
through war or strength, but through submission and death. Christ’s peace is
not about taking a shortcut around death, it is about going through the worst
that death can do, and still finding God’s abiding presence of peace with us.
The peace of God, it is no peace, at least, not as we usually think of it. That
being said, the peace of God, the difficult sort of peace which seeks wholeness
and mercy, is what the salvation of the Gospel is all about.
When Jesus notes that he
will give us peace, he clarifies that “I do not give to you as the world gives.”
Let’s think a bit about how the world gives in order to understand how it is
that Jesus gives us peace. The world is transactional – this for that. Our
global economy is rooted in a capitalistic approach to the world. And for all
of the good that capitalism can and does do, capitalism is not the economics of
the Gospel. In fact, the word “economy” comes from a Greek compound word: oikos meaning “household” and nemein meaning “manage.” Thus, the
economy is about managing the household. And think about your household, that’s
closer to the way economic theory should be. In your household, if one of your
children didn’t do well on a test, you wouldn’t likely kick them out of the
house. If someone gets sick in your house, you probably wouldn’t expect them to
fend for themselves. If someone in your house wrongs you, you work towards
forgiveness. If someone in your house is struggling, you give them the benefit
of the doubt and do everything you can to help them out. The way we manage our
household is to be the way we manage our economy, but that simply isn’t the way
that the world gives.
Our economic system
differs greatly from the economy, the household, of God. Our reading from
Revelation gives us a glimpse into God’s economy – a household where the gates
are never shut, where food is abundant, where God’s light shines on all people.
But our economy suggests a different reality. Capitalism says that nothing is
priceless, that everything has a price; whereas the Gospel say that some things,
and all people, are of immeasurable value.
The Bible envisions
salvation as liberation from indebtedness. The Hebrew people found salvation in
being freed from slavery in Egypt and salvation in Jesus is often described as
freedom from the debts owed to sin and death. And yet, our economy is built upon
our becoming slaves to debt – and that system of indebtedness is sold and
packaged as “the American Dream.” We are told that that the means to a better
life, to a “normal” life, is through debt. Whether it’s college debt, car
payments, credit card debt, or a mortgage – nearly all of us are captives to
the economy. And by being captives, we are not able to invest in the peace of
God. We can’t spend as much time with family as we’d like to because we have to
work to pay the debt back.
Both the books of
Leviticus and Deuteronomy prohibit the charging of interest on loans, and yet,
that is essentially what our economy is built on. The reason why charging
interest on a loan was not allowed is that it was seen as attempt to buy and
sell time, and time is recognized in the Bible as a gift from God, something that
should never be turned into a commodity to profit from. Capitalism though is
built upon the idea that we buy and sell our time in exchange for goods.
Money commodifies everything,
and in doing so, it reduces everything into the same. Money takes things like
food, art, and our time and standardizes them all into a single unit of measure
– net worth. This though, is the opposite of the Gospel, which says that
everything is created by God and has an intrinsic and unique value, and that we
find our fulfillment only in communion with all other created things. One
theologian has remarked that “Jesus is the opposite of money.” That is, Jesus does
not give in the way that the world gives.
Consider the Biblical
view of God’s economy. The first example that we have is of Creation: an
undeserved, unearned, and unprecedented gift. God creates not out of
obligation, not to get some return on the investment, but simply out of love. God
gives fully, not holding anything back. And Creation is not contingent or
conditional, thanks be to God. As often as we mess things up, God’s sustaining
presence remains. And while it quite clearly seems that God desires that we be
good stewards of Creation, we are not “in debt” to God.
Through the centuries,
some theologians have, of course, viewed humanity as being in debt to God,
claiming that Jesus’ death paid that debt for us. This is problematic because
it confuses the gift economy with that of a transactional one; it mistakes
abundance for scarcity. As created beings, there is nothing that we can do to
repay God for our Creation, therefore, there is nothing that we can possibly
owe to God. God’s love and salvation are not dependent on our ability to pay –
that would limit God’s sovereignty by putting a condition on it. Every year,
when it’s time to do my taxes, I thank God for accountants; but God is not the
great accountant in the sky. God does not have a ledger book in which our
merits and debts are tracked. Heaven is not a meritocracy. Instead, God’s book
has a check mark next to each of our names, and when God looks at this book,
God says “Oh yes, I love her. And I love him, and her, and her, and him” and so
on. In other words, God’s economy is not competitive, it doesn’t keep score.
The Bible records that “God loves a cheerful giver,” perhaps that is because
God is also a cheerful giver. We don’t have to earn God’s love or repay God for
our Creation any more than a parent expects a child to repay the debt of its
procreation and birth. God does not give as the world gives.
And so now that I’ve
challenged the economic system of the world, where do we go from here? That’s something
that each of us will have to wrestle with on our own. I know that after worship
today I’ll get in my car, which was bought with debt, and return to a house
that is owned by the bank, coming home from a job that I obtained partially on
the basis of my diploma, which I still pay for each month. I confess that while
I give thanks for my life and that fact that I am a part of Creation, I also
misuse Creation by focusing more on the procurement of material things than I
should. I seek to repent of my ego that insists that I am owed anything other
than love. I seek to repent of the debts that I hold over other people. I
strive to participate in God’s generous and life-giving economy of love more
than I do the economies of the world, though I admit that I am willingly
enslaved to them. I strive to give and receive less like the world does, and
more like God does. I long for the peace of God which cannot be bought, sold,
or rented. I long for God’s wholeness and harmony in my life and our world, and
so I will try my best to live in God’s peace, knowing that my true value, and everyone
else’s, is found in God’s love, and not a credit score, earning potential, or
net worth.
Let us pray: O God, we
all know your peace when we find it, but so often we clutter our lives and our
economies with other things that distract us from your peace. Grant us the
mercy to see your peace all around us. Grant us the grace to see ourselves, and
all people, as members of your household. Grant us the courage to give and
receive, not as the world does, but as you do through your Advocate, who is
always with us. Amen.
For more on the economic and theological foundations of this sermons, see:
Economy of Grace by Kathryn Tanner
"Soteriology, Debt, and Faithful Witness" by Luke Bretherton in Anglican Theological Review, Volume 98, Number 1, pages 71-89
