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ALL SAINTS CHURCH
Pasadena, California
The Peace of God
A sermon preached by The Reverend Abel Lopez
Sunday, August 15, 2010
In the name of the lbving, liberating, God, Amen.
In the gospel story this morning we encounter very unexpected and troubling words from Jesus, who is
often portrayed as the epitome of gentleness and compassion. He shouts that he has not come to bring
peace on earth but division, even splitting families apart. Contradicting the angels' promise of peace on
earth at his birth, Jesus vigorously denies that he has come to bring peace. This is not gentle-Jesus,
.meek-and-mild. This isn't the comfort for which we come to church. This is a tough passage, and it's not
easy for us to hear Jesus speaking like this.
Today is probably one of those Sundays where parishioners throughout the church are likely to hear
sermons on the collect, or an apologetic plea arguing why Jesus didn't actually mean this. The prophet
Jeremiah alerts us of more conciliatory, soothing, and less demanding voices. These voices claim to
know God very well. They are often voices of painless solutions "saying 'peace' when there is no.


They prearh the god of the nearby, who is a controllable presence,-agodthat is a manageable
commodity.
It is never the preacher's job to avoid difficult or controversial text, even when such text might differ
from a faith community's primary understanding of God.
Sometimes we have to interpret the text and other times we have to allow the text to interpret us and
often we have to do both. If our preconceived notions or understanding of God seem not to be in
alignment with our sacred texts, the invitation then is to wrestle with the text, but never to avoid it.
Sometimes our experiences surpass the stories in the text. We must enhance our spiritual nurturing"by
incorporating them as a part of the Holy Word of God. The Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori
has said that "our ways of reading Scripture and what we go looking for shapes our conclusions." Schori
goes on to say that in studying and interpreting scripture we must "go back to the very sources ... We
must ask the context of a particular passae; what was it written to address? What was going on
underneath it that it appears to speak to?' And I would add that we must ask how the passage connects
with the oveni.rching message to love thy neighbor and that we should see the dignity and presence of
Christ in all creation.
"The word of the Lord is 'like a hammer on a rock,'
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reverberating throughout the ages with endless
readings, endless tellings, endless re-tellings, and endless remembrances. From age to age each verse,
each word, each letter gets re-examined, re-thought, re-told, newly articulated, and newly acted upon.'
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I
believe that it is into this spirit that we are invited to confront the readings this morning. I want to
suggest to you that a way to understand these difficult words of Jesus is to see them in the light of a
story.
Date of Sermon: August 15,2010
Gospel: Luke 12:49-56
Pentecost 12C
Page 1 of4
A few years back I had the occasion to visit relatives in Miami. While there I connected with a friend a
few years older than myself. By all accounts my friend is a very successful individual at the top of his
profession. He's well respected, admired, and a great friend to so many people. It's hard not to envy his
success and the life he has built. On this particular visit, I noticed that he appeared somewhat withdrawn
and even sad. Over the course of a few days I sought him out and suggested we go for a walk. As we
walked a very long walk, he revealed that he had pursued a relationship with an individual, things had
not worked out and that his sadness was actually a deep pain. He was actually beside himself, and the
pain was so great he could barely tolerate it. He realized that it was affecting every aspect of his life to
the point of making him physically ill. Moreover, my friend confided in me that this had happened
before, this intolerable, excruciating, irrational pain following the end of a relationship. In this recent
event it happened not at the end of a relationship but at the closure of the pursuit. I continued to visit my
friend during my stay and we continued to talk about his pain and what he was experiencing. On our
thlrd walk I pushed him to look deeper into this pattern and to try to understand the root cause. With an
abundance of tears my friend shared with me that at the age of thirteen an older neighbor began sexually
abusing him. The abuse was particularly violent and aggressive, and over the course of two yearsthe
young boy was at the beck and call of this adult. Afraid to tell anyone, his way out was to excel
academically and graduate from high school at 15. My very logical friend told himself at the tender age
of 15 that he needed professional help to deal with the situation at some point, but his priority then and
for the next 30 years was to excel... to exceed so that he protected himself from such a situation ever
happening to him again. So for thirty years he avoided confronting this nightmare and for all of those
thirty years, even with his success, he struggled to be free, to have true happiness, and to have a healthy
relationship.
And now the time had come ... he had connected his pain and all the past pains with the abuse. He
understood that if he was to move forward, if he was to have peace, a real relationship, he'd have to do
the har-d \vork of with that thirteen year old little him underst"!..'ld what had
happened and the fact that it was not his fault, and that today that little boy was loved and protected,
because he the adult man would always love and protect him. On his path to peace, my friend had to
experience tremendous pain, anger, shame, and guilt. He even had to experience again the fear of being
pulled from his bed in the middle of the night, and to be used by this man while the other family
members were asleep. He had to relive a storm that most people, thank God, can only imagine. This
storm was his path to peace and the ability to have a loving relationship.
Perhaps one way to understand the Gospel's strange words this morning is to see them in the light of my
friend's story. He had built over the course of many years what appeared to be a wonderful life, and yet,
underneath everything, there was another truth. My friend longed for peace, for the ability to have a
meaningful relationship. However, he could never have true peace or a real relationship without facing
the pain of his past. This is the sense, I think, in which Jesus comes not to bring peace, but to bring
division. Our peace and happiness cannot be bought at the price of ignoring our brokenness. Jesus comes
with a truth that may at times divide us, that may cause us to face the ugliness in our lives and our world.
Jesus came to show us the depth of our problems which may infect every part of our lives. If we choose
to remain blind to the depths of that problem, then the truth that Jesus brings will divide us before it has
the chance to heal us.
Fear and anger are weary emotional forces that rip off our senses in the midst of agony and turmoil.
Freedom from disquieting and oppressive thoughts and emotions is the only alternative that can put us
on a path to peacefulness. We battle in life, and certainly, my friend battled for his survival, but God has
not made us for war, but for peace. God has not fashioned us spirits of battle, but spirits of love, joy and
quietness. Truth be told, peace sometimes seems a weary way off, or sometimes out of reach. Jeremiah
lamented: "We looked for peace, but no peace came. "
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Date of Sermon: August I 5, 20 I 0
Gospel: Luke 12:49- 56
Pentecost 12C
Page 2 of4
We want peace: that deep sense ofharmony, acceptance and joyfulness. Peace within is a state of mind
that we cherish in life whether we are consciously aware or not. Peace is a divine energy that disarms
our resistance and clears up our minds to help us surrender and reach out to the depths of our soul where
we find God. A place of rest that makes us feel at home, that place is God. Being at peace is being with
God. Regardless of where you are in your journey toward peace, the truth before us is that to give up on
peace is to give up on God. I am reminded of Saint Augustine's insightful words: "Our hearts are
restless, 0 Lord, until they rest in you. ,,6
How are we then to understand the harsh and conflicting sayings of Jesus this morning? They certainly
sit poorly with our "nice" contemporary images of God. Jesus' words challenge this understanding. "I
came to bringfire to the earth." And "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I
tell you, but rather division!" He illustrates this claim hy challenging traditional systems of meaning and
cohesion, especially familial ties. How can this be good news? The answer depends on how we see the
world we live in, with its systems of meaning and cohesion.
If our world were nothing but a place of created goodness and -profound beauty, a space of flourishing
for all, just and life-giving for all in God's creation, then Jesus' challenging words would be deeply
troubling. If, on the other hand, our world is disfigured with actions and systems of meaning that are
oppressive, suffocating and dehumanizing, then redemption can only come when those systems are
shattered and dismantled. Life cannot re-emerge without confrontation. This is the basis of the conflict
Jesus envisions. He comes not to disturb a "nice" world but to blow apart the disturbing and death-
dealing systems of meaning that stifle life. Jesus comes today to blow apart our "human tendency to
insist that some are not worthy of respect, that dignity doesn't apply to the poor, or to the immigrants or
to women, or to Muslims, or to gay and lesbian people. Jesus comes to help us do his prophetic work
which is about challenging human systems that ignore or deny the innate dignity of all of God's
creation." "Perhaps a 1 <;o, Jesus'- words of.divisiveness tel: the dangers-of doing-his-propheti-.: works, ''for
those systems can respond with violence -the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the
imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, the disappearance of righteous gentiles who rescued Jews during the
Second World War, or the expulsion of a Ugandan bishop because he asked the church to treat the gay
and lesbian members of society with dignity are all responses of the system to God's prophetic work."
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The vision embedded in Jesus' stark words is not one of conflict for conflict's sake, but one of
fragmentation for the sake of wholeness. The peace Christ really brings about is based on the deep
reordering of our own interior life and the reordering of our relationships to one another. It is a costly
and demanding peace that requires of us the free gift not only of ourselves, but of our various points of
view and our imagination. And so, as we allow this authentic peace to seep into our consciousness and
into our lives, we sometimes experience division- division within ourselves: our desire on the one hand
to be about God's work of transformation and binding up and reconciling, but then, on the other hand,
our fear, our reluctance, that the cost may be too great. It may be too demanding of who and wbat we
are, and so we equivocate, we compromise, we try to explain away the challenge that the Gospel holds
out to us.
In this Gospel reading Jesus challenges us to look as closely as we can and examine our lives as we
examine that which is most precious to us. A way to begin is with ourselves and our relationships: our
family, our friends, this city, this nation and the world.
"Some people talk about doubts and fears and seem to think they are very allowable. Some might say,
'Well, a sailor in the sunshine knows his reckoning and can tell where he is, he has no doubt; but if the
sun withdraws, he cannot tell his longitude and latitude, and he knows not where he is.' That is not,
however, a fair description of faith. Always wanting the sun is wanting to live by sight; but living by
Date of Sermon: August 15,2010
Gospel: Luke 12:49-56
Pentecost 12C
Page 3 of4
faith is to say, "I cannot tell my longitude and my latitude, but I know the Captain is at the helm, and I
will trust him everywhere." But still you cannot stay in that peaceful state of mind unless you have God
in the vessel to help you smile at the storm .... God can speak to every wind that can blow across your
soul, and say, 'Peace be still,' for I am the God of peace."
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Amen.
Streaming video of this sermon is available on All Saints Cmch's website, at www.allsaints-pas.org. lt is also available on
CD at the Disk Ministry table Sunday mornings on the lawn at All Saints Church, or by calling the church .
. The following notes have been supplied by the transcriber,'c. d were not part of Abel Lopez' sermon:
1
The phrase is found at Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11. Jeremiah's warning is in this week's Old Testament reading, from Jeremiah
23:23-29.
2
The Most Reverend Katharine Jefforts Schori in conversation with Bill Moyers on the June 8, 2007 episode of Bill Moyers'
Journal, a Public Broadcasting System television series. The transcript is available online at
http://www. pbs.org/moyers/j oumaV06082007 /transcript3 .htr.1l.
3
Jeremiah 23:29
4
The Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek, in his August 19, 2007 Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, available online at
http://www .episcopalchurch.org/sermons _that_ work_ 8897 4 _ENG_ HTM.htrn.
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Jeremiah 8:15 and 14:19
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St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book I Chapter 1
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Katharine Jefforts Schori, "The Search for Dignity", a sermon preached at St Paul's Cathedral, London, on Sunday 25 July
2010, the feast ofSt James. It was published on July 26,2010 in The Guardian and is available online at
http://www. guardian.co. ukl 1 O/juV26/katharine-jefferts-schori-sermon
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The Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, "God of Peace", a sermon preached on Sunday, November 4, 1855, at New Park Street Chapel,
Soqthwark, England. It is available online at http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0049.htm
Date of Sermon: August l5, 2010
Gospel : Luke 12:49- 56
Pentecost 12C
Page 4 of4

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