Rev. Mel Baars O’Malley
First Presbyterian Church Karnes City
May 1, 2016
If given the choice, I don’t often choose the Revelation passage
when it comes up in the lectionary. I am happy to leave interpreting its
convoluted passages to the scholars and professors. Nonetheless, there are a
few passages in Revelation that I do really love. I think I discovered most of
them when I was a pastor in South Africa and was called on to preach at
funerals. Revelation paints a picture that is quite spectacular. Whether it’s a
new earth where there is no more crying or pain or suffering or, as we read
today, a city where there is no need for sun or moon to shine on it, but a
place where the glory of the Lord illuminates everything and everyone. Besides
the obvious savings on electricity bills, which everyone would be grateful for,
the prophesy in Revelation describes this light as so spectacular that all the
nations walk by it. It is hard to even imagine a time and place where all
people, all nations, walk in the light. It seems like a fantasy especially when you
consider that we, even in the church, don’t always walk in the light with any
real unity.
In South Africa, where there wasn’t a lot of present hope
because so many people were sick and struggling to find work and to make a good
life for themselves and their families, it was really easy to focus on the
future rather than dwell or even deal with the problems of the present. The
government wasn’t going to stop acting corruptly. HIV and AIDS wasn’t going to
suddenly cease transmitting. Jobs weren’t going to magically appear and ensure
solid wages for everyone who was unemployed. God’s promises were the only real
hope there was and we talked about them, longed for them, with our whole
hearts.
In the midst of suffering and pain, it is difficult not to
give in to the impulse to escape. I have to fight this impulse every time I am
called up to a room where a patient is suffering or even dying. I have to
struggle myself to stay in the room for a little longer, linger in a place even
where it hurts, where I am reminded of my own frailty and humanness, because
God is at work here too, in the suffering and tears and pain, and if I escape
too quickly I will miss it.
Revelation’s vision is a promise worth celebrating, but I
think we have to be careful not to use it as our escape from life, from the
complicated and messy gifts that we have in the present moment. Because as I
have grown, certainly as a pastor and even more as a person, I have experienced
the value of loss and pain, of valleys of darkness. Not that I would ever ask
for them to come into my life, but excepting that they will sooner or later,
that there is gift there, too.
About a year ago one of my friends from seminary decided
that the pastorate is not really where she is called. All the jobs that she has
had post seminary have not gone the way that she thought they would go. It’s
been a really frustrating road. She has been treated unfairly by pastor bosses
and hurt by the church as an institution. What seemed like a worthy and
beautiful profession turned out to be a disappointment. So what do most people
do when they are not sure what to do next in life… they go to law school. That
was for you Greg. But as I have listened to her talk about her hopes and dreams
for making a difference, for allowing God to use her life for good, it strikes
me that law school isn’t going to make her path any easier. Bosses are still
going to be disappointing and institutions, church, government, or anything
else, are still going to fall short. Escaping one mess doesn’t mean another
mess won’t still come our way.
What strikes me about our gospel reading today is that this
disappointing world that we live in is the same reality that Jesus lived and
taught and ministered in, too. His was also a world ruled by corrupt government
and by people who were only self-interested, who would do anything to protect
their way of life, even crucify an innocent man. Jesus knew disappointment
first hand. And despite the pain and suffering he experienced, he says to his
friends, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you
as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be
afraid.”
What Jesus isn’t doing here is offering an escape route to
avoid the messiness of the world; he isn’t encouraging them to focus on a less
painful future or even on the everlasting life that they have been promised.
But he is giving them his peace reminding them that his peace is the only thing
that can cure a troubled heart, the only thing that can truly cast out fear.
Jesus gives them and he gives us these words of
encouragement not so we can avoid pain or detour around the dark valleys, but
he speaks this good news so that we can be more ready to endure our lives, the
good, the bad, and everything between, with an openness to the joyful gifts as
well as the painful ones. It’s peace as you hold your grandchild in your arms
for the first time. Peace as the doctor says those dreaded words. Peace when
the well runs dry or the job doesn’t work out and peace when it does.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not
give to you as the world gives. Of course, its hard not to want what the world
gives. The advertisements alone paint a tempting picture, a picture that tells us
with a few less wrinkles or some miracle cure, all of our troubles will be
wiped away. But we also know that even this promise, as good as it seems, will still
disappoint us.
My grandmother used to talk a lot about what we would do
when her ship came in. As a little kid, I don’t know if I really understood
what that meant, but I knew enough that I should be hoping and praying for that
ship because when it did show up life was going to be awesome. But looking back
at my memories with her and my aunts and uncles and cousins as I was growing
up, I realize now that my life was already awesome, and it is not only because
she had an endless supply of dove bars in her freezer. But there was love and
wonder and joy accompanied with sadness and disappointment and loss. We were
all there together, though, enduring it all, and I have to think that at some
point she realized her ship had come a long time ago.
This morning Jesus reminds us of the gift that he has left
with us so that we are able to live our lives well. He makes no promises of
ease. He doesn’t tell us how to escape or that we just have to hold on until
heaven comes, but instead he gives us his peace. It is the gift of the spirit
which helps us to keep going when we are tired or afraid; it is the gift which
keeps our hearts open and willing to love. This is the good news we have to
share in an often disappointing and painful world. Don’t let this crazy
election season or news of economic downturn or anything else in the world
detract from this. Don’t let it take away your peace. But leave from here ready
to share as Jesus did, trusting that this peace will be enough today, tomorrow,
and always. Amen
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