Through the Sundays of this fall season, I have been exploring with you various aspects of God: God's love and forgiveness, God's humility, God's promise. We have seen how several of these themes, which came right out of the assigned lectionary text for the day, have put before us a great challenge as we seek to apply the words of the Holy Scripture to our daily lives. Today will be no different as we consider "God's Peace."

What we're called to ponder today is not only God's peace, which we receive as God's gift to us, but even more profoundly, the God of peace, as Paul says, the very nature and essence of the God who gives us life and whose precepts we are to follow. We must know that the peace of God, God's peace, is rooted in the God of peace. And therein lies the greatest challenge of all for us, we who are rooted and grounded not only in that God of peace, but in the gods of anxiety and fear, the gods of violence and hate.

It was Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian of the 20th century, who admonished Christians to do theology with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, at the same time. Today that means that we find ourselves with the letter of Paul in one hand speaking of the peace of God from a God of peace, and in our other hand, we hold newspapers full of stories of snipers and failed peace talks and threats of preemptive war. Oh, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, I know there are those among us who would prefer to hold only one thing at a time. Put down those newspapers and all that threatens us in order to know the peace of God. And there are those who would admonish putting aside the Bible in order to have a "rational" and "realistic" discussion of the choices confronting us in our nation.

Unfortunately, we Christians don't have either of those options. To us is given the harder task of discern-ing the will of the God of peace amidst the very conflicts and dilemmas that exist in our present circum-stance. We must keep both hands full-the Bible and the newspaper, faith and the world in which we live.

So, let's start with the apostle Paul and these verses from the fourth chapter of his letter to the Philippians, and see where this might take us today. We have spent now several weeks in this letter. It's powerful, knowing as we do, that Paul wrote it from prison to a community of believers he clearly loved very much. It seems that Paul had received word of some dissension among them, conflict within the congregation. Now, given that anyone who has ever gotten up close and personal with any congregation whatsoever soon realizes that conflict can and often does exist among the very people who seek to be followers of Christ Jesus, this letter is going to sound astonishingly pertinent.\

Among the congregation at Philippi, it seems that some strain has developed within Paul's circle of church leaders. Apparently two, Euodia and Syntyche, were at odds with one another over their understanding of what the way of Christ is. Hear these opening verses from Peterson's translation, The Message: "My dear, dear friends, [writes Paul], I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don't waver. Stay on track, steady in God. I urge Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences and make up. God doesn't want his children holding grudges."

Paul's letter would have been read aloud to the congregation as it gathered for worship. They would have heard it much as we're hearing it today. His concern for the two and the healing of their rift was urgent enough to bring before the whole body, because they were all to participate in the healing process. We can see here Paul's understanding of the church as the Body of Christ, which assumes, as one commentator puts it, "a mutuality or coherence [among] the members of the congregation that makes compassionate intervention and the sharing of difficulties as natural as a hand gently massaging a sore set of muscles."

Oh, how I wish that Paul had gone on to tell us just exactly what was done to heal the rift, and how that early Christian community forged reconciliation. For certainly we would learn much about what we've now come to call "conflict transformation." But, at the very least, we learn that conflict is to be expected among those who work for Christ, and that when conflict occurs it is to be addressed and healed.

And of course, all of this for Paul comes not from his desire just to "make nice," but from his theology, from his faith, from his total allegiance to the God of peace. It is this God who is ever ready to grant them the peace that saves them from their own failings.

Billy Graham once said: "Peace often must begin with ourselves. Love is not a vague feeling or abstract idea. When I love someone, I seek what is best for them. If I begin to take the love of Christ seriously, then I will work toward what is best for my neighbor. I will seek to bind up the wounds and bring about healing, no matter what the cost may be."

The question is, I suppose, "how do we get that peace?" This Paul does tell us! Be active in your faith life, he says. Don't be anxious, but fill your life with rejoicing, gentleness, kindness, good sense, with prayer and thanksgiving. "Be known for your consideration of others," one translation says. Another puts it this way: "Tell God all your desires of every kind in prayer that is full of gratitude."

And fill your minds, he says, with that which is true, honorable, just, pure, with whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious. Keep on doing what you have learned from me, seen in me, he says. And in so doing, the God of peace will be with you. Rejoice! The Lord is near. The God of peace will be present as we let go of anxiety and live in accordance with his promise to us.

Paul promises that this peace will "stand guard" he says-using a military term here-this peace will stand guard over our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, guarding what enters in and shielding us from anxiety. The wording seems to imply that God will do these things because we behave in a certain way, but that is not Paul's point. Paul wants us to understand that God grants peace because that is the very nature of God. Paul calls God here "the God of peace."

This was an important affirmation of the early church. This understanding of God is found in the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures. In Judges, Gideon builds an altar and calls it "the Lord is peace, shalom." And the prophet Isaiah tells us that God "makes peace." "I shall make Peace your overseer and Saving Justice shall rule over you. Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise." (60:17)

The early church took this one step further and settled on the designation "the God of peace." This asserts that peace characterizes God's activity, not war. God brings peace because it is in the very nature of God to do so.

Now, in our time, God still yearns to bring peace, yet war looms on the horizon. I have spoken with many of you about the current deliberations regarding war with Iraq and I well know that we are of many diverse opinions, as you would expect. This diversity is a strength of our congregation, though it certainly makes our life together in Christian community more complex and challenging. As I've listened, I have been especially moved by conversations with parents of sons and daughters serving in the military, those whose lives will be put on the line in any armed conflict. They count the cost and they are deeply concerned.

With the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, the God of peace places stringent demands upon us, his children. For Christians, this must, at least, mean that before war is ever considered, every possible alternative must be passionately pursued. And surely, "we must pursue our goals in a manner consistent with moral principles, political wisdom and international law."

Whatever our diverging views, what we must agree upon is the utter seriousness and gravity of this moment and seek to be as informed as we can, as prayerful as we can be, and responsible in our citizenship by making our views known.

This past week, President Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. We know him as not only a former president and now international statesman and tireless worker for peace, global health and human rights, but as a committed Christian, volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and Sunday school teacher in his home church.

His biographer, Douglas Brinkley, wrote of him: "Carter's religious conviction underlies his tenacious will to find peace wherever the parties to a conflict seem stymied and intransigent." His Christian faith has molded him into a preeminent peacemaker and we are grateful for his witness and courage.

It is not easy to face the world with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and there is a tremendous temptation to put down one or the other. There are no simple answers and rarely does consensus emerge. We are left to wrestle with our God and with one another's point-of-view, in ways that do not harm the community or cause the world to miss the gospel.

The words of John Calvin on this passage are perhaps an instructive place to conclude: "[Paul] is right to call it "the peace of God," inasmuch as it does not depend on the present aspect of things, and does not bend itself to the various shiftings of the world, but is founded on the firm and immutable word of God. He is right also to speak of it as surpassing all understanding or perception, for nothing is more foreign to the human mind than to hope even in the depth of despair, in the depth of poverty to see riches, and in the depth of weakness not to give way . . . and all this in the grace of God alone, which is itself only known through the Word and the inward earnest of the Spirit."

Peace be with you. May peace guide our every deed. And may the God of peace sanctify you and keep you. Amen.

NOTES

1. Douglas Brinkley. The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House. Viking Press, May 1998.

2. "Disarm Iraq Without War." A Statement from Religious Leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom. October 12, 2002.

3. Billy Graham cited in Peace Prayers. Harper San Francisco, 1992.

4. William Klassen. Proclamation 6 Series A. Pentecost 3. Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1996.

5. Douglas Wingeier, ed. Keeping Holy Time. Studying the Revised Common Lectionary Year A. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2001.

© Patricia E. Farris, 2002. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.