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| The former Holy Trinity, Ringwood East |
SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 30th) 1989
READINGS
Acts16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22:1-5
John 14:23-29
“Peace I bequeath to you: my own peace
I give you”
One of my pet hates is commercial broadcasting. That is not
to say that from time to time I don’t watch the dreaded 7, 9 and 10, oh listen
to the vast range of commercial stations across the FM and AM bands. But it is
to say that I feel insulted and tortured by those stations, television and
radio, as they incessantly bombard me with their message, their message of
noise and money.
As a child at boarding school, where transistors were highly
illegal, we used to snuggle them up to our dormitories at night, and listen to
the request programme through the earphone until close down. For stations did
close down then – and at the early hour of 11:00 PM. I remember clearly the
depths of silence that used to descend on me as the station, 2ZW,[1]
went off air, and then the deeper, more mysterious silence as the station
transmitters were turned off altogether.
Then I would remove my earphone to hear only the silence of
the night. Perhaps another boy in the dorm coughing on settling down after turning
his illicit radio off, or tossing in his sleep. Or perhaps the engine brake of
a truck, some distance away, grinding its way down the hill into the city. Then
silence would descend again.
Until the silence became the silence of my own sleep.
And the silence was a taste of peace.
Of Shalom.
To make such a claim is not to debase the mystery of Christ’s
teaching, “peace I bequeath to you.” It is often only the child who can really
perceive the awesome simplicities of Christ’s teachings. “Peace I bequeath to
you.” The peace of God that transcends all understanding may be like the peace
of a winter’s night after the noise of a radio, or the peace of a baby feeding
after a frenzy of frustrated screams. We may all have our memories of peace.
But where is it now? We may have moments of it – not, ironically,
at the passing of the peace in church, which is a symbol of God’s peace – but perhaps
during or after the Communion. But where is peace in the life and teaching of a
church that like Chanel 7, or Eon FM[2]
constantly bombards us with action and information? Where in a church that
seems to equate faith with work and the spirituality with being constantly and
aggressively active, is there the Shalom of Christ?
“Peace I bequeath to you.”
When were you last still, deep within the stillness of God?
I am hoping that late this year or early next year we might
be able to offer a parish quiet day. I am hoping and praying that stillness and
silence – signs of God’s peace with us – may become a part of our communal
experience of faith in Christ and of our liturgy. For it is when we begin to
explore the depths of the stillness and the peace – the Shalom – of God that we
begin to find the strength-in-faith that can lead us through the turmoil of
everyday existence.
It is to offer that peace to the world that our Lord
bequeathed to us his Spirit. As we prepare for the coming of that Spirit at
Pentecost I pray that we may begin – or begin again – to discover that Spirit who
empowers us and who strengthens us, but whose signature is peace beyond
comprehension
