Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23
What does peace look like? I mean, the peace that Jesus sends through the Holy Spirit––what does it look like? Or feel like?
What comes immediately to my mind is the passage from Isaiah 11:6, “and the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid, and the calf and the lion, and a little child shall lead them.” And then I think of Psalm 23, or an of the shepherd images in the bible, and sheep grazing peacefully in the field, warm in the sunshine, safe from all enemies. And then there’s our Gospel reading, where Jesus talks about peace as a state of forgiveness––relationships restored, peace between peoples. Long-standing conflicts resolved, people previously at war standing arm-in-arm. When I imagine the peace of the Holy Spirit, that’s what I picture––calm, serene, restful. The Spirit of gentleness.
I would love that kind of peace in the world. Especially after watching the news yesterday, and seeing what is going on in the United States. And I want to say, it’s easy for us up in Canada to look down south of the border and shake our heads, and say oh, well, and shrug. But, as Christians, we ought not to be quite so dismissive. For one thing, those are people, just like you and I. They are our neighbours, whom God calls us to love and care for. The peaceful protestors out in the daytime, and even those destroying property after the sun goes down, they are fellow human beings, one with us in God’s eyes. The police officers who are continuing to use violent means––pepper spray, tear gas, vehicles as battering rams, knees on backs and throats, and the black men and women who are bearing that violence on their bodies, all of them are our neighbours, fellow humans, one with us in Christ. We cannot dismiss what is going on to the south of us. And, for another, we are not exempt in Canada from our own forms of racism, against indigenous people, and yes, even against people with different skin colour than our own. And so, seeing all of this, I yearn for the peace that Jesus promises to send through the Holy Spirit. The bringing together of all people from different places, with different languages, into one.
But I admit that I experience some unease when I hear the actual words from our reading from Acts. Peter says, quoting the prophet Joel, “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” I love those verses. The Holy Spirit comes to all, regardless of status or age or gender. The Holy Spirit does not discriminate. This is why we have children’s Sunday, you know––because the Holy Spirit does not bless only those who have reached a certain age.
But those aren’t the verses that make me uneasy. What makes me uneasy is what comes after: “And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.”
Those are not descriptions of the kind of peace that we would want. These are not times where lions and lambs lie down peacefully. These are not times of warm sunshine in a field of flowers, or cool clean water to drink. This peace does not sound calm, or serene, or restful. This is a Spirit of upset, of tempest and earthquake.
And yet, to people whose lives have been misery, who have been trampled on and oppressed, who are afraid to leave their houses for fear of being assaulted, maybe these words do bring peace? This was the situation of those early Christians for whom the book of Acts was written. And the situation of those for whom the prophet Joel was writing. And the situation of black people in America, whose grandmothers and grandfathers still remember segregation and various states preventing black voters from registering and their young men being killed by white mobs for not crossing to the other side of the street when a white woman walked their way. This is not ancient history––this is less than 80 years ago. All around the world, actually, there are people whose lives are being made such a misery that Joel’s words of the day of the Lord being preceded by fire and blood and darkness, by the complete overturning of all the structures of the world, sound like the prelude to peace.
So which is it? Which does the Holy Spirit bring? Which verses embody what happens when the Holy Spirit is present? It is calm or is it destruction? Does the Spirit bring sunny meadows or burning cars?
I think it’s both. When the Holy Spirit is present, there is both justice and peace. There can’t be one without the other. Peace without justice is peace only for some. It is a fake peace, it is like smiling when you don’t mean it. Peace without justice is like leaving the room rather than continuing the argument, but the feelings still linger and poison the air. Peace without justice is like shunning someone––sure, the conflict has stopped, but there is no true reconciliation.
And justice without peace is justice only for some. It’s a fake justice, like one sibling getting sent to their room for something the other sibling did. Justice without peace is what happens when a government jails political prisoners. Justice without peace is like someone being forced to apologize when they don’t mean it. Again, sure, the conflict has stopped, but there is no true reconciliation.
True peace requires justice, and true justice leads to peace. This is very hard to accept. It is very hard to accept that the Spirit brings both. We usually tend to fall on one side or the other––it might be easier for us to accept justice, but not peace, or it might be easier for us to accept peace, but not justice. But that is not the new life that Jesus brings, that is not the vision that God has in mind for us. God wants more for us––God wants true peace and true justice for us, and so they must go hand in hand.
Now normally, I like to have something practical in my sermons, but I’m not exactly sure how to do that in this case. The gap between what God wants for us and what we want for ourselves seems too vast to cross in this case. But this is what I will say: if you yearn for justice, try working a bit for peace. Maybe there is a situation in your own life where you are bothered by injustice, where you feel oppressed or wrongly treated. In that situation, maybe the Holy Spirit is calling you to work for peace, as your path to justice. And if you yearn for peace, then try working for justice. Maybe people are around you are fighting, and you wish they would just stop. Maybe the news bothers you, maybe protests unsettle you, and you wish they would just be over and everybody would go home. In that situation, maybe the Holy Spirit is calling you to take steps towards acting for justice, to find out what is actually going on, to engage in the issue, maybe the Spirit is calling you to work for justice, as your path to peace.
We need both. We need those prophets whom the Spirit calls to speak and fight for justice. And we need those calm voices whom the Spirit calls to speak and plead for peace. When we pray, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven,” this is what we’re praying for. We’re praying for the Holy Spirit to bring peace and justice together. We’re praying for the wolf and the lamb to lie down together, and we’re praying for the blood and fire that precedes the day of the Lord. We’re praying to be filled with the Spirit of Jesus, who flipped tables in the Temple and died on the cross asking for forgiveness for those who put him there. And God will answer. The Holy Spirit will come. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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