January 19, 2025
• Rev. Rob Fuquay
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St. Luke’s UMC
January 19, 2025
New Year Series
Finding the Middle Way: Living the Fruit of the Spirit
The Fruit of Peace
Mark 4:35-41; Galatians 5:22
MLK Weekend
A trial was held about 10 days ago in Jackson County for a young man’s role in the death of Ashlea Albertson, a decorated Midget car driver with Tony Stewart Racing. She was also the fiancé of the man on trial. The death occurred in 2023 as result of a road rage incident. He was driving on I-65 with Ashlea in the passenger seat when an aggressive driver wouldn’t let them pass. So, he sped up to pass. With both cars going at an excessive rate of speed the other driver cut them off, bumping their car causing it to crash and Ashlea being thrown from the vehicle. The other driver was charged in the incident as well.
That story to me is a miniature reflection of a much broader picture of concerns happening around us: our rage is killing us. A few years ago, a girl was killed walking home from school because two drivers in a rage flew through an intersection.
A teenager at a shopping mall doesn’t like the look another teen gave him and pulls out a gun and shoots, harming not only the other person but innocent shoppers.
A young little league baseball standout takes his own life because he’s been the victim of social media bullying by his peers at school. And these are all stories from right here in Indianapolis in the last couple years.
But this seems to have been our reality from the very beginning. In 2015 a human skull was discovered in Spain that is believed to be 430,000 years and it belonged to the oldest known murder victim. Signs of blunt force trauma to the skull caused by a crude instrument was the cause. Of course, the Bible points out in the story of Cain and Abel, that the first natural born humans couldn’t get along.
For all of our technological development from rudimentary objects to speeding cars and technology, humankind has learned to take about any instrument and turn it into a weapon. We have amazing resources with which to manage life, but do we have the inner resources to preserve life?
Somewhat like an air raid siren amid crashing bombs the words of Paul standout: The fruit of the spirit is…peace.
But how is such fruit produced? For some, the only discovery of peace is retreat, avoiding the sources of conflict in our lives, steering clear of those who challenge our peace. The trouble, of course, is the conflict doesn’t disappear. It internalizes. We hold the conflict inside and deal with the consequences differently.
Our daughter in Denver called the other night to say her son, Geo, now 2 ½, had been waking up in the night crying, unable to sleep. This was uncharacteristic. So she asked
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what was upsetting him and learned he had seen a little bit of a Star Wars movie on TV. Star Wars, of course, is all about conflict between the good and dark sides. So our daughter in a rather brilliant move said, “Well, Mommie has a light that takes away Star Wars. Do you want me to plug it in?” He said yes, and now he’s sleeping again. We all need a light to help us with conflict, don’t we?
On the opposite side of retreating are those who say that to have peace you have to defeat your adversaries. Defeating people you have conflict with is how you have peace. The late Mark Trotter pointed out years ago how we have adopted the language of war in our common way of speaking. He said, in war the military can’t refer to the enemy as “brothers and sisters” or fellow children of God. We couldn’t kill the enemy if we talked about them that way. We have to speak of the enemy as if they are evil, almost subhuman.
The trouble with this, he points out, is how we have brought this language in our public discourse. We talk about those we disagree with as evil people, because we have to destroy and win in order to have peace. But again, has such an approach made our society more peaceful?
How can the promise of peace be a middle way between the options of retreat or defeat?
Let’s begin with the word itself. In the Bible there are two very important words for peace. In the Old Testament, Hebrew, it is the word shalom which conveys health, security, and harmony in relationships, but in a deeper way shalom means wholeness. Shalom, peace, makes life complete. In the New Testament, the Greek word for peace, is Eirene, which conveys many of the same meanings as shalom, but in a somewhat richer way. Beyond the idea of wholeness, Eirene communicates the notion of enough.
When Paul says in Ephesians, “Christ is our peace,” it means that in Him we find we are enough. We don’t have to do more or be better to know we are accepted. And it means that in Christ we have enough to face the conflicts of our world. His peace is enough.
I want us to think about these two dimensions of peace and how they show up in a story about Jesus and the disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. One evening Jesus said to the disciples, “Let us go to the other side.” So, “Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.” Notice the curious description, “just as he was.” The disciples took Jesus just as he was. What did that mean?
Some interpreters think it was a physical description of Jesus already being in the boat where he had been teaching. So, without needing him to get out of the boat, they took him as he was. But others say it describes something deeper. It had been a long day and Jesus was probably tired. Notice how the story begins, “That day when evening came.” If you start searching for when that day began, it’s not very clear how far back you have to go. At least to the start of chapter 3. Listen to what went on that day. Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath which angered religious officials. This is when they started plotting to kill Jesus.
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Then Jesus went to pray over which people to choose as his disciples. That was a big deal. Then religious officials came from Jerusalem claiming Jesus was demonic and he got into a controversy with them. That is followed by his own family tracking him down probably to beg him to come home because they were hearing what people were saying, and this is where Jesus said his family is all who do God’s will. Then Jesus launched into a long period of teaching. All of that in one day.
So, when we are told the disciples took him “just as he was,” it means he was exhausted. He was beaten down and weary. This is a picture of Jesus fully human. I know, we say he was fully God, but we also believe he was fully human, and this is what the human side of Jesus looked like. Someone for whom ministry could be exhausting.
Do you know what that’s like? Is there any kind of tiredness like the one that comes from conflict as a result of trying to do something good? I remember a church I served where the people started a soup kitchen. It was a cold winter, just like we’re having here in Indiana, and two women got concerned about folks who couldn’t cook a hot nutritious meal. That’s how this kitchen started. Scores of members got behind the idea and in no time they were renting a building and serving meals six days a week.
Then a controversy arose. Fellow business owners thought the kitchen attracted riff-raff that was negatively affecting their business. They got the owner of the building to revoke the lease. He put a thick chain and padlock across the door. Interestingly the name of the soup kitchen was “The Open Door.” There was a picture in the paper of the locked doors with The Open Door sign above.
A few days later I was out of town. A member of the church called me and texted me a picture of the cover of the paper that day. The chair of our board had gotten a set of chain cutters and was opening the soup kitchen back up. Now we had a legal violation to face.
Why does doing good have to be so hard? Do you understand what I’m talking about? Is there any conflict as exhausting as the kind that happens as a result of trying to do something good? When Jesus laid down in that boat he was ready to sleep through anything.
But, of course, Jesus couldn’t sleep long. A violent storm came and the disciples thought they wouldn’t survive. They woke Jesus asking if he even cared. Don’t you know that question had to hurt. They didn’t ask, “Will you help us?” They said, “Don’t you care?” So Jesus spoke to the storm and said, “Be still!” And the wind stopped and the water calmed. Then Jesus had a question for the disciples, “What happened to your faith?”
That question is like a depth measurement. It makes the disciples think about the quality and depth of their faith. Did they want a faith that could bring Jesus into their anxiety; or did they want a faith that allowed Jesus to bring them into His peace?
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To be fair the disciples had faith in Jesus, but that’s all. They had faith in Jesus, they did not yet have the faith of Jesus. This story is so critical in the faith formation of the disciples. It is critical in the faith formation of every disciple. The faith we need is not to have our storms removed. The deep faith we need is the security we can have in the midst of a storm. And what the disciples learn here is such trust and peace comes in their connection to Jesus. As they hold onto him, the have peace.
There’s a story about a group of Christians huddled in a church as a hurricane went over. The people could hear the crashing and violence outside. The pastor prayed, “Our benevolent Heavenly Father, Send us the spirit of the children of Moses; send us the spirit of the children of Israel, send us the spirit of the children of the Promised Land.” Finally, one old man, with a lot less eloquence, shouted above the preacher, “Lord, don’t send nobody. Come yourself! This ain’t no time for children!” (God Does Immeasurably More, Bob Russell, p116)
The sign of a mature faith is one that finds peace in God’s presence, not just what we hope God will do.
So, yes, we can have peace in the midst of storms, but there is another aspect of peace in this story that to leave it unrecognized would be irresponsible. Jesus is a source of peace to disciples in a storm. But how did they get in a storm at sea in the first place? What got them there? They obeyed Jesus. Following Jesus can be unsafe, if safe means staying storm-free!
This is the other side of Godly-peace. It doesn’t keep life placid and tranquil. Peace is not the absence of conflict, it is the courage to face conflict with confidence. As Wallace Hamilton preached in the midst of the tumultuous sixties, with a bit of shock and awe for his congregation just wanting some escape from the politics and division of the day, he said:
There are times and conditions when peace of mind is positively sinful. No decent person would want it and ought not to have it. To be preoccupied with yourself, to have an untroubled heart in this world in the midst of its wrongs and needs, to withdraw from the responsibility of bearing some share of its burden, is to fail the very purpose of being human. (Serendipity, p.69)
What happened to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee that night was a foreshadowing of things to come. Over and over again Jesus would lead them into storms and the disciples would plead with him not to go to Samaria, stay away from Jerusalem, and by all means avoid the cross. In other words, let’s play it safe and avoid the storms. But in the end they decided faithfulness was preferrable to safety. And after the resurrection Jesus met these frightened followers behind closed doors and he breathed on the Holy Spirit and said, “Peace be with you.”
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And so they carried his peace forward, not where life was pleasant and easy, but where peace was in need, where conflict ruled, where life was not always valued. They carried peace where it was missing.
Tomorrow we will mark the 96th birthday anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He knew the power of God’s peace to shelter him. He told how God met him at a lonesome midnight hour after another receiving another death threat over the phone. He told how God’s glory lightened his heart and gave him peace.
But that peace didn’t keep him home. It sent him out again, to continue the mission. His peace gave him confidence to confront hate yet keep loving. His method was nonviolence, yes, but nonviolent resistance. To fight the good fight, but to do it with a heart of peace believing with God’s presence he had enough.
You may never be called to march in the face of guns and billy clubs, but choose the way of peace and know that you will be called to resist; to resist hate; to resist indifference; to resist fear and withdrawal.
Sometimes the toughest courage is to go to someone and have an honest conversation in love. Sometimes it is to speak up on behalf of someone else being wrongly treated. Sometimes it is going and serving in a place that feels risky to do so, but it is where the vulnerable area.
Paul said “pursue the things that make for peace.” (Rom. 14:19) Because when we do, we find peace.
When Phil Amerson was pastor at Broadway UMC downtown the neighborhood around the church was rife with violence. Some of the older women in the church came together each week to pray for one another, to pray in intercession for those who were sick, to pray for the city, to pray for the whole wide world.
In time they began to use oil in their prayers for healing. They would anoint the sick with oil and pray for them. Then they said, “We should put oil on the pews and pray for God to anoint all who sit on them.” So they did. They said, “Let put oil on the pulpit and pray for God to anoint our pastor.” Phil said he wasn’t sure what that meant exactly but he joined them.
Then, one day, they said to Phil, "We want you to anoint the parking lot." He was taken aback. He had never anointed a parking lot. But he knew that the church parking lot had been the site of a lot of illegal and ugly activity. People had been hurt in that parking lot, damaged for life. One young man had been killed there.
So he followed this procession of women out to the church parking lot. They handed him the oil. He said, "Now what do I do?" They said, "Anoint the asphalt." So he knelt down, and poured out the oil. Then he stood, and suggested that they hold hands and pray.
Just then they noticed some neighborhood children playing in another part of the parking lot. The children were curious. They came running over to see what was going
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on. The women opened the circle, and said, "Come join us." Now instead of ten there, there were forty people in that prayer circle. They prayed for new life. They prayed for their neighborhood. They prayed for peace in the name of the Christ who wept over the city.
One of the women gave one of the children a piece of chalk. She said, "Go over there where that oil is poured on the asphalt, and write, "The earth is the Lord's."
The pastor, reflecting on that incident years later, said, "You know that act is still remembered in that neighborhood. To my knowledge, there have been no more problems in that parking lot. No one has been killed there since.” Phil said, “I wish I had enough oil to anoint all the cities of our land." And one of the women responded, “Oh pastor, we have enough to anoint the whole world.”