The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
August 19, 2001

God’s Peace is No Peace
Luke 12:49-56

Creation stories are important. It matters to know where you’ve come from. Of course, there is the big creation story that starts, “In the beginning God….” I’m thinking instead of lesser creation stories. Like Victoria and I begin our own story when we met in a class at Georgia Southern. The class, and I know this is unlikely, was called Deutsche Hörspiel. It was a college class so obscure that it didn’t even go by the English translation of the subject, German Radio Plays. There are other important creation or beginning stories. Stories of birth are important examples. Our own daughter Griffin’s story begins with her birth at home.

For King of Peace, the story of birth dates back before the church had a name. First there was the idea, and that idea was first the idea of Henry Louttit, who is the Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia. Bishop Louttit knew that I wanted to be involved in starting a church from scratch, which is called in current ecclesiastical terms, church planting. So, the Bishop approached me, while I was still in seminary, about planting a new Episcopal Church in Kingsland, Georgia. He first mentioned the idea to me in winter of 1998, two full years before I would graduate from seminary. At that point, it was just an idea. Just one possibility alongside others. Nothing was certain.

By January of 2000, the idea was certain. Victoria, Griffin, and I would move to Camden County that May to begin the work of starting a new, as of yet unnamed church. It was hard to think of an unnamed church. Before long, Victoria started playing with possible names. She looked through lists of saints, poured over church directories, and the web looking for names. But one day, Victoria decided to go through scripture looking for all the references to the word “King”. What were the names for God that related to “King?” For in using the word king, it could be seen as transforming Kingsland, to the land of a different King from the town’s founder. She found “King of Glory” and “King of Peace.”

That second option King of Peace really resonated for us. Sure there is the peace preserved with the military might evidenced at Kings Bay Sub Base, be we had something else in mind. Peace in our own lives, a sense of inner tranquility that doesn’t come from the current state of world politics. Wouldn’t that peace be something others want as well? Wouldn’t the name King of Peace stand for what God, as revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, has to offer all of us in our all-too-busy lives? We hoped so. Encouraged, I wrote to the Bishop, who told me that it was far too soon for names. He, wisely, suggested that the folks in Kingsland should have some say in the process.

My first day on the job as a church planter was June 1, 2000. That day and each day for the coming few weeks, I went out and knocked on doors in neighborhoods all around town. I went to see people in a variety of houses asking what, of all the things a new church could offer, should the new Episcopal Church try to do. I also asked the folks I talked to if they would help pick a name. I showed pieces of paper with possible names. The list of names included saints’ names, such as St. Timothy and St. Aidan, as well as the Bishops favorite, Saints Martha and Mary. Along with these and some others was King of Peace.

Time after time at door after door in a variety of neighborhoods, every single person picked King of Peace. It became a game with me. I would shuffle the cards and change the order. No matter how they were stacked, I could always tell when they saw King of Peace. The person looking at the slips of paper would relax his or her face and looked relieved from the task of naming a church they would likely never attend. They would smile, show me the card, and say, “I like this one.” Oh sure, it happened in different ways, but 25 out of 25 people picked King of Peace. I went back to the Bishop and got the OK. Our unnamed mission to Camden County would be called King of Peace.

In the 14 months since I hit the ground and the church got its named, we have grown from an idea into a thriving community of faith. Perhaps, Kingsland is not yet the land of the King of Peace, but maybe a few people’s lives have been touched by God’s peace in a new way. The process of creating a new church from scratch has taught me that none of us really begins a project from scratch, certainly not a church. Had God not been working through the Holy Spirit to reach each of your hearts and minds in some way, the idea of coming and taking part in this particular creation story might never have gotten your attention. God was here working in Camden County before I got here and has made my meager efforts and our combined efforts amount to more than any of us could do alone.

It’s been all nice and peaceful up until now. We have been able to bask in a warm fuzzy peace, like a comforting warm bath on a cold, rainy day. Just as we are all ready for a nice big group hug, somebody has to come along and ruin all of this warm fuzzy stuff for everybody. Somebody doesn’t like our peaceful little existence. And of all the nerve, the somebody who can’t leave well enough alone is the King of Peace himself, Jesus of Nazareth. The carpenter’s son from Galilee says that peace isn’t what he is all about.

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Who does Jesus think he is? Didn’t he read the sign out front on his way to church today? It says quite plainly King of Peace. We named the place for Jesus. How dare Jesus tell us that he didn’t come to bring peace?

We are just trying to settle in to the work of multiplying Christian disciples and Jesus tells us that the equation will divide families. What is wrong with this picture? Doesn’t Jesus know about the whole family-values agenda? Why can’t he get with the “honor thy father and thy mother” program? It’s hard enough to get families together at the dinner table and for some quality time without having God the son mess it up. Jesus says that he came to turn peaceful, whole families into full houses. That’s a full house as in poker terms. After all, Jesus says, “From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Now that’s division.

Let’s take a look a peace. The word behind our word for peace is the Hebrew word Shalom. That biblical word for peace means more than what we typically picture. Shalom is peace, but it also means wholeness, well-being, and health. All of those concepts are one big package that in Hebrew was Shalom, God’s peace which passes our understanding. Shalom is a truer, deeper peace. That promise of God’s peace was part of Jesus’ life and message all along.

At Jesus birth, the angels told the shepherds about “peace on earth.” Several times, Luke’s Gospel describes Jesus healing someone and then sending them away saying, “Go in peace.” Jesus makes them whole, healthy, peaceful, and gives them a deep well-being and then sends them away in that deeper peace, called shalom. Then in his final word of peace in this Gospel, Jesus appears to his disciples after the crucifixion. It was the first time they saw Jesus after they had betrayed him and run in fear to avoid arrest. Jesus avoids any talk of all that has happened between them and says, “Peace be with you.” Jesus, God’s own son, was a man of peace who brought shalom, God’s peace, to broken hearts and lives. And yet, here he is this Sunday saying that he did not come to bring peace.

This contradiction of a person of peace who says he came to bring division is a tension that calls us sit up and take notice. Jesus does want to bring a deeper health and wholeness to our world and the cost of that process will be division. The greater peace will come at the cost of lesser peace. How do I know that this is true? Not only do I find this idea in reading through Luke’s Gospel, but I find the idea confirmed in the world around us. Jesus is calling us to shalom, God’s deeper, lasting peace that is beyond human understanding. But now, he pauses for some truth in advertising to say that the deeper peace will first bring division.

We can look at some history a little closer at hand for an example. I was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1963. Some could look around that place and time to see a world that had peace among racial groups. But the peace that existed in Alabama in the early 1960s was a much lesser peace. The peace was maintained by blacks who sat in the back of the bus without complaint. The peace was maintained by blacks who knew better than to attempt to be served in white restaurants. There was a lesser peace in place and yet in that time and place a deeper understanding of God’s peace called some people, black and white, to action. The promise of God’s peace called people to stand up for their own rights and the rights of others and led them to refuse to settle for some lesser peace, bought at too great a price.

I am not picking on my own time and place of birth. Throughout history there are thousands of examples of people settling for a lesser peace when God was calling them to something more. The peace of God brings an end to the false peace and can easily pit family members against each other. The price of God’s peace is almost always division. Jesus experienced plenty of division in his own life. Jesus saw his mother and brothers turn against him. They tried to silence Jesus fearing that he had lost his senses. Later, would come reconciliation for Jesus and his family, but first came division. Jesus continually reached out to the outcast in his own society. Jesus upset the status quo and eventually was killed for rocking the societal boat a little too much. Jesus did bring God’s peace to the earth, a true and lasting peace, but the price was division.

Life still works that way. You can’t make a commitment to follow Jesus’ teaching and not have it change your behavior and your attitude. A commitment made in one area of your life will affect your whole life. You will be transformed over time in ways that you might not fully appreciate yourself. Other people will notice and not everyone will like what they see. For example, stop taking drugs and then try hanging around the friends that do. You won’t be welcomed for long, unless you change back to your old self.

Without being aware of it, everyone wants to preserve the lesser peace. But the cost of accepting the lesser peace is that we can’t help our world break through to the deeper peace waiting for us. Shalom, God’s true and lasting peace is calling us to stand up against the many forms of injustice around us. Any time we preserve the peace at someone or some group of people’s expense, we are trading God’s Shalom for a something less.

As the song before the Gospel proclaimed, “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing, the marvelous peace of God.”

Amen.