Sixth Sunday of Easter

The organisers of the Alpha Course have announced that they are going to run TV adverts on Channel 4 during the next series of Big Brother. Why on earth, one might ask, would people watching Big Brother want to attend an Alpha Course. The whole purpose of Big Brother is to encourage a culture of voyerism within its audience. This becomes increasingly addictive. The producers manipulate the contestants to display the very worst traits of human behaviour as they are tempted by the prospect of becoming celebrities. The purpose of the Alpha Course is the exact opposite.

Advertising Alpha in Big Brother might work because when we see people behave in an extreme fashion we naturally think about how we might behave and reflect a little on our own lives. And in reflecting we might begin to realise that fulfilment will never come from the shallow, and often cruel values that underpin Big Brother.

But Big Brother is a massive exaggeration of ordinary life and very few seek to pursue its values as a priority. On my own Christian journey I increasingly found the wealth, security and fulfilment I gained from my work in property and finance, even a happy family life were not the ultimate source of peace. God was somehow inviting me to discover an inner peace and purpose that could never be achieved through these alone. That peace I now work towards is found only in Jesus Christ.

Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of Salvador, said ‘the poor in their condition of need are disposed to conversion. They are more conscious of their need of God.’ Part of the ills of our present day society is that with so many of us living lives of relative wealth and security, with the constant pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment as a goal, the conscious need of God is not present. Until that is things go wrong. It is quite natural and right that the distraught parents of Madeleine McCann, the abducted little girl whose fourth birthday was yesterday, are openly reaching out to God in the midst of their appalling situation. It is at times of great need that God emerges from the shadows of people’s lives. We have join people around the world in praying for little Madeleine’s safe return.

The reason why the Church is there today for the McCanns is that people since the time of those first disciples have realised their need of God. The setting for our gospel reading this morning was the last supper. Jesus was saying farewell to his disciples in the knowledge that he was shortly to be betrayed and arrested. He used a very common and familiar Jewish greeting and farewell, ‘shalom’ or peace. But these words had a wholly different meaning when given by Jesus.

He first said ‘peace I leave with you’, a familiar farewell, but then also ‘my peace I give to you’. The peace he gave to them, and now gives to us, is possible because Jesus was going, as he said later in the passage, to his father, but was also to return as the risen glorified Lord. By giving us his peace Jesus has reconciled us to God. He has created the channel by which the whole created order and the whole of humanity can be reconciled to God.

Jesus says he and his father ‘will make their home in us’. He uses the same expression when he talks about the many dwelling places in his father’s house.

The ideas of peace and home are strongly connected. We often say ‘peace at last’ when we come in and close the front door. So this tremendous offer from God is that if we make a space for him in ourselves, he will use it as his home, an area of peace and inspiration. And he will give us a refuge in him – somewhere we can turn to in our own times of trouble and say ‘peace at last’. In the second letter to Timothy we find these words ‘For God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.’

If we accept this inner well of peace from God, the peace given to Jesus’ disciples, then we can share that peace with others. We symbolically share this peace in this service. Our sharing of the peace is a sign of reconciliation and love for one another. Perhaps you remember last week’s reading ‘By this everyone will know you are my disciples; if you have love for one another.’ So, each week we include prayers for the peace and unity of the church.

St Paul teaches that we don’t have to earn peace from God. By coming to God and seeking forgiveness we are reconciled to him. That in itself earns the gift of peace. In his letter to the Romans he wrote ‘Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Peace with God is never available apart from grace. The cross of Christ which looms over today’s reading is the focal point of grace and is the source of peace. Jesus Christ is our eternal peace.

But accepting this peace does change our behaviour. We won’t want to emulate the behaviour on Big Brother! Seeking God’s doesn’t necessarily mean an easy life – even a peaceful one in secular terms. Having brought God into our lives, we share the urgent longing for reconciliation of all creation with him. The red Christian Aid envelopes that many will deliver this week and hundreds of people will fill with money is one sign of that urgent longing for reconciliation. ‘A hope’, as Paul wrote in Romans, ‘that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay, and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’

Despite all the distractions of our western society, which can blank out peoples awareness of God’s grace, he remains at its core, as echoed in this call to prayer for Christian Aid Week: ‘Humanity still bears your image, the power of Christ still heals and converts, your spirit is with us. We bless you ever faithful God.’

It was the longing for reconciliation that drove Jesus to offer himself on the cross; that drives us to offer ourselves at communion today, and goes with the inner peace of knowing God. ‘Peace I leave with you: my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid’.

Amen