Peace I Leave with You

“Peace I leave with you.  My peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give to you.”  Jesus was speaking peace into reality when he spoke these words into his disciples ears.  It was not the peace that nations understand  – the peace of stand-off or mutually assured destruction.  No – Jesus was speaking the God peace of calm and quiet, of acceptance and mutuality, of love as a verb and not a noun, Love as what we do and not what we feel.  Maybe we would better understand if we called this ‘serenity’ rather than ‘peace’:  the calm in any situation that knows its well being resides elsewhere. . . it is the calm of a Peter or a Paul who could face their own death with the assurance of Christ’s own witness from the cross.  To quote the hymn written by Horatio Spafford, this peace, this serenity, can proclaim with assurance, “whatere may befall, thou hast taught me to say, even so, it is well with my soul.”  For those in Aurora, Colorado and all over the world suffering the effects of violence today, may such peace, such serenity, pervade their and our souls.  Amen.

ScotlandDay39: It is well

The woman on the mountain stopped in her tracks
by Karen’s* Metropolitan-Opera-sized voice
singing It is well with my soul
We thousands worship in the valley
so too does the lone hiking woman
on the mountain
frozen for a moment in time
by a voice too big to be contained
        and the truth it sings.
As the last note fades,
on she moves
back to her journey
up the mountain
But for a moment
we were bound together,
she and I,
in that worship space
of the two- or more gathered
Both of us stopped in our track-making
on this planet
we call home
And it was well with our souls

The woman hiker is in the center of the photo

_____________
Opera singer Karen Cargill sang some hymns during worship at Heart & Soul 2012, the Church of Scotland kick-off event for their annual General Assembly in Edinburgh.  This is the third GA of the Church of Scotland that I've been able to attend at least a portion of.  During the closing outdoor worship where thousands gathered together (a first for me), Edinburgh Castle and the mountainside approach faced us as the background to the worship stage area; and as I listened to one of my own favorite hymns, I noticed a woman hiker standing rock still while Ms. Cargill sang.

Now Thank We All Our God

It’s Wednesday tea time, when some gals in the church and I gather together to pray and talk and study.  Today we’re looking at hymns, considering favorites, looking at back stories.

Angelika comes with Now Thank We All Our God.  What Angelika shared from the life of Martin Rinkart, who wrote the words to the hymn, is of a godly man living in a time of great suffering: The Thirty Years’ War was ravaging Europe; the plague had resurfaced and as the only surviving  pastor in his community, Martin buried 4,000 people; and a famine further wracked the already decimated population.

It was into that space of suffering and devastation that Martin Rinkart wrote, Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices.

How, in the midst of the crucible of suffering, are such words even possible?  We ponder the question together, one speaking of God’s grace emerging in ways discernible after the suffering has ended.  She speaks of the grace of hindsight, of what I think of as Joseph’s benediction upon his murderous brothers at the end of Genesis: what you intended for my evil, God used to the good.  It is the idea not that God visits suffering upon us, but rather that God transforms the suffering into something useful, something beautiful even, and in the transforming of the ‘thing’, God transforms us.

But Rinkart isn’t writing after the suffering is past.  He’s writing in the middle of the suffering, right from the heart of the spiritual and physical blast site.

And in the German, Angelika tells us, it’s even more obvious, this joy and faith-claim to God: [God], who from our childhood, has given us too much. . . 

“Too much”.  The phrase stands out so much more than the English Hath blessed us.  Even when it seems as if we have nothing, God has given us “too much”, so great is the divine blessing of relationship.

Martin Rinkart was speaking hope from suffering to suffering.  It was the benediction not of the fool, but of the experienced.  And from the experience, Rinkart does not celebrate suffering; rather, he sees through the suffering to the reality of God standing there.  And what Rinkart sees is bounty.  And peace.  And divine nearness.  And grace.  And guidance.  And perplexity.

What Rinkart ‘sees’ is God.