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Sermon: Trinity 5 - God as Peace (Jim Palmer)

  • The only way to peace is through love.
  • The dynamic of love’s story is this:
    • It starts in the flow of the Divine at the birth of creation and in the continual process of God embedding His spark of life, His spark of pure Love in each and every living form.
    • This love cannot remain stagnant, so it too flows in and through each of us and the whole of our world.
    • As we each gradually come to acknowledge that Love as who we are, as all that we are, we offer it back to its Source, back to God, through every intention and action.
    • Our whole life becomes the flow of Love.
  • Peace in this world has many faces:
    • A personal feeling of peace
    • A peaceful place or community
    • A peaceful country
    • A World at Peace
  • However, Christ says in the Gospel today that in giving us peace He gives not as the world gives. His peace is that peace that transcends the mind and heart, that passes all understanding.
  • Peace means no fear and no falsehood; it means no thoughts that war against the emotions or emotions that fight with concepts in the mind.
  • Fear separates us from one another and from our true self, which is Divine, which is the ancient Christ, the One that is also Three, and from the present – taking us to the future or to the past.
  • Fear and separation (from one’s self and from others) cannot happen when there is that simple, honest and true love of the presence, of the true understanding and practice of the teachings of the Christ.
  • The LCC is a sacramental Church, being a channel for God’s Grace to come into the world through the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist.
  • Participating in the Eucharist and partaking of Holy Communion awakens that love and giving that, sharing that with others brings us that peace.
  • Peace means living always in that softness that is open, simple love and joy of the present; where the feelings that emerge, the nature of their emergence and the thoughts that form speech are gentle and good to both you and to others. The Presence of God is living and giving love and joy in the present.
  • We often say that a person who has died now knows peace; the meaning here is that he has passed to the realms of the spirit and is closer to God and free of the boundaries, opposites and paradoxes of earthly life.
  • Yet, we can know this peace here.
  • Loving your neighbor as yourself. Loving oneself is the starting place.
  • Love for one’s self is all wrapped up with consciousness in which there is acknowledgement, acceptance, forgiveness, honesty and all that inner work that helps you let go of all ideas and conceptual thought.
  • Love is the handmaiden of peace: both today’s Epistle and Gospel mention Love and Peace in practically the same breath.
  • READ SECTIONS FROM GOSPEL (John 14:18-27) and EPISTLE (Paul's Letter to the Galatians 5:13-25).
  • Long suffering – what is this? It comes from knowing and accepting the wholeness that you are, whether you like all of what you are or not.
  • Long suffering means allowing those parts of your life that are not perfect in your mind to become perfected as you see and accept they are gifts to you from the Father, who has only love for you and who wants you to know him as he knows you.
  • Teach us, O Lord, to see thy life in all the peoples of thine earth and so guide the nations into the understanding of thy laws that peace and goodwill may reign upon earth.
  • There is a peace that passeth understanding; it abides in the hearts of those who abide in the eternal.