I thought I’d break out of my non-posting rut by putting up my children’s sermon for tomorrow (er, for less than ten hours from now, actually, but who’s counting?). This one is based on a paper I wrote in my “Introduction to Christian Worship” class way back in the fall of ‘04, in which I sought to better understand that much-maligned, but also much-loved, worship element, the passing of the peace. Since the children’s sermon has followed the peace in this summer’s order of worship, I thought it might make a fun sermon to talk about why exactly we do this crazy thing in the midst of our liturgy. Here’s how it goes:
Sometimes I wonder: if an alien came from outer space and watched us here at church, what would he think we were doing? After all, we do some funny things here at church. For example, a minute ago, all of us got up from where we were sitting and walked around hugging people and shaking their hands, saying, “Peace of the Lord be with you.” Then we all sat back down again. We call it “passing the peace.” I wonder what an alien would have made of that! Have you ever wondered why we pass the peace?
It’s fun to get up and out of your seat, but that’s not why we do it. It’s a good way to say hi to people we know, but that’s not why we do it. And it’s always nice to meet new people we haven’t met before, but that’s not why we do it either.
We pass the peace because Jesus said that it’s important for us to love one another. He said we need to love all our neighbors, even our enemies. In the prayer he taught us, Jesus said we should forgive other people when they hurt us. And he said that if we feel like praying, but we are having an argument with a friend, we need first to go to that person and become friends again before coming to church to pray.
All of those things are very hard to do! It’s hard to love our enemies. It’s hard to forgive other people when they hurt us. And when we’re having an argument, it’s hard to go straight to the person we’re fighting with and try to make things better.
When things are hard to do, you have to practice them over and over until you get them right. One way to practice being peaceful and loving people is to pass the peace here in church. We stand up and say to each other “peace be with you.” “Peace be with you” is one way of saying, “I pray that God’s love and peace are part of your life.” It’s kind of like saying, “I love you, and God loves you too.”
Here at church, with our friends, it’s easy to say those words. But someday, we might need to say those words to someone we don’t like. Someone who has done something to hurt us. Someone with whom we’re having a fight. We will need to wish that person peace, because that’s what Jesus wanted us to do. And when that happens, we will have lots of practice saying “peace be with you.” We have said those words every week here at church! Maybe that will make it a little bit easier for us to do the right thing when the time comes for us to make peace with our enemies.
Let’s say a prayer together: Dear God - Thank you - for giving us your peace - Help us - to practice making peace - even when that’s hard to do - Amen.
Let’s share the peace together one more time before we go back to our seats today. Peace be with you! Peace be with you! Peace be with you!
Because surely we can do better than this.