I’ve had a difficult time working on this piece. I had almost talked myself into skipping “The Peace” and going on to the Offertory when my spiritual director suggested that people would surely notice if I did that.
I’m having trouble with this one because I don’t like “The Peace.” Not for all the reasons you usually hear. At least, not the reason I usually hear. Not because it’s either too “formal” with folks barely acknowledging each other in the pew, or because (as in my church) it brings the service to something of a halt while the parishioners greet each other with great affection.
No, my objections are different, twofold. First, I think it’s just in the wrong place. Second, I think we’ve totally missed the power of the moment by confusing it with the reconciliation about which Jesus speaks in the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5:23-26)
I don’t want to write about this negatively, but in order to open up new possibilities for this moment in the liturgy, I just have to strip away some of the dross that has accumulated on it over the years.
Okay. It’s in the wrong place.
I understand the liturgists’ thought that we should seek reconciliation with each other before we “offer our gifts at the altar.” This is certainly an idea I would value if we hadn’t so twisted it by the insertion of two tiny little phrases in the middle of the Eucharist. Going up to the person in the congregation whose presence you can’t stand and hugging them while you say, “God’s Peace be with you,” or “and also with you,” does not constitute reconciliation. It may be a beginning, it may indicate a desire to be reconciled, but reconciliation takes time, and it’s costly. Suggesting as we do by this charade right before the Offertory that we are somehow satisfying Jesus’ instructions to be reconciled with one another is not only ineffective, it is deeply misleading. It is more a negative than a positive.
By putting it right here, before the Offertory, we also say that this passing of the plate, and perhaps the carrying forward of the bread and wine, these are the gifts that matter. There is no awareness in this placement decision that the entire service is a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.” For many of us that sense of sacrifice of self has been dulled or even overlooked by the ordinariness of our experience in church. But it is all sacrifice, it is all gift at the altar, and all our acts of reconciliation aimed at preparing our hearts for worship belong outside the front door somewhere, or at least before the opening hymn.
The second objection goes something like this: Speaking peace to each other at this point in the Eucharist is not about reconciliation. As I just suggested above, it can’t be. To say otherwise is to cheapen both the Peace and the reconciliation made possible through the Blood of Jesus. The Peace is, or can be, another moment of warfare through worship, and this is where I get to talk about what the Peace might be.
When you and I look each other in the eye and “wish” them God’s Peace, we are making a heavenly declaration! We are prophesying, speaking a reality into each others’ lives, declaring God’s will that His peace reign in their hearts and in their lives! This isn’t peace as we’ve come to define it, not just the absence of conflict. No indeed! It is peace that brings conflict, but refuses to give way to fear. It is peace that slowly strips us of every false source of “peace” that we have so that we might have more room for God’s Peace.
God’s peace makes other people uncomfortable. Like the poster I saw in someone’s office years ago, “If you can keep your head while everyone around you is losing theirs, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION!” People get angry at us when we don’t worry about the same things they worry about.
God’s peace ruins the taste of everything I used to enjoy as a source of “self soothing.” I still love chocolate, but now, when I’m upset, it just doesn’t help me any more! When I try to fill up on anything but His Presence, God’s Peace leaves me hungrier than I was when I started .
So when we pray for God’s Peace for each other, we may be saying more than our pew-mates want to hear!
This is still in the wrong place. It really fits better alongside the Intercessions than after the Confession, but it can be seen as an extension of the decision to accept absolution, the gift of God’s peace for ourselves. Having received it, taken it into ourselves, we might then speak it to each other. (Even to those with whom I am not fully reconciled yet!)
And so we close this portion of our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving with a prophetic act. We give voice to, reality to, God’s will to reign in peace in His own. Next week we cross over from the life as Christ’s Body in the world to Christ’s beloved with Him at table.
In Him,
Jeff
