On Easter, the angel said to the women at the tomb – do not be alarmed, Jesus of Nazareth has been raised, he is not here. The angel offered them peace for their aching hearts. This week, the disciples are gathered behind locked doors. They are in fear. Fear of arrest. Fear of being found. Fear of crucifixion. And Jesus comes into their midst and offers them peace for the fear that had overwhelmed them.
Peace be with you, he said, and then he breathes on them and then the Spirit is on the disciples. Again he says, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you… They were not to remain locked up, away from everyone and everything. They are sent by God with the Spirit to do God’s work in the world with peace in their hearts.
He would offer that same peace to Doubting Thomas who was not there… It is the same peace he offers us as we too are sent out into this world. Our ministry is not locked up within these holy walls, but we go nourished from here into the world in Jesus’ name.
As we think about this, I want to use three saints as examples of those who followed that call, who went out into the world in their own way and brought peace to those they encountered, in their day. Some names will be familiar, others less so.
1. Teresa of Avila (Spanish Nun of the 16th Century)
2. Deaconess Anna Alexander of Georgia (Episcopal Deacon of the early 20th Century)
3. Fred Rogers of the Neighborhood (ordained Presbyterian minister, TV Host)
In convents, on the back roads of Georgia and through TV, each brought the Peace of God with them…
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, known as Teresa of Avila, was born in 1515 to a wealthy Spanish family. 1 of 12 children! In 1538 she began to suffer from a chronic illness that affected her for years. During her illness, she experienced visions and revelations. Upon her recovery, she entered a Carmelite monastery…
(excerpts from “Stars in a Dark World” by Fr. John-Julian, OJN on “Teresa of Avila”)
According to tradition this great saint carried her bookmark around in her prayer book, where it was found after her death in 1582… It was prayer that grounded her that allowed to walk and to help create new convents. She brought prayer and peace.
300 years or so later...
Anna Ellison Butler Alexander was born in 1865 to recently emancipated slaves in Georgia. Deaconness Anna Alexander in her 60 years of walking, she would bring love, peace & Jesus to the forgotten African Americans in Georgia. “The Bar is Open!” was not a phrase uttered by Deaconess Alexander, but it could have been. Stories tells us that when the diocese would not build her a new church so she could minister, she took over an abandoned whiskey bar and converted the bar itself to an altar to God.Some 20 years later, in a new medium, a young ordained minister began ministering to children on TV. Mister Rogers Neighborhood began in 1968. But the story that I think of, happened some 23 years later.
But Deaconess Alexander’s zeal for her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ did not just begin or end at the Altar of God, she walked the talk right out into her community and kept walking by foot to spread the word of God to African American Georgians between the towns of Brunswick and Darian. The children she touched along the way went on to become teachers, nurses, and advocates in their own communities for the education and inclusion of black people in the south. Deaconess Alexander is the pebble that was dropped in the pond of Georgia that had ripples of impact that went on for generations.
Recollections from her students account Deaconess Alexander as both mother and father to the children in Pennick, Georgia. No matter how bad her students acted, she responded with kindness and a firm assurance that learning to read and write would make a difference one day, even if her students did not realize it now. Students remembered that Anna Alexander would not just ensure her students were well educated enough for college, she would drive them there if they did not have the means to do so. She was known for providing not just education, but clothes, food, and shelter to ensure the well being of her flock.
Deaconess Alexander responded to all from a place of consistency, tough love, and enduring kindness, to soften the hardest of hearts. (Lent Madness, Anna Courie)
Fred Rogers was concerned. Ellen Goodman, a syndicated columnist for the Boston Globe, had just criticized one of his public service announcements for preschool children during the Persian Gulf War – she called the PSA from the “Kingdom of Make Believe.”
After the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy, Mister Rogers had written and taped a program in which he asked families to include their children in the grieving process. “Our country was in mass mourning,” he explained. “It was then that I realized more fully how speaking the truth about feelings—even on television—could be exceedingly curative.”
Rogers accepted the invitation from PBS regarding the Gulf War by doing what he did best—speaking directly to children and their families about their hopes and fears. He summed it up for Goodman in a letter:
When PBS asked if I would speak about conflict to families of preschoolers, my first reaction was not to do anything about the war in this medium which seemed to broadcast nonstop the ‘Scud v. Patriot Show,’ But then I started to hear more and more about young children’s fears, and I prayed for the inspiration to do something helpful…
Even though I don’t make policy in this country, I do feel an obligation to give the best I know how to families with young children when policies (of government and television) are affecting those families so directly. That’s why I agreed to do anything at all. I lament for the world (not the Neighborhood of Make-Believe!) because the abuses of war breed abusers who grow up to sow the seeds of future wars. Anything I can do to bring a modicum of comfort to a little one, I will do. (How I would love for my 2½-year-old grandson to be able to grow up in a world which refuses to abuse its children!) Even though I felt helpless in some ways (because of the onset of the war), I was grateful (as I imagine you must be at times) to have an avenue in which to express the truth as I felt it for the children I’ve always tried to serve…
You can imagine my grief when I think of the many 20+-year-old men and women on ‘active duty’ in this war who grew during their earliest years with our ‘Neighborhood’ program. How I long for them to be able to come back here and live the rest of their lives in peace. (Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers by Michael G. Long)
- Peace be with you – Jesus said to the disciples – and he sent them out with the Spirit blowing on them.
- And off they went to share that peace & love with the world.
- Teresa of Avila, Anna Alexander & Fred Rogers in their day, did the same, with their gifts.
- How will you share that peace & love of God with our world today?
Amen.
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