Thought for the Day-My peace I give to you

Dove, Pablo Picasso, 1949

A Thought for the Day given at a lunchtime sermon of Holy Communion at St Olave Hart Street, City of London on Tuesday 5th May 2026 based on the text of John 14.27-end.

On close reading of the short gospel passage this lunchtime, we can understand why it is often described as forming part of Jesus’s ‘farewell discourse’ – the wisdom he imparts to the disciples in the Upper Room on the night before he died. The language of departure – of taking leave – is self-evident. Some have described it as ‘Jesus’s last testament’.

The imminent finality of the moment is expressed – but the resignation is not hopeless. The short section we heard today forms part of a longer description of how Jesus promises to return in the person of the Spirit, to abide with the faithful. To guide them on the way ahead as they journey towards his Kingdom – no matter what travails and persecutions they may face from the rulers of the world.

And to help them, he promises a gift like no other.     

Peace.

Jesus’s promise of eternal peace is often heard at funerals or memorial services. To comfort those left behind in mourning. And it is perhaps when we experience trauma, such as the death of a loved one, that we most consciously seek it.

But our gospel passage reminds us that this gift-like-no-other is here now and always. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you, Jesus told his disciples.

A peace which stills our troubled hearts and calms our fears.

A peace which one writer described as so great that “the smiles of the world cannot give it or the frowns of the world take it away.”

A peace of the heart that – in St Paul’s words – “surpasses all understanding”.

The challenge to do so – to understand this deep peace and our desire for it - has been taken up over the centuries by some of our greatest philosophers, theologians – and more recently, scientists.

At the start of his “Confessions” – his great work of spiritual reflection describing his own complex path to faith, Saint Augustine states that we were created to be with God and that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him.

In recent years, scientists have discovered that it’s not just our hearts that are restless. Every atom of our being is in a constant state of flux or resonance. Reality – as we understand it scientifically – is contingent. Transient. Moving. Jarring.  

It is not absolute.

Some have suggested, by way of analogy, that the longing of which Augustine wrote is woven into the very fabric of our being – a reflection, in created things, of our desire to return to God our creator. The one who is infinite, absolute. And so to find our rest in Him: perfect peace.

The church has developed practices of prayer and worship to help us encounter the peace of which Jesus spoke on the night before he died. To perceive – in so far as we are able from this contingent world - the new reality which he revealed through his death, resurrection and ascension. Practices of prayer which help us to turn our troubled and fearful hearts to God – and to learn that peace is not about the absence of worry and anxiety, but recognising that these conditions of the world have no power over us when we surrender ourselves to our Saviour, Jesus Christ. The one who has already conquered sin and death.

The one we have promised to follow.

And so, not empty-handed, but bearing within us that gift-like-no-other – his peace – a peace which stills our hearts and casts out fear, let us ‘Rise up’ – and go from this place resting – trusting – in that peace – stepping out into a world which is yearning for it.