On my way to someplace or another this week, I heard some local radio hosts discussing their weekend plans. One of them was getting ready to take his daughter on a Father-Daughter camping trip with the Girl Scouts. And while this father was beginning to worry about the forecasted break in the warm weather, his daughter had other concerns. Once she realized this camping trip would fall on mother's day weekend, the young girl began to worry that her mother's feelings would be hurt.

As it turns out, when the father-daughter duo announced their plans, the soon-to-be-abandoned parent had to struggle to conceal her excitement. Gently, but firmly she reassured the two that it would be okay for them to go on the camping trip, all the while secretly looking forward to pausing for a few moments of peace.

The day we now mark as Mother's Day was not always about celebrating the vocation of motherhood, or giving mothers a "time out" from their daily duties. In fact, it was women themselves who, in the mid-19th century, organized Mother's Work Days to improve sanitation and to foster friendship between union and confederate troops. A few years later, a woman by the name of Julia Ward Howe called upon women to cultivate a Mother's Day for Peace. Howe was simply asking mothers to do what mothers have always done...advocate for their children. And her hope was that, by working together, women could put an end to war by persuading people around the world to lay down their weapons and pause for the sake of peace.

Today's scripture reading from the gospel of John gives all of us reason to pause for peace. Our text for this sixth Sunday in the Easter season takes us back to an exchange Jesus had with his disciples prior to his death. Here, in this follow-up to last week's reading, Jesus continues to bid his friends farewell as he prepares them for the changes they are about to face.

Throughout this portion of John's gospel, Jesus promises the disciples that even in his physical absence, they will not be left alone. Jesus reminds his anxious followers that the bond he has forged with them unbreakable. And Jesus repeatedly reassures them that the same web of love will follow them into the future. In the days ahead, Father, Son and Spirit will dwell among them in surprising, new ways.

Despite all these reassurances, it's pretty clear that the disciples really don't know what to think. Looking for specifics, they long to know what this mystic connectedness will look like. Questions abound. You're going where? And why? What will this mean for us? And how exactly are you going to reveal yourself to us?

Time and again, Jesus responds to the disciples using relational terms, words he hopes will echo in their hearts long after he has "gone to the Father". Then, in a last-ditch attempt to break through their stunned stupor, Jesus pauses to offer the disciples a word of peace. "Peace I leave with you," he tells them, "My peace I give to you." Jesus hands to his beloved friends a couple of phrases lovely enough to fill a frame. Still, these words leave them, and us, with plenty to ponder. What does this gift of peace look like, after all?

Part of the beauty of divine peace, of course, is that it lies beyond the grasp of human understanding, which means we can never fully parse passages like the one in today's gospel reading . Yet Jesus does help refine the disciples' understanding. For one thing, Jesus tells his disciples the peace he gives is not peace of the sort that is up for grabs in the world. And this was no small declaration, since Jesus and his disciples were living during the period of Pax Romana, otherwise known as "the peace of Rome".

During this time, the Roman empire introduced the idea that a nation could prosper without making military conquests in foreign lands. It was a radical thought at the time and there was indeed a lull in strifes of the physical sort. But the empire quickly learned that keeping the peace, as it were, required external measures. Laws and officers, courts and consequences were needed to maintained order when tension arose. And while warfare mostly ceased, and provinces like Judea were allowed certain freedoms, it was only because they submitted to Roman laws and paid taxes to the Roman empire. The peace of Rome was, for many people, a sort of pseudo-peace. At its worst, the peace of Rome was coercive and divisive. At its best, this new form of worldly peace was conditional.

Scripture paints a very different picture when it comes to depicting the peace that is ushered in by Christ. While rulers of this world pad the pockets of the wealthy, Jesus caters to the least of these. While the rulers of this world maintain peace using laws and limits; God's love nutures peace by a love that knows no bounds. God's reign of peace is founded not in fear, but rather, in freedom. God's peace is not subject to the constraints of human time, but instead endures forever.

Today the enduring peace of Christ gives pause. For today Jesus invites us to dwell in a new reality. Today we are called to allow the peace which passes all understanding to seep deep into our souls, to redefine our relationships with one another and the world around us. You might say that our gospel is another invitation to honor the sabbath during this season of Easter. It is a summons to rest in the reality that God has defeated whatever threatens to undo us in this world.

And isn't that what our gathering in this space is all about? When we enter into this time of worship together, we enter into a new reality. There is a prayer for welcoming the Sabbath that sums it up well. It reads: "...in the silence of our praying place we close the door upon the hectic joys and fears, the accomplishments and anguish of the week we have left behind."

You and I come together in this place at a mutually agreed upon time, according to our worldly clocks. But once we have entered into worship, we find ourselves moving and breathing on God's time, living into God's reality, indeed, God's peace.

In water and word, bread and wine, Jesus comes. The Spirit makes a home in our hearts and God gives us the grace to let go of the cares and concerns that brought us here in the first place. As we allow our Lord's love to nourish us, it dawns on us that most of the matters over which we obsess are simply not worth dying for. And yet, our Lord assures us that you and I, and a world restored, those things were worth a trip to the grave. Somehow knowing that is just enough to stir us to begin againin Christ's peace.