The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 13, 2007 Year C

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. John 14:27

Peace.

Peace is a word we use in church all the time. We pray for peace, of course, but we also talk about ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding.’ We hear the letters of Paul begin with invocations of peace. We pause in the midst of our liturgy to greet one another with ‘the peace of the Lord.’

Peace. We use this word regularly and we act as if we know exactly what it means. But I wonder if we have used this word so much that it has become weak, like old jeans, faded and worn after being washed too many times--comfortable but easily torn. I wonder if the warm fuzzy connotations we get when we pass the peace or talk about peace of mind really capture what Jesus meant when he promised his disciples that he was leaving his peace with them.

Thinking about this all week, I decided to do a little word study. Where does the word ‘peace’ come from? How has it been used? And just what do we mean when we talk about the ‘peace of God?’

In general usage, of course, peace connotes absence of war, an absence of conflict both in our lives in the world and in our interior lives, but in our liturgical and spiritual context the word and the concept have a much richer, more nuanced and multilayered meaning.

The Hebrew word for peace is ‘shalom’. This word appears frequently in Hebrew scripture, and in its OT context it did mean absence from war—something quite important for a people who were geographically situated between various “super powers” for much of their history, a people who were subject to invasion by the Assyrians, by the Hittites, by the Egyptians, and who suffered through long periods of religious and political subjugation and even being carried off into exile.

But shalom in Hebrew scripture has a deeper connotation as well, one of wholeness or well-being. Shalom was often used in conjunction with the notion of prosperity, indicating times of material well-being, good harvests, safety from wild beasts.

Shalom is also associated with moral concepts—with truth in the sense of faithfulness, and perhaps more importantly shalom is associated with justice and righteousness, especially in the prophets; Micah and Amos, and Isaiah in particular, connect peace with righteousness and with justice for the poor and oppressed.

Today we often speak of peace as something interior, something personal, but in the OT, peace is always relational—there is no individual ‘peace of mind’ or spiritual peace with God, but rather a collective, communal peace. And most importantly, shalom, peace is always a gift from God.

In the NT we find the Greek word for peace—‘eireinen’—from which we get words like ‘irenic.’ In classical Greek, this word normally meant just the absence of war but in the NT it takes on some of the connotations of ‘shalom’ as well as some new specifically Christian connotations. In the gospels of Luke and Mark, peace is associated with healing—Jesus sends those who have been healed to ‘go in peace’. In the epistles peace indicates not only absence of strife between individuals or nations, but also connotes harmony and order within communities of Christ followers. In the NT as well there is a connection between peace and spiritual blessing emphasized, and as in the Hebrew scripture, there is also a strong connection of peace with justice and mercy.

It’s clear from this word study, then, that ‘peace’ is much more than the absence of conflict, much more than the warm fuzziness we get when greeting our neighbors, much more than an inner sense of calmness and satisfaction. The peace of God, the peace promised by Jesus, the shalom that is a gift from God through out scripture may involve all of these things, but the peace of God, the shalom of God is really another way of talking about the Kingdom of God, that already but not yet kingdom in which we have our being and which we are bound to more fully instantiate in our lives and in the world. This kingdom, this place of peace, of shalom is the world the prophets envisioned when they called for righteousness and justice; it’s the world that Jesus envisioned in the Sermon on the Mount, it s the world he envisioned when he talked of feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, healing the sick.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori spoke of this world in her investiture sermon when she describes her understanding of the concept of shalom:

[Shalom] doesn't just mean the sort of peace that comes when we're no longer at war. It's that rich and multihued vision of a world where no one goes hungry because everyone is invited to a seat at the groaning board, it's a vision of a world where no one is sick or in prison because all sorts of disease have been healed, it's a vision of a world where every human being has the capacity to use every good gift that God has given, it is a vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of another, it's a vision of a world where all enjoy Sabbath rest in the conscious presence of God. Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation. It is that vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the small child playing over the den of the adder, where the specter of death no longer holds sway. It is that vision to which Jesus points when he says, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." To say "shalom" is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.

There’s an old hymn that ends with this verse:

The peace of God, it is no peace,
But strife closed in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing—
The marvelous peace of God (hymn 661, Wm. Percy)

For a long time, I didn’t understand that hymn, or like it. The opening verses, of course, talk about the disciples losing their lives in various ways, becoming martyrs for the faith. But I’ve come to think that the meaning is deeper than that. If we take seriously the concept of shalom, the concept of the peace of God as synonymous for the Kingdom of God, a world in which there is justice for all of humanity, it becomes clear that ‘peace’ is not some washed out, faded, feel-good word. Rather it is a word of strength, a word of power —God’s power to do more acting in us than we can ask or imagine. And it is word to embrace as we go forth to be God’s people and to do the work God has called us to do.

So as we leave this place to go back out into the world, may the peace of God that passes all understanding be among us and remain with us always.

AMEN