Peace Is Not a Passing Feeling.
What if we felt settled amid conflict, noise, and inner irritation?
Do you have anxiety that voices itself in the muscles and joints of your body?
Do you feel drained in soul?
Are you wearied in spirit?
The disciples of Jesus knew all about this. Imagine the disciples climbing the creaking stairs to the Upper Room. Can you imagine the scent of olive oil emanating from the surrounding stone walls—their sense of smell taking in the memory of decades of burning lamps? Yet, nothing in their hearts was very bright in the dimming afternoon light straining to get in through the small windows.
Can you imagine clusters of them standing around, awkwardly, wondering why Jesus had led them here? They thought they had come to Jerusalem for Jesus to do something dramatic, to put earthly and evil powers in their place, to assert his lordship, his claim of his messiahship, to finally show the powers that be who the real lord is.
Shouldn’t the disciples be making a commanding public, political show on the streets below?
Just when it seemed their anxiety would swirl out of control, Jesus spoke:
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me…peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:1, 27
As he had many times before, Jesus was pointing to, articulating, and ushering the disciples into a new reality. The disciples noticed that Jesus experienced the ups and downs of life much more serenely than they did. He usually explained it as the overflow of his relationship with his Father in heaven. They could see the effect, but they had no capacity to grasp the inner reality from which it came.
The Master’s words revealed to the disciples a new way of being when they experienced times of pain and stress:
Peace.
Questions
This story raises a couple questions crucial to our followership of Jesus:
What is peace?
How does one attain it?
When I am not clear about some aspect of Christian spirituality, I return to this quote from Eugene Peterson: Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meaning of words.
It is the life of Jesus, his words, works, and manner of being that defines and illumines peace. In Jesus, we see the truth that peace is not just a passing feeling, but a new way of being in the world. Jesus was conveying to his agitated friends a new ability to be settled and centered amid conflict, noise, irritation, and social/political strife.
I can almost hear one of his disciples later testifying:
When he said my peace, we knew he was referring to something we had never seen in another leader or experienced ourselves. Jesus had an inner stillness when strife was in the air. He was cool-headed in moments of contention, unruffled when others were in unrest, tranquil in times turmoil and trouble.
Jesus embodied the Divine shalom that God intends for his creation—a peace that will someday cover the whole earth.
How Do We Attain Peace?
What if peace is not an attainment—not something to strive for? Such striving just causes different kinds of stresses. What if peace is simply saying yes to an invitation? Jesus said he was giving something—his peace! That puts us in the posture of receiving, not straining.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews saw the all-surpassing value of God-gifted rest in a human life, and in human societies. He wrote, “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest” (Hebrews 4:11). That sounds like a contradiction. But what if the effort involved is simply the confident reception of a gift, like holding out your hands to a loved one at your birthday to receive a thoughtful, carefully chosen gift?
Jesus still stands in the middle of human history holding out to us the completeness, the soundness, the healing of shalom that is at work in the world, seeking to make it whole again.
This restful peace is a close cousin to assurance about how things will turn out because of confidence in God’s loving and powerful rule and reign. This allows us to drop our need to control outcomes.
Then we are not just at peace, but we possess the power to be peacemakers.
Come, holy peace.