the peace of Christ in a world of trouble

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

John 14:27; NRSVue

I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”

John 16:33; NRSVue

In his Upper Room Discourse, Jesus made it clear to his disciples what they would face, but also that they would have all that they need to stay the course, and follow in no less than his way, the way of the cross, the way of love.

I’m smacked up against trouble of one kind or another most every day. Some of it can seem threatening and dangerous, indeed is, not so much at this point because of my own faith, but just living in a broken, fallen world.

Christ promises us his peace unbroken in the midst of it all. Part of shalom I take it, but he is speaking here of an inward peace, a tranquility right in the midst of the storm.

I easily want to run from that, and do. But I want to do better, and I think I am at least in the sense of coming back to the posture of faith Christ calls me to. And it’s all the more powerful as we learn to do that together as Christ’s body through our regular gatherings.

The peace of Christ in a world of trouble promised just as much to us as to his disciples in days of old.

yes peace, for Christ’s sake

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.“

Acts 10:34-36; NRSVue

I don’t know how we can’t be more than hoping for peace, peace, and more peace in this war torn, angry, divisive, hate-filled, deceived and deceptive mess which is too much of this life and world. We long, long, long for peace. But is it good enough to just have peace?

If we define peace as absence of conflict, wouldn’t that be wonderful? If we add to that definition justice in human flourishing on an individual and communal as well as systemic level, then we’re getting closer to the Biblical meaning of peace (shalom, שָׁלוֹם).

Peace in and of itself is not enough. There was Pax Romana and we’ve heard “peace through strength.” Sometimes something like that has been justified on the basis of an acceptance of something akin to Christendom or a Christian nationalistic ideal which somehow justifies imposing peace through physical force. Many problems, even dangers result. One is the cycle of violence. Violated peoples don’t forget, and once given the chance, will seek revenge.

Christ came in large part to put an end to that violence through the peace given by the blood of his cross, his death. This is a peace which ultimately reconciles all peoples. Too many will say, in the sweet by and by. Yes, there too. But it’s meant to challenge the powers that be now. Only we in Christ carry that peace. Not to say that Christ’s peace isn’t somehow disseminated in the world through those who perhaps don’t know his name. But Christ is always and forever the source of that one true lasting forever peace.

But here on the ground we have to learn to do the hard work of bringing that peace into the most difficult situations. Yes, it won’t always work, especially among those who are set in their ways, be it religious, political or otherwise. But we must press on together in Christ to work at bringing in the peace that only Christ can bring, amongst ourselves and for the world. For the world’s sake, and for Jesus’s sake as well.

keep pressing forward no matter what

My soul clings to the dust;
revive me according to your word.
When I told of my ways, you answered me;
teach me your statutes.
Make me understand the way of your precepts,
and I will meditate on your wondrous works.
My soul melts away for sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word.
Put false ways far from me,
and graciously teach me your law.
I have chosen the way of faithfulness;
I set your ordinances before me.
I cling to your decrees, O LORD;
let me not be put to shame.
I run the way of your commandments,
for you enlarge my understanding.

Psalm 119:25-32

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. seems to be celebrated across the board nowadays, though I’m sure that if he were still present, some would at best only grant him a grudging respect. Some of the same elements that he and the Civil Rights Movement were up against, have come to the fore today, saying and standing for some of the very same things which he was challenging. King was committed to nonviolent resistance to evil, always in love for enemies, grounded in the promise of shalom in the gospel of Christ.

Part of King’s story was the need to go on no matter what, whatever pressures were being faced internally or externally. This is something of the same lesson I have to keep going through, of course in my case, in much lesser matters. I find that I have to just keep pushing through, going through by faith. And one of the most important aspects for me to remember is to simply accept the heaviness, fear, whatever it may be I’m experiencing, and keep going through in faith.

If I resist those negative experiences, as a friend reminded me this morning, I’m resisting it in the power of the flesh which will get me nowhere. If I’m getting nowhere over time, that’s a sure sign that I’m going about it wrong. But going on in the Spirit, means I accept whatever I’m experiencing, that being a part of trusting God instead of thinking that somehow it’s up to me to get rid of it. At least this is something which has worked for me over and over. Though it seems like I still have to be reminded the hard way.

Martin Luther King Jr. was able to be triumphant through it all, because he did not try to escape reality, but was willing under the leadership of the Spirit, to confront it head on, along with others. Part of what Christ calls all of his followers to.

Advent: hope for a broken, breaking world

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

Luke 2:13-14

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:13-14; KJV

Advent on the Christian church calendar is a season of hope, remembering the anticipation of Christ’s first coming as we long for his second coming when at long last this weary world rejoices.

Most all of us are tired, weary and worn, even as we enjoy the gifts and blessings of this life. But we long for more, much more, and for good reason, considering all the world’s ills. We desire that promised “peace on earth, good will toward men.” According to what’s considered a better textual reading, “peace among those whom he favors!”

Given the evil found all over the world, it seems sadly that the only way shalom, or peace is possible is through final judgment. Judgment comes from grace and precedes salvation. We have to be saved from something threatening or hanging over us, victimizing us and others, to be saved to something better, the full restoration of humanity and creation as God intends.

This is at the heart of the hope of Advent. We know the best that can be accomplished in this world can’t measure up to that. Though part of this Advent hope includes a willingness to try to find God’s light in this darkness to address issues such as war, famine and starvation, climate change, the disparity between the rich and the poor, etc. That is if we follow the concern and passion found in the Bible. Otherwise we might settle for a Platonic salvation in which heaven is what ultimately matters since this world is to be burned anyhow.

Instead we need to see that God’s care is for all creation, indeed that God loves all that God has made. And that followers of Christ along with the rest of humanity should work towards a better world. And that what we do now somehow in God’s will makes a difference that ends up being eternal since matter is just as much a part of the world to come as is spirit.

We who are followers of Christ bear witness to the hope promised, that the God who made all things in the first place, has promised to remake all things in Christ, which actually is beginning even now. Advent a wonderful season to reflect on that.

fellowship

what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

1 John 1:3

Central to and part of the core of the Christian faith is fellowship, or what some might prefer to call communion. Just as God in God’s triunity is in communion with God’s self, of course something we can’t parse out and understand, so we humans are created to live in such a relationship in harmony with God and each other. Fellowship or communion is at the heart of who God is, the nature of God. And so if God is a reality, or in Christian or Jewish terms maybe we could say the overriding reality, then any fellowship with God automatically takes us into this space with God and with each other.

Of course as the biblical story tells us, and as we see all too clearly in life, such harmony is rarely present, and indeed our fellowship and communion is indeed broken, or at least strained and cracked. This is not where we live or at least not what characterizes our existence. We are off on another quest, far removed from that so that we’re actually removed from life itself.

But Christ, what is called the cosmic Christ, but not divorced from the Jesus of the gospels, in fact united with that, is really the reality that gives humanity the hope which brings humanity together toward a harmonious whole. In this time and present existence there will always be the principalities and powers, both human and spiritual, which are ever resistant and downright opposed to this, infiltrating everywhere. We need to know that the answer is present in Christ, but that the struggle in the present will continue. Not that there can’t be progress, but it seems that this side of the end will always include opposition and struggle.

The fellowship here is not only a sense of blissful intercourse, but also a love which is concerned for all in the love for our neighbor as ourselves. It is a fellowship not at rest until what is true in Christ becomes something true of the world itself, of all things, certainly to be finished when Christ returns, but something we are to be committed to here and now. As we more and more live and experience with each other the reality in God and in Christ by the Spirit.

it will come

I will stand at my watchpost
and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me
and what he will answer concerning my complaint.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so that a runner may read it.
For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
it speaks of the end and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.
Look at the proud!
Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faithfulness.
Moreover, wealth is treacherous;
the arrogant do not endure.
They open their throats wide as Sheol;
like Death they never have enough.
They gather all nations for themselves
and collect all peoples as their own.

Habakkuk 2:1-5

This prophetic, poetic book is poignant for our times. We too live in the midst of destructive, even self-destructive machinations on the part of nations as well as tribal allegiances in such nations. And in this, as well as in so much of the world’s history, God seems all but absent.

But as I was reminded recently in our church fellowship, we have hope as a discipline, and indeed like in the case of Habakkuk of old, that hope is given to us from God. Hope, as Paul tells us elsewhere (Romans 8) is not something we already possess, but rather something that we wait for. But somehow such hope sustains us.

All the while we continue in the struggle for what is good, just and true in the sphere of a sustained, responsible, whole love which in the end is for the very best for everyone and for all.

how does true shalom (שָׁלוֹם) come?

So then, remember that at one time you gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone; in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Ephesians 2:11-22

Shalom (שָׁלוֹם) ordinarily translated “peace” in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament is a great study in itself. It certainly is the absence of conflict and violence, but means so much more. It includes all that contributes to and is involved in human flourishing along with the flourishing of all creation.

There is what continues to be, the settled belief that peace comes through strength, meaning military might, and that might (somehow) makes right. That’s a given not just in ancient times, but in the present. The Roman empire is among those who imposed their will in that way. And that is just as alive and well today, with the idea that what the world power does can change reality supposedly for the good, though given the makeup of the world in all its many diverse expressions along with inevitable problems, that indeed is impossible and always backfires.

When all is said and done, true, lasting, forever peace which brings the salvation and healing needed comes only through Christ. Of all people in the world, those who name that name ought to know better than to think anything else. Somehow in the brush heap of history God does use nations and kingdoms in ways that are well beyond our understanding even if we might be able to note some of the possibilities and even good coming out of that, along with what is questionable and not good.

In Christ alone comes the peace and good that the world needs. Not in any nation state, not in one. Through his reconciling death which is meant to put an end to all conflict. Christ took the final blow of humanity to end the chain and stop the endless cycle of violence and to bring about the shalom which only God can bring. Meant to be seen today yes in a humble way, but totally real, in Christ through Christ’s body in the world.

putting on the whole armor of God: the helmet of salvation

Take the helmet of salvation…

Ephesians 6:17a

We wait for justice, but there is none;
for salvation, but it is far from us.
For our transgressions before you are many,
and our sins testify against us.
Our transgressions indeed are with us,
and we know our iniquities:
transgressing and denying the LORD
and turning away from following our God,
talking oppression and revolt,
conceiving lying words and uttering them from the heart.
Justice is turned back,
and deliverance stands at a distance,
for truth stumbles in the public square,
and uprightness cannot enter.
Truth is lacking,
and whoever turns from evil is despoiled.

The LORD saw it, and it displeased him
that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one
and was appalled that there was no one to intervene,
so his own arm brought him victory,
and his righteousness upheld him.
He put on righteousness like a breastplate
and a helmet of salvation on his head…

Isaiah 59:11b-17a

But since we belong to the day, let us be sober and put on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

1 Thessalonians 5:8

The helmet of salvation in what’s considered the classic spiritual warfare passage in Ephesians 6 is usually considered something like the assurance of the believer’s salvation, at least the “hope” of it, as we see in 1 Thessalonians 5. It is part of the armor of God. And mostly the idea for at least many in the annals of Christianity that we’re told to put it on, but supposedly for many the thought of what lies after death being entirely in God’s hands, and that no one can presume to know. Maybe something we can take out of that is that we’re not to be so caught up in this so that it becomes our main concern while this “helmet” is still vital for us to wear. As we have an active faith in God, so we believe that God will take care of our salvation. That this is personal, yes for the church, but also for each individual of the church is certainly the case. Yes, important. But it surely doesn’t stop there.

The prophet Isaiah point to the sins of God’s people being the reason that there was no justice in their midst, for themselves and especially for others. When you read Isaiah and the rest of the prophets you find that among God’s prime concerns are justice especially for the poor and for aliens, widows and orphans. And when Israel was sinning, such justice was lacking. Interestingly it’s God who puts on the helmet of salvation and other armor to bring correction and justice. Couldn’t that possibly suggest something as to the meaning of the helmet of salvation in Ephesians 6:10-20 beyond just our own personal salvation? I think so.

We’re to work on our salvation together (Philippians 2:12-13) so that hopefully no one will be left behind (Hebrews 12:15). We as the church are in this together. But salvation doesn’t stop there.

We also hope for the salvation of the world (John 3:16-17). Yes, in terms that all would have faith. And also bringing God’s deliverance and healing to all. And through that breaking down systems of evil. Light exposing darkness and bringing with that God’s judgment and salvation, yes bringing true justice along with mercy. The power of the gospel.

So the helmet of salvation we’re to put on surely includes all that salvation means, yes even in the present as we wait for the final salvation to come with righteousness, justice and peace in the new heavens and earth when Christ returns (2 Peter 3:13).

revolutions/revolutionary change comes over distress

After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.

Exodus 2:23-25

Yesterday I posted on how revolutionary change takes time. Logically what precedes that is the actual need which can begin the process of change.

It would be nice if everyone could simply sit down and figure out what is best for all, and have that be an ongoing process with everyone in full participation. What is best for all would certainly exclude wars and all that troubles the world, but given the greed and pride that is rampant, given the spirit of the age in which in part and in many places people are out for themselves, that is simply a pipe dream.

People need to understand that we are essentially one, just one human race with many different expressions, cultural expressions of that. Sadly we’re the ones that foster and honor division. All should indeed bring their distinctive gifts and contributions to the table.

Instead like when Israel groaned, in deep trouble and distress in Egypt, need presses in to the place where people can no longer breathe, and need an escape. That’s when the beginning of the needed revolution and change can come.

For Christ followers, the Jesus we read of in the gospel accounts and what follows is the way, the truth and the life to the actual change the world needs both in terms of the means and the end, we might say especially the means since we’re referring to the way of the cross. There’s no other way in a world that is in such need, even total need of change. No less than a new creation is needed to not replace, but bring the change for which creation now groans (Romans 8). And the church is central for this outworking today.

The simple thought in this post is that whether on a global, international, national scale, in community and in our individual lives, it seems we often have to hit something of a bottom, so that we’ll be content with nothing less than the change that is needed. And will set ourselves in that direction, to participate together with others in the struggle. For us Christ followers, in and through Jesus.

putting on the whole armor of God: lacing sandals in preparation for good news of peace

and lace up your sandals in preparation for the gospel of peace.

Ephesians 6:15

Whether this means being ready to spread the word of the good news of peace (Common English Bible) or being established by that peace to have a firm footing in life (New Living Translation), the peace promised as good news is included as part of the spiritual armor which the believer along with the church is to put on. Surely both are important for us. We share with others what is helpful for ourselves.

Peace in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament is the word transliterated shalom which means not only the absence of conflict, but all that life is intended to be, which is a mouthful. It speaks of flourishing and all being well. Where that is most to be found today will be among and in the community of Jesus’s disciples. Jesus told his disciples that he gives them his peace, and pronounced the blessing of peace on them, telling them not to let their hearts be troubled, nor afraid.

God has made peace in and through Christ who by his life and death brings the final reconciliation of all things, enemies becoming friends, beginning now. This happens through the good news of peace, good news also named with the technical term, gospel, the gospel of peace. As the New Oxford Annotated Bible points out, it’s good to see what this letter, Ephesians says about peace.

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both* into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Ephesians 2:14-18

We share this good news of peace, a goodness that ultimately even if only in part now, is meant to bring reconciliation and healing into relationships, a peace to move us toward wellness in relationship with others. In which we can be confident through Christ that since all will end well, we can be rest assured in the midst of that being incomplete now.

This often seems like a pipe dream now, and there are after all limitations in this life. Those abused should not expect to see full reconciliation with their abusers. Often that’s not possible, and to try to force that, or expect more than possible is unhealthy and not wise. But insofar as it depends on us, we live at peace with everyone (Romans 12).

And we trust through prayer and thanksgiving that God’s peace which passes all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4). As we seek to stand firm in this spiritual battle on the footing of this peace, proclaimed and present in and through Jesus.

*Jews and gentiles.