A discourse on peace (John 14: 23-29)

During the Farewell Discourse at the Last Supper,  Jesus tells his disciples: “Peace I leave to you.” PEACE, like “Love” is something we read and hear every day.  And yet, it can mean so many different things to different people.

Here are three questions about peace:

1) Where is the problem of peace?

2) What does peace mean in the promise of Jesus?

3) What should the word “peace” say to us?

1) What is the problem with peace?

Archbishop Thomas Becket expressed the problem powerfully in his Christmas sermon in the play “Murder in the Cathedral.”

He says, “Does it seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace; when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with war and the fear of war? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?”

The point is - this promise seems to be the opposite of reality. Not only for Becket, but for us too, there is no peace. There is constant war in the Middle East; genocide decimated Cambodia and Vietnam; Christians murder one another in Northern Ireland; villages are destroyed and thousands of people are massacred in several countries in Africa.

In our own country: wars between government troops and the NPA, the Abu Sayaff, and the attempted rebellion and power grab by certain elements in our country, the violence connected with our elections.

Where do we really find peace? Scripture itself is a paradox; some would call it plain contradiction.

At his birth and death, Jesus promised peace. But he also warned: “Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword” (Mt. 10:34), “dissension,” division and disunity (Lk. 12:51).

Is our liturgy, then, a make-believe, a fantasy, mere pretense? We run around hugging one another or shaking hands. “Peace!” we cry, “Shalom!” And there is no peace.

Is peace really possible? Even in the world inside ourselves, that world too is at war, filled with passions and fears, at times with anger and hate.

2) This problem raises a second question: What does peace mean in the promise of Jesus?

Biblical peace has so rich a content that no single English word can render it fully. It means that things are going well with you; you are happy; you feel secure; you have friends; you have fruitful land, eat your fill and sleep without fear or worry, multiply your offspring and triumph over your enemies.

But, for the Israelite, peace was not simply harmony with nature, with self, with others. True peace meant harmony with God, a right relationship with Yahweh: for “the Lord is peace.”

In this sense peace was salvation, a salvation that was indeed being worked out in history and would be realized to perfection only in ultimate communion with Him, who gives all that is good.

Such is the meaning of Solomon’s Wisdom: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God… In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died… and their going from us [was thought] to be their destruction; but they are at peace.”

Precisely here is the bond between the Old Testament and the New. The peace Jesus announces is a saving peace. “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” Luke is so clear on this. The sinful woman, who washed his feet with her tears can “go in peace”, because her sins have been forgiven.

With their greeting “Peace to this house,” the disciples offered salvation to the towns, where Jesus would come. As the disciples went to radiate Easter peace to the ends of the earth, Peter preaches: “You know the word which [God] sent to Israel, preaching the good news that is peace, and peace is the gospel.”

What Luke narrated, Paul explained. The heart of his message is a short, glorious sentence: “He is our peace.” If you forget all else, remember that resounding affirmation: “Christ is our peace.” How?

Here, Paul proclaims in inspired language that Christ is our peace because he “has broken down the wall of hostility” that divides Jew and Gentile. Christ is our peace because “through him God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things… making peace by the blood of his cross.”

This is the peace that is “the fruit of the Spirit,” the peace that “passes all understanding,” the peace that endures in distress and tribulation, the peace that “will keep your hearts and your mind in Christ Jesus.”

This is the peace that will find its consummation in endless, rapturous communion with God.

3) If such is the gospel of peace, God’s own good news, what should the word “peace” say to us?

In the first place, it should challenge our Christian intelligence. What meaning above all others does “peace” have for you? For a soldier, peace is the absence of war, for an honest politician, no guns, no goons, no cheating, for a mother, a child asleep.

If you live on campus, peace can be after all the students have gone home. Peace might be the end of a tough day. If you are hurting, peace is an hour without pain.

But at bottom the peace of Christ is not a psychological state resulting from God’s life within you; peace is your communion with God. You are one with Him in love. Is this how you understand peace?

And if this is basic Christian peace, then the peace of Christ can coexist with war in the world, with human agony, with death and a thousand other forms of human dying.

This coexistence Christ predicted: “I have said this to you that in me you may find peace. In the world you find suffering, but have courage: I have conquered the world.”

The “world” here is all that which is hostile to God. In that world, where you must live and die, you will indeed find distress and tribulation. God never promised you a rose garden of comfortable easy fun-filled life. In that world you indeed need courage to survive, to overcome.

And your courage comes from the fact that Jesus Christ, who is your peace, has conquered the world, has broken its power, not by force but by a total surrender to love consummated in crucifixion.

But it will not do to clutch the peace of Christ like Linus’ security blanket and endure the world’s distress. Precisely because you have been reconciled to God in Christ, you have been sent, have been missioned, to this world at war, this world in distress. If Christ conquered the world, so must each Christian.

The paradox is:  By opening your heart to others you will experience the peace of Christ that is there, feel his real presence.

I pray that you will feel it, that the presence of Christ will make you tremble – aware that Heaven is – not up, but within!