The peace Jesus promises isn’t a passive thing done to us, or a weapon to enforce conformity. It is the very love of God and it is already here.
God brings to life the peace that is already present.
Easter 6C | John 14:23-29
Let’s talk about peace.
I think we’re tempted to start with Jesus. We’re tempted to train our eyes on the one whom we follow. That’s our work as disciples, after all. To watch him, follow him, do what he does, say what he says, live as he lives.
So I think we want to know what exactly he means by “the peace he leaves” and “the peace he gives”. Which, by the way, sounds pretty redundant. But I don’t think we should start there.
I think we need to go instead to the line he says right after that one.
“I do not give to you as the world gives.”
Because we need to dwell on how much of a contrast God’s peace is from our definition of peace.
What is peace?
So what do we mean by peace?
The simple answer we go to is “the absence of war.”
This also isn’t far from the root of the word. It shares a linguistic path with “pact”. So in a sense, peace is defined by an agreement not to hurt each other.
So our minds get really practical really fast, don’t they? When we hear the word, peace, it doesn’t take long to get us from big, global events to very specific human interactions. Two nations at war, imperiling the globe can dive quickly down to a moment where a couple of people are sitting at a table, signing a treaty. The act can be local, but the impact can be global.
Peace, for us, is about human volatility, not just physical violence. It’s about the explosiveness of human interaction or the disruptions which destroy tranquility.
Peace then becomes an act of disrupting disruption. So we seek the minimizing of conflict through the stifling of dissent and the policing of influence. In other words, we shut people up when they get mouthy. Not because they are making waves, but because some people are really sensitive to there being any waves at all.
So peace in our world is the absence of war, negotiated neutrality, enforced tranquility. But that’s about the outside world. There’s also the internal space.
Peace of Mind
The other peace we talk about is having peace of mind. That sense of inner tranquility we don’t want disturbed, perhaps.
But the minding of this peace as tranquility isn’t only about the external world. What brings peace of mind is not just the absence of conflict, but economic insecurity and legal wranglings as well. It is the absence of oppressive thoughts or conditions: even ones which are self-imposed.
To find peace of mind, we come to church or go on retreats; we go to therapists or read self-help books. So often we see this inner conflict as personal. The solution must, therefore, be personal and self-directed. I made this bed, so now I have to lie in it, we might say.
In other words, freedom from the oppressive thoughts, to achieve peace of mind, comes from the mind which creates the thoughts.
The peace the world gives is absurd.
It is bullying, manipulative, and disrespectful of the oppressed. It values an unjust status quo over the mechanisms of change. But most of all, it is constantly defining itself, not by what it is, but by what it is not.
Remember in Introduction to Psychology, you likely learned a couple of useful terms: positive and negative. Now, we hear them and think: good and bad. Set that aside a minute. Positive also means something added to a situation. And negative means something removed from a situation.
So the term we most often hear about is “positive reinforcement,” right? Something added to encourage desirable behavior. So negative reinforcement is something removed to encourage desirable behavior. Then the other two: positive punishment: something added to discourage undesirable behavior and negative punishment: something removed to discourage undesirable behavior.
And you recall that positive reinforcement is the most effective of the four. And the reason is that the person receiving positive encouragement can most clearly comprehend what a good decision looks like. Just based on the information. They can tie the action with the desirable outcome.
On the other hand, removing a thing we don’t want says nothing about what we do want.
So when the world describes peace as a negative absence, it is an intentional refusal to tell you what the presence of peace really is.
Hebrew sends us on the right track.
This is why I love the word Shalom so much. It doesn’t describe peace only in negative terms, but also in positive terms. It is not just the absence of war, but the presence of…
Connection
Love
Wholeness
Justice
Mercy.
Shalom is an active term which combines that sense of peace we long for: tranquility and harmony: with the agency of making it real. Not just protecting something in place, but creating a new thing. And not with the fear of avoiding the next catastrophe, but with the openness to God restoring brokenness into wholeness.
The synonyms for peace are many! Justice. Wholeness. Love. Connectedness. Restoration.
So peace is way more than a truce or a ceasefire. The fragile connection between two parties isn’t the pinnacle of peace. It’s the beginning of peace.
Peace can’t thrive in the confines of injustice and inequity. We can’t make peace when we continue to allow discrimination and refuse to do the work of reconciliation. With these things present we can’t have peace because they are antonyms of peace.
And this may be really hard to hear, but honesty, inclusion, compassion, generosity, and healing are not obstacles to peace. Opening the door to strangers isn’t an obstacle to peace. Sharing the grace of God with anyone is not an obstacle to peace. These define peace.
This is why we fear the peace Jesus gives.
Jesus is not just offering peace of mind or an inner balance struggling to stay aloft on the head of a pin. This isn’t simply the end to war and division.
It’s fundamentally about restoration and creating a new world.
The most useful image to remember comes from Isaiah.
“The wolf shall live with the lamb”
Which is a beautiful, poetic image. But think one layer further. It isn’t opposites coexisting. This isn’t a yin-yang thing or Platonic dualism. The wolf is a carnivore and the lamb is an herbivore. They aren’t opposites: one lives by killing the other.
The Peaceable Kingdom is a vision in which wolves don’t kill lambs for survival anymore. Wolves have to be radically changed to be part of this beloved community.
But, and this will freak our equal-rights hearts right out, lambs don’t need to change a thing! Wolves have to do it all! Because lambs already inhabit a world of peace. And wolves don’t.
The peace of God demands wolves drop their weapons and change their diets. It isn’t a both sides sort of thing. Lambs aren’t responsible for looking tasty. But, in a truly reconciled world, the desire to destroy will disappear.
Peace is Present
So when Jesus says
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
He is leaving behind the tools for reconciliation; the means with which we can restore the world.
That peace is present. It is here. It is with us and in us. And it is now!
But it is not like an infinity gauntlet with which we can snap our fingers and have our way. We can’t control or command, obliterate or circumvent, silence or punish our way to peace.
It requires justice. Love. Hope. Conviction. It doesn’t happen to us, without us. Peace isn’t passive. And it doesn’t happen when we shout at the lambs for not changing enough to keep the wolves at the negotiation table.
It starts to happen when we open our hearts to God and one another. When we listen and are moved. Or when we dream together, build together, hope together.
God brings to life the peace that is already present. The peace we were born to live in and offer to each other. A peace of sharing, generosity, like a banquet, full of the best food, and there is plenty of room at the table for everybody.
That is, everybody who is willing to deal with the guest list! Which is full of people we’ve never met. And we don’t know who we’re going to be sitting next to. But they are going to love us regardless of who we are.