What is Peace?

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

Let us look at three questions about peace:  1) Where is the problem of peace? 2) What does peace mean in the promise of Jesus? 3) What ought the word “peace” say to us?

What is the problem with peace? Archbishop Thomas Becket expressed the problem powerfully in his Christian sermon in the play “Murder in the Cathedral.” He says, “Does it seem strange to you that the angels announced Peace; when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with war and 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 some African countries, the threat of ISIS. The terrorist bombs are always a threat; villages are destroyed and thousands of people are massacred in some countries, refugees have become a global crisis.

In our own country, wars between government troops and the NPA, the Abu Sayaff, and the warlords and private armies, the violence connected with our elections. Where is peace? 

Even in our urban areas the crime situation of killings, rapes, kidnappings, robbery, and other violence steal away our peace.  Where do we really find peace?

In fact, Scripture itself is a paradox; some would call it plain contradiction.  At his birth and death, Jesus promises peace. But in the midst of his preaching he warns: “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, mere play-acting?  We run around hugging one another or shaking hands.  “Peace!” we cry, “Shalom!”  And there is no peace.

Is peace really possible?  Or, is “peace” another of those empty words that allow Christians to live at ease in a world of war, to forget the real world is out there, and that world is made up of blood and tears? To forget that there is a real world inside ourselves, and that world too is at war,

fill with passions and fears, at times with anger and hate?

This problem raises a second question: What does peace mean in the promise of Jesus? For that, you must go back to the Old Testament. 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 “Lord is peace.” In this sense peace was salvation, a salvation that was indeed being worked out in history but would be realized to perfection only in ultimate communion with [God] 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 [Jesus’] his feet with her tears can “go in peace,” because her sins have been forgiven.

With their greeting “Peace to this house,” the disciples offer salvation to the towns, where Jesus will come.  As they escort Jesus with joy into Jerusalem, their cry of “peace” proclaims a redemption, which the city will reject. And when they go out 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 narrates, Paul explains.  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, “that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God.”

Christ is our peace because “through him God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things… making peace by the blood of his cross.”

Christ is our peace, because only through him do all of us “have one access in one Spirit to the Father.” Christ is our peace, because it is by his gathering us “in a single body” that his peace rules in our hearts. That 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 minds in Christ Jesus.” This is the peace that will find its consummation in endless, rapturous communion with God. For the biblical “God of peace” is a God who saves, and a heart at peace is a heart one with God in Christ.

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?   It will vary, of course.  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, where sin tyrannizes, hate smothers love, death destroys life. It is humankind inasmuch as it is anti-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 precence.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, in a few moments you will wish one another peace.  Realize what it is that a Christian nourished on Scripture wishes another Christian when you say “peace.” It means: “With all my heart, I wish you and pray, the salvation God took flesh to bring, the redemption from sin Christ brought with his blood.”

“I wish you the grace of God that is the beginning of glory that is eternal life here and now.”

“I wish you deeper and deeper oneness with God, I pray that you will feel it, that the presence of Christ will make you tremble – aware that Heaven is – not up, but in!”