May 16, 2004 - Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 14: 23-29
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Psalm 67
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Acts 16: 9-15
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"Seeing Shalom"

Yesterday one of my sons, Erik, called me, asking about my father’s golfing career.  My father died in 1979, before either of my sons was born.  My dad was a gifted golfer.  Erik was involved in a conversation with someone—perhaps his roommates and they may have been comparing family sport hero stories.  In the conversation, I remembered my dad’s golf trophies which I have boxed away and I promised Erik that we would get them out next time he was here.

I realized that there is really very little I have from my father.  A few pieces of jewelry, a few old books, some pictures.  And his trophies.  That is what I have left of him, that is his legacy to me, at least in material terms.

In today’s gospel text, Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples and is leaving them his legacy.  Jesus is speaking to the disciples in the upper room, before his arrest and crucifixion.  This is one part of a larger farewell discourse in John.  In today’s gospel text Jesus answers a question put to him: “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”  Or, how is it that we will know you, or that believers will know you, but the rest of the world might not?

Jesus answers in terms of relationship, of love and hope and possibility.  “Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  Once he is gone, Jesus says the spirit will be here to teach and remind them all that he taught.

And then, in verse 27, is what is the key to this passage:  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.”  This contains a new promise.  This is the first occurrence in John’s gospel of the word “peace.” In the Hebrew scripture, or Old Testament, “peace” would be in the original Hebrew “shalom.”

Shalom is the Hebrew word that Jesus would have used in reference to the peace he promises.  “Shalom” has no real equivalent in the English language.  It is at first a greeting, used for hellos and goodbyes.  Moreover, it means “peace,” though its meaning is broader and deeper than we sometimes think of that word. Shalom refers to inner peace, joy, the fullness of life.  Shalom means everything that makes for the highest good.  It is a peace that takes us into the realms of righteousness, justice, wholeness, living out of very deep wells of faithfulness. Shalom is more than the mere absence of conflict, it is being attuned to that which is of the holy.

So Jesus is saying, “Shalom I leave with you” – this peace beyond peace, this living in true righteousness, living aware of the highest good for all God’s creation.  And in this context, here in the upper room on that night before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus is not simply saying goodbye to his disciples with this promise of peace.  A few verses earlier, in verse 18, Jesus says “I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you.” So Jesus promised not to leave the disciples orphans—that is, they will not be alone—because they will live in the peace of Jesus.  The peace that he offers is not the world’s peace—not merely a comfortable promise of security or an end of conflict.  The peace that Jesus gives is a shalom derived from the heart of Jesus’ life in God, a life which we share.

So this is what Jesus leaves us.  This is his legacy to us – peace, or shalom.  He had little else to leave.  Even his clothes would soon be the property of the crucifixion squad of soldiers.  But there was one thing he could give – shalom.  And so we are the beneficiaries of the peace of Christ.

And yet there is so much brutality and ugliness in the world, so much evil, that it is difficult to see this shalom, to experience this peace.  In our own lives, in our own wider communities, there is so much need, so much lack.  How do we see this shalom when it is so often not visible?

*  *  *  *  *

Frederick Buechner is a Presbyterian minister and prolific author.  In one essay he tells of his grandmother whom he called “Naya.”  Naya was like a lot of us, he said, having both happy and sad times.  But it seemed that no matter what happened to her, “she seemed always to remain remarkably and invincibly herself.  Even when her life was shattered by the deaths of those she loved and other kinds of loss or failure, she seemed to remain so serene and intact that it was as if she lived out of some deep center within herself that was beyond the reach of circumstance.”

The last time Buechner saw her was in 1961 when Naya was 94 and had a broken hip and so was confined to a nursing home.  In a thank you note after that visit Naya described herself as “an old crone in a dark little room.”

She so described herself somewhat humorously, perhaps.  In his essay, Buechner says:  “She was indeed an old crone in a dark little room, as she said, but … she could see clearly and without either bitterness or complaint that that was what the years had reduced her to, because there was something in her that was half amused at the sight and to that extent untouched by it, (so) she was of course a good deal more than that, too.  There was a room inside her that was neither dark nor little, and in that room she remained … beautiful and at peace and full of wit and eloquence to the end. It is a glimpse of at least some important aspect of wholeness that I carry with me to this day.”

Buechner says that to be whole requires that you see the world whole.  He says:  “The world floods in on all of us.  The world can be kind, and it can be cruel…It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to give up all hope.”

It is in Jesus, Buechner suggests, that we see another way of being human in this world, a way that is of wholeness, or shalom.

In another dark and little room, on that night in the upper room, Jesus huddled in the confines, saying goodbye to the disciples and saying goodbye to life itself and everything he had lived for.  And yet he looks around the room at the disciples and says “Peace, I leave you,” when you and I would have thought there was no peace anywhere, for we know and he knew of the events to come.  But the peace he spoke of was not the peace of the world, which is fleeting.  The peace he spoke of is a peace that, Buechner said, “sees with unflinching clarity the tragic and terrible things that are happening and yet is not shattered by them.”

And yet looking out at the world these days, it is difficult not to feel shattered.  Especially this last week, as the images of the global situation have become so much more frightening, grotesque and dark.  We have literally seen images now of an innocent civilian, Nicholas Berg, murdered – beheaded – on video and those images spread across the world on the Internet.  Where, in all this, where is shalom? Where is God?  How do we see the shalom Jesus has promised amid all this?

How do we see these images coming out of the war and maintain that we still live in Christ’s shalom? How do we, in our own lives here in our community, see peace amid the anxieties of contemporary life?  How do we see love amid estrangement and loneliness?  How do we see vitality amid disease?  How do we see abundance amid lack?  How do we see life amid the shadows of death?

We see God in the world, we see the holy amid the profane, if we see with the eyes of Christ. 

In the same essay, Frederick Buechner says:

“All his life long, wherever Jesus looked he saw the world not in terms simply of its brokenness—a patchwork of light and dark calling forth in us now our light, now our dark—but in terms of the ultimate mystery of God’s presence buried in it like a treasure buried in a field…To be whole, I believe, is to see the world like that.  To see the world like that, as Jesus saw it, is to be whole.  And sometimes I believe that even people like you and me see it like that.  Sometimes even in the midst of our confused and broken relationships with ourselves, with each other, with God, we catch glimpses of that holiness and wholeness that is not ours by a long shot and yet is part of who we are.”

To be whole is to see the world, as if God’s presence is there buried, like a treasure buried in a field.  That’s like those “magic eye” pictures that were popular among children several years ago, that would have an image embedded with another image and if you look in just the right way, you would see the image within an image.  It’s there all along, but not always visible.

To see the world like that is not easy, especially in our highly anxious, media-driven world with instant access to all kinds of images and sounds and stories from literally across the globe. But we are more than what we appear to be; situations are more than what is on the surface.  We are more than our circumstances tell us we are.  Each of us has suffered indignities, and in each situation, we are more than our struggles.  And even, it must be said, we are more than our successes.  Our successes are the peace that the world gives, but which prove temporary and illusive.  This shalom, this quality of life we have in the spirit of God, comes to show us a deeper way to live. 

In the story from Acts, Paul gets a vision to go to Philippi where he encounters Lydia.  Lydia is a seller of “purple goods,” which means that she sells purple cloth to the wealthy and to royalty, for purple cloth suggested power and influence.  In such a role, she would most likely have dealt with the rich and the powerful on that society, so Lydia was likely a person of social prominence.  But even the materially wealthy can be spiritually impoverished and Lydia was a quick convert to the new way, a sign that the shalom of Christ is not only for those marginalized in the world, but for the comfortable and the wealthy as well. 

To be grounded in this peace; to be aware of this shalom, is to be rooted and held steadfast against the winds and all the forces of our age.  This is not to look out at the world through rose-colored glasses and pretend that squalor is beauty, or to deny that real hurt, real pain and real evil exist in the world.  This is Pollyanna-ism.  To see shalom is to look out at all the pain in the world, not be shattered by it, but to also see the glimmer of hope embedded in these situations. And then, not just to see shalom, but moreover, to BE shalom and to be active FOR shalom in the world.  Living in shalom is not to avoid difficult situations or even to avoid conflict.  Sometimes shalom takes you into conflict, to confront something which needs confronting.  It is not an avoidance of difficulty, it is not an appeasement of evil, nor an enmeshment with it, but a way of getting through it to the other side. 

Being Christian is not avoiding the real thorns of life.  We do not follow an escapist religion.  “The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever.” These words of Martin Luther point to a fundamental truth: To be a disciple is not to escape any of the human condition, not even death itself, but it is to be grounded in a higher and deeper experience of the spiritual basis of life itself and to see life as more than mere existence, and mere materiality.

It is to see life, and to see each other, with new eyes.  It is to see the Christ in each other and in the world.  In her book “Amazing Grace,” Kathleen Norris recalls the time she joined a group of nuns at a worship service. She processed in with the nuns at the beginning of worship and her partner prompted her on the proper way to approach the altar.  “We bow first to the Christ who is at the altar … and then we turn to face our partner, and bow to the Christ in each other.” 

This is shalom, to be aware of the Christ pervading creation, especially in each other.  This is our legacy, more valuable than any material memento, even treasured trophies of past victories.  This legacy is a victory over all the travails of life.

Amen.  And Shalom.

For reference and further study: