According to John's gospel, Jesus said these words to prepare his disciples for his death and the advent of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Jesus states, 'Do not let your hearts be troubled' twice, meaning that his disciples were a) troubled and b) prone to forgetting things – which about sums me up at the moment.
On Tuesday of this week, I awakened to the usual news headlines of Radio 4 and heard more upheaval in the Middle East, with Israel staging a land invasion in Lebanon, followed by a truly moving piece on Sudan's famine. It strikes me that in both news stories, the innocent, frequently children, are the most adversely affected. I was equally challenged that the world’s attention to Sudan is really low, and I cannot help but wonder if race is a factor in this. Stepping aside from further criticisms of our media, the main emotion I experienced was worry: “What is the world coming to?” I asked myself (sounding jarringly like my 84-year-old father!)
We can convince ourselves that the problems of today are worse than ever before; certainly, we have grown better at our ability to hurt, maim, and abuse others. However, are things really getting worse? I believe Adrienne Maree Brown said, “Things are not getting worse; they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.” Perhaps that is it; veils are being pulled back in all sorts of places to reveal unspeakable evil.
When Jesus said: “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.”[1] I wonder what the word peace might mean for us within our rural context. Is it an absence of war within our country and further afield? We need to remember that peace comes at a great cost, and we must be willing to sacrifice our convenience and be prepared to speak up for injustice. It was Martin Luther King who noted that peace is “not the Absence of Tension but the Presence of Justice.”
As Rosie Hoad asks, does peace mean an absence of noise? Some of us really are quite fortunate in where we live and worship, where birdsong is audible with relatively little interference from alarms, sirens, or cries of those in distress. Perhaps this silence, this peace, affords us the space to pray and listen intently to the voice of God, who is very much speaking through the cries of the innocents so often caught up in the horrors of today.
Does peace mean an absence of inner turmoil? I imagine the disciples were experiencing a degree of inner turmoil over what Jesus said would happen. So many of us have had to adapt and respond to change and uncertainty, deal with anxieties and fears, and work out what it all means for our own lives, relationships, and actions.
As Jesus has given us his peace, our response is to pray for and be that peace in our world, starting with where we live. The Hebrew word for peace is ‘shalom’, which carries a sense of wholeness and well-being in all areas of life. In Arabic, Salaam means peace and refers to an invocation of blessings, a communication of respect to the other. We should pray for the shalom and salaam of the Middle East. Peace-making is not merely about avoiding conflict. Rather, it is about pursuing reconciliation, understanding and mutual respect. It is about creating spaces where diverse voices can be heard and where differences are not just tolerated but celebrated.
May we be the peacemakers who work for peace and unity in our world. And in all things, may we always remember the promise of Jesus, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God" (Matthew 5:9).
May I leave you with a beautiful poem by Malcolm Guite entitled ‘Peace’
Not as the world gives, not the victor’s peace,
Not to be fought for, hard-won, or achieved,
Just grace and mercy, gratefully received:
An undeserved and unforeseen release,
As the cold chains of memory and wrath
Fall from our hearts before we are aware,
Their rusty locks all picked by patient prayer,
Till closed doors open, and we see a path
Descending from a source we cannot see;
A path that must be taken, hand in hand,
Only by those, forgiving and forgiven,
Who see their saviour in their enemy.
So reach for me. We’ll cross our broken land,
And make each other bridges back to Heaven.
Today and every day, let us be those peacemakers. Amen.
Simon Mattholie
CEO, Rural Ministries
[1] John 14:27
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