"Peace" and its meanings

A reflection on Isaiah 40:1-6 and Mark 1:1-8

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, “peace” can mean one of three things:

1. Freedom from disturbance, or
2. Freedom from or the ending of war, or
3. Within the Christian Church, the peace is an action such as a handshake, signifying unity, performed during the Eucharist

 

The dictionary also tells me that “peace” is used in a number of common English phrases such as “at peace”, or “hold one’s peace”, or “keep the peace”, or “make one’s peace”.

 

Because this is the second Sunday in Advent, I would like to take a moment or two to consider some of these meanings and uses of the word “Peace”.

 

For a start, I’m not entirely happy with the notion that “peace” simply means freedom from disturbance. I’m quite sure that there are lots of people whose lives are basically free from disturbance but I’m not equally sure that their lives are truly peaceful: a prisoner in solitary confinement has a bed and three meals a day, but is hardly likely to describe their circumstances as peaceful. A patient in a coma in Intensive Care is free from disturbance but their family is not going to say that that is a peaceful situation.

 

Similarly, I’m not convinced by the definition of peace as an absence of war, any more than I would want to define war as simply the absence of peace. Yes, I recognise that the ending of hostilities between warring parties is a great and good thing: the end to death and destruction is to be hoped for and hungered for and celebrated when it arrives, but I would want peace to be something more than just an absence of war.

 

My problem with both these definitions is that they suggest peace is not something rather than is something: they tell us that peace is not disturbance and war, but they don’t tell us what it is.

 

Where we find the word “peace” in our bibles, it is most often the word used to translate the Jewish term “shalom”. But there is a difference between “peace” and “shalom”. Shalom is a positive word, a word to describe positive attributes, things to be sought after, rather simply the absence of something.

 

The Encyclopedia of Jewish concepts tells us that:

"The Hebrew word shalom has a wider meaning than the English equivalent peace, for it signifies welfare of every kind: security, contentment, sound health, prosperity, friendship, peace of mind and heart..."

 Encyclopedia of Jewish Concepts 
by Philip Birnbaum

 

When we celebrate the Sunday of Peace, surely these are the things we wish to celebrate: security, contentment, sound health, prosperity, friendship, peace of mind and heart. These mean so much more than merely an absence of disturbance or freedom from conflict.

 

Last week, I spoke about hope in the context of good news and bad news. Hope is what we hold to when our circumstances are bad news circumstances. The family gathered around the bed in Intensive Care needs hope; they reach out to the possibility of good news. In any number of circumstances, in the midst of bad news people hope for good news.

 

And peace is a good news thing. Security is good news – when all around us the world is in financial turmoil, security is to be hoped for. Sound health is a good news thing as well – the family gathered around the sick bed will attest to that. Friendship is very good news – someone to depend on, to offer counsel and support, to share the journey through the valley of shadow: friendship is surely good news.

 

Where is John the Baptiser in this morning’s reading? In the wilderness. Where is the way of the Lord to be prepared? In the wilderness.

 

As Australians, we tend to think of the wilderness as a bad news place – without water, surrounded by dangerous creatures, without knowledge of where we are or how to get out of the wilderness, it seems like bad news.

 

But I wonder how we would feel if the story of who we are took place in the wilderness; if our identity had been shaped by a forty year journey from captivity to a Promised Land? Perhaps then the wilderness would be the place of hope. Perhaps then we would see the possibility of good news springing forth from the journey.

 

It is into the wilderness of our lives and the wilderness of our world that Jesus comes. He comes to bring good news; he comes to bring peace: security, contentment, sound health, prosperity, friendship, peace of mind and heart…

 

Not that we will necessarily recognise these things because the world has been blinded by false definitions; the hopes of the world have been dulled to the point that we have come to believe that peace is nothing more than an absence of disturbance. Our culture has been deluded into thinking that prosperity means money in the bank, and contentment means shopping trips with credit cards.

 

In short we have settled for less than mountains leveled; highways smoothed; valleys filled. We haven’t dared to hope for a wilderness transformed with roadways straightened; ruts plugged. It has been beyond us to ask for rocks to be rolled from the doors to new life.

 

But it is into this disillusioned world that the Messiah comes, bringing hope and bringing peace.

 

I want to leave you with one last reference to “peace” in the dictionary – the phrase “to make one’s peace”. The dictionary tells me that this means “to be reconciled with another.” Jesus is the peace bringer, who hungers for us to be reconciled with God, with one another, and with ourselves.

 

And that is why we greet one another with words of peace in church: as a foretaste of that reconciliation, as sign of our unity, as a symbol of shalom.

 

Peace be with you. Amen.

Watch, wait, be ready

A reflection on Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:33-37

A patient wakes up following an operation to find the doctor standing beside him. He’s not feeling at all well, but he manages to ask, "Doctor, how did it go?"
"I have good news and bad news", says the doctor.
"Give me the good news. I feel terrible and I need cheering up"
"The good news is that we managed to save your kidneys."
"That’s terrific. What's the bad news?"
"The bad news is I have them here in this jar."

 

My suspicion is that, if we are offered a choice between good news and bad news, we will want the good news. And not the good news first, but only good news. Being rational human beings we avoid the bad news if we possibly can.

 

I think that’s one of the reasons we like Christmas: it’s a good news time. A story about a little baby born in a stable – that’s a good news story. A story about a fat man dressed in red bringing presents to all the girls and boys – that’s a good news story. The whole idea of Christmas parties, gatherings of families and friends, gift giving and receiving, it’s all such a good news thing, isn’t it?

 

But our Bible readings this morning don’t seem very good news at all; they seem far more bad news. I mean, just listen to some of these verses from the first reading. God’s chosen people are speaking to God and they say:

   There is no one who calls on your name,

    or attempts to take hold of you;

    for you have hidden your face from us,

    and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

(Now that’s bad news.)

 

    We all fade like a leaf,

    and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

(And that’s bad news too.)

 

   You meet those who gladly do right,

    those who remember you in your ways.

(Good news!)

 

    But you were angry, and we sinned;

    because you hid yourself we transgressed.

(Bad news.)

 

The reading from the gospel of Mark, the words of Jesus himself, aren’t terribly positive sounding either:

Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come… you do not know when the master of the house will come [and] he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 

 

Sleeping when the boss returns? Bad news!

 

So what is this all about? This time of the church’s year is set aside to prepare for Christmas. So why the focus on bad news rather than getting excited about the good news that is to come? Surely we can prepare for the good news of Christ’s coming into the world without having to think about anything too depressing.

 

Or can we?

 

Perhaps, we need to face the bad news in order to recognise our need for good news. Perhaps, we have become so accustomed to good news – comfortable lives, security, good health, good times – that we don’t even recognise that there is something missing, some need in us that is not being met because we are anaesthetised by too much good news.

 

And the Bible is really excellent at this: pointing to what is real in this world to remind us that we need something from beyond this world. The Bible is a consistent reminder that the world in which we live is not just a good news world. There are countless biblical references to what is wrong, and each of those references is meant to point us towards what is needed to make what is wrong right.

 

Instead of living in a fantasy world, where everything is jingle bells and Christmas stockings and plates heaped with turkey and ham and enough food to provoke the most profound indigestion, instead of a fantasy world where everything is all right, we are asked to recognise a greater truth: all is not well, and Christ comes into the real world in order to do something about it.

 

Did you know that tomorrow, the first day of December, is the fiftieth anniversary of the day Rosa Parkes got on a bus? “Who is Rosa Parkes?” you ask. On December 1, 1955, a black woman got on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in the United States. She was required to go to the back of the bus because the front was for whites only. This is the U.S. just fifty years ago. But Rosa Parkes was tired and weary from a long day of hard work, and she sat herself at the front of the bus and refused to move. Her small act of defiance is seen by many as the initiating event for the movement for civil rights in America; the whole Martin Luther King revolution which has made it possible for a black man to move into the White House began with a tired and weary woman who refused to change her seat.

 

We are watching and waiting for Christmas, but are we ready to allow our dissatisfaction with the way things are to bring Christ into the world?

 

Another thing about the first of December is that it is World AIDS Day. Do you have any idea how many people in our healthy, rich, well-educated world are going to die between now and Christmas from a disease which could be controlled if not defeated through education and spending some money on making medication available where it is needed most?

 

But, of course, those who suffer from HIV/AIDS aren’t on our TV screens at this time of the year. They aren’t even in our country. So we can choose to ignore HIV/AIDS; this is a problem we don’t have to see unless someone is rude enough to disturb our good news preparations with some bad news.

 

We are watching and waiting for Christmas, but are we ready to do something about bringing real good news into this world?

 

Jesus says,

Beware, keep alert… It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work.

 

There is work for us to do while we watch and wait; there is a readiness we have to adopt. Perhaps this year it is finding a red ribbon to wear tomorrow, the first of December, World AIDS Day, and to keep on wearing right up until Christmas to remind ourselves of the bad news and to remind ourselves that good news is needed and good news is coming.

 

Watch, wait, be ready.

 

Where will we look in the days and weeks to come? Will we look only under the Christmas tree? Will we only wait for Santa Claus? Will we be ready only for good news for ourselves?

 

Or will we look for the lost and the lonely, the despairing and deprived, the suffering and saddened? Will we wait with those whose daily news is bad news? And will we be ready for the good news that comes into our world at Christmas?

 

Watch, wait, be ready.