"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.