Peace be with You!
Perhaps because of the continued unrest in Ukraine, perhaps because with every passing day there’s yet another horrible story of violence, perhaps because each day brings for me my own experience of discord within myself, I have been reflecting at length on this simple and all too familiar greeting of Jesus to the apostles in the upper room on Easter Sunday. Ours is a world, mine is a life, desperately longing for peace.
To understand better the significance of these words, let’s briefly recall what happened before Jesus utters them.
Jesus has triumphantly entered into Jerusalem at the time of Passover, a feast that not only commemorated God’s dramatic rescue of the Israelites from slavery but looked forward to yet another rescue. Jesus is hailed as King, the long awaited anointed one. The disciples, and especially the apostles, have to be excited and giddy as all get out, as they finally see the crowds recognize him as the one for whom the Jewish people have been longing. This can only mean great things for them — they’re among the “in” crowd! But then Jesus speaks most unsettling words at their final meal together and predicts His betrayal — by one of them! Peter adamantly declares that he will never do this, in fact, he will die protecting Jesus if that’s what it takes. Then, arrest, interrogation, condemnation, torture and death in the umost degrading and humiliating way that is the cross. As Jesus foretold, He was betrayed, Peter did deny Him, and — except for His mother, some other women, and John — they all abandoned Him to die.
And now here He is. Alive! In the room with them. The ones who had left Him to be tortured and executed. Put yourself in that scene. What would you be thinking if you were there? I would have been scared out of my mind!
Jesus opens His mouth and says…”Peace be with you.”
Who would ever have expected that greeting from the crucified and risen Lord?
God is — blessed be He — so unlike us. God is — blessed be He — not a God of wrath or retaliation. God is — blessed be He — a God of mercy, compassion and forgiveness. As the Psalmist says, “He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust” (Ps 103:14). God has — blessed be He — a long fuse.
Isaiah had glimpsed something of this scene hundreds of years before when he wrote, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’ (52:7). Here is the Lord God, gloriously risen from the dead, standing amongst the creature made in His image and likeness, publishing peace, publishing salvation, letting them — and us — know that our God reigns. Everything is right. Death has been conquered. The strong man has been bound. Sin is forgiven. The project that is creation is back on track again. And we don’t have to be afraid of what is in our past, even if that past was last night in a hasty and unkind word, action or inaction that leaves us this morning feeling ashamed.
In the midst of the ongoing conflicts that are taking place across the ocean, in our cities, our families and our own hearts, may Jesus speak those same words to us even now: “Peace be with you.” May He remind us again and again in this Easter season that He reigns, no matter what the headlines may say. May He remind us again and again that yes, “in this world [we] will have trouble, but take heart, I have conquered the world!” (Jn 16:33).
These are in between days, the time of the already and the not yet. Jesus is already reigning, we’re just not experiencing that yet fully. Jesus has already given us His peace, we’re just not yet living in the kingdom that is to come where there will be no more sickness, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more war, and no more death. But we will.
In the meantime, there is work to do! “As the Father sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). May we strive today and this week, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to live as agents of healing, reconciliation, recreation and restoration in our marriages, our families, our workplaces, our parishes and our world.