Shalom and Syria: a sermon for Easter 3

Shalom... and Syria?

Sermon preached at Lincoln Cathedral, Easter 3 15/04/18

Acts 3: 12-19

1 John 3: 1-7

Luke 24: 36-48

Jesus stood among his disciples and said: Peace be with you.

It’s a greeting that the risen Jesus uses frequently and it’s a greeting that we, his followers, take over in our liturgy. Bishops use it exclusively – they never say “The Lord be with you,” the normal Christian greeting, but always “peace be with you.” The Subdean will use it later this morning: as we finish our focus on Jesus revealed in the words of Scripture, he will use Jesus’ words to invite us to greet him revealed in the faces of our brothers and sisters.

Peace be with you.

And like most of the phrases we use very often, we don’t always think about what it means. The word “peace,” for example. It’s a cliché to point out that the Greek and Hebrew concept of “peace” was much richer and fuller than the war-versus-peace dualism we associate with the word, but it’s a cliché because it’s true. Peace – Hebrew shalom, Greek eirene – is a concept straight from the Hebrew scriptures. It’s the peace and prosperity the prophets talk about, when in God’s renewed Israel every citizen will rest on their own land, surrounded by plentiful food, with nobody to make them afraid. It’s wholeness and healing and fullness of life. In later Jewish tradition, it’s taught that “G-d did not find a vessel to hold blessing except for shalom.” Shalom is the way God pours blessing into his creation. It’s a name of God – in whom dwells all the fulfilment of human hopes. It’s the idea which Julian of Norwich captures when she says “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

This is what the risen Jesus is talking about when he walks into a locked room on the evening of Easter Sunday and says to his confused, grieving, hoping, doubting friends “peace be with you.” Shalom. God’s blessing dwell among you.

Jesus is not the first to use “shalom” as a greeting. It’s used throughout the Old Testament. Modern Jews use it as a daily greeting (though as it’s one of the names of God, they would never use it in a public lavatory). And Jesus had already instructed his disciples that, when they went out to the villages of Galilee to tell the good news of the Kingdom and heal the sick, they should greet every house they entered with “peace to this house.”

In other words, shalom – peace and blessing, wholeness and fulfilment – was part of Jesus’ message from the beginning – and part of the way that Jesus’ message built on and fulfilled the message God had been giving to his people since the very beginning. But here, in the room where Jesus’ disciples gather together, the risen Jesus makes shalom something new. Something concrete and real. Shalom is there in the presence of Jesus – the Prince of peace. Shalom for the confused, grieving disciples is the presence of the risen Jesus, turning their sorrow into joy, remaking them into the community of the risen Lord, gathered in grief, remade by joy and sent out in hope. And shalom doesn’t just exist in the moment of Jesus’ arrival. Jesus, risen and glorified, gives his friends shalom – to be with them and remain with them. As Easter turns to Ascension and then to Pentecost, the shalom of the presence of Jesus, risen and standing among them, becomes the shalom of the presence of the Holy Spirit, with God’s people to empower them.

And that means that we too are the people to whom shalom is given, on whom God’s blessing is conferred. Like the disciples on the evening of Easter Sunday, we are given God’s shalom unconditionally – wholeness and healing, fullness of life, flourishing, blessing. But because we are the people to whom shalom is given, we are called to be the people who make shalom a reality in God’s world.

At another time I might finish the sermon there. But not today – not this weekend. Not in a weekend when shalom has been so glaringly absent from the life of our world. Yesterday’s news of air strikes in Syria has rocked the foundations of many people. Whether or not you think they are a justified response to the events there; and whatever you think about the legality of what the UK did and its likely effectiveness; in fact, whatever you think about the morality of war in general (and there are no easy answers to any of these questions); the situation in Syria is one of unimaginable pain and loss and suffering. Pain and death to which our country contributed yesterday. Pain and destruction with no end in sight. There is no shalom in Syria.

But that doesn’t mean that shalom is a myth, or an idea that only exists within church. Shalom in the Old Testament was always a future promise, not a daily reality. The shalom Jesus confers on his friends brings joy out of grief, but doesn’t yet change the reality of the fallen world they live in. Shalom is conferred within the circle of God’s people in order that it can become a reality within the whole of God’s world. When we look at Syria, and all the other places where the absence of shalom is a gaping wound, we are called to realise that the shalom we receive is a call for us to make shalom a reality in the fallen world we inhabit – which is also the created world which God loves.

That means doing more than passively believing in shalom. That means participating in the fullness of God’s dynamic life. We taste the fullness of God’s life and it makes us yearn to see life in all its fullness throughout the world. We are hopeful, and that hope makes us work for shalom: peace, justice, righteousness, wholeness, flourishing.

We may not be in a situation where we can work for peace in Syria. But we may be able to work for shalom in our own city, our own communities, our own country. Syria shows us the extreme of an absence of shalom: in chaos and fear. But shalom is absent in the economic and social life of this country too: in people who are insecure and fearful, and in the exploitation of poverty and anxiety to encourage hatred and division. Being people of shalom means standing against hatred, arguing that our life is not diminished by the inclusion of others. There’s been a concrete example of that too this week, as bishops have begun a petition for those who arrived in England as children, part of the Windrush generation, who are now finding that their immigration status has changed and they are vulnerable to being deported. The action of the bishops, and others who sign the petition and argue for the rights of refugees and immigrants, is a stand for shalom in the face of a fallen world that seeks to exclude and divide.

The world cries out for shalom – in the voices of the injured, the weeping of the bereaved, the pleading of refugees. And that cry for shalom is a cry for us – God’s people to bring it about. Through committing ourselves to being a people remade by shalom, and remaking the world around us. A people knowing that our needs are supplied by God, who raised Jesus to glorious new life, and building on that firm foundation to supply the needs of others.

So when we greet one another in Jesus' name and with Jesus' greeting of peace, may it be a prayer for one another: that God's shalom would overflow upon us and empower each one of us to work to build a world where shalom may reign.