The symbol of the descending dove has meant for the Christian community both the coming of the Holy Spirit and the symbol of peace. As we have seen, the community of the Holy Spirit is a creative and diverse community, yet a community where peace prevails characterized by openness and freedom, as well as, togetherness and unity. The words in John 14 tie together the concept of both the coming of the Holy Spirit and Jesus' desire for peace.
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 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.
-- John 14:26-27 NRSV
A Shalom Community
The Holy Spirit desires peace. This was true from the beginning chapter of Genesis, where the Spirit of God hovered over the formless void of the earth bringing order, light, and life to the overall view of the Bible where the scriptures' central vision is that all of creation is one. Walter Brueggemann in Living Toward a Vision declared that in the community of faith in Israel the vision is expressed in the affirmation that Abraham is father of all Israel and every person is his child (Genesis 15:5). Israel has a vision of all people drawn into community around the will of God (Isaiah 2:2-4). The church in the New Testament has a parallel vision of all persons being drawn under the lordship and fellowship of Jesus (Matthew 28:16-20). In the book of Acts there is the Holy Spirit who seeks to create a single community (Acts 2:43-47).
The biblical vision for peace is that all persons are children of a single family, members of single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God's creation. Brueggemann points out that the term used to express the meaning of this vision is shalom. Shalom is the biblical term used to summarize the biblical vision of peace that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery. Shalom is the substance of the biblical vision of one community embracing all creation. It is this vision of peace that the Holy Spirit seeks to keep alive in our world.
When it comes right down to it we are all for peace. The general consensus of most is: "I am for peace. I am against war." But the question is, "How?" We all know where we should be, but we disagree on the peace plan to get us there. How and in what direction is the Holy Spirit leading us in our quest for peace today?
The Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, is a shalom community, whose strength of community is maintained through the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, the foundation of the body of Christ, the community of faith, is love. Love is the cement that holds the community together. Love is essential. The church is where people love one another. It is a community where people are more important than property or things, where peace is acquired through atonement rather than attainment. It is a community where swords are beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks; where iron is for tilling rather than for killing. The church is a community where the people do not "learn war any more." It is a community where the most powerful force is spiritual rather than physical.
The Absence Of Peace
Peace is the most sought after thing in the world. It has been the goal of governments, presidents, kings, princes, nations and the United Nations. It has been the subject of more prayers, sermons, litanies, and worship services than any other single subject. However, it remains the most elusive.
Some have become cynical in this long and, what they have considered, futile quest for peace. Thomas Hardy, the English poet, wrote after World War I,
Peace upon earth was said; we sing it.
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass.
We've got as far as poison gas.
Although Hardy was in a typical, cynical mood, yet there is a measure of truth in his words that causes us pain and shame.
The reality is that the world is cruel and peace is absent. Jeremiah cried, " 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace" (8:11). The precarious peace we do have is preserved by a balance of terror based on the might of weaponry. What kind of peace is that? Several years ago, Thomas Edison said, "What the mind of man can create, the heart of man can control." Can we? That seems to be today's question that still needs an answer.
The movie, Dr. Strangelove, three decades ago reminded us that the real doomsday machine is not the bomb, but human beings themselves. The UNESCO charter of the United Nations states flatly, "Wars begin in the minds of men." The bomb is a product of selfishness and sin. War is a consequence of human sinfulness. Thomas Aquinas, centuries ago in the scholastic period of the church, reminded us that things in and of themselves are not evil. Bombs are not evil. American technology is not evil. Leonard Sweet, in his book The Lion's Pride, is absolutely right when he says, "Evil comes from what one does with what one has." Weapons are the tools of human intentions.
The Moral Dimensions Of Peace
The book of Genesis is on target. The author hit the nail right on the head when he described the four basic problems of the world that beset Adam and Eve as being sex, greed, pride, and violence. They are all fundamentally spiritual issues. Therefore, our fundamental problem is not weaponry. It is ideas, values, priorities, thinking and theology. It is within the church, the body of Christ, that the issues of world peace must be met head on. These are moral problems and they need moral answers. These are theological problems and they need theological answers. The Holy Spirit comes to lead us to the truthful and moral dimensions of peace.
Therefore, peace, freedom, liberty and justice cannot come from weaponry but divinity, not from the mind of men and women, but the heart of God, through the Holy Spirit. The church can say to the Pentagon, "You have it all wrong." National security is not in the "hands of the right force," but in the "hands of the force of right."
The most powerful, the most invincible, the strongest national defense that we can have is spiritual not material. The words of Zachariah hit home: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit says the Lord." Down deep we have known this all along. It has been part of our Christian education since we were children.
Peace is a matter of will, not weaponry. Sweet asks, "If it took one stone for David to slay Goliath, why do we require millions?" The answer seems to be: The weaker we become as a nation in the realm of the spirit, the harder we try to be stronger in might. The weaker we become in will, the desire there is to become stronger in rhetoric and weapons. Sweet concludes, "If we would perspire more for peace, we would bleed less for war."
Peace Amid Conflict
Jesus talks to his disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit and inward peace in an angry world. "Peace, I leave with you ...." What did this peace mean for Jesus? It did not mean living in the absence of violence and conflict. Jesus made this statement about peace while being in the "eye of the hurricane." His peace was being experienced amid the conspiracy of his enemies who were planning to take his life and bring about his downfall.
Jesus was quick to point out to them that the world was not able to give this kind of peace. The Roman world of Jesus' time defined peace as the absence of war and conflict. This is much the same way that we define peace in our world today. This was not the kind of peace that Jesus was talking about. His life was surrounded by boiling hostility, hatred and violence. There were those who were planning to take his life. The cross for his crucifixion was being prepared by the carpenters who were fitting the cross-member. His accusers were assembling to scheme and plan their strategy for the taking of his life. Amid these circumstances, he said to his disciples when his world was falling apart, "My legacy to you, my gift to you, is my peace." From the circumstances that were swirling about this life at this time, peace appeared to be the very thing he did not have.
When the Dow Jones is falling, unemployment appears imminent, health is declining, the diagnosis is unchanging, and danger is impending -- it is then that the peace of Christ is prevailing and enduring.
The time, the day, the moment will come when peace will become the most valuable and precious possession of life. One of the most emotional scenes on television of the earthquake in San Francisco was the picture of the man standing near the collapsed Interstate 880, pleading with the officers to allow him to go in and search for his son. He pleaded, "Let me go in and look for my son. Maybe he is in a coma, maybe he is unconscious, if only I can get to him." The officers had to restrain him from going in amid the rubble because of the danger to his own life. The cameras would come back hour after hour and the man was still there waiting and pleading. It was a very heart-wrenching moment for those watching on television. What is one to do in a moment like that? Is it possible to know a sense of peace in the midst of such tumult and pain? For Jesus this peace is a peace even in the midst of hostility, even in the face of Calvary and death. He said to his disciples, "I have this peace; this peace I give to you."
The Holy Spirit And Inner Peace
Nowhere does the Bible teach that the righteous shall not suffer, or face adversity, or not live amid turbulent events. Religion in the Bible is not an insurance policy where one pays the premiums in offerings and attendance, thus protected and sheltered from suffering and pain. Nowhere is God represented as bribing people into God's service by rewards of prosperity or immunity from adversity. The apostle reminds us, "We are ... fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him" (Romans 8:17).
The Holy Spirit is a presence, a force, a power to see us through. Even for that father standing by the rubble of Highway 880, looking for his son, it is possible to say, "On Christ the solid rock I stand, (when literally in an earthquake) all other ground is sinking sand." Can you picture this setting of Jesus with his disciples? They are confused, bewildered, scared, uneasy, and afraid. He said to them, "Peace, I leave with you ... Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." How often during their lifetime the disciples would relive that experience and remember those words.
There is a fable, told by Leonard Sweet in The Lion's Pride, about an oriental monarch who met Pestilence on the road to Baghdad. The monarch asked, "What are you going to do there?" Pestilence replied, "I am going to kill 5,000 people." On the way back the monarch met Pestilence again, "You are a liar," he thundered. "You killed 25,000 people." "Oh, no," said Pestilence, "I killed 5,000. It was fear that killed the rest." Fear kills! It tears life apart. It destroys faith and hope. It obscures our vision and saps our strength. We are not only afraid, but at times scared, by what is happening in us, to us, and around us. The peace that Jesus gives us is that which anchors the soul in the time of storm. As the hymn writer states,
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is my rock and stay.
How discouraged God must feel when he looks at his world of creation and sees the bloodshed, violence, and destruction that men, women and nations have brought upon one another. We seem to be hell-bent on destroying the environment and ourselves with it.
Morality And Peace
Isaiah declared that "righteousness will yield peace" (Isaiah 32:17 NEB). There is a relationship between morality and peace. A relationship that we have not yet seemed to understand or comprehend. We have not aimed high enough in our desires for peace. We have allowed the politicians to convince us that the way to peace is in a state of armed preparedness. They have told us that we should set our sights on the balance of power, hoping against hope that fear would restrain the strife. In no sense could fear make possible our quest for peace. The Bible knows nothing about a peace that is based on fear, but rather a peace that is based on righteousness.
Isaiah said that the effect of righteousness is peace. Why is it that peace is so elusive in our day? First, peace is so elusive because of the unrighteousness of a deep-seated racism in our world. No city, no state, no country can have peace until it resolves the question of race. Our greatest threat is not bombs or arms, but racism. Nothing has done more in the twentieth century to kill, destroy, inflict pain or suffering than racism. This is true from the Third Reich to the apartheid of South Africa. We will never see peace in the streets of Soweto, New York or Miami until we conquer that battle and allow God's love to prevail in our lives.
For man, racism is a spiritual problem. We must, at all costs, guard against such divisive, racial attitudes in the body of Christ -- the church. The fact is, such divisive and racial attitudes do exist in the church. It is incredible how such crippling racial attitudes within the church have distracted us from our primary task of being peacekeepers and reconcilers for Jesus Christ in our broken and divided world. We need a reprise of Pentecost in order to bridge the difference of race and culture in the church today.
The Possibility Of Peace
Regardless of what has happened or what is happening now, peace for our world is possible because the Holy Spirit is ever working for peace in our world. It is God's will for this world. The prophet Micah declared,
In the days to come ...
God will settle disputes among the nations,
among the great powers near and far.
They will hammer their swords into plows
and their spears into pruning knives.
Nations will never again go to war,
never prepare for battle again.
Everyone will live in peace ....
-- Micah 4:1-4 (GNB)
Peace is possible because it is the will of God and the Holy Spirit desires to bring peace.
Peace is possible because the Bible gives us the assurance that there is within this troubled world and behind the mysteries of time and space a sovereign God who is on the side of justice and on the side of peace. We shall begin to be God's instruments for righteousness and peace as our own minds and hearts are at peace with God. In God's will is our peace. Peace is an integral part of our commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It is the Christian's responsibility to work for peace.
Peace is possible if we work as hard for peace as we have for war. We have paid a high price for the waging of war. I wonder how different the history of this century may have been if we had been able to save the lives of the young men and women who were killed in its wars. The high price of war is not only paid by those who live through it, but by all the generations to come. Many of us are old enough to remember what shortages and discomforts were endured, what wealth was poured out, what terrible sufferings were borne, and what lives were lost in World War II, as well as in the Korean and Vietnam wars. What a different world this would be if we would be willing to pay at least as high a price in economic terms for peace.
Personal Peace
We cannot become the instruments of peace and reconciliation until our own hearts and minds are at peace with God. The violence in our world results from the conflict and turmoil in our own lives. The divisions in the world are the divisions within our hearts. We will not be at peace with the world until we are at peace with ourselves. The Holy Spirit brings to us what Paul describes as the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, and peace (Galatians 5:22). The apostle goes on to declare, "If we live by the Spirit, let us walk also by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25).
In God's peace is our peace. It begins with us. The work for peace begins with the first person we meet. Regardless whether that person is black or white, rich or poor, homeless or affluent, transient or neighbor, the peace within your soul, the peace in our world, depends on how you treat that person.
The War, Our Conscience, And Lent
(As I write this section I have just returned from an early morning Ash Wednesday service and the coalition forces are about to invade Kuwait.)
General Patton, the most flamboyant and aggressive of American generals in World War II, was able on occasion to reflect on the ultimate paradox of war. One such incident was when he wrote in his journal at the time of the allied invasion of France, "An arresting sight in one French village were the crucifixes located on the top of long poles at each corner of the intersection. They were used by the signal corps as supplementary telephone poles. I could not help but think of the incongruity between the crosses and the lethal messages that passed over the wires."
In war we always make some appeal to moral idealism. We have regarded war as something of a tragic necessity, justified if fought with conscientious instincts to repel an intolerable wrong. Such reasoning has produced the classic doctrine of the "just war." Most people in most wars think of their own cause as justifiable. To gain support for war, religion and nationalism are forced into a formidable alliance. Without thinking of the incongruity, Christian theology and symbolism, like those crucifixes in that French village, are used to support a lethal message. The President has sought, and for the most part received, the support of the churches for the war effort in the Persian Gulf.
For the last several weeks our minds have been full of such words as killing fields, smart bombs, precision bombing, sorties, collateral damage, KIA's, EPW's, and POW's. This morning I attended an early Ash Wednesday service in our chapel and received communion. I was reminded of the broken body of Christ and I found myself thinking upon the Prince of Peace, the Suffering Servant, who has asked us to love our enemies, pray for those who would despitefully use us, to forgive seventy times seven and to resist evil.
The Christ, who is the focus of our attention during our Lenten pilgrimage, was a nonviolent man, who refused to take the sword, and told us that a man has no greater love than to lay down his life for his friend. This morning as I prayed at the altar I was conscious of a life and teachings that were far different from all that I have been hearing for the past several months. The life of Jesus and his teachings throw a mighty question mark against the warlike ways of men and women. If we don't know what to do with them, we cannot easily forget them. During this service I asked myself, "Is it possible that we are practicing violence in the pursuit of goals that are attainable only by violence?" We should not set limits on the possibilities of nonviolence, or on the potential power in Christ-like living, when we have given it such little chance.
The sayings of Jesus are parabolic, situational, metaphorical, and dramatic. They should disturb us, awaken us to new styles of human awareness, shatter rigid preconceptions, and lure us with unrealized possibilities for peace and justice.
This morning the words of that outstanding hymn by Harry Emerson Fosdick came to mind:
Cure thy children's warring madness,
Bend our pride to thy control;
Shame our wanton, selfish gladness,
Rich in things, poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss thy kingdom's goal.
For Further Reflection And Study
1. Define the biblical meaning of shalom.
2. How and in what direction is the Holy Spirit leading us in our quest for peace today?
3. Comment on Leonard Sweet's comment, "Evil comes from what one does with what one has. Weapons are the tools of human intentions."
4. Do you agree that our fundamental problems are moral problems, that need moral answers?
5. What is the relationship between morality and peace?
6. What are the possibilities for peace? What role does the Holy Spirit seek to play in world peace?
7. What is the relationship between the Holy Spirit and non-violence?
8. How diligently do you think the Christian Church is working toward world peace with justice? Is the church part of the solution or the problem?
Permission to photoc_esermonsopy Reflection and Study questions for local congregational use granted to original purchaser by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.