It is not as the world gives that Christ gives to us. The Holy Spirit is the difference that makes all the difference in the world.

Thursday nights just haven't been the same. Ever since "Cheers" finally died and went to TV-heaven (syndicated reruns), Thursday nights have been different. For 11 wonderful years, "Cheers" captured the imagination of an entire country.

Why was "Cheers" one of the greatest successes in the history of television? Was it because so few of us have familiar hangouts these days that "Cheers" offered a sense of homey comfort? Did we love that "Cheers" bar because we yearn for a place (or a church) "where everybody knows your name"?

Most of us don't even know our neighbors' names anymore. Most of us care more about what's going on in our neighbor's lawn than what's going on in our neighbor's life. Most of us don't have enough really close friends to fill our kitchen table, much less a whole roomful of comrades who truly care about us and are waiting for us at the end of the day.

"Cheers" offered a nation a slice of the small-town spirit that has disappeared from our hurry-up, don't-ask- questions, anonymous lifestyles. But for the disciples of Jesus Christ, even "Cheers" didn't go far enough. "Cheers" never did offer the closeness we are really searching for.

Intimacy, love, trust, peace, belonging, community, identity these are the things our spirits crave and these are the things the world cannot give us. Jesus spoke to his disciples' most basic fears and insecurities when he shared his farewell discourse with them. The incarnate Christ knew about the longings and loneliness that reside inside every human heart. Jesus offers to banish this emptiness forever. Jesus promised that, through love, he and the Father will "come to" and "make a home in" the hearts of all who love them.

Everyone's blood has a clotting factor. In the presence of air, these clotting factors transform your usually liquid blood into a sludgy/solid mass. The basic essence of your blood is completely changed by the clotting factor.

Jesus offers a similar life-altering factor to his disciples in the form of the Holy Spirit. This is the "S-factor" that makes all the difference in your life and mine. The Spirit, whom the Father sends in Jesus' name, teaches us "everything." The Spirit totally changes our outlook on life. This "S-factor" so transforms our lives that we become a different people, human beings who are opened to receive the fullness of God. With the S-factor living in us, we experience the final gift Jesus promised to all his disciples his peace.

The "S-factor" working within us gives us access to a peace that is beyond anything we have ever imagined. The worldly definition of peace is a negative "the absence of conflict." In the same way, nature can't leave a vacuum empty, it sometimes seems that humanity is driven to fill every such "absence" of conflict with new eruptions of violence. Worldly peace is always based on someone accepting defeat, someone ruling in triumph. No one in the world can "give" peace to another. We can only speak of peace being "won" or "declared" or "established."

Several countries in the Middle East have signed remarkable, even stunning, "peace" agreements in the past year. But always, these peace pacts are spoken of as "hard won" and obviously "fragile." The "peace" established by these treaties and accords doesn't set hearts at ease or souls at rest. If anything, they heighten the tensions, the sidewise glances and the light-sleeping of those most dedicated to "keeping the peace." The price of worldly peace is eternal vigilance. It is fittingly ironic that we have taken to calling occupying armed forces as "peacekeeping units." Peace as the absence of conflict is only as strong as the effort it takes for a single finger to pull a single trigger.

The S-factor at work in the life of a disciple of Christ transforms the world's definition of peace. No longer is peace the absence of something; peace now becomes the living presence of God in our lives. The S-factor makes peace the presence of all the creative forces and fulfilled freedoms of the gospel. This peace is given to us, not "as the world gives," that is, with hedges and hold-outs and half-truths. Christ's peace is the unwavering assurance that God has made a home in our hearts.

The peace Jesus gives to us through the Holy Spirit is more than we can ever imagine:

- Peace means the cessation of all warfare, but it also means much more.
- Peace means a feeling of inner well-being, but it also means much more.
- Peace means an end to psychological tensions, but it also means much more.
- Peace means halting interpersonal conflicts, but it also means much more.
- Peace means the settling of silence on the soul, but it also means much more.

In Valyermo, California, the Benedic- tines converted a 400-acre ranch into a religious community called St. Andrew's Priory. As you enter the grounds, you find that the land is posted: "No Hunting Except for Peace."

The world is hunting for peace. What will we give it?

Jesus asks us today, as he asked his disciples back then, "What do you more than others?" The world offers people a bar where everybody knows your name.

That's not good enough. "What do you more than others?"

The S-factor enables us to offer people not a bar, where everybody knows your name, but a church, where everybody knows your nickname.