(Audio)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Jesus gives us his peace. This is the peace that was promised to all people of good will by the angels who sang of his birth. It is the way in which Zechariah promised that Jesus would guide our feet. After Jesus rose from the dead it is this peace that he offered to his disciples he were still shaken by fear and disappointment. Unlike the peace that the world can offer the peace of Christ is not dependent on any circumstance.
They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city,
supposing that he was dead.
It is a peace that can survive even when violence is leveled against it. It allows Paul to go back to Lystra where they tried to stone him so that he could use that as a lesson for disciples there.
“It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships
to enter the Kingdom of God.”
But what of us? Our peace seems fragile by comparison. It wavers long before anyone picks up a stone to throw at us.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
It appears that this peace won't be manifested in us if we are entirely passive about it. The fruits the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithful, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23). Look at love. We know that the seed of love is planted within us. But we know that it will remain a seed unless we do those things which will bear its fruit. With fruits like joy and peace we expect something different. We expect something automatic. We expect something which is, in fact, tamperproof, resistant to all the things we do to provoke anxiety and doubt in ourselves. The point is that just as we have been given the power to love but must choose to love so too have we been given the power to have peace but must use that power.
If you loved me,
you would rejoice that I am going to the Father;
for the Father is greater than I.
Jesus has unshakable peace because of his relationship with the Father. He chooses to always remain centered in the primacy of that reality. He knows the ruler of the world has no power over him. He remembers this even when it seems as the he has been completely defeated by him. We can rejoice that Jesus goes to the Father because in doing so he makes this relationship and the certainty it imparts available to us as well.
To walk in the peace of Christ we need the Holy Spirit to remind us that this peace is a reality available to us whenever we ask for it. The Spirit brings us the living words of Jesus. When we receive these words as living and active they genuinely impart peace to us. The darkness of anxiety and fear is forced to flee. A simple strategy we might use is to use an online Bible to search for the word peace and read verses, especially from the New Testament, about it. We may find ourselves strengthened in peace even as we read about it.
And when they arrived, they called the Church together
and reported what God had done with them
and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.
We also need fellowship and thanksgiving to walk in peace. Our fellow disciples remind us that peace is available when, through human weakness, we forget and look away from the source of peace. Thanksgiving reminds us that God was faithful before and will be faithful in the future. It makes us confident that even if there are many hardships ahead we can have peace even in their midst.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
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