Peace Be With You

A person can go just about anywhere in the world and greet someone with a sign or symbol of peace and have some sign or symbol of peace reciprocated. Seriously. Even if it is just a head nod, it’s an acknowledgment that they’ve received your peace offering and are sending it back to you.

We speak words of peace all the time – shalom, salaam, paz, heiwa, shanti, paix, amani, fred – and we easily throw up our two fingers in a gesture of peace (though you should be careful doing that abroad) or press our praying hands together with a tiny bow to convey the same message. We love to throw peace around. But are we peacemakers?

Our church practices the Passing of the Peace almost weekly in our worship gatherings – it often turns into a time of greeting, and it can be squirm-inducing for the introverts – but how authentic are we, truly, when we say those words to each other?

“Peace be with you.”

“And also with you.”

What does that mean? What do we intend? What do we hope? What happens?

Are we peacemakers?

And what happens when we leave worship? Do we carry that peace forward to share in the world? Is it like a Ziplock bag of friendship breadstarter that we pass along to others to multiply and share again?

This week’s passage says, “God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called children of God.” I know that I am a child of God, and I know that you are a child of God…so that must make us peacemakers. I guess the big question is whether we are living into either of those identity markers or are we content with accepting rhetoric and ritual over something more radical and revolutionary?

This Sunday we are going to be celebrating the Faith Milestones of many of our children and youth, including one baptism, and we will be asked to remember our own baptisms, to respond to the question: Do you, the people of the church, promise to tell this young person the good news of the gospel, to help him know all that Christ commands, and, by your fellowship, to strengthen his family ties with the household of God? As a congregation, we affirm our responsibility to walk alongside every child of God in our midst, and as a part of the wider Body, we affirm our responsibility to do this for all of God’s children. To help them know the good news of the gospel and all that Christ commands, we must be about the work of making and modeling peace…for we are all one in Him.

Peace be with you,

Sam