Advent 2

Shalom!, Salaam!, Peace! -Rev. David Mundy

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 2 Peter 3:8-9, 14-15 Mark 1:1-8

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does anyone else find email a mixed blessing? Even though we may use it regularly, along with texting, it can be a plague at times as we are inundated with nefarious messages trying to convince us that they are from our bank, or that we have inherited a ton of money. In my profession, I also get weird and wonderful emails, from people out there in cyberspace, who ask me to do all sorts of things, even though we have never met.

Fortunately there are also the interesting inquiries and exchanges, one of which came just recently.

Hey, David. I hope this email finds you well. I have a question that I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now . . . What does Shalom mean when you sign off an email that way? Wikipedia & my memory tells me Shalom is a traditional Muslim greeting, often translated as, “Peace be upon you.” Is that correct?

It happened that I was working at my computer when this one arrived so I responded immediately

Well, yes and . . . Actually Salaam, or Salaam Alaikum, is the Muslim version of the Jewish Shalom, which does mean Peace or Peace be with you. In Hebrew, shalom/peace means wholeness, wellness, integration rather than just an absence of conflict or a sense of tranquillity.

Trust a minister to make an easy question more complicated!

May your commute be gentle and yes, shalom.

This was the beginning of several exchanges between us about peace, which I really appreciated. Of course in Christianity and Judaism and Islam peace is grounded in God who is the source of peace.

Shalom aleichem! Salaam alaikum! Peace be with you! This is Peace Sunday in the Advent season, the time of the year when we Christians are pregnant with the possibility of Christmas but not there yet. As one person has put it, in Advent we aren’t ready to give birth, but we’re showing! So we try to just take our time and patiently explore the themes of hope and peace and joy and love.

A couple of our readings for this Sunday contain the word peace and the promise of peace which is God’s gift and Christ’s gift. In psalm eighty five God speaks “shalom, ” peace, to the faithful, to those who give their hearts to God. Here is a vision for a better world, a world of shalom where turmoil and conflict have come to an end. Then there is another promise of peace which we used on our bulletin cover this morning: “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet: righteousness and peace will kiss each other.” In ancient cultures it was common for men to greet one another with a kiss as a sign of friendship and trust, so this is poetic word picture in which God’s peace and right living embrace.

The passage from the New Testament letter called Second Peter offers another image of peace and of intimacy. The readers are addressed twice as “beloved” as the writer asks them to be patient in waiting for the coming of Christ, in this case the second coming. They are encouraged to wait without anxiety and worry and to found living in peace.

Is God speaking peace to your heart this morning? Surely we all hope for peace in our inner lives and in our relationships and for our world.

Inner Peace

Peace-filled Relationships

World Peace

It would be wonderful if all of you are thinking, yes, I have a sense of abiding peace, but the truth is that life is challenging. We can’t tell just by looking around us on a Sunday morning whether our neighbours in the pews are at peace in their spirits. We tend to “clean up nicely” when we come to church so the inner turmoil we may experience isn’t evident to those around us.

When we are younger, it can be the relentless expectations of work and family commitments and community involvements which we may deal with reasonably well until something happens and we develop an emotional “speed wobble.”

We share our facility with a nursery here at St. Paul’s which means there is the migration in and out of the building several times a day. My study window looks out to the parking area beside the church and I see the cars and vans screech to a halt, the parents check their text messages, then haul their little ones out of the vehicle and herd them into the building. I’m exhausted just watching them and even though they might say “this is life” my heart goes out to them.

As we grow older, the circumstances which deplete our shalom can be very different. We are fretting because that driver’s license test is coming up, or we have nagging health problems – or we aren’t sure whether we can put on our own socks when we get up in the morning. You may think that’s a joke, but for the elderly it’s not!

Somehow we are managing to do what needs to be done, but in the moments when we can catch our breath we realize that the days pass without a great deal of satisfaction or contentment, let alone joy.

Don’t we find, too, that when we are “unpeaceful” in our spirits it makes maintaining healthy relationships that much harder? Recently I saw a book with the title Scream Free Marriage – talk about subtle. I discovered that, lo and behold, this book is offered by the Scream Free Institute, which also has the book entitled Scream Free Parenting. While these titles may make us smile, they are honest. We might not be screamers but there are times when the tensions in our relationships result in our saying and doing things which we don’t feel are true to whom we want to be – certainly not who we want to be as Christians.

And if we struggle to establish inner peace and peace in our relationships how can be part of bringing peace to our world? If we can’t get our kids to eat broccoli the chances we can be involved in bringing about world peace are slim to none. Right now leaders from around the world are in South Africa trying to pound out an agreement on climate change. The moderator of the United Church, Mardi Tindal is there as a religious leader and while we are probably glad she is representing us, an issue such as this or the issues of violence and war can seem beyond our grasp.

From time to time I meet people from the congregation I haven’t seen in a while, in the grocery store or the gym or the mall. Sometimes they look a bit sheepish, sometimes not, and they tell me that they have so much on their plates they don’t have time or energy for church. While I appreciate that life can get out of kilter at times, it’s sad that all the stuff we do pushes the relationship we have with God into the background.

We can end up in “emergency mode” which is not abundant life. Do you remember the floods in Western Canada earlier this year and how as they waters rose folk protected their homes with barriers and sand bags. Sometimes it worked, although everyone knew this wasn’t a long term solution and these people sure weren’t sleeping easy. We can end up feeling under siege ourselves with the waters rising around us.

Shalom. Salaam. Peace be with you. When we take the deep breath and we calm ourselves we realize that we do desire righteousness and peace in our lives and for our world.

All of us need to get the email this morning that we are beloved. If that word is not one that sits comfortably with you, just break it down into two more manageable parts – be loved! Be loved by the Christ whose grace is the ultimate Christmas gift, one we are not required to earn by all our running and doing.

Many of us know the name of the late Christian writer, Henri Nouwen. Nouwen became the equivalent of a religious celebrity, a superstar, teaching at prestigious universities in the States and speaking around the world. He left all of that to work in a L’Arche community for the physically and mentally challenged in Richmond Hill Ontario, not an hour from here. One of his books is called Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World. Nouwen points out that we end up accumulating all the junk of self-doubt and the feeling that we just aren’t doing enough, no matter how hard we try. He invites us to return to a sense that we are “beloved.”

Long before any human being saw us, we are seen by God’s loving eyes. Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us. Long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love. Our preciousness, uniqueness and individuality are not given to us by those who meet us in clock-time – our brief chronological existence – but by the One who has chosen us with an everlasting love, a love that existed from all eternity . . .

Find peace today in the truth that you are loved by the Christ of Christmas and of Easter. As your anxiety rises at the thought of everything you need to do in preparation for Christmas, as the negative inner chatter erodes your sense of well being, remember the One who is “the reason for the season” and return to that place of Shalom.

You know the story friends. The first people who heard about the birth of Jesus were lowly shepherds who were afraid, until the angels told them that they have a message of great joy about the birth of a saviour, the Messiah. And the angels offer peace to all men and women.

I’ll leave you with other words of peace from scripture, this hymn of assurance and shalom from Paul’s letter to the one of the first Christian congregations in Philippi.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4

Peace be with you, Christ’s beloved.