Sunday, July 21, 2024

Proper 11 B

Ephesians 2:11-22

The Rev. Canon Joann Saylors

In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Shalom.

Aloha. For any of you who have been to Hawaii and heard it in place of hello or goodbye, you probably know that it actually means peace, love, respect as a way of life.

Shalom is Hebrew for aloha. Well, sort of. It also is translated as peace and can be used as a greeting or a way to say goodbye.

But shalom has a deeper meaning than peace, certainly more than the absence of conflict. The root of the word shalom is shalem, which means “wholeness” or “completeness.” Complete happiness, total harmony with self, God, nature and others. Wholeness in relationships with parents, children, grandchildren, job, neighbors. Both shalom and shalem were important words for Jesus, the Prince of Peace, who taught people to walk in the paths of peace.

Shalom was also an important word for the Apostle Paul, who began his letters with a consistent phrase: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father.” He also put statements about peace in the conclusions of his letters, each slightly different. Here are a few:

·       Romans: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”[i] 

·       2 Thessalonians: “Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways.”[ii]

·       2 Corinthians: “Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”[iii]  

·       Colossians: “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.”[iv]  

And, of course, the letter to the Ephesians, which includes the text we heard this morning. It was written in response to the conflicts of the day. Because the early Christians were fighting with each other about all sorts of things.  There were the fights about circumcision and about whether it was ok to eat foods sacrificed to idols. Fights about leadership, whether they should follow the eloquence of Apollos or the intelligence of Paul. They were fighting about speaking in tongues, whether there could be religious ecstasies or whether they should follow rigid dogma. They were fighting about how to live together. In other words, the early Christians were fighting about what it meant to follow Jesus, and Paul responds with shalom. “Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”[v] “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.”[vi]  

Through the cross, Jesus is offering salvation through faith in him, not rigid adherence to religious traditions and dogma. He unites those who believe in him, thus making what had been divided peoples, be they Jew and Greek, slave and free, or rich and poor – one community. “He came and proclaimed peace to [those] who were far off and peace to those who were near.”[vii]

 The will of God is that we are to enjoy lives of wholeness, internally and with others.  God calls us to peace within our families, between our neighbors, at work and school, in government, with our enemies. Everywhere. In every place in our lives, we need and want peace. And God wants it for us. 

What is God’s shalom?  It is an attitude of the heart.  Peace is God’s Spirit living inside of us, within us.  When God lives inside of us, we are drawn to peace. We desire harmony.  Not that we can’t or won’t disagree, but that we speak our truths in love and respect for all of God’s creatures. Aloha.

Shalom is shalem, and shalem is totality.  

God’s peace can permeate all the realities of our lives. 

So we can come to terms with our mortality. 

We can make peace with our fallibility, even while we fight the diseases that attack us.

We can reach a place of shalom with our bodies growing older, our bodies falling apart. 

We can respond to God’s call to make peace with our relationships, our divorces, our ex-spouses, our children, our parents, the situations in life that we don’t like. 

Shalem. Shalom. God’s peace affects the totality of life.

God’s peace is not merely a theological construct or a mental ideal; shalom is for living our real lives. 

We don’t find God’s peace by running away from the problems in our lives. 

We won’t reach wholeness by just heading off on a vacation to Tahiti, where the only decision you need to make is what time you get out of bed in the morning and what time you get back in.  

Nor does shalom mean retreating what one writer calls an “emotional Disneyland,

where everybody sweeps up the mess behind you and the mess in front of you.” That is not God’s peace.  

Peace, as I’ve said, is not the absence of conflict.

God’s peace is not running away from real difference by joining a church where everybody has the same ideas that you have and therefore everything is fine.

It isn’t avoiding people with minor and major differences of opinion by choosing to be only with your friends who think and act just the way you do.

God’s peace doesn’t let us escape from the chaos and the conflict all around us and inside of us.

Instead, shalom is what lets us be in the chaotic situation called life and still find God’s peace within us and between us.

Shalom.  Peace. Shalem.  Totality.  

God’s peace includes kindness, empathy, hope, and connection. It requires us to offer all of ourselves to God and for the world.

To live peace and to make peace.

Now I don’t have easy answers for how to be a peacemaker, only the understanding that we are each called to be one.

But I do believe in some essential things we can bring to our relationships that at least offer the possibility of moving in a peaceful direction.

First, we need curiosity, a genuine interest in people’s lives and stories. A willingness to say, “I want to hear more about that,” and mean it.

To ask questions about why people think what they think and believe what they do out of genuine interest rather than judgment.

And then to actively listen, a skill that most of us need to learn and practice.

Peacemaking also requires time together to build trust and connection.

It requires vulnerability.

Not showing off all your insecurities and personal weirdnesses as soon as you meet someone,

but understanding that everyone’s life is different and none of us have it all figured out, so we need to learn from each other.

Choosing not to stay superficial or walk away.

Recognizing that there are essential things we all share:

our needs for a safe place to live, enough to eat, dignity, autonomy, and love, and a desire for a better world.

And seeking to find those commonalities in one another.

And finally, perhaps most importantly, making peace requires a recognition of our own brokenness.

We have to begin there, with the understanding that we are finite and God is not,

that we cannot fix everything, even in ourselves, and that we need help. We need a savior. Jesus.

That recognition is a place of humility, and it is the place God enters to heal us.

If we don’t want to ask for or accept help, even when we need it,

we end up building walls instead of breaking them down.

The world doesn’t need more walls. The world needs peace. The world needs wholeness.

The world needs us to go out there and build that. Shalom.

[i] Romans 15:13 (NRSV)

[ii] 2 Thessalonians 3:16 (NRSV)

[iii] 2 Corinthians 3:11 (NRSV)

[iv] Colossians 3:15 (NRSV)

[v] Ephesians 4:32 (NRSV)

[vi] Ephesians 2:14-15 (NRSV)

[vii] Ephesians 2:17 (NRSV)