After singing “ Do You Hear What I Hear” a couple of weeks ago with friends, all of us hauntingly implored to “pray for peace, people everywhere,” I confessed that most of my life I had thought peace to be all about absence — absence of stress, absence of conflict; absence of war; absence of fruitcake. And while all of those things are blessed contributions to it, I’m finally coming to comprehend that more than any absence, peace is above all a presence.
I should have known it. Scripture is pretty forthright about it — in the flood story where Noah is instructed to make sure that every animal is represented on the Ark; in the Gospel parable in which the servants are commanded to go out to the highways and byways and urge everyone to the feast; in the vision that Peter has of a sheet being lowered down from heaven bearing every imaginable creature, with the instruction to take and eat; to which Peter responds, “I can’t eat what’s unclean.” “Don’t call unclean what I have called clean,” the voice pushed back.
In fact, I should have caught a glimpse of it in the very first chapter of Genesis, at the end of the creation story, where…“God looked at everything created and said, ‘It’s very good’”. Everything.
As if to drive that point home, Paul writes to Timothy what may well be the most challenging assertion in scripture: that “Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks.” (1 Timothy 4:4, MSG)
Everything, which is a challenging affirmation on the farmstead where bugs and rabbits invade the vegetables and possums and raccoons invade the chicken yard. But there is the biblical insistence: Everything. It’s the reason Jesus came among us according to John 3:16: because God so loved this world.
We borrow the Hebrew word for it — shalom — without bothering to grasp the expansiveness of its meaning. Far more than the mere absence of fighting, shalom refers to the presence of wholeness; fullness; completeness.
In recent months Lori and I have had the joy of organizing and teaching a Sunday School class for Burmese refugee children. Nearing the end of one of the first sessions, helpers began distributing snacks. One little boy immediately tore into his packaged treat and began to nibble away. Another boy, perhaps 6 years old, touched his arm and kindly, but sternly, told him, “You need to wait. We all do this together. And first we need to pray.
Together, with a prayer. Shalom.
Peace, then, not so much an absence, but rather the beloved presence of all that God loves. Like each one of us, and each other. On his new CD released last month, Minnesota singer/songwriter Peter Mayer sings of just that expansive awareness…
Jesus spoke, entreating them
To live together in a great circle of love
When his followers asked him then
“Who should be included?”
Jesus said…
Let everybody in, everybody in,
Everybody in to the circle, circle.
Everybody, everybody; everybody, everybody,
Everybody into the circle, circle.
Everybody. That which God managed to communicate to Noah, and to Peter and the other disciples we are still trying to get our hearts and minds around: that when any one of us is excluded, we are all diminished — which, more than stars and snow and stables and shepherds, may well be the bigger Christmas message.
Shalom, then. Peace on earth, good will to all.
All of us in this great circle of love.
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