
The Road to Shalom
The Road to Shalom
4D Theology #2 - "Peace-Taking Should Produce Peace-Making"
The "Peace Movement"—if there really is such a thing—did not originate with the Sixties youth culture. It's as old as the heart of God Himself. In fact, it's at the very center of His purposes. That means "peace" is an enormous word in the One Story of the One God.
Paul used the word over forty times in his letters. He wrote the Greek word for peace, eirēnē, but his mind was marinating in something more ancient. Something with a couple thousand years of meaning behind it. Paul was thinking, “shalom,” one of the most beautiful words in all of Hebrew. A word that refers to everything flourishing as it was originally created to do.
Unfortunately, for most of us, when we read about the "peace of God" in the Bible, our minds run quickly to the personal benefits of God's peace for us as individuals. But, just like the Story word, "sin" we looked at in the last episode, the Story word, "peace" also has multiple dimensions to it. And, the majority of them involve us. Yet, not as beneficiaries of shalom, but as it agents.
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Photo by Vasilios Muselimis on Unsplash
When I was younger, I subscribed to the popular notion that I was part of something that was going somewhere. Nobody wants to think that they’re standing still. So, like many my age in the late Sixties, I joined what was called, “the peace movement, without ever questioning whether something like peace could have a movement.” There was a ton of talk about peace back then. It was the Sixties’ version of the modern obsession with “tolerance.” Peace had its own circular logo, its own clothing options, its own music, its own hand signal, and its own celebrities. One of them was Arlo Guthrie, son of folk music icon, Woody Guthrie. Arlo had some thoughts about peace and how to secure it that sounded really deep…unless you lived in the real world. In 1969, when I was a sophomore in college, he said:
“All political systems are on the way out. We’re finally gonna get to the point where there’s no more bigotry or greed or war. Peace is the way. And you don’t seek peace, you use it. In twenty years (1989), all that stuff ‘ll be over. People are simply gonna learn that they can get more from being groovy than being greedy…” (https://blog.timesunion.com/berkshires/thinking-about-alices-restaurant-and-the-massacree/913/)
I was 19 when he made that prophecy, so didn’t realize “being groovy” so you could “get more” was just greed wearing tie-dye and denim. I also hadn’t yet learned the truer truth that just because someone performed at Woodstock didn’t mean everything he said was true. But probably the bigger thing at work here is that it’s more common for folks to get everything about peace wrong, than it is to get it right. And that, it turns out, has got a lot to do with where you’re looking to see what peace looks like in the first place.
Welcome to the Road to Shalom, a tiny podcast with the enormous goal of helping us find the little traveled path of making sense of why what we see around us often seems so far from the way we wish it were. I’m Fran Sciacca, an old guy with a young heart, and I’m the host.
Last episode, I launched us on a quest to deepen our understanding of some key words that undergird the One Story of the One God. Words that I called “Story words.” I also suggested that we seem to have settled for an understanding of these words that is only personal and parochial. Or put another way, thinking of what they have to do with “me,” and “us” as believers. A sort of two-dimensional understanding that naturally leads us to build separate, little systematic theology boxes for these words. Then, over time, we add them to our collection, assuming we know what they mean…at least what they mean for us. But if you remember, I cautioned, that using two-dimensional word meanings in the One Story of the One God, which if anything, has multiple dimensions, well, our faith ends up being pretty flat. And not only for ourselves, but also to the watching world that is paying much closer attention to us than we know. I think this anemic approach to the Bible is also at the heart of the geometric rise of the group sociologists call the “Nones.” People who profess that they have no religious affiliation. One of the fastest growing demographics in the U.S.
So I proposed that we take these “Story words” out of their two-dimensional theological boxes and look at them more closely. When we did, we discovered that they have at least two more dimensions; one that is global and the other that is missional. Or put another way, a dimension that deals with the unbelieving world—the world “out there,” and a dimension that deals with God Himself. And what’s more, these dimensions have always been there, and are essential components of the One Story of the One God. When we do this, our thinking arises from its two-dimensional dust, and the Bible becomes multi-dimensional, just like life itself. And our faith is slowly transformed into what we’ve always intuitively hoped it would be.
I’m rehearsing these ideas not just because they’re important, but also because they’re a little counter-intuitive, which means they’ll slowly fall off the back of the desk if we don’t keep putting them in front of us.
The first Story word we took out of its box last time was “sin.” Our two-dimensional understanding of “sin,” one that was familiar to all people of faith, had to do with “guilt.” Mine, yours, and everyone else who has 22 pairs of functioning chromosomes. But, it turned out that this restricted view of sin then reduced our understanding of redemption to a forensic solution, that focused on the death of Jesus as payment for the guilt my sin produced. In the world of systematic theology, this is known as substitutionary atonement. It’s wonderful news. But, it neglects the first half of Jesus’ own description of his mission, which it turns out, was his entire life, minus about 15 hours:
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
But then we turned our word “sin” over and discovered the enormous effects sin had on everything God had originally created to be “very good,” that had nothing to do with “guilt.” We assigned the word, “corruption” to sin’s other dimensions, one of which was the enormous global pandemic of decay it unleashed on everything in every way. The other was a missional dimension of sin. Namely that God is concerned about dealing with both sides of sin. Our guilt, others’ guilt, and all the places and ways sin’s corruption had ruined God’s creation at the beginning of the Story. Suddenly sin was no longer just personal and parochial. It was bigger than me. It was bigger than you. And so is God’s solution. It’s comprehensive, not just forensic.
In the next two episodes we’re going to dive headlong into two more Story words, the first of which in fact, is what launched this podcast two years ago. Those two words are “peace” and “grace.” In an odd way, “grace” and “peace” are sort of like fraternal twins, they’re often found hanging out together in the Bible. And even though they might not look exactly alike on the surface, when you really get to know them, you can definitely tell they are related. Most of us already have a two-dimensional understanding of these words. We’re pretty familiar with their personal and parochial benefits. They’re precious words to us. These are two of Paul’s favorite words too. In fact, he opens each of his thirteen letters with the same phrase, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” For Paul, “grace” and “peace” are woven into a tapestry with our problem with sin’s guilt. So, I suspect that when most of us see the word, “peace,” in the Bible, our minds sprint quickly to the personal benefits we each have with God through Jesus. We love verses like this one:
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God thorough our Lord Jesus Christ…”(Romans 5:1)
I’m guessing you’re also familiar with the promise Jesus gives regarding our own struggles with fear and anxiety:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)
In fact, we all have been taught at some point in our lives that the best way to calm our hearts is to pray:
“…do not be anxious 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 4:6–7)
So, Paul says that through faith, we have “peace with God.” The enmity between us and God is gone, thanks to what Jesus has done. The war between us and Him is over. In fact, Paul pushes this idea even further and says not only do we have peace with God through Jesus. He says in another letter that Jesus “is our peace”! (Ephesians 2:14) Do you rejoice in this? You should. I should We all should. It’s absolutely amazing…just like grace.
But, don’t forget that Paul was about as Jewish as you can get. In fact, in a very real sense, Paul never “became a Christian” in any of the ways we understand that phrase. Paul wasn’t “converted” like I was fifty years ago. He didn’t go from being a Jew to being a Christian. In fact, Paul never uses the word, “Christian” to describe himself or anyone else in any of his letters or sermons. Some of you just drove off the road. Sorry. That’s a topic for another podcast someday. But, it’s true. Paul never separated the gospel from the Story of God predicted in the prophets and the Psalms.
Anyway, so when Paul writes the word, “peace” 43 times in his letters, he uses the Greek word for peace, eirēnē. But his mind was marinating in something more ancient, something with a couple thousand years of meaning behind it. When Paul was writing, eirēnē, he was thinking, “shalom,” one of the most beautiful words in all of Hebrew. A word that refers to everything flourishing as it was originally created to do. Everything following its original design. Or in the words of theologian Cornelius Plantinga, shalom is “things being the way they’re supposed to be.” A word that points back to everything being “very good.” So, when we said last episode that the flip-side of sin was corruption, that corruption is the loss of shalom. Between us and God for starters. We’ve already talked about that. But also within us, as individuals. Listen to Saint Paul here:
“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:18-20, 24-25)
There’s a loss of shalom between us and those closest to us as well. We see this in the story of Joseph and his ten brothers in Genesis, the opening Act of God’s Story. It says they “hated him, and could not speak peacefully to him.” (Genesis 37:4) The word “shalom” is in that verse, but there was no shalom in that home. Some of you know the pain of the loss of shalom in a family, a church, a business. It’s a drain on all that’s good.
The Bible tells us that because of sin, shalom has also been lost between us and nature. Even the shalom between us and the dirt and the animals has been vandalized:
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.” (Genesis 3:17–18)
“…as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him.” (Amos 5:19)
But it gets more serious. God’s plans for shalomic restoration reaches way outside the two dimensional boundaries of our relationship with Him and those in our limited, private worlds. Listen closely to this “shalomic” language literally gushing from Paul’s pen:
“For he himself is our peace, [Jesus is our shalom] who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14-16)
Did you hear that? Paul first identifies a racial barrier that exists between people, and then says that one of the express purposes of God in sending Jesus was the repairing of the loss of shalom between people groups. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul said this new family that God has created, is exclusively inclusive. Not everyone is in it, but everyone is equally welcome, and equal once in:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
Should we as Christians be passionate about racial healing? Yes. But not because it’s sexy, or politically correct, or a social problem to be solved. But because racial division is a corruption created by sin. Beloved, part of the tremendous divide among believers over issues of race right now, is rooted in our anemic and two-dimensional theology. Our weak understanding, perhaps even ignorance of the other dimensions to sin on one hand, and the other dimensions to peace on the other. Sin is bigger than my personal guilt and my personal justification. And peace is broader than my peace with God.
That means that our own peace with God as believers is simply the doorway through which we each enter into God’s shalomic restoration project for his broken world. It’s the beginning of our journey to shalom. Not the destination. And, according to Peter, it’s supposed to become our passion. Peter told Christians to:
“Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:14)
The word “pursue” here is the Greek word, diōkō. It’s an aggressive word. In fact, it’s translated 35 times in our Bible as “persecute.” It’s that kind of intensity. Peter says we’re supposed to “pursue” shalom, we’re supposed to “chase after” it. And this idea is nothing new to Peter. Even in the Old Testament Yahweh told his people that their own shalom was inseparably woven into that of the unbelievers around them! Let me show you what I mean. Have you ever heard or read this verse from Jeremiah? He’s speaking to his fellow Jews who are captives in Babylon:
“Seek the welfare of the city where I’ve sent you into exile, and pray on its behalf. For in its welfare, you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7)
Did you know the three times the word, “welfare” shows up in this verse are the Hebrew word, “shalom.” We are to seek and work for shalom where we find ourselves, because we’re now part of God’s solution, and the pursuit of shalom in the lives of others yields the growth of shalom within ourselves. As people who have peace with God, we’re to become peace-seekers. But, it gets even better.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called God’s children.” (Matthew 5:9) Those who have experienced peace with God, are agents of the peace of God. Peace-making, it turns out, is Yahweh’s family business. Beloved, taken together, this means that God wants to mature you and me from being shalom-takers, to shalom-seekers, to shalom-makers. Your peace with God, my peace with God, is our initiation into the multiple types of shalom God wants to bring back to his broken world. This clear, linear connection between our own salvation and the restoration of shalom is obvious in the Story. Or put another way, the four-dimensional view of shalom becomes apparent once we know what we’re looking for. Let me show you from a familiar passage that all of us know…two-dimensionally:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with this passage. It’s a classic reference used to demonstrate that God has done what we were powerless to do. He saved us. We didn’t save ourselves. That’s what He did. The very next verse contains the other two dimensions of our guilt being forgiven. Paul goes on to tell us why He saved us. Listen to what Paul says again, only this time in its four-dimensional context:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)
You and I are “created in Christ Jesus” to work for shalom because we’re now part of the solution to the absence of shalom. And this was God’s plan all along. To create a family composed of multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-generational people who have been given peace with Him, in order to cooperate with Him in enlarging the family on one hand, and restoring shalom to the rest of creation on the other. Titus couldn’t have said it any clearer when he wrote about the family of God:
“…waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” (Titus 2:13–14)
The Greek word for “people” here, laos, is a word for a multitude. God’s intention for those who’ve been given shalom with Him, is to become seekers and makers of that shalom wherever it is missing. And beloved…it’s missing everywhere, in every way. So, the flip-side of peace, it turns out, is the road to shalom God’s put you on now that you’ve taken the peace with Him He offered freely to you. Makes being a Christian a whole different matter, doesn’t it?
So, how in the world does God accomplish this shalomic restoration project of His? Well that has a lot to do with peace’s twin…grace. And we’re going to look at grace next episode…both sides of it. Until then, “seek peace and pursue it,” and when you see places where its absence and your life intersect, well…how ‘bout you work to make some? See ya next time.