Peace Be With You

Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.'” Jesus comes and gives peace to His disciples, calming their hearts, which had been churning since that morning on account of the reports from the women and Peter and John. The peace that Jesus gives is a real and abiding peace, a peace rooted in the redemptive work He has accomplished for us.

However, Jesus does not give peace in the ways the world seeks peace. According to the teachers of this world, peace comes in many and various ways, but not the way Jesus gives it. Consider the great pop slogan of the 1960s and 1970s: “Make love, not war.” People, tired of the conflict in Vietnam and the culture wars raging in our own land, clamored for a peace that simply let everyone be him-, her-, or themselves. Add that to the sexual revolution, and the ultimate peace was to “love” one another, or at least to have sex as much as possible. Of course, this thinking is merely an extreme example of the idea that peace is simply the absence of conflict. In the minds of the hippies and flower children, if everyone simply lays down arms and lives and lets live, everyone and everything will be fine and dandy.

Of course this thinking simply leads to passive-aggressive conflict. We humans are infected with the sinful need for conflict. If there is no outward aggression, the old Adam will creep up inside and foster resentment and bitterness and envy. You may not fight with your neighbor, but you will not help him either.

An older message than that of the hippies, one that goes back millennia, is the idea that peace is in having possessions or position. If you can secure for yourself enough money, you can secure your future. This idea appeals to the American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” work ethic, but it is not a new idea. Consider how many people were emotionally and spiritually devastated when the stock market bottomed out in 2008. In 1929 and 1930, after the Great Crash, scores of people committed suicide because they lost all their worldly wealth and prosperity. Luther makes it abundantly clear in the Large Catechism that money is one of the most insidious of the false gods the human heart can worship. Jesus says that you cannot serve God and mammon.

Then, of course, there are the various paths of other world religions. Islam and Judaism claim to offer peace in the Law. Follow all these commands correctly, and you will be at peace. Do enough to satisfy Moses or Allah, and everything will be ok. The eastern religions claim to offer peace through meditation and emptying of oneself. Just fold yourself inside out spiritually and you will find peace. Renounce everything and become one with the tree, and you will find peace inside your own nose. Then there is the self-fulfillment addiction fostered by the so-called New Age movement. Meditate upon yourself, and find the peace within. Rummage around in your mind until you find the “you” you want to be.

But what happens when that peace is gone? What do you do when your neat and tidy little world gets turns upside-down? This past week, thousands of people in the South are facing this very question. What do you say to someone whose house was picked up and flung into the field? Where is the peace for someone whose husband will not come home again because of the storm? You cannot simply utter some platitudes and slap some cash in the hand and pretend that everything will go back to normal. Meditation will not fix this. No possessions will stop a tornado, or bring its victims back to life.

Likewise, not all the money in the world can bring back the victim of some sudden tragedy. You cannot pay to unwrap a teenager's car from around the power pole. You cannot shove a gold bar in the robber's gun. The size of your wallet is not relative to the size of the heart attack that kills you. Even cancer strikes whom and when it will, and no pool of lucre will change its course.

In the midst of the changes and chances of life, Jesus comes to you and says, “Peace be with you.” While you were yet a sinner, dead in the midst of death and sin, He burst through the locked doors of your heart. He invaded your most personal spaces and staked His claim on you. He poured out His Spirit over and into you, and He proclaims to you His peace.

Jesus does not give the peace of the world. The peace of this world is fleeting and transitory. It depends on experience and warm-fuzziness. The peace of this world is only good if you are standing still, but this life never stands still. But the peace which Jesus gives is everlasting and certain. As certain as He is God and Lord, He gives His peace. The peace of Christ is not simply a wish or a few nice words, but a real, abiding calm in the heart. For “the peace of God, which passes all understanding” is that peace which Jesus won by His innocent suffering and death, and His glorious resurrection (Philippians 4:7). The peace of God is not found in the imagination of our hearts, but in the blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. When Jesus says “Peace be with you.”, He is really and truly giving you His peace. For God's Word does what it says. As surely as God lives, He speaks His Word of forgiveness to you, and that Word creates the peace within your heart that no person, no tragedy, nothing in all of creation can take away from you.

And our Lord is exceedingly generous toward us. He does not simply pull us from the bath and leave us. He returns to us over and over and over again, washing us clean of our sins, proclaiming to us the redemption of our souls, and speaking His peace to us.

St. John instructs us, “if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The peace of God comes through the forgiveness of sins, and we receive that forgiveness when we confess our corrupt sinful nature and our own evil deeds and misdeeds. The act of confession brings our darkness into the light of Christ, where it is obliterated, and only His peace remains for us. The apostolic word of forgiveness which comes from the mouth of your pastor is fueled by the Holy Spirit, which Jesus breathed out on His apostles, and which is given to all those who stand in His stead and by His command.

Regardless of the inclinations of your heart or mind, regardless of the stresses and strains of life, regardless of the evil that befall you, Jesus comes to you and says, “Peace be with you.” He says to you, I forgive you all your sins. I give to you the peace I have won for you on the cross, the peace which I rose from the dead to proclaim to you. My peace I give to you.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Christ is risen! Alleluia!