Preached at Tigard Community Friends Church
January 5, 2020
Picture it: England 1650. King Charles 1 has recently been
beheaded by the Parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell, bringing the divine
right of kings to govern to an abrupt end. A war is raging between Protestants
and Catholics over who will rule England.
Bear-baiting is a sport, and hangings are a family outing. The Church seemed to
be splintering a hundred ways as Ranters say God permits them to do whatever
they want in their wild parties, Adamites say God wants them to return to Eden
and walk around naked, and Quakers…Quakers stand up and argue with Anglican
priests during church, keep their hats on in the presence of the upper class,
and refuse to swear loyalty oaths—to pledge allegiance—to the government. The
mid-1600s, when young George Fox began preaching and the Quaker movement began,
were a wild, violent, chaotic time. And out of that context came the Quaker “peace testimony.” Several who had
served the Parliamentary Army under Oliver Cromwell, fighting for English
Protestantism against Roman Catholicism, followed their experience of personal
revelation of God out of the army and into preaching. Their testimony was not
so much against the military as for their experience of being
restored to the innocence of the garden of Eden by the indwelling Spirit of
Jesus Christ, and that innocence took away all cause for war.
This testimony also derived from the Quaker commitment to
equality of all persons and the determination to swear not at all. This refusal
to take the oath of loyalty was frequently used by hostile persons to put
Quakers in jail because they refused to swear allegiance to the government and
its head. They committed their bodies and souls to be loyal to no political
regime, but only to Jesus Christ, despite their natural preference for the
Protestant side of the English Civil War. Thus, when the nation returned to
King Charles II, they attempted to use their refusal to swear allegiance to
Oliver Cromwell to prove to King Charles II that they were called to a
different kind of kingdom and were no more or less loyal to King Charles than
they had been to Oliver Cromwell. They still went to jail, because political
systems demand body and soul loyalty.
The actual lives of Quakers in the beginnings were fraught
with persecution from the established Church of England, hostilities from other
sects like the early Baptists, and conflicts among the faithful themselves. And
those latter conflicts, while they may make us skeptical of their entire restoration
to innocence, often came directly from what made their contribution to the
whole of Christianity important and worthwhile, namely, their insistence on
personal experience of the Spirit of God and personal accountability to obey
what the Spirit of God told them to do. This practical mysticism derived from
their belief that within every person is a seed of Truth that God’s Spirit
speaks to and causes to grow. And though they went on to be separatist and
self-preserving, the truth that inspired the first generation ran like an
undercurrent into the mainstreams of Christianity and changed how we understand
God and our relationship to God through Christ. A soul at peace, in shalom,
with God is a soul nothing can ultimately trouble.
At the time just before Jesus was born, the nation of Israel
was occupied by a foreign power, Rome, and ruled locally by hereditary enemies
represented in the various Herods. The Jews were split internally among
collaborators with Rome and religious purists and purifiers, and zealots
dedicated to overthrowing Rome. The temple system exploited worshipers for
money, particularly the poor or foreign-born. But there were still faithful
Jews hoping for the coming of Messiah who would bring Shalom.
Luke 1 tells about the birth of John who became known as the
Baptizer. His birth was foretold to his father Zechariah, who just mentioned to
God’s messenger that he and his wife were old and she was past child-bearing
age and could he please have a sign so that his wife would believe him, and the
sign was that he could not talk for the duration of the pregnancy. When John
was born, Zechariah’s speech came back, and he prophesied:
“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, because God has looked on
God’s people and ransomed them, and raised a mighty helper for us in the house
of David…God will deliver us safely out of the hands of our enemies and of all
who hate us, will perform the mercy shown to our fathers and will remember God’s
holy covenant, the oath God swore to Abraham our father, to grant that we,
having been rescued from our enemies, might worship and serve God without fear,
in holiness and right living before God’s presence for all our days. And now
you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you go forth
before the face of the Master to prepare his ways, to give to his people a
knowledge of salvation in release from the bondage of their sins, through our
God’s inmost mercy, whereby a dawn from above will visit us, to shine upon
those sitting in darkness and death’s shadow, in order to guide our feet into
the path of peace.” (Luke 1:67-79)
So let’s see what Zechariah thought would lead to peace, to
shalom.
Liberation from oppression
Salvation from enemies
Restoration of the covenant with God through God’s mercy
Freedom to worship without fear, in holiness and justice
before his presence, which was understood to be in the Temple
John was to be the prophetic voice that taught Israel to
understand their sinfulness, their need for forgiveness, so that their lives
would not be characterized by darkness and the fear of death but by light and
peace.
And that is what John set out to do. He lived a life of
abstinence and purity, spent time in the desert with only God, and then
returned to preach. His message was about being washed in living water in the Jordan
River to show repentance, the commitment to changing mind and behavior, and to
confer release and forgiveness from sins. He told the crowds to share their
clothing and food with the impoverished; he told tax-collectors to collect no
more than was due; he told men in the army not to extort or falsely accuse
anyone and to be content with their wages. His message was right in line with
all the prophets before him: be generous, have integrity, tell the truth, be
content.
But most importantly, he told them that his baptism was
water, but that one was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire,
who carried a threshing flail to beat the chaff away from the grain, saving the
grain into a storehouse and burning away the chaff “with inextinguishable
fire.”
So there’s that to look forward to in an encounter with the
Chosen and Sent One of God, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ.
I was asked to talk about Shalom. Because Shalom is a Hebrew
word, it is found only in the Old Testament in that form. However, it is very
likely that when the New Testament portrays Jesus speaking the Greek word for
peace that what he actually said was some version of Shalom. For example, when
Jesus said, “Peace be unto you,” he was using a familiar greeting that included
the word Shalom. When Jesus talks about peace, the Old Testament Shalom
inhabits and fills up the meaning of the word in the New Testament.
The history of how the word is used in the Old Testament is
more complex than a notion of peace as tranquility or even the absence of
conflict. The root of the word is a verb and these are some of the ways to
translate it:
restore, recompense, reward, repay, requite, make
restitution, make amends, complete, finish
be at peace, make peace with, make safe, make whole, make
good
You can see that inherent in these words is an idea of
justice. It is unsurprising that the word Shalom in various forms permeates the
books of the Law—Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. Shalom is about
making things right, about fairness, about justice, about adjudicating who owes
whom what and defining how to pay it. The word is used to describe the offering
of an animal to God to acknowledge sin and make peace with God. The prophets
weigh in against deceptive weights and measures because Shalom relates to
providing full value, and they assert that God hates it when people cheat each
other in business transactions, noting that they most often cheat the poor.
In other words, the concept of Shalom presupposes that
things have gone wrong, and acknowledges our deep desire that things go right,
that our lives be characterized by completeness, soundness, safety, health,
prosperity, quiet, contentment, friendship.
Even the Greek word for peace, eirene, has a probable root
that means “to join”, suggesting the prerequisite of something divided prior to
the coming of peace.
So Zechariah’s prophecy is a prayer for Shalom.
I want to suggest to you two things. Zechariah’s prophecy as
he understood it was too small. When he referred to God’s people, he understood
it entirely as referring to the nation of Israel. But we know from the rest of
the story of Jesus that the circle widened to include those outside almost
immediately, both while Jesus ministered and after the Holy Spirit took over
the disciples’ lives and moved them outside Jerusalem, Judea, and to the
farthest reaches of the world they knew.
And the process of understanding that all peoples are God’s
people has been fraught with division and pain, from the actual Messiah, Jesus,
on down to today. In other words, Shalom is not simple, and the enemies of
peace are within ourselves and the systems like families, religions, and
politics that shape our fears, our shames, and our areas of ignorance. Further,
being moved by God’s Spirit from a life of fear and shame and unknowing to a
life of faith and acceptance and increasing understanding is painful and
requires quite often a kind of divine surgery.
That is why John warns his hearers that the Messiah will
come as a reaper, not grim, but determined. The one God sends to save God’s
people will not necessarily be experienced as a gentle restorer of balance. In
point of fact, Jesus himself makes this point by word and deed.
In Luke 12 and Matthew 10 Jesus describes his mission:
“I came to set a fire
on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled….Do you think I came to
give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on there
will be five in one house divided three against two…; father against son, son
against father, mother and daughter divided against each other…Why do you not
judge what is right even for yourselves? For as you are going out with your
adversary to a judge, make an effort to settle your debt with your adversary on
the spot, so that he does not drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you
over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you
most surely will not come out from there until you pay the very last cent.” (Luke
12:49 ff)
I have to say that I was startled to find my thoughts
directed (I hope by the Spirit of Truth) toward these passages when I signed on
to speak about Shalom. Yet I think we can see our understanding of Shalom informs
this passage. If Shalom is about making things right, about making things whole
that have been broken, the first great brokenness of humanity is the
willingness to be parted from God. This willingness shows up in every action
that goes against what God’s Spirit has told us is right and good to do, in
every evasion in our own spirits against absolutely trusting in the goodness
and love and faithfulness of God and the claims that God has on us because of
them. We owe God everything, starting with the breath of life itself, and we
will be imprisoned within ourselves by law and justice until we admit what we
owe to God, and admit our own inability to pay, and throw ourselves on the
mercy of the court where Jesus is our advocate as well as our judge. And then
we have to stand naked and unashamed in God’s presence, hiding nothing,
allowing God to bring what has been hidden out of the corners where we buried
it, running toward God rather than away when we realize we’re not ready to meet
God’s eyes. The Old Testament writers called this open stance toward God “a
perfect heart”—“perfect” being derived from Shalom, meaning at peace with God,
in friendship with God, rather than a heart without flaws. See the relationship
between David and God if you want to understand the term.
And this version: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace
upon the earth; I came to bring not peace but a sword. For I came to divide a
man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…and a man’s enemies
will be the members of his household. Whoever cherishes father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me; and whoever cherishes son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up their cross and follow after
me is not worthy of me. Whoever gains their soul will lose it, and whoever
loses their soul for my sake will gain it. Whoever accepts you accepts me, and
whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me.” (Matthew 10:34 ff)
This speech occurs in a context of sending disciples out to
preach in Judea to Jews. In commissioning them, Jesus warns them of resistance,
rejection, and violence in response to the message to repent because God’s
kingdom is here. This message of God’s kingdom exposes inmost allegiances,
which remain to family, race, religion, not to God. As long as this is true, God is their
adversary, who is contending with them for what they, what we, owe to God—our
undivided loyalty, our faith, our faithfulness.
We are so often prone to put loyalty to God in storage while
we sign on to our family heritage, our religious tradition, our political
party, our national identity. We need, like early Quakers saw, to be restored
to the innocence of personal relationship with God Almighty, to walk daily with
God, to hide nothing from God. We need to make all other loyalties secondary to
this primary one. If we are participating in any system that splits the world
into us vs. them, we have been drawn away from our loyalty to God, who has no
favorites in the world, who even told the nation of Israel prior to the coming
of Jesus, “are you not as children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of
Israel? Saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt?
And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). In
other words, all the peoples are God’s. God’s care is for all the peoples of
the world. And don’t forget the story of Jonah, whom God sent to preach to the
political and national enemies of Israel, the Assyrians, and Jonah’s complaint
to God when God forgives and does not rain judgment on the Assyrians: “Isn’t
this just what I predicted? I knew that
You are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that
You will choose not to inflict misery.” To which God (eventually) responds: “Should
I not pity Nineveh, that great city, wherein there are more than 120,000
persons that cannot tell their right hand from their left hand; and also many
animals?” (Jonah 4:2,11). Jesus tweaks the religious leaders of his day by
referencing this specific story and saying it will be easier for Nineveh in the
day of judgment than for Israel because the Assyrians repented when the prophet
preached (Matthew 12:41).
Both of these challenging passages are preceded by the
following encouragement given by Jesus himself, and I can think of no better
way for us to prepare within ourselves the way of the Lord as best we can:
“Guard yourselves from the yeast of the Pharisees, which is pretending
to be good. There is nothing thoroughly veiled that will not be unveiled, or
hidden that will not be known. Thus the things you said in the darkness will be
heard in the light, and what you whisper in private rooms will be proclaimed on
the rooftops. And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those killing
the body and thereafter having nothing more that they can do…Are not five
sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight.
Rather, even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. Do not be afraid;
you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:1-7). “What I say to you in
the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in your ear, proclaim upon the
housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…Are
not two sparrows sold for the smallest pittance? And not one of them will fall
to earth without your Father. But even the hairs of your head have all been
numbered. So do not be afraid; you are of greater worth than a great many
sparrows.” (Matthew 10:27-31)
Jesus says that when we say by word and deed, “I’m with God.
I have pledged my loyalty to God” that he, Jesus, will say in front of God’s
angels, “I’m with that person; I have pledged loyalty to her, to him, to them.”
And nothing can separate us from God’s faithful love. God’s love is committed
to our Shalom, to our well-being, to our wholeness, which we cannot have
without relationship, friendship—Shalom—with God. And God will work to burn away the chaff or
the nonsense in how we understand ourselves and our relationships in order to
leave behind the true grain of our personhood which God will never let go to
waste.
The following helped me write this sermon:
https://www.blueletterbible.org/
The Jewish Study Bible, eds. Adele Berlin and Mark Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)
The New Testament, trans. David Bentley Hart (New Haven: Yale UP, 2017)
George MacDonald's writings in general
