Peace be with you

From Helen

We all have different characters and personalities, we all have different needs. I have always been better in the mornings than at any other time in the day. I am a morning person, who whilst not always awake can be bright and breezy. When I was a child I used to wake up and chatter, maybe sing and dance…. This was fine with my family but for one lady from our Church whose name was Gloria this wasn’t so good.

Gloria didn’t like mornings, she would get up and come to services even early ones but her way of waking up meant that she liked things to be gentle and fairly peaceful. On coming to our house in the morning she would watch me bouncing around and the one morning she said to my mum, ‘is she always like this ? – if she was mine I would kill her !!’. I decided to be kind and ask how I could make things better and she answered that peace and quiet would be nice.

So, I got an old ice cream tub and put some tissue in it, made a table and chair out of foil and offered her – her very own personal box of peace and quiet! A nice thought – although I expect that I danced around afterwards.

I was thinking of this when I looked at the gospel reading for this morning (Luke 24:36b-48). There were four words that stood out for me. They were, ‘peace be with you.’ 

They really are incredible words. In our service this morning we will share the peace and it can be almost ironic that the peace involves chatter and moving around. But, the peace is something to share and the peace is not a sitting and being quiet type of thing. It is the peace of knowing that the Prince of Peace, who rose from the dead loves us and we are part of His family.

The type of peace is the peace that marks us out as children of God. We are people who have said ‘yes’ to God.  We have seen and believed in Him, and whilst it can be hard in a world where there is little peace we are to stand up for peace as the followers of Jesus, as children of Him.

I am not sure how you are at imagination but there is a type of reading the Bible, which involves picturing a situation and putting yourself into the story. I want to do a little bit of that now. I want you to picture being in the room with the disciples that we heard about this morning. I wonder what you might see ?

You may see the disciples talking excitedly, Jesus whom they had followed was back !! He was alive, this is amazing … or maybe you would see people looking confused, what does this mean ? What is going to happen next ? Are we supposed to do something about this news ? If so, what ?

Then Jesus appears and He doesn’t answer the questions, He doesn’t do anything amazing but He does something which completely confounds them. Jesus stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’

Incredible, no immediate ideas for the future, no action plans to discuss! Amidst all the excitement and anticipation, the wonder of what might happen next Jesus stood and said ‘peace be with you’ and the disciples could have been forgiven for thinking ‘what else do you want to say to us?’ 

Then Jesus unveiled His action plan by saying,‘You are my witnesses’.

Jesus, through his victory over death, and the gift of the Holy Spirit that would come to all his followers at Pentecost was handing over the earthly ministry to those followers – as they received the peace of Christ, as they had seen the risen Jesus they were to be witnesses to all the things that they had seen, they were to tell others. 

It is the same for us as well, we are witnesses to Jesus because of the events of Easter, because of what He has done in our lives, maybe through an answered prayer, maybe through support from someone we didn’t expect, maybe through the experience of a sudden peace. As witnesses we have something to share which starts with the peace of Christ.

We are changed by God and we are to go and help God to transform others by allowing God to work through us by the way we live and the words we speak.

We are witnesses, we are children of God by His love for us. An amazing love, an incredible peace and it is ours to share. 

Being witnesses can sound quite frightening. The preacher William Sangster told a story of a man in his Church who was a barber. This man was very excited about his faith and wanted to be a good witness and so the one day he was ready to shave a man, and after lathering the mans face he stood there with his razor in his hand and said, ‘Are you ready to meet your God ?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly the man ran away !

Being a witness doesn’t have to be as scary as that but it is about us sharing with others what we have seen and know of God. The people who ask why you go to Church, the friends who know you believe, the people who may say something that you don’t feel comfortable with, whenever you answer with the reasons you believe then you are witnessing.

We are witnesses when we share with others the peace that God has given us, the promise that He is always with us. To know peace is to know God, and to know God means that we have something incredible to share. That something is that God loves us so much that He would come amongst us, be crucified and rise again and then offer us peace. 

The risen Jesus, the peace we are given means that God is with us. A new light has dawned, for the disciples the day to day things would never be the same because they had seen the Lord, they knew that they were not alone. We have seen the Lord, we know we are not alone. We have His peace to share. 

We will share that peace as children of God, loved by Him, witnesses to His resurrection as we let God change and transform us so that we are more like Him. May we be ready to turn to each other and say, ‘Peace be with you.’ May we be ready to turn to those we have difficulties with and say, ‘Peace be with you.’ May we be ready to pray for the world and say, ‘May God’s peace be with them.’ We can feel helpless in many situations but we are witnessing to the peace of God and we can always pray, ‘May they know your peace.’ So I pray ‘May God’s peace be with us always.’ AMEN