What is peace? How do we define peace? Who defines peace? Like love or mercy, the term peace is not so easily nailed down or defined.

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1 1 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Peace is a rather loaded term. What is peace? How do we define peace? Who defines peace? Like love or mercy, the term peace is not so easily nailed down or defined. Peace can be used as a greeting and as a good-bye. Peace can apply globally and individually. Many if not most of us have heard peace described as not just the absence of conflict but it is also the presence of justice. This is a nice sentiment, but I have to ask, can we know authentic peace if we have never experienced conflict? Consider the virtue of courage is someone truly brave if they re not afraid. If we want peace, if we want to know and experience peace for what it is, does that mean we need conflict? Surely it would be better to avoid things that disrupt peace; that disrupt the flow of things; that introduce conflict? The term peace is not so easily nailed down or defined But here is Jesus, offering us His peace and He is offering it not as the world does, so obviously his peace is different. Jesus is saying is that the peace that the world gives, that the world thinks is important, that the world thinks is actually peace I think Jesus is saying that that peace is incomplete and misguided, and that it ultimately pales in comparison to the peace that He leaves.

2 2 Because the peace that Christ leaves, the peace that Christ gives, is a peace that is hard for us to wrap our minds around, but to be honest it s not that surprising that we would struggle with it. Jesus himself offers some pretty confusing and paradoxical statements about peace. At one point He said, I came not to bring peace but the sword. How are we supposed to weave that together with the beatitude blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God? I think we like to envision and define peace as something that is unitive and yet Christ said Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother My peace I leave you my peace I give you. The Peace of Christ seems more akin to chaos and turmoil than it does to serenity and tranquility. Because it is. Jesus came to upset the established order. The moment Adam and Eve sampled the forbidden fruit the world was turned upside down. And so Jesus came to intervene, He came to set the world right side up again. And as we well know, there was some resistance to that. Some of the accusations levied against Christ bore the hallmark of someone who is an agitator, an instigator, a trouble-maker.

3 3 When the scribes and the Pharisees brought Jesus before Pilate they said to Pilate, We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar. They were trying to convince Pilate that Jesus was trying to turn the world on its head, but what all of them failed to recognize is that the world was already on its head. They told Pilate that Jesus was trying to upset the established order, that He was dangerous you know what they were right. He is dangerous. Jesus Christ is the most dangerous man who has ever lived. He is an agitator, he is an instigator, he is a trouble-maker. He doesn t tip toe around, he runs into the temple and starts flipping tables over. He doesn t have quite conversations about what the leadership is doing. He goes right up to them and calls them what they are; hollow, whitewashed, hypocrites. If Jesus talked like this today, he would be accused of being un-christian. He s not being very nice. He s not being very tolerant. No he s not what he is being is God. What he is being.. is truth because that s what He is. He s not a truth, he s the truth. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And he does these things, he says these things, he upsets the established order, he upsets us, because he is so desperate to save us. To bring peace to the world Jesus had to shatter the perceptions that the world had of itself to pieces. A world that thought everything was fine.

4 4 A world that had gotten so used to being upside down that they thought they were right side up. He knew there was going to be resistance, and he knew what it was going to cost him. Never was the world more wrong than when we crucified Jesus but when Jesus vacated the tomb He had set things right. Now that doesn t mean that the world will stop doing terrible things. That doesn t mean that the world will be free from conflict. And it doesn t mean that we will be free from conflict. As much as Christ introduced chaos into the world, he introduces it into our lives as well into our very souls. Just as he intervened in the world he intervenes in our lives. He has come to flip tables over; he has come to call us out for our hypocrisies; he has come to upset our own personal established orders. And we will resist him. We will avoid him because discipleship costs, conversion is hard, and the cross is terrifying. But Jesus is going to come and cause chaos anyways. We can t avoid Him forever. And the longer we do, the more we try, the less peace we will have. Because in the end, the peace given by Christ is not achieved because there is an absence of conflict, but because there has been a complete embracing of it.

5 5 Find the conflict within you and embrace it. And if we embrace the conflict, if we struggle with it, if we struggle with conversion, even if we are terrible at, even if it takes us our entire lives to get it right, through the grace of God and the merits of the cross of Christ things are going to be set right again And then we will truly come to know the peace of Christ. A peace that surpasses all understanding, a peace that will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.