Circles of Shalom. September 21, 2014 First Baptist Church, Kansas City, MO Dr. Stephen D. Jones, preaching Luke 24:44-53

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1 Circles of Shalom September 21, 2014 First Baptist Church, Kansas City, MO Dr. Stephen D. Jones, preaching Luke 24:44-53 When Jesus spoke of peace, he used the Hebrew word, shalom. Shalom occurs over 200 times in the Hebrew Bible. New Testament scholar Willard Swartley writes, Shalom is an iridescent word, with many levels of meaning in Hebrew scripture. The base denominator of its many meanings is well-being, wholeness, completeness. (p. 27, Covenant of Peace, Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2008) It s truly unfortunate that there is no English word that adequately translates shalom. We typically translate shalom into the English word, peace. But instead of being a many-splendored word like shalom, peace can be a slippery and dualistic word, without cohesive meaning. I was leading a workshop on shalom a few years ago in Berea, Kentucky for the Baptist Peace Fellowship. And attending the workshop was a dear friend of mine, Dr. Maung Maung Yin of Myanmar. On the spur of the moment, I decided to ask him if in his native Burmese language there is such a holistic word like shalom. He responded quickly, Oh, yes, we have a word, mingalabar, which can be used as a greeting on the street, but it also means well-being. Many languages of the world have such a word that English lacks. Shalom is at the heart of Jesus teachings, the core of his message. Scholars Hartmut Beck and Colin Brown state, the word (shalom) can describe both the content and goal of all Christian preaching, the message itself called the gospel of peace. (p 781, NIDictionary of NT Theology). Jesus invited his followers to come together as children of shalom (Lk 10:6 KJV and RSV) and he was the only first century Jew to whom this phrase is attributed (p. 208 Wm Klassen, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 5, 1992) Jesus often sought his own shalom. At 12 years of age, he was found by his parents listening to the teachers in the temple and asking them questions. (Lk 2:41) As Jesus was baptized by John, it was a shalom moment. Seven times in the Gospel of Luke it states that at daybreak Jesus departed and went into a deserted place (4:42; 5:16; 6:12; 9:10; 9:18; 9:28; 11:1) to seek his own shalom. Jesus taught, Blessed are the peacemakers. (Mt 5:29) He often taught about how to live as a person of shalom. Nearly all his healings involved restoring well-being to a broken person. He said, You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also Again, You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your

2 enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt 6:38-44) How are we to live a life committed to shalom in the midst of violence and conflict around us? What can you and I do about the savage disregard for human decency as evidenced by ISIS? Most of us cannot alter the cycle of history. How can we make a difference for shalom? We feel so small and the problems around us loom so large. We feel impotent. Poet-theologian Ross Snyder wrote years ago, We breathe the whole world around us. And something of us takes up residence in other people. Our person extends beyond our own skin We permeate each other; we are present in each other. We influence and form each other s personality. We exude feelings and actions which help determine the feeling tone of our home, our school, and other people. In each here and now we are constantly helping to organize a world in which we and others exist You cannot live as an isolated self, feeding on just yourself with energies turned back in on yourself. With nothing going out or coming in We do not exist as just ourselves. We exist only as part of a world There is no such thing as a self; only a self-in-world. There is no life without a hyphen! To be a human being we hyphen with other human beings. (p , 84, Ross Snyder, On Becoming Human) What Snyder is essentially saying is that we each have a wide circle around our lives. It isn t just a circle for one individual. It is a friendship circle, a mentoring circle, a circle for loved ones, a collegial circle. While we may not be able to impact large-scale global events, we can impact what happens within the circles that already surround our lives. My life touches other lives. Your life touches other lives, and we each have more influence, in wider circles, than we likely imagine to be true. Parker Palmer says, Gathering in circles is an ancient practice being revived in our time. We have dialogue circles to improve communication, conflict resolution circles to negotiate crises, therapeutic circles to explore our emotions, problem-solving circles to puzzle out hard questions, team-building circles to cheerlead for a common cause, and collaborative learning circles to deepen our education. (P. 22 Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness) In the circles around us, we have amazing influence and power. We may not be able to influence the entire Heartland of America, or even the Kansas City metropolitan area, but we can create shalom in our homes, with our extended family, within our friendship circles, within our neighborhood, and within this church. This we can do: this is where we already have influence. We can build circles of shalom around our lives. Introduce one unhealthy person spewing poison throughout a congregation and look at the harm it creates. Introduce one person of wellbeing and look at the good it can do. A young pastor spoke with me at the last American Baptist Mission Summit. She was distraught as to how her first pastorate was unraveling. She is a very capable and gifted young pastor. But she was also emotionally un-well, and she was exhausted and disillusioned. How could she possibly introduce health and wholeness when she herself was so deeply pained? I suggested to her that she must first attend to her own well-being, and circle around herself the group of twenty or so members receptive to her vision and who are eager to attend to their and her well-being.

3 Create a circle of shalom among the receptive in the congregation, and pray that it spread to others. Allow me to re-state the social vision of the gospel of Jesus Christ: our call is to create Circles of Shalom around our lives. Our church is called to be a healthy, living organism, a Circle of Shalom in our togetherness. If we are here merely for our own self-betterment, our own private walk, or for the youth group or the music program, or the preaching, then we likely are not creating Circles of Shalom. If this be a welcoming place, an inclusive place, a liberating place, a healing place, it is so because of the circles of shalom that we ourselves create. Our church must also have a public agenda: our public agenda should expand the circle of shalom that exists within this church. Last Friday night we formally covenanted with MORE2. If I have had one message during my first year among you, I think it has been: take it out! Turn out! Take the shalom that exists within and between us and take it to the world. Expand our circle of shalom. When I served in Seattle, I was struck by the rugged individualism of the culture in the Northwest and the stoicism of so many long-term residents. Above all else, the church I served was committed to individual privacy. They went to great lengths to protect each person s privacy. During that time, there was a member of the church named David. He was about my age and discovered that he had late-stage cancer. David wasn t typical of members of that congregation because in his dying, he decided to be so public, and so unafraid to allow others to know his feelings, his struggles, and he welcomed people to come sit with him in his living room or on his porch, and his front door was always open. David went about the final stage of his cancer in a counter-cultural way, wide open, allowing many others to journey with him on any level of depth or intimacy they desired. The friends who came to sit with him typically had provocative conversations about the meaning of his life in this last stage. Those conversations were repeated throughout the congregation. David gave an extraordinary gift to that church and I believe he reshaped that congregation s Circle of Shalom. David taught that it can be a blessing to be transparent and vulnerable in his wide circle of friends. We may not get a vote on City Council or the County or State Legislature. We might not get phone calls from the movers and shakers who want to know our opinion or ask for our wisdom. But by creating Circles of Shalom, we can renew our congregation and our neighborhoods as well as our metropolitan region in genuine ways. Our 60 Minutes of Prayer on one Sunday night each month could create Circles of Shalom. It could offer communal healing, intercessory prayer for one another, holy communion, expanded sharing of concerns and celebrations, and an opportunity to go deeper than Sunday morning typically allows. When you have need of prayer, of encouragement, of hope, when you have need of friends, our Circle of Shalom could be there for you.

4 At the end of the Gospel of Luke, the Risen Christ appeared to the disciples with a greeting. He said to them, Shalom be with you. The disciples were terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost. They were disbelieving and still wondering. (24:41a) But then Jesus gave them a commission to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Stay in Jerusalem until you have been clothed with power from on high Start with your own Circle of Shalom right here, among the believers in Jerusalem. And then take it out to all peoples and all nations. That s our commission as well. Start right here in Kansas City. Start in our own neighborhoods where we live. Start right here in South Kansas City surrounding our church. And as we do, we will be clothed from on high with spiritual power! We may not have power to end all wars, stop all violence, end shocking instances of inhumanity. That we cannot do. We do not have that power. But we do have power from on high to build circles of shalom in our families, in our neighborhood, within this church, and beyond this church. One of my favorite movies is Finding Forrester, in which an aging white man remains living in the Bronx long after the neighborhood has become inhabited by African Americans. And the white man, Forrester, is a total recluse, afraid of going outside his apartment. His only access to the outside world is through his window, which he constantly cleans and through which he observes birds, and the street activity three floors below. The boys who play basketball under his window are aware that he is watching their activities. And one night, one of the boys, Jamal Wallace, takes up a challenge to climb his fire escape, enter the old man s apartment after the lights have gone out, and bring down some object from the old man s apartment as a trophy to demonstrate to his friends that he has the nerve to pull off the juvenile heist. Jamal climbed the fire escape, carefully raised the window, and entered the apartment, only to be scared by the old man who had been watching his every move. In his haste, Jamal left behind his school bag. Jamal, it turns out, is a genius, and Forrester, it turns out, is none other than William Forrester, the famous novelist. The two get acquainted and Jamal starts spending a lot of time in Forrester s apartment. Forrester edits Jamal s work that he left behind in his school bag, and the two become fast friends. At first, their relationship is one of a young boy learning at the feet of the master. But Forrester is an isolated and frightened man, and Jamal finally convinces him to leave his apartment. He takes him to an empty Yankee Stadium, where Forrester spent much of his childhood. It turns out to be a revealing and healing trip. Jamal so encourages Forrester to trust people again, that Forrester ventures out in more creative ways, finally, returning to revisit his native Scotland in the eve of his life. The young Jamal, just an inner city kid with a high IQ, leads Forrester out of his reclusive life. Jamal invites him into a wider circle of shalom where they become advocates for each other.

5 Circles of Shalom do not exist in isolation. They over-lap and rub up against each other. They set off chain reactions. Isn t it fascinating to toss a large stone out into a quiet pond? From one stone, the ripple effect consumes the entire pond, from one concentric circle to another. It is this same rippling effect that circles of shalom have upon each other. One circle can ripple into nearby circles. And one never knows how far the circle extends. Margaret Mead once said, Never under-estimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it s the only thing that ever has. We are a few committed people. That s all we are. It s all we need to be. There may be more followers of Jesus in this church than were among Jesus original followers. And they literally changed the world. Their circle of shalom rippled out to take over the entire Mediterranean, European, Middle Eastern and northern African world. O God, give us the power from on high to create circles of shalom right now, right here, among us. May our Circle of Shalom reach out to the world around us, in your Name. Amen.