Image: Christ Pantocrator, 6th century, St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai.
This Easter, we’ve had a lot of John’s Gospel. We’ve heard the risen Jesus invite a thunderstruck Thomas to see and touch him. We were with Peter by the lakeshore when Jesus restored him to relationship. We heard Jesus confront the religious leaders in the Temple, declaring his love for his sheep. Last week, Jesus told us that the main identifier of Christian community is the love shown within it. And we’re back in John’s Gospel the week before Jesus’s ascension.
It’s a fitting text. The setting is the same as last week. It’s the night of Jesus’s arrest. Judas has gone out into the night. Jesus keeps talking about his departure from this world. And the disciples are becoming more anxious and despondent. Jesus is going away, so what does that mean for them? Brash Peter asks why he can’t follow Jesus now. Philip wants to see God the Father directly. And Thomas wonders how they can continue to follow Jesus when they don’t know where he is going. They’re scared. They’re troubled. They’re grieving.
And we’ve been there, too. Maybe you yourself are there this morning. Maybe you’re disturbed about the state of the nation or the world. Maybe you’re grieving the loss of a loved one. Maybe you’re anxious or scared about what might happen in the future with your children, grandchildren, parents, finances—the list of fears can be endless. And I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older, that list has only grown. I used to worry about myself. Now, I worry about my child, my wife, our congregation, my father-in-law’s house, and so on. We carry a lot of fear with us. And we can also fear that we’re on our own. That no one is coming to help us.
But Jesus knows our fears. He knows our grief, our anxiety, our troubled hearts. He knows that amid all these cares and worries, we have trouble trusting him. And so, he makes a solemn promise to his disciples and to us. He promises us his peace.
Now, peace is a strange word. It can simply mean the absence of conflict. That was the state of the Empire in Jesus’s day—for the most part, anyway. There was period of relative quiet called the pax Romana—the Roman peace. Yet, this peace was not just. This peace was kept through taxation and sporadic brutality. It was a peace that papered over oppression and inequality. We still find that papered-over peace today. We find it in government. We may find it in the workplace, where employees walk on eggshells around an abusive boss. We might find it in families that struggle with addiction, when everyone agrees to pretend there isn’t a problem. The prophet Jeremiah has a phrase for that kind of peace. He calls it a peace where “the wound of my people is treated carelessly, saying, ‘peace, peace,’ where there is no peace.”
But that’s not the kind of peace Jesus is talking about. When Jesus talks about peace, he’s talking about shalom. And shalom is not merely the absence of conflict. Shalom is about our well-being. Our wholeness. Our being who God made us to be. This peace tells the truth. This peace confronts injustice. This peace that is unbent and untarnished by our other allegiances and worldviews. As you can guess, this is a peace that is impossible for us mortals to achieve. As much as we may love the truth, we may find bending it a little to be more pragmatic sometimes. As much as we may value liberty and justice for all, we may find it more convenient to let go of that high-flying rhetoric, particularly when we benefit from the injustice. We’re simply stuck in our sinfulness.
But thank God—Jesus doesn’t leave us alone. He doesn’t let us figure this out by ourselves. Jesus sends his disciples—us contemporary ones included—the Holy Spirit. He sends us the Advocate, the Teacher, the Counselor, the Comforter—the Spirit who will keep us in the truth. This Spirit is the Love that exists between Father and Son, and that spills over to the whole creation. This is the Spirit that lifts us out of our sinfulness and works on us from the moment of our baptism on, remaking us in the image of Jesus Christ. Luther speaks about this work of the Spirit in his explanation of the Creed in his Small Catechism: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.[1]” Through the Spirit, we are made holy, even when we don’t feel it. Through the Spirit, we are called to faith in Jesus Christ. And through the Spirit, we find the peace of Christ. This is not an abstraction; this is truth. Through the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we are given not only a model of unity and peace, we are given actual unity and peace, even when division and destruction are all around us.
And that peace and love of God is here for you—here at this communion table. It doesn’t look like much—a bite and a sip. But that bite and sip is the love of Christ for you. It is the life of God—for you. It is forgiveness—for you. And it is peace—genuine peace, real shalom—for you. For us. Since the day of our baptism, the Spirit has been active in each of us. And when Jesus says the Spirit will keep us in the truth, that is a promise just as valid as the one when he promises to be fully present in this bread and wine. The triune God is here. Come forward and receive his peace. Amen.
© 2025, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes with appropriate credit given.
[1] Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 355–356.