"Shalom!"

I love that word. It resonates for me. It touches something deep inside.

"Shalom - Peace!" Yes, "shalom" means peace, bit it means much more than our modern understanding of the word "peace", and far more than what the world tries to pass off as peace.

The world - modern society - tries to convince us that peace is having that car with Anstar - a device that sends a constant signal to a satellite so you never get lost.

Alternatively, peace is a good stock portfolio and economic indicators that produce generous dividends. Several times over the last few months I’ve been invited to lunch by a financial advisor who would like come to St. Paul’s and tell you all how investing through his company will give you peace.

Then, of course, there are those who believe that peace can be achieved through use of power. Have the biggest arsenal of weapons. Show the world you can do as you please and are accountable to no one. Since the first caveman used a dinosaur bone as a club to chase his neighbor away, we humans have been trying to bring about peace by use of force. And, we still don’t seem to realize that it doesn’t work - or at least, not for long. The use of violence or coercion do not bring about peace.

True peace is Shalom. Shalom is more than an absence of conflict, a comfortable/secure existence or the presence of power. Shalom rather than being about something external or about absence is about fullness, about being filled up with something. Shalom is about the reign of God in our hearts, so that we live in a state of compassion and true strength.

Shalom is about going deep into ourselves. It is about letting Jesus heal the broken places in us that keep us from experiencing shalom. This is not quick or easy. Facing and dealing with experiences that wounded us is hard and painful. And it can take a long long time, but it is worth it even to know a little shalom.

As the broken places in us become more healed we are enabled to trust God more and more. We are enabled to let go of the need to control, to have power over, to rely on externals.

This leads us into God’s shalom. From that wholeness which is God’s Shalom we are able to see others as God sees them. From the acceptance that we experience from God we are able to rejoice in the "otherness" of all people - that which makes them unique and different from us, but which we may find threatening. From the love that flows into us from God we are able to become channels for His love to flow out to others. From that true peace which becomes our inner world, we are able to lead others to a life of peace. Then little by little God’s shalom will replace the angry exchanges within families, between neighbors, between competing interest groups and ultimately, between warring nations.

You may doubt this. It may sound too "pie in the sky", but just this week a newspaper report gives evidence that becoming open to God’s shalom can bring peace to the most impossible groups. In California prison officials are crediting what they call a religious studies program with cutting inmate violence. The year before the program started there were five riots, 103 violent incidents, four staff assaults, 1226 disciplinary reports and five lockdowns. In the years since the program was tried there was only one riot, 67 violent incidents and a reduction in other behavior problems as well. This happen in a prison notorious for inmate violence. Surely, if God’s peace can come to a situation like this, it can effect the relationships between nations.

The first time I ever heard the word, "shalom" was in a sermon at my LCMS church during the Vietnam conflict. Now, almost thirty years later, we are again involved in a conflict happening far away from our shores. Is this a conflict we needed to get into? Was there any connection between Saddam and Alcaida, or was this really a means of releasing anxiety and insecurity that have unconsciously taken over our lives since 9/11? Will we get out of it before the body count is in the 1000's? Will we win or at least secure a greater sense of peace and security for ourselves?

I don’t know with certainty the answers to these questions and I will leave them to each of you to work through for yourselves. I do know that nothing we do that includes violence and power plays will bring true peace to our lives. Only the peace that comes from God through Christ can bring true shalom and that peace must be in and comes through each of us.