Channels of Peace
Last Sunday saw the feast day of St Francis (4th October). After all the 1st Century main players in the biblical story, has there been any one person who has influenced Christianity as much as Francis of Assisi? I’m not writing a history lesson today, though I did really enjoy Sam’s from last week (I can be a bit of a history nerd at times). Instead, I want to draw simply from a couple of things he said and stood for.
After a radical conversion and calling, Francis turned to a life of deep devotion, particularly to vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. He is remembered for the religious orders he founded, The Order of Friars Minor (The Franciscan Order) and the Order of St Clare, aka the Poor Clares. Running through these orders, and their legacy, are threads of peace-making, reconciliation, creation care, care for the poor, and a life of prayer.
Whilst it is important for us to remember and reflect on all the incredible contributions he has made, and his legacy continues to make, I’d like to consider perhaps the most famous line of all his prayers:
Make me a channel of your peace
Pause reading for a moment. What does that line, that stunningly simple prayer, mean to you today? What might it mean to be a channel of Jesus’ peace? Synonyms could be conduit, transmit, connection, move through.
If we’re going to channel the peace of Jesus into the world, to be a conduit for Jesus’ peace, what does his peace even look like? You may know it already; you may know it more than me. We have what scriptures and stories reveal to us, and we have our own experience of Jesus, the Bestower of Sacred Peace. My hope is that those things match up. The reality is that you can’t give something away that you don’t have yourself already. How are we to be Jesus’ peace to a hurting and conflicted world, if we don’t first allow and experience the peace of Jesus within us, in the deepest caverns of our hearts? We can talk about it, even point a curious soul to the relevant Bible passage, but can we speak richly of how it feels, how transformative it is to receive and dwell in Jesus’ peace? Do our lives bear witness to the manifest peace of Christ within us?
Jesus said some pretty crucial things about peace. Just before his arrest, he is with his friends. He says to them, My peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
Jesus is gifting them, and therefore us too, with a truly glorious gift. What does this true, holistic peace mean for us? It is a peace of mind, heart, soul, and body. Do you trust Jesus and take him at his word? Later in the very same discourse, Jesus says that we will see and experience trouble in this world, but to take heart, he has overcome the world. Our peace of mind and heart are often connected to our favourable circumstance and the fulfilment of our desired outcomes. Jesus however, was entering a very unfavourable circumstance to say the least. He was about to be subject of horrific, torturous violence at the hands of merciless people, and then to die upon a cross. Where did his peace come from? We know that his life, love, identity, his very being, was deeply unified with God. His trust and faithfulness unwavering. Maybe resting in God, allowing oneself to truly give everything, heart, mind, body, soul, strength, and will into the embrace and love of God, allows his peace to gently rest upon and within us.
What might that look like for you today?
A prayer that I regularly pray is simply, I give everything and everyone to you Lord (based on 1 Peter 5:7). It’s an act of release of things I carry. Sharing the burden, trusting in the goodness and availability of Christ. It’s the beginning of receiving the gift of Jesus’ peace. If someone wants to give a gift, we must extend our hand to receive it. Releasing burden, pressure, expectation, worries, doubts and fears to him postures our hearts towards him in peace, and a blessed lightness replaces the weight.
Learning the nature of God is a life-long process of maturation and living a life apprenticed to Jesus, to be a committed disciple and friend. The closer we journey and seek God, the more we experience his nature and heart. We will witness God bringing what the Hebrew’s know as shalom. While the simple translation is peace, the underlying nuance and etymology is also leaning towards completeness, wholeness, things as they should be. This is a wonderful word.
If we’re to be channels of peace, or maybe ‘purveyors of shalom’ (that phrase made me smile while writing this on the train), we understand that after receiving Jesus’ peace, allowing it to be the guard over our hearts and minds, our ever-present help in times of trouble, we spill this shalom, spread it, speak it, use our hands and feet to bring it, we shape our world with it into completeness, into union. God has reconciled the world to himself through Christ, and now we are given the same message and task of reconciliation; to be purveyors of shalom, Christ’s ambassadors to a hurting world.
Isn’t this what Francis did? Channelled the peace of Christ into all things, his love and heart for the poor, for healing, for caring for the natural world he saw around him. He saw what true Shalom could look like, and everything and everyone was included, even ‘Brother Sun and Sister Moon’, and the birds and animals he shared God’s love and shalom with.
Lord, make me a channel of your peace,
That where there is hatred, I may bring love;
That where there is wrong,
I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
That where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
That where there is error, I may bring truth;
That where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
That where there is despair, I may bring hope;
That where there are shadows, I may bring light;
That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
To understand, than to be understood;
To love than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.
Amen.
Grace and peace,
Jon
Jon Timms
Joint CEO, Rural Ministries
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