All cultures and peoples have their standard greetings. The equivalents of our ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, ‘goodbye’. For the Jewish people at Jesus time the term for greeting and taking leave was ‘shalom’—peace. The Anglican Church has a similar greeting during the communion service, called the passing of the peace. The minster says ‘the peace of the Lord be always with you.’ The congregation replies, ‘and also with you.’ Then there is a general milling around the church while everyone says to their neighbours ‘peace be with you.’

Such standard greetings, in society or church, may mean hardly more than the ozzie civil grunt, ‘owyagoinmate!’ And that’s okay. We need such linguistic lubrications in the bustle of life. And yet almost always they have a possible implication that presses deeper into the heart of things. ‘How are you?’ can mean no more than ‘hi, and don’t say anything else!’ But it can also cut to the core of life, if we let it. I might be in anguish of heart; I might be in a state of serious illness; I might be in a situation of great joy or delirious love. You ask me: ‘How are you?’ And you might just get an answer!

Likewise with ‘Shalom’. Are things at peace for you? Well, yes things are okay, say no more. But a deeper query lurks in the word, waiting its moment.

In one of his books, the American sociologist, Peter Berger, has a fascinating discussion of these ordinary interactions we have with each other. He asks us to imagine a young child who wakes in the night in terror. A bad dream, say. She screams out in fright. Nearby, her sleeping mother is instantly awake and in a flash is by the bedside of the child. She scoops her up in her arms, turns on the light, finds teddy, and says: ‘there, there, don’t be frightened, mummy’s here, everything is alright.’

Now, says Berger, is the mother lying to the child? The child is terrified. The terror signals the touch of a darkness that we all face, whether young or old. The darkness of the unknown; of some threat we cannot name; of loss and suffering and even death. That is what frightens the child, though she could not name it in so many words. And the mother says, ‘everything is alright!’ For the moment that is true enough. The child is awake, alive, and though shaking, not in mortal danger. Mother is here. It is okay—now. But the darkness, which for the moment is dispelled, will return. At some point we all enter what Jesus in our reading calls troubles and fears. Is everything alright? Sometimes trouble, fear, warfare, threat, distress and death seem overwhelmingly powerful. Is there a deep truth in the mother’s statement that rightly goes beyond these things and rests on a more profound reality, some rock bottom positivity, friendliness, acceptance and peace of our being human?

Our reading from the Gospel today is part of what is known as Jesus’ farewell discourse. He is taking leave of his disciples. This is no perfunctory goodbye: ‘well must be off, see you later!’ This is the last goodbye. Jesus is going to suffering, desertion and death. He is taking leave of this life itself. And of his friends, at least in the way he has been known to them thus far.

And his farewell word is ‘peace’. When Jesus says, ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you’, the word ‘leave’ means leave as in legacy. This is his parting gift. His last will and testament, as it were; the inheritance he has to give to those who will survive him. This is underlined by the fact that Jesus links these words with the coming of the Holy Spirit. After his death and resurrection he promises that his truth and presence will be with them in a new form—‘The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.’ The Spirit will be the continuing reality of Christ’s presence in the world and the church. This Spirit gift is what we remember and celebrate today, Pentecost Sunday. And what does the Spirit bring to the world and church? Peace. My Spirit I send to you. My peace I leave to you. Peace, Spirit; Spirit, Peace; peaceful Spirit. This is Christ’s parting gift to us.

But what does it amount to? There is such lack of peace everywhere we look. The world of society and politics and international relations—look at it, how much violence, conflict, strife. The world of the church—look at it, so many divisions and fragments, squabbles and hostility. And our own hearts—look at them, so often we are troubled, torn and divided, and afraid within. Does the peace of which we speak, echoing Jesus, with our ‘shaloms’, and our ‘peace be with you,’ amount to more than a ‘hill of beans’, to quote Humphrey Bogart’s famous line to Ingrid Bergmann in Casablanca.

When Jesus spoke these words of peace, he knew full well what conflicts were there. Right there, in the upper room. Judas was about to betray him. Peter to deny him. The rest were about to run for their lives. Not much in the way of personal peace there. And he knew full well that he was about to fall foul of the law. Judicial and political violence were about to break over his head like a thunderclap. In no time at all they would have him tortured, strung up, and dead. Not much by way of peace in the public sphere either.

Was this just whistling in the dark? I don’t think so. Jesus never acted and spoke in self-deceiving ways. He knew what was what and he named it to himself and to them. ‘In this world you have tribulation’, he said. ‘But do not be afraid, I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33). That’s the point of his greeting of peace. It’s like Berger’s mother with the frightened child, ‘Everything’s alright’, only at a much deeper level. Jesus’ ‘peace I leave with you’, is the announcement of a theological vision for the world. God’s vision, not ours. God’s peace, that is, God’s goodwill in and towards the world, God’s ‘yes’ to the world, God’s deliberate intention to bring the world into God’s own life, light and love—this is the theological truth of things. ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,’ said Paul in a famous verse. The whole event of Jesus, his life and message, his death and resurrection, is the manifestation of the fact that God’s peace and God’s peacemaking overarches and embraces all that happens in God’s creation. Peace, not violence, is the deep truth of God’s being. Reconciling love, not destructive conflict, is the true grain of God’s world. Grace that forgives and heals, not violence that devours and despoils, is the fundamental reality with which we have to do in life and death, at least when we have to do with the death and resurrected life of Jesus. ‘Peace’ is Jesus’ last word to us, because peace is God’s first word to the world.

If Berger’s mother really speaks the truth to her child, truth that cuts all the way down to bedrock, it must be truth spoken on the basis of some such ultimate assurance as this: ‘my peace (God’s peace) I give to you.’ On the truth of that assurance we speak and enact peace to each other in the community of faith. Of course at times we experience conflict, and competition, and personal disappointments. Of course, we do not always feel at peace with the world and in ourselves. And obviously the world itself is often torn with war and violence. But in the end, and in the depths of life, peace is God’s truth and peace is God’s intention, so peace needs to become also our truth and our intention in Christ.

But this is not just a truth about some final spiritual state of affairs. As if only in a realm beyond history will this peaceful Spirit be present, and this spiritual peace turn out to be God’s reality. That is also true and implied in Jesus’ words. But just because it is ultimately true, Jesus’ words also mean something penultimately for us now. In speaking the peace of Christ to each other we are affirming that we are, and intend to be, a peaceable people now. ‘If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceable with all,’ says St Paul (Rom 12:18), in his wonderful meditation on the nature of Christian living that we read a few moments ago.

That doesn’t mean we are wimps who never take a stand on anything. Jesus certainly didn’t buckle like a matchstick under foot. He stuck to his guns in the face of torture and death. In the power of the ultimate peace that God is working in the creation, he endured the penultimate threat and violence with courage and, amazingly, even forgiveness for those who were the deliverers of such hatred. So we, his followers, are called to face conflict and fear as peace witnesses: that is, we point to the peace of God made manifest in Christ; and as peace lovers: that is, we embrace peace in our own hearts as the foundation of our moral life; and as peace makers: that is, we work and advocate for peace, ‘in so far as it depends on us,’ in the home, the office, the church, the society, the nation. Often we fall short. But, despite shortcomings and failure, in the final analysis that’s who we are and intend to be as Christ’s people.

‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you,’ said Jesus to his friends.

In the next five weeks we are going to be looking at some of the practical implications of that legacy for daily life. Let us pray together that Christ may address us, and give us wisdom and grace to make these words, not some hollow formality, a ‘how are you’ that wants no significant response, but the truth of God by which to live and speak and act.