Dear reader,
Last month, on our morning school run, my oldest read out a local church sign that we pass every day: “Know Jesus, Know Peace. No Jesus, No Peace.” He asked for clarification: “Does it mean that with Jesus you have peace, but without him, you don’t?” “Yes,” I responded, distracted, as my mind was already on the printing and marking tasks that awaited me at school. Even so, those preoccupations were interrupted by a question of my own: “Can there be a false sense of peace, with or without Jesus?”
I wonder if the sense of peace I often have is a result, not of a deep-seated trust in God’s love and covenant faithfulness, but of my mind and heart being so preoccupied with my to-do list or my activities or my job that I simply don’t allow any niggling thoughts to stick around. When it comes to my inner life, distraction has become the means to a semblance of peace.
Being alone with ourselves, with the clamour of questions, doubts, complaints, and cries, for any significant amount of time, is not conducive to tranquility. But resisting distracting, quieting the noise outside of us, is necessary for an honest confrontation with our sins.
Paradoxically, Jesus’ peace first uncloaks the evil of the world (an evil, as Solzhenitsyn declared, that runs through each of our hearts) before he defeats it. It is shocking that in the wake of the angel’s pronouncement of “Peace on Earth” to the shepherds, the birth of Jesus provokes King Herod to slaughter all the infant boys in Bethlehem and its surrounding areas. Here is the antithesis of peace: here is “weeping and great mourning” (Matthew 2:18). Even as he comes as the Prince of Peace, Jesus’s presence reveals the depths of evil in every human heart.
As the Light of the World, he reveals the anxieties, the discord, the evasions that we settle for and distract ourselves from. Before peace, we must reckon with our sin—a reckoning done in the presence of God, even as we cling to Christ as our peace-maker. This is the only true peace. Anything else sidesteps peace for a shallow tranquility, putting us in danger of treating the peace and comfort of God as an anaesthetic against facing our own sin.
We can only move into a place of peace by first traversing great spiritual turmoil. In confession, we ought to be distraught—“Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus declares. David demonstrates this distress, wearing himself out with groaning and flooding his bed with tears (Psalm 6). We do not easily choose this posture.
Instead, we resist the discomfort of conviction and the grief of confession. We choose a kind of severance from ourselves that promises peace, yet delivers only bondage.
In the Ignatian tradition, following Ignatius of Loyola, an ‘examen’ is used daily. Since thinking about the church’s peace sign, I have been trying to use it in the evening, before I go to bed. The questions are gentle. They remind me of God’s question to Adam and Eve, “Where are you?” Not a confrontation, accusation, or judgment—but an invitation. An invitation to relinquish the false sense of peace attempted through covering up with fig leaves, and to instead face their transgression with the hope that the One who seeks them would not be disgusted by what he finds.
With hope—and with confidence. Otherwise, the risk of exposure is too great. In knowing myself truly, honestly, in refusing to hide away, I expose my shame. That shame is the reason I hide, both from God and myself: I am afraid of the judgment, certain as I am that I have sinned. And so I seek to cover myself in order to hide myself from God’s gaze, despite the impossibility of such a task.
Apart from Christ, this hiding is understandable, if still impossible. After all, “Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap” (Malachi 3:2).
But in Christ, we have the promise that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). The peace that Christ offers is not an anaesthetic that allows us to ignore our deeply broken humanity and the ugliness that we create as a result. Instead, it is a peace that provides a context from which we can face our own wickedness, just as he has—and, rather than despairing in self-hate, we can, with him, love even ourselves in a way that stirs up a desire to not only be rid of the weight of a guilty conscience, but to be healed.
The Expulsion of Adam and Eve by Pieter van der Werff circa early 1700s
I’m drawn to two aspects of this painting —first, the horrified faces of Adam and Eve, and second, the light that represents God’s presence and also reveals Adam and Eve’s nakedness. This is the common human response to the light of God that reveals our nakedness: a desperate desire to hide, to cover ourselves. And yet the fear on their faces is tragic, because it reveals a failure to understand that it is only through God’s light, only by facing the truth of their nakedness, can they be clothed by the One who was stripped naked for them.
The recent death of Frederick Buechner prompted me to read a book of his that I've had on my shelf for a while—Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. I hadn’t read anything of Buecher’s before, but I found his writing compelling and honest. He insists that preaching must speak to the sadness, the tragedy, of life, and he expects the light of the Gospel to break into this darkness in such an unexpected, unbelievable way, that the laughter of astonished joy is the fitting response.
O Thou holy and unspeakable, Thou wonderful and mighty God, whose power and wisdom hath no end, before whom all powers tremble, at whose glance the heavens and the earth flee away, Thou art Love, Thou art my Father, and I will love and worship Thee forever and ever!
Thou hast deigned to show pity on me, and a ray from Thy light hath shone upon mine inward eye. Guide me on into the perfect light, that it may illumine me wholly, and that all darkness may flee away. Let the holy flame of Thy love so burn in my heart that it be made pure, and I may see Thee, O God; for it is the pure in heart who see Thee. Thou hast set me free; Thou hast drawn me to Thee; therefore forsake me not, but keep me always in Thy grace. Guide me, and rule me, and perfect me for Thy kingdom. Amen.
- St. Augustine
On the road with you,
Laura