Amen, Insha Allah – the only way to lasting Peace

 ‘Peace be with you …..’ (John 20:21)

Pic: Monastère de Tibhirine vue des champs

John 20:19-31 (Year A: Second Sunday of Easter 23^rd April 2017)

The scene is set by John.  The disciples are afraid; very afraid. They might have been in a 21^st century church in Cairo on edge watching the loner in the middle of the pews with a slightly bulky jacket …. The mind imagines and freezes in terror. You get the picture.

Fear is terribly raw and terribly ‘in the gut’.

Then something out of the ordinary happens. Jesus walks among them again. As he says every time he shows up after the resurrection and even today: ‘Peace be with you’. Perhaps it was not just the words ‘peace be with you’ that impacted on the disciples but the way that this was said. It was like the way that Jesus uttered ‘Mary’ in the garden where Mary Magdalene was searching for her lost One and did not recognise, at first, who this mysterious ‘stranger’ right in front of her was. There was something powerfully peace-giving in the way Jesus spoke and acted throughout his years of ministry that when the disciples heard this same voice they recognised it completely. In his ministry Jesus said (Matthew 7:16):

‘You will know them by their fruits’

What fruits do I, you, he, she, we bring today?  Are we, as it says in that famous prayer of St Francis, ‘instruments of peace’?

Peace means the absence of violence and disharmony. But, more than this, it is life, wholeness and joy. It is brought to us ‘that that through believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31). Christ is our peace (Ephesians 2:14) speaks us today through the words of the psalmist:

When cares increase in my heart your consolation calms my soul (Psalm 93(94):19)

There are many, many other references to peace throughout the Bible and the Gospel of John is no exception. The peace that Jesus brings is no ordinary peace for he said (John 14:27):

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

The strong command not to be afraid is also strewn right across the Bible.  It is not easy to be at peace or without fear in moments of great danger. In possibly one of the best and most moving films ever made, Des Hommes et des Dieux, one can feel the fear and the peace side by side as events play out towards the final dénouement facing the brave Cistercian monks in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria in early 1996.  Dom Christian Christian de Chergé OCSO concluded his last testament prior to the capture and execution of this small band of modern witnesses to peace as follows:

If the day comes, and it could be today, that I am a victim of the terrorism……And to you, too, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you, too, I wish this thank-you, this "A-Dieu", whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father. Amen! Insha Allah!

Insha Allah. God willing. Mary, the mother of Jesus would have used very similar words and sounds in Aramaic in her response to God’s call at the annunciation.

And when our time comes to pass from this world may we find peace in the Prince of Peace who alone can fully console our souls:

Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace – in peace because they trust in you. (Isaiah 26:3)

And though we may not be able to see or touch or reason in the way our ancestors in faith did we are no less vulnerable and called to the challenge of faith in a world crying out for the risen life of Jesus.  Grounded in the here and anchored to the present moment we, too, can taste this risen life to such an extent that we cry out as Thomas did, ‘My Lord and my God’. There we will find that peace, that joy and that freedom that stands out in all of the gospel stories of the resurrection.