peace is beautifully complex

I think all of us have the recent tragic events of the Northeast on our heart or at least somewhere in the darker recesses of our mind. I also think of the Venezuelan side of my family and all of the political trouble they've been facing. I wasn't looking for a message of hope, but found one while listening to an old sermon today. What struck me was a passage quoted from an American theologian that was noted at the end. I think being reminded of the beautiful complexity of the Lord's peace is profoundly encouraging, especially in the midst of a frightened world who's simple version of peace isn't substantial enough to have a solid connection to hope. I hope the passage below finds you well as it did me.

 Below is the passage regarding John 14:27 from Frederick Buechner's Journey Toward Wholeness.

Picture Jesus at the Last Supper: he had every reason to believe that the end was upon him, and we see him looking around at his friends who will all betray him and saying, "Peace I leave with you," he says, when you would have thought he had no peace at all anywhere. "My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid" (John 14:27).

The kind of peace that the world gives is the peace we experience when for a little time the world happens to be peaceful. It is a peace that lasts for only as long as the peaceful time lasts, because as soon as the peaceful time ends, the peace ends with it. The peace that Jesus offers, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the things that are going on at the moment when he offers to give it, which are for the most part tragic and terrible things. It is, instead, a peace beyond the reach of the tragic and terrible. It is a profound and inward peace that sees with unflinching clarity the tragic and terrible things that are happening and yet is not shattered by them. It is a peace that looks out at the friends, whom he loves enough to be concerned more for their frightened and troubled hearts than he is for his own, and yet his love for his friends is no more where his peace comes from than his impending torture and death are where his peace will be destroyed. The place that his peace comes from is not the world but something whole and holy within himself, which sees the world also as whole and holy because deep beneath all the broken and unholy things that are happening in it, even as he speaks, Jesus sees what he calls the kingdom of God.