After war - peace

 

“War is War, and Hell is Hell" | MASH

Season 5, Episode 20. “The General’s Practitioner.” February 15, 1977

Burns: Well, everybody knows, ‘war is Hell.’

Hunnicutt: Remember, you heard it heard it here last.

Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.

Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?

Father Mulcahy: Um, sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them – little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

Burns: Well, I’m not. I’m here because my country needs me.

Hunnicutt: How do you know it wasn’t just some excuse to ship you eight-thousand miles from home?

Eric Bogle | The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Bruce Cockburn | Each One Lost

Mary Gauthier | The War After The War

from her album Rifles and Rosary Beads

The Peace of Christ to you today!

If we were meeting in person right now, I might warmly shake your hand as I speak those words, with a smile.

If we know one another well, we might embrace, a physical touch that communicates we are one in Jesus—Christ's peace is shared between us and is making each of us whole.

J.D. Walt tells of a greeting of peace he learned from, Maxie Dunham: 

The Spirit of Jesus in me greets the Spirit of Jesus in you, and brings us together in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The word for peace in Hebrew is shalom, and carries with it a vision of an expansive and permeating wholeness, completeness, and flourishing that is not merely the absence of conflict, but is the presence of God abiding with us.

Shalom speaks of relational peace, mutual connection, shared delight, a just creation, completeness, and wholeness between people, between us and the world, and ultimately between us and God. It is the Peace of Christ Jesus who makes us all whole.

As the royal priesthood [1 Peter 2:9], we can offer the Peace of Christ to whomever we meet, whether they are a follower of Jesus (it's mutual) or not (it's a blessing and resets our hearts toward the other).

In the early Church, and the earliest centuries of the Body of Christ living and growing in a pagan world, the "kiss of peace" was a common way for them to greet one another and confer a mutual blessing. 

While the holy kiss may not be as commonly exchanged in church traditions today, or may feel less appropriate given our cultural views of the kiss, the exchange of Peace in a spoken word, handshake, or embrace between believers is a sustaining, embodied practice that changes our relationships.

With the word, "Peace" on your lips, move into your day today sharing the word and its riches as a blessing, with perhaps a physical gesture of connection (a handshake, or an embrace as seems appropriate), to affirm that the Peace of Jesus dwells in you, and that His Peace heals all it touches.