Living Toward A Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom

I am grateful to Conrad Kanagy and Santos Books for taking on the republication of this book. I first wrote the book in the mid-70's as a resource for my own denomination, The United Church of Christ. The national church had just discovered the Hebrew word shalom and came to use it widely and easily for every positive gesture we might undertake. I think my study is well-grounded, but at the time, it served a rather careless, undemanding notion of peace. Its republication now comes at a time when we are greatly sobered by any prospect for peace in the world, and when our hopes and efforts for peacemaking all too readily collide with what is widely perceived as our national interest. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the recovery, the review, and the future implications of peace and peacemaking in the Bible are well worth the effort. Our beginning with this subject, as with all subjects, is the claim and reality of the biblical God, who is attested as a lively agent and a real character. We can see in the witness of scripture the peacemaking capacity of God across the various spheres of creation.

Written large, the contradiction to God's will for peace is chaos, a distortion that endangers all life. The Bible attests that God is willing and able to tame, domesticate, and finally defeat the power of chaos. Thus, the prophet Jeremiah can have God assert: I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it (Jeremiah 5:22). Perhaps the most vivid and dramatic instance of God's triumph over chaos is the narrative of Jesus stilling the storm (Mark 4:35-41; Matthew 8:23-27; Luke 8:22-25). The disciples faced "a great windstorm" and were fearful. By contrast, Jesus is serene amid the storm, calmly asleep. When he is awakened, he utters his lordly command, "Peace, be still," and the wind ceases. The wind obeyed his command. It is no wonder that the disciples, in their great awe, puzzled about his identity. But of course the narrator knows this...It is good human work to be engaged in peacemaking that involves disarmament, the transformation of adversaries into partners, and confidence in the rule of God that lets us move past anxiety into generative community-creating work. We live in a time when the threat of chaos, the reality of violence, and profound anxiety beset our common life. But the gospel is a summons and an empowerment to an alternative: