Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator and Sustainer, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that abides in each of us.

Shalom!  I love that word.  It is a Hebrew word that is loaded with meaning.  In English, we often translate it as “peace,” but the reality is it has a multitude of simultaneous meanings, such as national tranquility, complete absence of conflict, harmony, security, prosperity, wholeness, absence of illness and disease… and that is the peace Jesus came to bring into this broken world.  I have thought a lot about shalom this week, as we have prepared to celebrate our nation’s independence this weekend because, as hard as we try, in a world filled with violence, hatred, war, disease, conflict, hunger and poverty, we will only experience real peace when we offer God’s shalom.  In our text today, we see that real peace will not/cannot be achieved until we take God’s road to peace.   
 
When Jesus offered this greeting of peace, he did not offer it as a wishful greeting, but as a blessing of fact, “God’s peace is upon you.”  In other words, God’s peace can be and is a reality if only we allow it to be.  In a world that was full of brokenness, poverty, disease, conflict, and insecurity, a world not really any different than today’s world, Jesus announced that this was not God’s intention, and that real peace, shalom, was achievable.  In Jesus’ day, there was another phrase for peace that everyone knew, a slogan that the Romans taught, Pax Romana, which meant Roman peace.  In other words, if you allowed the Romans to conquer you and you lived by their rules, they would guarantee you peace, that is, an absence of military conflict.  But Pax Romana came with a price.  Roman peace meant only the very rich and powerful would experience harmony, prosperity, security, a lack of disease and illness, and a real lack of conflict; everyone else, literally the other 95 percent of the population, would live in poverty, suffer from disease and illness because of poor living conditions, suffer from hunger and starvation, and be involved in daily conflict just to survive.  There was no harmony.  Even after the Roman Empire fell and Pax Romana ceased, over the centuries, others have continued to offer a similar model of peace:  Hitler tried it, North Korea tried it, and even today, others continue to offer this type of peace.  Some would say our own nation attempts to offer this type of peace at times.
 
Jesus, however, said “no” to Pax Romana, peace for only the very few, and he said “yes” to shalom, peace for everyone.  God’s peace is not about domination and control.  God’s peace is achieved through feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless, and healing those experiencing sickness and disease.  To make God’s shalom a reality, Jesus knew that he would need many more people aside from himself, and so he sent his followers on this mission.  Our gospel writer says he “appointed seventy others and sent them ahead of him” (10:1).  For the hearers of Luke’s day, this number, seventy, had a lot of meaning.  Seventy would represent people of all nations.  In Chapter 9, we are told that Jesus commissioned the twelve, a representation of the twelve tribes of Israel, to do this, as well, but now Jesus commissioned all of his followers, even non-Jews, even you and me, to continue his mission, the mission of bringing God’s peace into a broken world.  The road to real peace, God’s shalom, will not be paved with power and violence, but with God’s Word and God’s healing presence.  When Jesus sent these followers out, he told them to enter people’s homes with the greeting of, “Peace,” and when welcomed they were to eat what was set before them, cure the sick, and share with them that this was what God’s kingdom was about (10:8-9).  Can you imagine what that was like for those people who had never experienced such peace before?  Before this, these people had only known violence and conflict as a means of achieving peace.  According to the society of Jesus’ day, the only way peace could be accomplished was by power and force, that is, by dominating others and forcing them to live and think as the powerful lived and thought.  But Jesus taught that peace would come when individuals could enter each others homes, even if they were very different, such as not being kosher, for the Jews, and eat what was set before them, and bring wholeness and health to that home.  Real peace would be achieved through peaceful means.  In a time like ours, when we so often speak of desiring peace in a world full of war and conflict, I wonder, is this how we are seeking peace?  Do we seek peace by going to strangers and meeting them as they are?  Do we go out and offer real peace by feeding the hungry, building shelters for the homeless, educating the illiterate, and helping them discover God’s promise of shalom in their own home and culture?  Do we walk away from those who do not welcome us or do we prefer to go in and try to offer our version of Pax Romana?  Do we try to make them see things our way and offer peace only if they succumb to our version of peace?  As Christians, these are tough questions we must ask ourselves.
 
For Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, one way of achieving this peace was by helping others to see that peace comes through doing what is right, but for us today, the hard part is that this does not necessarily mean that they will do what serves or pleases us.  Paul points out that to really help others and, thus, achieve peace, we must first be willing to take responsibility for our own actions and deeds.  “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.” (Galatians 6:7).  In other words, if we seek to help others by insuring that their “peace” comes about by serving our needs and desires and not by what is best for them, then the “peace” we will achieve will not be shalom; in fact, we will not achieve peace at all. 
 
So often, when we find something that gives us life, we want everyone else to have it, too.  We want to share the good we have found, whether it is something as simple as a new way to lose weight or something as complex as a style of government.  However, when we attempt to force our individual ways on others and judge them on their failure to see and do things our way, then our good intentions become self-righteousness.  And as one biblical scholar notes, “Self-righteousness kills, not only those that are bludgeoned by it, but those who wield it, as well.” 
 
Brothers and sisters, as we celebrate our nation’s freedom this weekend, I pray that we realize we do have much to offer this world.  As Christians, however, we must offer our blessings God’s way, and not ours.  This weekend many in this country will sing America the Beautiful.  In fact, we sang it for our offering song this morning at our 8:00 service.  Yes, this is patriotic song, but for me, more importantly, this is a song that praises God and asks God to make us a blessing to the world.  As we sing this song, listen to the words, “God shed your grace on us, crown our good with brotherhood,” “mend our flaws,” “give us self-control,” “till selfish gain no longer stain…”  As we sing this song, I pray we mean it.  The road to real peace, shalom, is paved with the Gospel.  Shalom will be achieved, not through violence and war, but through peace and humility.  Jesus taught his followers to live humbly, not because it was fashionable, but because it is the only cure for arrogance and self-righteousness.  May we be those that walk humbly and offer shalom to all of God’s creation.  Amen.
 

Lessons:
Galatians 6:7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20