Peace Versus Plan

Scripture: 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.

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“My peace I give to your… Do not let your hearts be troubled…” Jesus offers peace to his disciples, urging them to not let their hearts be troubled and I think to myself, I wondered if they thought, “Jesus… do we live on the same planet? Look around at this mess and tell me how your heart is not troubled.” Maybe they are more faithful, but when I look at the world around us I am tempted to think offering peace is just not enough. Peace seems almost impossible. “Peace be with you” is hollow when it seems impossible. He might as well say, “I am giving you 100,000 billion dollars, or here is a unicorn,” the way we hear, “My peace I give to you.”

That might because when when we think of peace we think of it as what it is not; it is an absence. Peace is the absence of war; peace looks like beautiful people in black and white photos celebrating the end of WWII with pure joy on their faces. Peace is the absence of violence, pausing the words and weapons that wound. It looks like the absence of politicians bickering, or perhaps no more tweets. Peace in our relationships might look like partners putting an argument on hold or siblings getting along and letting things go, or at least not bringing it up… like that one Aunt not demanding Grandpa apologize publicly for his vote last November before he opens his Christmas present…hypothetically. Peace looks like the absence of tension, debate and argument at home. And then there is the question, “How is it with your soul?” I think of that deep question that Wesley asked his friends in his small group that we continue to share when we wonder how someone is and we expect a bigger answer other than ‘fine.’ When I think of peace in my soul, I think of the absence of worry, tension and anxiety; I think of finished to-do lists and plenty of time.

But when Jesus says, “My peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives,” he is not talking about an absence. In the Gospel of John he is preparing his disciples for the final moments of struggle he will face. He is preparing them for the reality that prophets don’t live long and that they will have to journey on their own. And in this moment of struggle and grief and preparation, he does not give them a plan. He does not reiterate the Ten Commandments or give a checklist; he offers peace. Peace, not an absence but a presence. He does not offer the absence of struggle; he offers peace for the struggle. He does not offer an easy plan; he offers resilience and support for the journey. He is rooted in a tradition of Shalom, this greeting of wholeness and well-being. And when Jesus offers peace, he connects it with the gift of the Holy Spirit, this advocate and presence that will journey with them. Peace is not only a presence rather than an absence, it is a gift that comes with a companion and a teacher. Peace is not a simple plan, it is so challenging that it requires a teacher and thus learning. Jesus offered this wild, vivid spirit that will help us discern, learn and grow. Peace is a gift, a complicated gift. It is generative and life-giving in the midst of a world that deals destruction, hurt and violence. It is generative in the midst of grief, heartbreak and sadness. It is the deep well of resilience that make the disciples capable moving forward… even when Jesus asks them to pick up a cross and follow him.

This summer, I will celebrate 10 years under appointment as a Methodist Pastor, and during my ten years people have shared heart-breaking stories… partially because if you are on an airplane and you tell them you are a pastor… People have shared their stories of loss and grief: the death of a child, the death of a lover to cancer, the terminal illness with no mercy, the horrors of childhood with abusive parents, emotional abuse, divorce, terrible bosses and terrible companies, fires and incarceration. And in almost every case, there is a pause, and it ends with the phrase, “But God has a plan.” And I think… “What…uh…noooooo.” This plan theology always catches me off guard; it shouldn’t because it is everywhere. Perhaps I struggle when I hear it because it reminds me of when people said it to me. I was 26, I had been married for five years to my high school sweetheart, and he wanted a divorce. I was heartbroken. It wasn’t my idea, I didn’t want it, it didn’t make sense to me. I cried so much my eyelids were swollen and my lashes were matted down… at least once a day… if not all day. It was a hard moment, and I was pretty sure I would never love again and would live alone, as a shell of myself, and to make matters worse, I didn’t even have a cat. People would listen to my grief and then perhaps, needing to close the conversation, or just tired or just not sure what else to say, they would say things like, “Well at least you are so young,” like that made it easier. Or, “At least you didn’t have kids,” or “At least you didn’t own a home,” and I would think, Right, less paperwork… I guess… I should feel better. And then most conversations would crescendo to a final and resounding, “Well God has a plan for you and you are going to be great.” And I would think, Well if this is God’s plan it is a really bad plan. Later that year, I started seminary and people began to say something like, “Well God just wanted you to go to seminary so He could use you in ministry!” and I could think of about 100 other ways She could have accomplished that goal. 

I needed peace but people offered me what I’m going to call plan theology, and there is nothing unusual about that. Maybe we lean in to plan theology because we just need something stable and solid to hold onto when the world feels too uneasy. Maybe we lean into plan theology because we get nervous sitting with people in those really hard spaces or allowing ourselves to be there. Grief and loss make us uncomfortable, it is hard to be present in broken spaces. It makes us aware of our own vulnerability, which we don’t like. Maybe it is that we like to make something seem reasonable, even when it is not, so we don’t have to worry quite so much about how our own lives could change in a moment. Maybe we lean into plan theology because we don’t know what else to say and aren’t quite skilled at just not saying anything at all.

This holiday season, I wish we as the church could lean a little bit more into peace theology, rather than plan theology. I wish we could shut up, get uncomfortable, and sit with someone in their worry, hurt, pain and anxiety and not say anything about plans, rationalize it, or proclaim we know how they feel. I wonder if we could just be present and listen. Maybe if we listen we will start to hear how the whisper God’s peace is seeded within and begin to notice in these tremendously painful stories a glimpse of that courage or resilience and honor it. Maybe if we are still, we will sense God’s peace and be God’s peace.

As I look back on my journey. I am grateful for every moment of struggle and broken heart, in both my personal and my professional life. Even though I would have rather read a book on some of it, I learned and I grew, and I wouldn’t change a moment of it because I wouldn’t dream of changing where and who I am today. And that also puts me at a vantage point where I could say, “It was all part of God’s plan… see how perfectly it worked out.” But the truth for me is that peace is what brought me through. It was the people who stood by when my eyes were full of tears and just let me cry. It was the people that listened and named the strength and resilience and grace they saw with me when I couldn’t see it myself. Jesus offers us peace and the Spirit that shows up in teachers around us and whispers direction from within. God’s peace is generative and life-giving. It is not a plan and it doesn’t make life easy, but it is a presence that sustains us through the grief, brokenness and pain. God’s peace is that resilience that lets us love again, knowing we are strong enough to be vulnerable again. It lets us risk again with the confidence that we will rise from falling, and it grants courage in new ways to journey down new roads… with or without a plan. “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.”