In Luke 24:35, Yeshua appears to the disciples even as Cleopas and his friend finish recounting their experience at the inn in Emmaus. He is suddenly there, in the way he has now, after the Resurrection, but which he had also had from time to time before, of moving in ways not common to ordinary earthlings. He is there, we may imagine with a friendly smile, and he says “Shalom!”
The commentators tend to make much of this pax vobiscum, this “peace be with you!”, this “Que la paix soit avec vous!” But it was, as it still is, also simply a way of saying Hello. Nevertheless, it does have the unemphasised but real weight of shalom, that vast and wonderful condition we translate, inadequately, as “peace”. It is the almost cosmic peace that results from perfect harmony, from God being in His heaven and all being right with the world; of everything and everybody in the right place, doing what God intends them to do. The peace that results from that harmony being played in the key of Love. Every little peace we make makes us “peacemakers”, who are Blessed in the Beatitudes.
It has been a long time since the need for inner peace was as urgent as it is now. Daily, we hear that the need is not only for more nurses and hospital workers, but for psychologists and psychiatrists. The pandemic is wearing us down and Christians are not immune. So I find it alarming to see devout commentators whom I have long admired now once again insisting that no, shalom does not mean well-being, it does not mean comfort, it means taking up your cross and suffering with the Meshiach like a true disciple, it means turning your life upside down.
Most people are not starving swineherds with boils. There are those – always too many – who live from day to day in precarious misery, and Christians should help them in every way they can. But to assume, as preachers and commentators regularly do, that the faithful are mainly comfortable rentiers who direly need their billowy parts booted is an error that especially now causes real pain. The churches, as we know, are emptying, and so far the pandemic does not, surprisingly, seem to have reversed that trend. Could it be, in part, because they are no longer offering comfort? They are not donors, purveyors, spreaders of shalom; instead they are unrepentant purveyors of unrest, challenging believers to get off their behinds and make shalom themselves in the world.
This is not in itself wrong: as St Teresa of Ávila said, the only hands God has in the world are ours. But when thousands are suffering inward misery, stress, depression, frustration and grief, it might not come amiss for those who bring the word to the faithful and beyond to remind everyone of those other words: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest . . . for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30)
