Peace Beyond Understanding

Several afternoons ago, a storm was moving across the Alleghenies from the west and soon overcame our portion of the Shenandoah Valley. Quite a number of tempestuous storms have blown over us this spring and early summer. They bring thunder, frightening wind, and lots of rain. They drive my bushland terrier into the closet. On this particular late afternoon, I stood on the front porch and watched the magnificent storm as it raced in our direction. Lightning, roiling and tumbling blue-gray clouds, and growing darkness would soon be upon us.

When the wall of rain was almost to our westernmost meadow, something caught my eye overhead. It was a kestrel or sparrow hawk fluttering against the gale. These splendid small falcons — for the proper name is indeed Falco sparverius — live around the farm. They are beautiful, interesting, and do good work. They have survived all these thousands of years because they fill a niche and have a catholic appetite. Their hunger is satisfied in various ways by larger insects, small birds, little reptiles, bats, and small rodents. The kestrel I saw over the house meadow the other day was hunting for field mice, moles, and voles. I know it was a female because it was a larger bird sporting more white on the underside. She would beat her wings rapidly and then, still as a bird in a painting, glide. She never drifted backward. Her routine was to flap vigorously and freeze again. I suppose she intended to trick any game on the ground below. Perhaps a mouse would assume that she was not even there.

Watching this petite bird of prey hunting with an incredible storm on the brim of the farm struck me deeply. Bright against the darkening west, fluttering like a silvery butterfly, suspended in time and space like a fairy of sorts, she inspired me to various thoughts. I first thought of the “Spirit of the Lord” hovering over the waters in the Book of Genesis, the all-mighty God transforming chaos into cosmos, creating a world saturated with Logos from the primordial slosh devoid of meaning. When that pretty little falcon became perfectly still in the 50-mile-an-hour gusts, I also thought of “the still point of the turning world” in T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding. Durable affection for Eliot’s line reveals my generation, but the phrase and indeed the entire poem are hard to beat as evocations of the eternal realm.

But, above all, the kestrel’s amazing behavior in the face of the coming storm that early evening made me think of peace. Peace. What is peace? I first thought of the lack of peace in our world right now, and realized that war always begins in a single human heart, discontented, resentful, and angry. If impatience is the cause of anger, then the little kestrel hovering patiently over the hay meadow was a great symbol of the peace born of patience.

On that afternoon, I had been thinking about the sermon for Pentecost 4 (June 16), especially the verse, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17). The same early Christian writer spoke of Christian “confidence.” During the 50 days of Easter, I thought a lot about the “peace” Jesus bestowed on his disciples and continued to give when he appeared to each and all. “Peace I give to you, my own peace.” On likely more than one occasion, the disciples were in hiding, fearing for their lives. Jesus came among them and simply breathed on them, and into them came his peace. We think of nothing but peace when we contemplate the face of St. Stephen at the time of his martyrdom. Saints Peter and Paul must have been the same way when they were slain in Rome: at peace.

I am referring to “the peace that passeth understanding” (Phil. 4:7; BCP, pp. 339, 365). What is it? I am unqualified to say, but I have a few reflections. In my mind, I hold together the motive back of the Lord’s covenant with Israel, the giving of the Torah, the holiest sacrifice offered on the cross, the numerous resurrection appearances, the Ascension, when Jesus went away in one way so that he could come in another, and the coming of the Holy Ghost, whose first mission is to confirm in the believer everything about Christ Jesus — that he what he says is true, that he is the human embodiment of Torah, that he is the eternal Son of God, that he is the Messiah and Shepherd King of Israel, that he is the God-Man, and that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the whole world.

When pondering what “the peace that passeth understanding” might be, it has helped me to remember that Jesus was a devout Jew. In his own words, he assured his auditors that he did not come to abolish the Torah but to fulfill it — that is, to fill it full of the eternal actuality that was given him by the Father, the one obedient man in whom God is well pleased. This has something to do with peace above understanding: fulfillment or, indeed, glory. I like to think that, in the beginning, God had a “blueprint” for what the complete human being should be. In what does our glory consist? This was the first function of Torah: to indicate what the maker had in mind for human beings, how the superstructure is built and then the walls, roof, interior walls, the plumbing, wiring, and so on — all for the creature who would be in special communion with God. When Jesus appeared on the earth, God enabled many people to recognize that he fit the blueprint of Torah perfectly.

“Behold, my beloved Son! in whom I am well pleased.” I find that the words pleased and peace go together quite nicely, not only in English but in the religion of Israel. We know that “peace” was for Jesus a status vis-à-vis the living and true God: Jesus was approved of God and thus so near to God that Jesus was able to give to others the approval that the Father gives him forever.

In the religion of Israel, those who repented of their sins, who came to God with broken hearts and asked God to put the pieces of their lives back together again, brought peace offerings or peace sacrifices. I am far from any sort of biblical scholar, but I can read in an encyclopedia that there were in Israel three types of peace sacrifices. First, the “thank offering” was a response to a blessing or blessings. A believer would bring a “votive offering” when asking God for a particular blessing. The “free-will” or “praise” offering was a way to adore God from the heart, just because God is our Good. In each case, the offerings were animals of some kind.

According to the Hebrew Encyclopedia (and the old Jerome Biblical Commentary is great on this topic of Jewish sacrifices), what mattered more than anything else was the common meal that immediately followed the killing and cooking of the victim. In this deeply communitarian event, God was at once the Host and the especially honored Guest. As both Guest and Host, God communicated his own peace to the faithful person or persons who were seeking reconciliation with him. This is peace indeed. In this very context of sacrifices of the Old Covenant, I think of those times when we are so distraught, guilty, or otherwise extremely fouled up, and when we ache for peace. Words from Psalm 51 point to peace.

Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice;
but you take no delight in burnt offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

I believe that when Jesus celebrated the Passover with his carefully selected disciples on the night before he offered himself as both the propitiation and the expiation for the sins of the whole world, he initiated the process — at once temporal and trans-temporal — by which his people could gain “the peace that passeth understanding.” The beloved Son in whom the Father was well pleased identified himself with the Passover of Israel, commanding his disciples to henceforth observe the Passover in remembrance of him.

My gleanings from a small batch of Scriptures are not properly scholarly, but isn’t there a useful and reassuring logic here? We hold together the ideas of the covenant, of Torah as God’s Word to Israel, of the Word made flesh, of the Shepherd King, of the Passion and Passover, of redemption, of Ascension, and of God in us as the Holy Spirit. The eternal mediator is constantly working on our behalf, and the need for his mediated grace never goes away. And the great means to heaven that is the church of Christ in the world, the body mystical the members of which are forever told that to know God is eternal life. All of these have to do with the peace above human comprehension.

While we are pondering this priceless gift, we can behold the perfect man who is in perfect communion with himself because he gives himself in perfect obedience to the Father of love. Kierkegaard got it right: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” And what is the one thing we ought to will? To do the will of God. Gladstone once said or wrote, “

The final state which we are to contemplate with hope and seek by discipline is that state wherein our will is one with the will of God.”

Our Lord Jesus the Christ possesses this peace beyond understanding. I pray that we all might have it now.