The Gift of "Shalom"

Everything (literally everything) in our faith revolves around Easter.

One Easter Sunday morning a famous pastor announced. “If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then we should all go home. But, if Jesus has been raised from the dead then Jesus (and every promise he ever made) must become the center of our lives.”

The story of the Resurrection is often treated like a myth or turned into a heart-warming metaphor. It might be something we hope turns out to be true, but who could take the story of the Resurrection seriously?

C.S. Lewis, himself a serious thinker and a specialist in mythic literature once said:

“Those who claim that the Gospel stories are mythic,

simply haven’t read many myths.”

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Part 1: Rooted in History...

Unlike mythical stories that always take place outside of any specific time and place. i.e., they happened once upon a time, or in a galaxy far far away, the Gospel stories happened at a specific time and in a specific place. They took place in Judea, at a time when Pontius Pilate was the Roman Governor. To this day, we can still find coins with his mark on the back.

So the deeper we dig, the more we discover that the Gospels are grounded (rooted) in a real time and place in a way that myths are not.

Part 2: Credibility of Christians...

If we consider the historical roots of the resurrection, and the credibility of those who claim to have witnessed it, we see another important difference between the Gospels writers and the ancient Myth makers. Throughout history very few people appear to be willing to die for a made-up story.

In contrast, almost every early witness to the resurrection died defending the claim that Jesus was alive and risen from the dead. This belief lived on despite repeated persecution and imprisonment. By the third century, Christians had become public enemy number one, yet belief in the Resurrection persisted.

Part 3: The Great Myth

By paying close attention to stories told by eyewitnesses and recorded by the Gospel writers we find a story that breaks all the rules of ancient myths making.

In the great myths (from the epic of Gilgamesh to the Game of Thrones, to almost every superhero movie ever made) order is always established through violence. It’s usually through some great act of violence that order is achieved and when order is lost it is through an even greater act of violence that it is restored. That’s the consistent plot of every myth.

Part 4: Violence unveiled...

In the time of Jesus, Rome was the keeper of order. Rome embodied the great myth of order through force. Military might was used to establish order and the threat of punishment was used to maintain it. The greatest example of this terrible threat of violence to keep order was the science of crucifixion. The Romans turned crucifixion into one of the most brutal forms of punishment ever devised. They performed it publicly because they wanted everyone to see what would happen if Roman order was threatened. In a way, the fact that Jesus ended up on cross fits the pattern of order through violence perfectly.

Part 5: The Gift of Shalom...

When Jesus rises from the dead, and appears to his followers, the same followers that had betrayed him, denied him, abandoned him and had run away from him in his hour of greatest need, the Gospel tells us that they were afraid when they saw him risen from the dead. Their fear makes sense. Not only were they witnessing something miraculous, we all know how the story should have gone. If Jesus is back, he’s back for justice, for revenge, to put all the “bad guys” in their place. But instead he shows them his wounds and greets them with the word “Shalom'' which means peace. Jesus announces Shalom to indicate that a definitive reconciliation between humanity and God has been achieved. Shalom also means completeness or wholeness.

Part 6: Jesus the Anti-myth...

In his resurrection Jesus undoes the myth of violence; he overturns and undermines the tremendous power of the great myth that has held humanity captive for so long. Jesus is the “anti-myth” (truth) that sets us free.

That’s why the witnesses of the Resurrection would risk everything, even death, to follow the risen Jesus.

Throughout history some of the greatest leaders in our time have risked everything to bring transformation through the non-violent example of the risen Jesus. Whether it was Martin Luther King in America, Gandhi in India, Karol Wojtyla (later Saint Pope John Paul II) in Poland or Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa. they risked it all and gave up their lives or their freedom so the good news of order through divine mercy; an everlasting order to be amplified by self-sacrificial generosity and sustained by forgiveness.

Part 7: Reason to Rejoice and reason to tremble...

To this day, the resurrection is our greatest reason to rejoice, but for tyrants, dictators, and those tempted to bring about order through violence, the good news of the resurrection of Jesus is reason to tremble. It’s that powerful.

Despite ridicule, misunderstanding or personal risk, the mission of every Christian is to draw more and more people into the divine pattern of non-violence revealed in the Resurrection. Living a Christian life means joining ourselves to what Jesus wants to do for those still held captive by the myth of violence and the false promise of order it claims to bring.