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Hello friends. The Comfortable Words this week come from the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 27, where Jesus says:
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)
Jesus is giving a contrasting vision: what we receive from this world, set against what we receive from him. And it is a stark contrast. The world gives one thing, and Jesus gives us another.
I think we’ve all had our fair share of what the world gives. This week I had that experience of existential dread as I listened to the world’s richest, and arguably most powerful, person, Elon Musk, describe the future of the world in ten years, and the philosophy and vision that drive him.
Regarding the future, he says, “Work is going to be optional.” And “money won’t matter” in that world, he says. “The most likely outcome is an age of amazing abundance, where anyone can have anything they can think of.” Sounds great, doesn’t it?
But in the next breath he says, “Hopefully we’ll both be around” for this future, because, in his words, “it would be an exercise in vanity” to think he could control a “super genius AI that is vastly smarter” than he is. All we can do is try to “make sure that the AI has good values, that it cares about humanity, and that it wants us to be happy.” He says that compared to this future AI, we humans are “an evolved form of chimpanzee,” and jokes that there should be more swinging through the trees.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a benevolent AI taking care of us while we play in the trees. AI, after all, is not created in the image of God. It’s created in the image of man. If our treatment of the animal kingdom is anything like how we will be treated by the machines, then all I can say is that we might make a pretty tasty meal. The best we can hope for is to be a kind of AI lap dog.
Yet even as these two possible futures, eternal plenty and eternal destruction, are uttered in the same breath, his conclusion is shocking, but not all that surprising. He says, “Even if there was a stop button, we probably shouldn’t press it.” Why? Because “in the long run, we’re all dead.” So, he says, “Let’s enjoy the ride.” Which is it, hedonism or nihilism? Or is it both? All the while, we commoners are left here with this feeling of existential dread.
Jesus says, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” This is what the world gives.
It reminds me of the tower of Babel. We hear two voices crying from the same tower. The engineers who are quitting, saying it could kill us all by the end of the decade, and the trillionaire saying that no one will need money in ten years. Doom and abundance from the same tower. The tower keeps climbing, and we are waiting for it to collapse and fall on us all.
Sorry to be so dark. But if we don’t acknowledge the darkness, we might be lulled into it. We might crawl into a comfortable bed, put on the eye mask, and pull up the covers for a long sleep.
It seems, in fact, that this is the mood of the moment we find ourselves in. We are not just anxious. We have gone numb, and we have pulled back.
I came across a report this week called the Edelman Trust Barometer, a global survey now in its 26th year. It describes an arc that covers the past five years: it started with fear, which led to polarization, which gave way to grievance, and today where we find ourselves, in a state of insularity.
The American Psychological Association released a study this month called “The Stress of Uncertainty,” and what it showed was fascinating. Seventy-two percent said, “Bad news no longer shocks me the way it used to.” Sixty-eight percent said, “I’ve become accustomed to living with uncertainty.” And then this: 47 percent withdrew from other people this past year because of stress, uncertainty, or feeling overwhelmed.
In the words of Pink Floyd, we have become “Comfortably Numb.”
The Comfortable Words of Jesus do the opposite to us. They wake us up, not just to the happiness of this world, but to the pain. He gives us an alternative to becoming comfortably numb. He invites us to be uncomfortably awake. And at the same time, he brings a comfort that this world has no medicine for.
Let’s look and listen for how he both awakens and comforts his disciples.
The passage we started with from John takes place in the middle of what’s called the Farewell Discourse. In John 14, Jesus is giving his farewell address to his disciples. He says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”
He is using the language of someone on their deathbed, someone reading their final will and testament. And that’s why the disciples are so confused. Because he is young and vibrant and if the musical captures any of the reality, he is Jesus Christ Superstar. He’s not a man at the edge of death. Except he is, and he has been telling them as clearly and plainly as he can. Jesus is in his final act, and his words match the moment. This isn’t someone handing out platitudes. He’s not saying empty words, the way public officials do when some tragedy happens. He isn’t giving them the equivalent of “thoughts and prayers.” This isn’t a wish for good feelings and good vibes. No, this is something much deeper. When he says “Peace I leave you,” it’s the verb of a will. He is bequeathing. He is a dying man leaving something that is not theirs except by gift. And only he can give this gift.
And what is this gift of peace? The Hebrew word behind it is shalom. In the ancient world it was the ordinary word for hello and goodbye. You might hear it ten times a day. It means something more here, though. He is at his farewell meal, saying the farewell word. The difference is that what others offer as a wish, he gives as a promise. It reminds me of that line from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. You can go around saying Merry Christmas, but everyone knew the truth that it was always winter and never Christmas. There was a long history of empty words of shalom. Jeremiah the prophet complained:
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 6:14, ESV)
Shalom, shalom, when there is no shalom.
“I do not give to you as the world gives,” he says. Now, when Jesus says “the world,” he means something specific. John’s Gospel uses that word more than any other Gospel. It shows up in 46 verses of John, compared with 8 in Matthew, 3 in Mark, and 3 in Luke. John is the Gospel of the world. The Greek word is kosmos, and it carries three different meanings, and it’s important to distinguish them.
In John 3, Jesus uses the word for the world God loves. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” Jesus is talking about the people of the world. He loves them to death, whether or not they love him back.
The second sense is the world as a system that does not know him. John 1:10 says, “The world did not recognize him.” It is a system that hated him and hates his way of being. This world gives love, but only to its own.
The third sense of the world in John is not just a system of thinking and a way of being, but a power with a ruler. In John 14:30 Jesus says, “The prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me.”
So when Jesus says he does not give as the world gives, he means that second and third world. And Jesus is very specific about what that world hands out. Hatred: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” Trouble: “In this world you will have trouble.” Love with strings: “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.” And a shelf life: “The world and its desires pass away.”
And here is what Jesus gives. “My peace.” Joy, he says, that “no one will take away.” A kingdom that is “not of this world.” A peace that is not merely momentary or situational. Not depending on circumstances that change, and not impacted by anything the world delivers to you.
It’s not just a difference in kind. It’s a difference in quality. The world gives you numbness and calls it peace. The world gives you distance from other people, aloneness and isolation, and calls it peace. Jesus gives peace while the trouble is still in the room.
Later, after the Resurrection, the risen Jesus appears behind the locked doors of the upper room, where the disciples are afraid for their lives. The first thing he says is, “Peace be with you.” And then he shows them his wounds. His peace has wounds in it. It is a peace that does not ignore uncomfortable realities, and is not immune to them. And then in the next move, he doesn’t let them stay locked up behind closed doors. He says, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” He brings comfort to us in the midst of the pain of our own lives, and he doesn’t stop there; he sends us out into the pain of the world to bring healing and hope to those in need.
How can he do that? Because he has overcome it. It’s striking that when Jesus says, “I have overcome the world,” in John 16:33, it is before he goes to the cross. Before he suffered. Before he was raised. It is an eternal and sure peace that breaks into the history of this world through Christ before, during, and after suffering. And it is His eternal and sure peace that keeps us today.
I think the surprising turn in his teaching, though, is about his relationship to fear, and ours. He says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” Jesus is not saying, “Oh, just don’t worry. Be happy. Think positive. Manifest goodness.” Jesus himself had already been “troubled” more than once in the days leading up to this: at Lazarus’s tomb, facing his own hour, and at the table as he announced his betrayal. He is not asking for a feeling he hasn’t had himself.
No, the key phrase here is “do not be afraid.” It’s the only place in the whole New Testament this verb, “be afraid,” is used. It’s the word of Deuteronomy 31:6 in the Greek Old Testament, when Moses is saying farewell to Israel before they cross into the land: be strong and courageous, do not be afraid. Jesus is giving a Moses farewell. When he says do not be afraid, it means to not be a coward. It’s shrinking back. It’s pulling away. It’s locking the door. It’s losing your voice. Cowards are at the head of the list in Revelation 21:8 of those who are left outside the city. The opposite of peace is not worry. It is cowardice. It’s a strong word.
As we close our reflection today, I wonder where you may be comfortably numb, or tempted to become so. To the pain, to the need, to the voices calling out, maybe even your own voice calling out. You’ve managed to numb yourself in the shadow of whatever tower of Babel you find yourself under. Or maybe you’ve shrunk back instead. You’ve closed the door. You’ve isolated. You’ve protected yourself. You’ve lost your witness: your voice, your hands, your heart that brings the good news.
In the upper room, with the disciples in fear and uncertainty, Jesus does not let them stay behind locked doors. He says to them, and to you, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And then he breathes on them. Go. Be my wounded hands. Be my broken feet. Go into the world and bring good news.
Friends, if you are numb, can you ask Jesus to awaken you again? If you are hiding behind locked doors, can you ask him to breathe on you, to send you again?
As I pray, could you take a deep breath in… and now another…
Jesus, would you breathe on me today and awaken me to the uncomfortable reality of the world, in such a way that I experience your deep comfort. Give me your courage to break through the walls and locked doors, the places of protection and insulation, that I may courageously be your hands and feet this week.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.