Top Drawer Peace

I tug at my top drawer.  It catches.  A mail-slot-narrow slit.  Squeeze right hand through.  Press down on the unruly tangle of socks and undies.  The drawer slides open.  Dig through - striped, blue anklet, woolly lumberjack (you can guess which are socks and which ones undergarments) - success!  Press down once more.  Shove that sucker shut.

Bed neat, bookshelf tidy, chairs cozy by the window.  This room is the picture of rest.  Peace.  Let’s not address that drawer.  Ever.

But that drawer threatens to spill every time I open it.  The way I shove it - I know it’s broke-down.  The silver pulls are busted - layers of Gorilla glue keeping them on.  I know it can’t last.  Those socks are about to raise a riot, undergarments a mutiny.

The peace of this world?  It’s the peace of a bad top drawer.  Suppress and intimidate the weak, appease those in power, maintain facades.  Apply the glue of mindless distractions.  The messiness of living with people who are both images of God and plain aggravating?  The tangle of trauma, of shame, of oppression, of wounds that have festered and never healed?  Don’t even go there.  Just keep making that bed, tidying that shelf, propping cushions on those chairs.

Jesus comes to earth in such a time and place.  Stability.  Wealth.  Law and order.  New walls, aqueducts, roads.  Power and control.  Things look neat in the Roman Empire.  On the surface.  But Jesus embodies, reveals and brings forth a different kind of peace than the Pax Romana.

Jesus’ peace deals with the mess in the top drawer.  The tensions, the tangled mess of humanity, of generational sin piled high, of evil and suffering pressed within tidy borders, that bursts in violence when it can no longer be contained.  No wall, army, government or policy could ever protect us from the enemy within our own borders.  Our wicked tongues, deceitful hearts, lustful flesh, put us in constant war - against God, against one another, against ourselves.

Jesus turns Pax Romana over.  In his Shalom, the weak are honoured, the powerful brought low, the Empire destabilized, the wealthy threatened; love is revealed as the ultimate law, a crucified criminal the Cornerstone, the Living Water, the Way, and submission to God’s will the only true power.

Through his sacrifice, the horrific separation from God that we deserve, Jesus reconciles us to himself.  His Shalom is no surface absence of strife, but the deep presence of himself.  It is a peace with the power to transform our tongue, heart, flesh.  A peace that allows us to address past hurts with hope, confess and repent of sins without shame, to experience true peace with people like and unlike us as well as true peace within ourselves.

Today - may we pull that top drawer wide open, acknowledge our mess, and cry out for the peace of Jesus.  For ourselves, for our city, our country, our world.

Do a Lectio Divina on:  Ephesians 2:11-22

Karen Schaffer is the pastor of spiriutal formation at The Tapestry Richmond
Photo by Sunyu