Seek Peace and Pursue It

Seek Peace and Pursue It

May 19, 2020

1 Peter 3:8-12

Two days ago I put a piece on this blog with the simple title “Peace.” It’s a meditation on Jesus saying to his disciples “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” John 14-27. I say in that essay that peace is my favorite word and something I want more of in my life, especially an inner spiritual peace. So I was struck when I read the passage from 1 Peter that’s in the daily Revised Common Lectionary for today and found the line “seek peace and pursue it.” 1 Peter 3:11b. If I recall correctly my wife had a bumper sticker on a car she used to have with that line on it. Seek peace and pursue it. In John Jesus just leaves his peace and gives it to his disciples. 1 Peter seems to develop the dynamic of peace a bit farther than that. In that letter peace isn’t just something we receive, it is something we have to work at. It isn’t just lying around for us to pick up. We have to go after it, a very different dynamic from the one in John indeed. So I thought I’d meditate a bit here on what it means that we are called not just to receive peace as in John but to seek it and pursue it.

Our call to seek peace and pursue it assumes first of all that we don’t have it. You don’t seek or pursue something you’ve already got. You seek or pursue something you need or want but don’t have. Is 1 Peter right that we don’t have it? For a great many of us, perhaps for all of us, the answer is yes. We long for peace in our world and in our lives. Most people, perhaps all people, see peace as a great blessing but one we so often lack. So 1 Peter tells us to go after that great blessing that we crave but so often don’t have.

But how? 1 Peter doesn’t tell us. We have to figure it out on our own. When we work at figuring it out we discover that how we seek peace and pursue it depends on what peace we’re going after. There are at least two broad categories of peace that we can seek and pursue. There’s inner peace and outer peace in the world. Many of the world’s sages say that to get the second one we start with the first one, so I’ll start with the first one. How do we seek and pursue inner peace? The world’s spiritual traditions have all found ways to do it. To quiet the turmoil in your soul you start by being quiet. Take a few deep breaths and let go of all that judgmental noise that’s always going on in your head. You could read up on and practice transcendental meditation or centering prayer, then practice one of them. Don’t expect a wave of peace to come over you right away. Inner peace takes practice, but with practice you will find yourself to be more at peace.

Then of course there are other spiritual disciplines that help us attain inner peace. The foundational practice for any spiritual quest and even just for life is prayer. Ask God to grant you inner peace. Turn your worries over to God. God can handle them better than you can. Practice letting go and gently settling into God’s peace. Once again practice is necessary, but there’s a peace to be found in God that truly does surpass understanding. There are other spiritual practices that help too. Some of them are physical. Take up yoga, or find a labyrinth and walk it. Or just take a quiet walk in nature and open yourself to the world’s beauty. You can find inner peace there. There are lots of ways of seeking and pursuing inner peace.

Seeking and pursuing peace out in the world requires some different methods, but it too begins with prayer. I once heard a wise person say that the way prayer works is you pray for people who are hungry, then you feed them. It works the same way with world peace. Pray for peace, then go work for it. Join an organization whose mission is to work for peace. The Fellowship of Reconciliation is one that has chapters in many cities. Or join Amnesty International, or perhaps your religious tradition has ministries that work for peace. If you can, donate money to organizations that work for peace. Support UNICEF or Doctors Without Borders. Contribute to and work for political candidates committed to peace. World peace doesn’t just happen. If it is ever going to happen at all it will only be because a great many people who desire it work to make it happen.

Pope Paul VI once said “If you want peace, work for justice.” He was right about that. Injustice is a common cause of violence in the world. People in positions of power use violence against people with no power. People who have long been the victims of injustice sometimes react with violence. So to work for world peace join and support organizations that work for justice. Join the ACLU or the Southern Poverty Law Center. Work with your local political leaders to root out the systemic racism that so tarnishes virtually all of our American institutions. Work for legal system and penal reform. There are lots of things we can do to work for justice. Justice is of course a great blessing in its own right, but it also leads to a world more at peace.

Jesus left his peace with us. He gave his peace to us, but unless we pick it up it will just sit there doing nothing. So let’s pick it up. Let’s make it our own. Let’s do the hard but sacred work of making peace real in our lives and in God’s world. As people of faith who long for peace we can do no less.