Not False Peace, but Shalom

True peace is not just the absence of violence.

Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56

 

©2025 The Rev. Seth Olson

 

Holy God, may my words be your words and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen. 

 

We prefer a Jesus who soothes. A Jesus who blesses the children, stills the storm, multiplies bread, all while telling us not to worry. We like “Jesus meek and mild,” the little one lying in the manger from Luke’s opening chapters. But the Jesus we meet today here in Luke Chapter Twelve is anything but mild. He comes speaking of fire, division, and a baptism of suffering. This is not the sort of passage you embroider on a throw pillow.

 

When talking about this lesson with a parishioner earlier in the week the following question was asked, “How am I supposed to get up out of bed and do this, day-in and day-out?” That’s an honest inquiry. And it’s exactly the point: what Jesus is saying here is exceedingly challenging.

Today’s Gospel finds us far from the babe in Bethlehem. Jesus and his ministry are fully grown. And, the one we call the King of kings is heading toward Jerusalem, not to mount a typical throne, but to ascend the cross. His mission is urgent, costly, and deeply disruptive to the way things are.

 

Still, when he says, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division”, he’s not describing a new divine preference for quarrels. This is not a license to go picking fights in Jesus’ name. Instead, he’s warning that the arrival of God’s Kingdom — the real one, not any counterfeit version — will expose the fault lines in our loyalties. The peace Jesus refuses to offer here is the world’s peace: false tranquility, appeasement, the kind that maintains quiet on the surface while resentment, injustice, and wounds fester underneath.

The peace Jesus offers instead is shalom — the deep wholeness that comes only through truth, justice, and reconciliation. And that kind of peace is almost always preceded by discomfort, disorientation, and sometimes even death. Perhaps not literal, but nonetheless painful.

Of course, we all know the temptation especially in the South to “keep things nice.” Don’t rock the boat. Avoid hard conversations. Pretend it’s fine. But false peace is a thin crust over a fractured foundation. Eventually, it breaks, and you can’t call Alabama Foundation Specialists to fix this one.

 

Jesus refuses to plaster over the cracks of this faulty footing. He knows that if the truth is told in love — the truth about God, about ourselves, about the dignity of every human being — it will upset someone. It will divide households. It will cost relationships. But it will also open the door to healing that lasts. It will bring us into that New Jerusalem about which Isaiah speaks when he writes, “The lion and lamb shall lie down together.” 

 

But before you go off thinking your rector has gone off the deep end, or that in these divided times, I am going on a Don Quixote like mission, tilting at windmills, here’s another way to hear this passage: maybe Jesus isn’t only talking about external households divided against themselves. Perhaps Jesus isn’t speaking exclusively about the fractured systems that are everywhere in our world today. Maybe he’s also naming the divided household within us.

 

There is a part of me that knows who I am in Christ — beloved, called to love my neighbor, called to live truthfully. But there’s also a part of me that resists, that would rather take the easy way, that throws a tantrum until my superficial needs are met. Those parts of me, and even several others, are often at odds. And until they are all reconciled — until I let Christ be Lord over every room in my inner house — my peace will be partial, fragile, false.

 

Shalom requires that I invite God’s light into those locked rooms, even the ones I’d rather keep shut. It requires that I face my own divided heart before I go around fixing someone else’s. It necessitates that I tell the truth in love to myself first before I go off commending everyone else change their ways.

If we follow Jesus, we can’t sidestep the hard work:

• Naming where our lives are out of step with the Gospel.
• Speaking truth in love, even when it’s unpopular.
• Choosing to seek reconciliation rather than quiet avoidance.

And yes, it might mean division — not because we’re trying to create enemies, but because not everyone will welcome the truth of God’s inclusive, restorative love. Some will push back. Some will walk away. Some will follow for a time, then turn away. Jesus knew this. He warns us so we won’t be surprised when it happens.

So, what do we do? How do we live in this Shalom instead of false peace?
It requires doing the inner work — tending to our own divided hearts — so that we can engage the outer world with love, courage, and integrity.
It looks like refusing to accept “nice” when God calls us to “whole.”
It means being willing to let the Spirit set a holy fire in us — a refining fire that burns away pretense and makes space for truth.

Beloved in Christ, here is an invitation for you this week: As we encounter these hard words from Jesus, may we lean into Shalom instead of appeasement.
May we speak the truth in love.
May we not intentionally seek division, but may we not avoid it unnecessarily either.

May we reconcile all the parts within us around the throne of Christ in our hearts — so that we may join God in transforming this world into a place where all are loved, accepted, and welcomed as children of the Divine. For that is who we truly are and how we find true peace—Shalom.

 

Amen.