Greet: Peace be with you

 Christian living is after the language of the Gospel. Every ministry of the Gospel is shaped essentially by peace. Peace is not relaxation or a tensionless state nor is it an absence of violence or conflict. Peace is a docility to life i.e. it is lifegiving. So, the Gospel is lived, preached, and introduced in peace that is lifegiving.

Greeting of peace is not just a customary greeting. It is a sincere desire that life be experienced by everyone. But, how can we offer peace or life if we ourselves have not experienced it? Peace can be experienced only when we take all our life’s realities to the tenderness and the freedom of the love of God. Its personalising of the freedom of the Gospel – kindness, mercy, love, forgiveness, care, freedom from fear and guilt, confidence to face truth and stand for truth, willingness to forgive, love, and serve, spontaneity of the children of God in daily life, prayer, and relationships – being consoled, comforted, nourished, and strengthened. Isiah expresses this tenderness and freedom similar to a child’s experience of love at its mother’s breast, being fed, or playing on her lap. While we often emphasise on the ‘power’ ‘victory’ factors of the Gospel pointing to the miracle workers and healers we neglect this personalisation process which really needs to touch our hearts. We have mistaken seeing grace as a problem solving energy, it is tenderness of life we need greatly.

Once we have known the peace having consoled and strengthened by God, we are gradually transformed into Gospel men and women. The gospel is the covenantal mark that we bear on our life. These signs essentially carry peace within. Anything that is taken in the name of the Gospel but devoid of peace is not of faith, nor of the church nor of tradition. They may speak of the nobility of tradition, language, true faith, and so on, yet causes conflicts and power-consolidations; they are ideologies not the Gospel.

The light of the gospel has a struggle to shine where we are most vulnerable, our homes and our communities. Greeting of peace that the life of ours and of God may find a place in their life fruitfully is the door that we knock that in turn we ourselves may be received into the light of the Gospel.