“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide…. Do not move about from house to house.” –Luke 10:5-7
This week I’ve been wrestling with this verse. Better yet, through this verse God has been wrestling with me. It’s been doing some work on me, as I’ve been forced to think about what it means to be a person of peace. (That’s the holy danger of living with a text for a while. It’s sort of like Jacob wrestling with God all through the night by the river Jabbok. You’ll probably get a blessing, but it could come with a limp!)
What has really captured me this week, or, better, what has convicted me this week is the instruction to “remain in the same house.” I think that it is easy for most of us to come and proclaim peace, but it’s another thing altogether when we are called to remain somewhere for a while.
What Jesus envisions here is not a flash-mob approach to peace, where we invite someone to give peace a chance and then are on our way. This is about abiding, about remaining, about dwelling. Others will learn what peace looks like as we remain with them over a prolonged period of time. God’s peace is revealed through the habits and patterns of life as we live together.
And not only that, the way we interact with one another and with others reveals something about the ways in which we connect with God. In her book Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Hallie Barton puts it this way:
“Our patterns of intimacy or nonintimacy with other human beings are the very same patterns we bring to our relationship with God, whether we are conscious of it or not.”
That idea is doing some serious work on me this week. I want to be a person of peace. I want to connect deeply with God. I want to be in life-giving, intimate relationships with other people. I am sure that you do too. What I am coming to realize is that these things are all deeply connected.
My prayer today, flowing from dwelling in this Word, is that God will transform this community of believers into people of peace, as you remain together in this church house, eating together, drinking together, and creating a rich life together in the Spirit of the One who has called you and sent you ahead of him into the world!
Peace to this house! -ERM
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