introducing shalom

             Introducing Shalom           
Human beings and the natural world There is something deep within human beings that responds to the natural world. We may actually have a need to commune with nature. In times past people were deeply aware of their dependence on the earth, the seasons and the harvest and the creation naturally inspired reflection. It is not surprising therefore that meditation on the natural world is a primary source of Biblical spirituality.  There is an extraordinary amount of evidence within the Bible that demonstrates how important nature was as a source of inspiration. Metaphors were drawn from the natural world to describe a vast range of personal and social reality.

For example: There were pictures of compassion, comfort and security:-The best known Psalm of all, Psalm 23 is full of metaphors drawn from the natural world.

The Lord is my shepherd, green pastures, still waters, the valley of the shadow of death – these provide images of a compassionate God, a restoring of our soul, a security and comfort that human beings down the ages have loved.  

Metaphors offering hope were taken from nature:-

Fear not…for I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit on your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring. They shall spring up like grass amid waters like willows by flowing streams. (Isaiah 44 v 3ff) 

There are literally hundreds of examples of this sort of hope expressed through the natural world, sayings that are both rooted in natural reality but also find a transcendent metaphorical meaning.  

The same is true of inner spiritual longing;

As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God. Psalm 42 v 1 

Or the inner anguish of the soul;

Deep calls to deep at the thunder of thy waterfalls, all thy waves and billows have gone over me (Psalm 42 v7) T

he natural world also provided images of the whole society:-

Isaiah ‘sang a song for his beloved concerning his vineyard’ in which he likens the whole society to God’s vineyard, for which God had done everything, which had borne only wild grapes and now would be allowed to go to ruin. (Isaiah 5) It was a tragic picture which would be taken up and transformed by Jesus in his story of the tenants in the vineyard and in the mystical reflection ‘I am the vine, you are the branches…’ 

These are but a few examples of a mass of allusions to the natural world found in the Bible. They are evidence of a different way of seeing the world from that prevalent in the Western world today. These people were profoundly in touch with nature and their first approach to it was meditative and poetic rather than analytical and boundary setting. The most extravagant expression of this holistic perspective may be found in instances where the writer implores the non-human aspects of creation to worship God. In Psalm 148 we read

 Praise God, sun and moon.

Praise God, all you shining stars

Praise God you highest heavens…    

A vital interdependence 

Yet meditation on the natural world did more than inspire the imagination. People knew their dependence on the earth. It is still a commonplace among rural peoples around the world, that they watch the seasons, the rain, the flowers and the birds and they look for signs, knowing that the whole of life is one great network of interdependence, that strange things may spell danger and that some form of harmony is essential. Such a watching of the earth is clearly present in biblical minds. The writer of Psalm 104, for example, celebrates the creation, the springs that gush forth in the valleys, the grass growing for the cattle, the trees, the rain, the birds nests, the mountains for the goats, the moon and the seasons, the lions and even humans get a mention(!) as they ‘go forth to their work and their labour until the evening.’ And for the psalmist it is God who makes all this happen, giving each plant and creature its place in the whole.  This sense of interdependence becomes the great vision for human society itself.

Within all this there is a clear acknowledgement of the power of human beings in the natural world, and it is expressed in a tone of wonder  

What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them? (Psalm  

It is in this context of humility that we should understand words about dominion (such as in Gen 1 v 28). Psalm 8 goes on to wonder that ‘you have given them dominion over the works of your hands, you have put all things under their feet’. They were truly in awe about the evident power of human beings and that led to a vital sense of responsibility, whereby they really must order their societies in harmony with the natural world.  

Psalm 19 is a fascinating example of rich, metaphorical allusions. Nature speaks of the glory of God.in a way that is beyond words,

The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words; yet their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.  

The same psalm goes on to liken the path of the sun to a bridegroom leaving his bed filled with the joys of his wedding night and then it suddenly moves to a celebration of the law.

The law of the Lord is perfect reviving the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple… 

To us this shift from the glories of the heavens to the law that ordered their society makes no sense, but to them it was obvious. The law was built to reflect and be in harmony with the ordering of the natural world. To live well by God was to live in tune with the natural world. It seems that creation made an impact not only on the law, but also on worship. Many think that the first chapter of Genesis owes its rhythmic structure to the fact that it was used in worship and the temple itself may actually have been structured around the six days of creation. 

Wisdom was to live in harmony with creation 

Biblical communities developed a tradition of wisdom from the root idea that they should live in harmony with creation. Key texts include Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. Wisdom was about how you live your life and about what it meant to live well. It affected every area of life from harvesting the crops through to social and political behaviour. And their highest calling was to seek the life that was truly in tune with the way that the world was made. To seek wisdom was the duty of both rulers and ordinary people. The link between creation and ordinary life becomes very obvious in Proverbs where some very earthy practical advice is combined with an amazing picture of a wisdom as a woman working with God in the creation of the world (see Proverbs Chapter 8). This ‘woman wisdom’ is the source of all that they seek. She is described as a co-worker with God in creation and therefore holding insights into all aspects of living well. Describing wisdom in these relational terms, as a person almost ‘playing’ with God and ‘delighting’ in the creation meant that wisdom codes were not fixed for ever, but were dynamic and creative and responding to situations. There is evidence that even the law evolved and adapted over time.[1] 

 Living well would be rewarded in terms of natural fruitfulness 

The most thorough and important statement of the bond of trust between the biblical communities and God is found in Deuteronomy. This book focuses on encouraging the people to live well in God’s terms. At its heart are some promises and some warnings. 

And if you obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you this day….Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading trough…(Deuteronomy 28 v 1-5) 

The link with the natural world is clear. Biblical spirituality was based on the premise that the primary sign of living well by God would be that their fields and their flocks would be fruitful. And the reverse was true also, namely ‘If you will not obey the Lord your God…’ (v 15ff) there follows a list of warnings about consequences that includes the precise reverse of the blessings and throws in drought and disease for good measure. Some might see the origin of this type of thinking in the basic intuition of the farmer who thanks God for a good harvest and worries about having offended God when times are hard. If so we may consider that this way of thinking is primitive and pre-scientific. ‘All we need is fertiliser, tractors, artificial insemination, antibiotics etc. That is the way now,’ we may say. And I guess that seems fair enough, until we think of the lessons of climate change. Then we realise that there was something precious here, which we disregard at our peril. The belief in a Creator is part of a great vision about the interdependence of all things. We mess with creation at our peril. And climate change should impress that upon us scientifically as well as theologically.  

Great stories of restoration include creation 

There are many stories in the Bible of God working to restore the situation of the people when things have gone wrong. It is fascinating to notice how often these processes explicitly include the wider creation.

v  The primordial narrative of Noah, for example, charges Noah to collect each and every species on the earth, as breeding pairs, so that all can begin again after the flood. You might summarise the lesson to be learnt here with the phrase ‘We are all in the same boat’!

v  Or take Moses and the people in Egypt. Pharaoh has enslaved the people. What happens? Great plagues ravage the country, disturbances of the natural order that evoke foreboding and the eventual release of the people, who themselves are promised a ‘land of milk and honey’ that great picture of fruitfulness.  I wonder whether there is an analogy here with what we are about to experience through climate change? Will the earth suffer a series of plagues, like Hurricane Katrina, as part of God’s process of releasing us from the slavery of carbon addiction? Terence Fretheim (reference later) certainly thinks this is a proper way of reading this passage.

v  Then there is the time when the people were carried away captive to a foreign land. After this exile the prophets repeatedly promised restoration in terms that involve a fruitful land. This is so frequent and widespread an idea that it is fair to speak of it as a vision, a vision of a great peace or ‘Shalom’.     

The vision of Shalom and its globalisation 

The vision of Shalom had its origins in the basic attitudes of interdependence which have already been described. In the book of Leviticus we read for example; 

If you walk in my statutes…then I will give rains in their season and the land shall yield its increase and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit…and you shall eat bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. And I will give peace (Shalom) in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid…and I will make my home among you and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God and you will be my people. (Leviticus 26 v 3-6) 

This concept of peace, or Shalom, was much bigger than freedom from worry. It was a complete realisation of God’s purposes for human beings, as people fulfilling their potential, both individually and as members of their communities, living in a just and harmonious order, without fear or threat. And Shalom was not just about human beings. This vision of harmony embraced the whole natural world and was associated with the presence and rule of God. In Micah, for example, we read 

God shall judge between many peoples and shall decide for strong nations far off; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, but they shall sit every person under their vine and under their fig tree and none shall make them afraid (Micah 4 v 1-4) 

But how was this to come to be? The longings of the prophets were often tied up with payback time for those nations that had acted against Israel. This is a less savoury side of these writings and includes grim images of God executing justice on Israel’s enemies. (Isaiah 63 v 1-6 for example). There was only one God, of course, for biblical writers, but the idea that God had specially chosen Israel naturally led to the idea that God would specially look after their interests in regard to other nations. This may be at the heart of their expectation of vengeance. And it is a very natural feeling. Yet other streams of thought were developing. In the aftermath of the exile there came a realisation that God was at work among all the nations. Some of the more radical prophets would question the specialness of Israel and insist on a justice that was applicable to all (see Amos for example who castigates all the nations for war crimes and deals with Israel over economic injustice, including the words in Amos 9 v 7 which effectively say ‘What makes you think you are so special?’).  At the same time there were some striking statements of restoration that centred on whole world creation thinking. The writer of Second Isaiah begins with  

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain and all flesh shall see it together…(Isaiah 40 v 3-5) 

This phrase ‘all flesh’ is deliberately evoking a sense of all creation all around the world seeing this great happening. The same phrase is used in the verses that follow 

 ‘All flesh is grass and all its beauty like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;  (Isaiah 40 v 6) 

So Isaiah chooses to set this vision for the restoration of Israel within a massive canvas, of the whole creation. He evokes humility from his human readership with this antidote to human arrogance 

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord…(Isaiah 40 v 12) And humbles national prideBehold the nations are like a drop in a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales (Isaiah 40 v15)  

This is big picture stuff and it includes beautiful visions of Shalom, describing the Coming One who …

will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young .(Isaiah 40 v11) 

And Isaiah goes on to speak of this Coming One as a person who would suffer terribly and yet be God’s chosen means to make all this happen.( Isaiah 53) 

The vision of Shalom inspires Jesus of Nazareth 

We are used to thinking about Jesus through the eyes of the church, or via our various traditions or the New Testament epistles. This means we have to peer through layers of creeds and formulations, church history and doctrines that may cloud our view. I am going to suggest that we take a look at Jesus from a different angle and ask the question ‘What inspired Jesus?’ This is to try, as far as we can[2], to enter the mindset of Jesus from within his world and from the scriptures that he would have had access to. My principal guide in this venture has been Tom Wright and his book Jesus and the Victory of God. Tom Wright maintains that Jesus understood himself as in the line of the Old Testament prophets. This is obvious from parables like the Tenants in the Vineyard (Luke 20 v 9-16) or in the heartfelt cry as he entered Jerusalem for the last time; 

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered you children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not! 

Tom Wright suggests that the defining theme for Jesus was that he was fulfilling the great hopes of the prophets for all that would happen in the joyous return from exile.There can be no doubt that Jesus deeply engaged with the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah and others. In the great despair surrounding the parable of the sower we sense the frustrations of prophetic work and Jesus’ own awareness of directly fulfilling Isaiah’s words 

You shall indeed hear but never understand, you shall indeed see but never perceive (Matthew 13 v14 and Isaiah 6 v 9)  

There can be little doubt that Jesus took up the writings of the prophets and transformed them according to his vision of God and his calling. We have seen already how he took Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard and turned it into his own mediations and stories. We might also note how he took Jeremiah’s attitude to religious abuse via the temple as he cleared the temple using Jeremiah’s own ‘den of robbers’ phrase. (Jer 7 v 11 and Luke 19 v 46)

So here we have Jesus acting out the vision of the prophets. But what of Shalom and the vision for harmony with the earth and its creatures? I love to think of Jesus poring over Isaiah, coming across the words about the coming one as the Prince of Peace (Shalom) (Isaiah 9 v 6) who would bring in a whole new situation where ‘of the increase of his government and of peace (Shalom) there would be no end.’ Or likewise I think of Jesus wondering about his own calling as he read; 

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidingsWho publishes peace (Shalom)Who brings good tidings of goodWho publishes salvationWho says to Zion ‘Your God reigns’ (Isaiah 52 v7) 

I can sense Jesus’ heart beginning to bang as he read those words, the excitement rising up within him as he recognised that God was calling him to bring the good news, that it was about ‘Your God reigns’ or’ as he would say’ ‘the kingdom of God’ and central to this good news was the publishing of peace (Shalom) that glorious vision of the world made right, the fulfilment and healing of individuals and communities, where there would be a new wholeness of life and a well-being, that includes social justice and the harmony of creation.  

Shalom in the words and actions of Jesus

 I think we may have lost touch with a central element in the original message of Jesus. Part of the reason for this is that there are some parts of the gospel stories that we shy away from because of our scientific scruples Let me invite you as reader to engage in a thought experiment. Try for a moment to put aside your concerns about the miraculous and just look at the gospel stories as stories for a moment. Then ask ‘What was their central message?’ Jesus was clearly proclaiming some good news. Let’s think about what the gospels record in terms of Jesus’ actions. For example:  

·         The stilling of the storm ·         Water into wine ·         Walking on water ·         Cleansing of lepers ·         Casting out demons ·         Raising the dead ·         Healing the sick ·         Death and resurrection   

Do you notice how many of these miracles were associated with some sort of impact on the natural world? We may be familiar with interpreting Jesus’ words and actions in terms of the compassionate love of God, social inclusion, addressing injustice and shaking the political world, but have we missed this great message about the natural world?  The human social dimension was clearly an important part of the good news and we see this as Jesus proclaims the words of Isaiah 61 at the outset of his work. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me’, he says, and commits himself to the vision of ‘good news for the poor’, ‘release to the captives’ etc. But the really big picture within which all this sits is the message of Shalom, the great peace whose heart was in a new harmony for the whole natural order. As someone who has experienced the life of the church in the UK for the last 30 or so years I suspect we have seriously underestimated the importance of the natural world in our teaching about Jesus. We have missed the central element in the Shalom vision and instead produced something that is far too centred on humans, as if they were all that God cared about. The same message about nature is reflected in Jesus’ words. We know all too well how many of his sayings and parables drew their inspiration from the natural world. His understanding about his own role clearly took and transformed the visions of the prophets, deliberately leaving aside the thoughts of vengeance, opening people’s eyes to a God who cared for all, styling himself after the shepherd in Isaiah (40 v 11), now transformed to the ‘good shepherd’ and modelled after the suffering servant (Isaiah 53) as the one ‘who lays down his life for the sheep’. We can see his subversive use of power, deploying little children as emblems of humility (Matthew 18 v 2) and so taking on the visions of children from the prophets 

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11 v 6,7) 

Jesus understood all the living systems of the earth as caught up in a vital dependence on one another and through which the graciousness of the loving heavenly Father was expressed. He appealed to people to enter into that care through faith. 

Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they? (Matthew 6 v 254ff) 

It was this sense of interdependence of the world under God that lay behind the instructions to the disciples to take very little with them on their missionary journeys.  

He charged them to take nothing for their journey, except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts…(Mark 6 v8ff) 

This was no simple austerity measure nor was it about a magical dependence on an abstract God. It was about them knowing their proper dependence on the heavenly Father through the natural world and its people. Similar thinking may lie behind Jesus’ instructions about prayer in such as Luke 11 (v 1-3).   

Such dependence on God through the interdependence of creation is opposed to finding our security in mammon.  Jesus’ sayings about ‘not being anxious’ and ‘see the birds of the air they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns’ have a context. They begin with the phrase ‘therefore I tell you’ that in both Matthew and Luke refers to the alternative and false peace obtained through finding our security in mammon. Luke’s version tells us of the rich man whose crops yielded such abundance that he built ‘more barns’ in an obvious contrast to the birds of the air who do ‘not gather into barns’. Jesus implies there can be no real security in mammon. As we now live in a world which measures progress in terms of Gross Domestic Product, which has largely lost touch with the natural world and is in danger of destroying the environment, these words have a special relevance. ‘Fool’, said Jesus. 

 Yet Jesus did not just teach about Shalom. Jesus is portrayed as a unique source of this Shalom that was breaking into the world. His more extravagant words and actions like commanding ‘Peace’ (Shalom) to the storm on the lake or in describing himself as the ‘Bread of Life’ to the hungry multitudes around Galilee, these proclaim Jesus as something extraordinary with regard to the coming of this Shalom. He was somehow making it real in his person .  And so Jesus passed through the cross believing that he was fulfilling the hopes of the prophets and making  possible the great vision of Shalom for the world. As he met with the disciples after the resurrection he said the words still remembered at many weekly celebrations in our own day ‘Peace be with you’, or ‘Shalom’. It had happened. He was living proof that Shalom was breaking in on the world. For us the word peace is too often limited to an opposition to war in our minds, whilst for Jesus and the prophets of the Bible it conveyed this great vision of an earth, its creatures and its people brought into a new intentional harmony with one another. 

Globalisation of Shalom through the first church 

Yet the vision of Shalom did not fully go global in Jesus’ lifetime. Jesus lived to some extent with the traditional perspective of the Old Testament prophets in that he often spoke and acted as if the primary focus of God’s action was the people of Israel. Teasing instances of Jesus ministering to those outside of the people of Israel, as in the healing of the Centurion’s servant, whet our appetite for an inclusive faith, but other sayings of Jesus betray a primary strategic concern with the ‘lost sheep of the House of Israel’. It was only after his death, as the first church meditated on the person of Christ, that a truly global and inclusive vision of God’s intention emerged.

The death and resurrection of Jesus was a defining moment. It separated out the small band of ‘believers’ from the broader Jewish faith. These people saw themselves as charged with the work of Christ, personally identified with his death and resurrection, and they looked for the coming of a new world order. This would become a new expression of the Shalom vision, but the new church leaders had some personal journeys to go on first. Peter’s prejudices were confronted in the vision of unclean animals and the pouring out of the Spirit on the household of Cornelius. He began to see the possibilities of a truly global vision. Paul the Pharisee at first persecutes the believers and then undergoes a dramatic conversion and dedicates his life to taking the good news far and wide across the known world of his day.

Much of the New Testament is taken up with the formation of the first church and with the difficulties of the transition from traditional Jewish practices that would have excluded other people. Yet the vision of Shalom remains.

Paul’s writings, for example, are much occupied with how people are justified before God. He needs to work with the relationship between obedience to the Jewish law and the place of faith in Christ, but the backcloth of his thought is a new world order that is coming into being through Christ.

Therefore since we are justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans  5 v 1.

The heart of Paul’s theology was the bringing in of a reign of peace. For him, as a Jew, this must have connected with the great peace envisaged in Shalom. He dreamt of a deep reconciliation of the world that had been achieved through Christ’s death. This was enough to reconcile Jew and Gentile and so globalise the faith.

He is our peace who has made us both one and broken down the dividing wall of hostility…( Ephesians 3 v 14)

But it also extended to the natural world. In fact it included ‘all things’ meaning everything in the whole creation.

 …all things were created through and for him… …in him all things hold together… …through him to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1 v 16-20) 

Paul has actually been much misunderstood. Drawn into the world of his arguments, and possibly in search of security, we have thought our way into a ‘gospel’ centred around the law and justification not realising that these were categories supremely relevant to the people of his day and much less relevant to us, and in the process we have missed the teaching about peace or ‘Shalom’. As a result we have tended to think of God as only concerned for human beings. By contrast, for Paul, this was a gospel that, in some strange way, ‘had been preached to every creature under heaven’. In fact human beings were leading the way for the whole natural world. As they lived and championed Shalom they were heralds of the glorious liberty of the children of God that would eventually work its way through to the whole creation. The creation was even then seen to be ‘groaning in travail’ like as if in labour before the birth of the new order (Romans 8 v 18-25). Humans themselves, through their faith in Christ, were experiencing a transition between two natures. God had achieved something through the death and resurrection of Christ that was already evident within them. They were to see themselves as ‘born again’ and as ‘new creatures’ and they would experience an inner struggle and a new transforming power, that would only be finally complete with the redemption of their bodies in the new world order. But this new world order was not some hazy view of people floating around in a disembodied heaven. This was real. Paul’s language in describing all this is rooted in the earth. He seems affronted by the bodily death of Christians as if to indicate that this should no longer occur. He speaks of them as falling asleep (1 Cor 15). He reassures them at length about a new bodily existence. He expects the new world order to be somehow continuous with the present one and to retain its earthiness.

 

So much for Paul. But others also dreamt of Christ’s work in cosmic terms and the great Shalom was at the heart of their thinking. The writer of John’s gospel speaks of Christ as ‘the word’ through whom ‘all things’ had been made (John 1 v3). Again this phrase ‘all things’ included the whole created world, and extended way beyond simple human interests. The seven ‘signs’ that give structure to John’s gospel and point to the special nature of Christ are all impacts upon nature.

There is also evidence from the life of the earliest church of Shalom type thinking. As we read of the first church in Jerusalem sharing their goods, giving to the poor and attempting to live in a new harmony, this was surely an attempt to live out Shalom (Acts 4 v 32ff) . Likewise Paul encourages the believers at Colossae to ‘put on…compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another’ – this is another expression of Shalom (Colossians 3 v12).

 The same Shalom thread is detected in a rather different form in the letter of James, head of the church in Jerusalem. James’ most basic concerns hinge around social behaviour and justice between people but these are cast in a great vision, which echoes Psalm 19 (see earlier) as James speaks of ‘the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change’ and of ‘the perfect law, the law of liberty’ which is to order their lives and which makes demands in terms of their treatment of the poor. Here again is Shalom, a life lived in harmony with the creator and which has distinct social justice implications. 

To sum up, we live in days when the church is struggling to express its faith, especially in our Western urbanised world. Perhaps we need to remember the terms on which the biblical communities understood the world and rise to work, as they did, for a vision of people living in harmony with the earth and its creatures. Surely this is good news for the world.               

Key implications of Shalom for life today 

I believe this understanding of the good news as Shalom has profound implications for both church and society. In brief they are: 

v  Meditation on the natural world led to the key insight that all of creation was bundled together in a complex system of interdependence, and that human beings had a particular responsibility to respect this and work with it. The idea that human beings should alter the climate through their activities would have been understood as the worst, imaginable offence to God, the ultimate sin.  

v  The great vision for the restoration of the world has nature at its heart. The good news of Jesus was demonstrated by impacts upon natural disorder. Environmental concern can never be a ‘bolt-on’ part of the gospel. It is at the very core of the good news and our behaviour as Christians must reflect this.    

This has deliberately been a brief survey of the vision of Shalom.. There are great areas of thought that I have not touched. I just wanted to write an introduction and identify a few key implications of this approach. Much more can be done and I hope you will do some of it. If you would like to read some serious theology, I personally recommend ‘God and the World of the Old Testament – A relational theology of creation by Terence Fretheim from which some of these insights have been drawn.  

To close  - a verse from the rather extraordinary book of Revelation. Even there we find creation as part of the great picture of restoration in terms of the ‘four living creatures’ who stand for the whole of the non-human creation.  And all the angels stood around the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God…(Revelation 7 v9)  

Shalom. The peace of the Lord be with you.  Chris Sunderland. April 2007 

---

[1] Fretheim offers a remarkable overview of this area[2] It is impossible to discern precisely how much the description of Jesus words and actions were due to the interpretation of the gospel writers. In this exercise I am assuming that what is recorded does give us an insight into the actual mind of Christ. Others may judge this naive, conclude that little or nothing can be known about the mind of Christ  and choose to interpret this section  in terms of how Jesus’ words and actions were perceived and interpreted by the gospel writers. The result in terms of the vision for Shalom is no different.