Three days after Jesus has been crucified, Jesus’s apostles are holed up in a room, locked from the inside.
They are overcome with fear and pain. They had lost their teacher, their friend, the messiah. If it could happen to him, they wondered, it can also happen to us.
In the midst of what must have been the most horrific week of their lives, a resurrected Jesus appears to them inside the locked room and tells them “Peace be with you.”
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” (John 17:9 NIV)
The Hebrew word for the phrase “Peace be with you” is shalom. It also is a greeting that simply means hello.
Hello? To a group of close friends consumed by fear.
Hello? From someone that they just saw crucified and buried three days earlier.
Hello.
“Hello to you in this locked room.”1
Hello to conflict.
Hello to exile.
Hello to finding peace amidst conflict.
Hello to waymaking.
For those who feel like those poor disciples — locked inside a room, trembling with fear because our relationships or our world aren’t what we had hoped or want it to be – you are not alone. Whether our conflicts are internal, with our loved ones, in our communities or in the world, our fear of conflict can make them feel intractable. For thousands of years, people have experienced conflict in this destructive way. Some even gave it a name: exile.
Exile, in the Old Testament, is primarily referenced in regards to a homeland.
Exile can be thrust upon us by others or it can be self-imposed.
Either way, it comes with a sense of estrangement, fear, isolation, and hopelessness that can only deepen the conflict.
The feeling of exile can be experienced, most painfully, in the relationships we hold most deeply. To many, exile is a feeling of being disconnected from the people we most desire to be in relationship with.
Whether we choose to run from it, fight it, or resign our fates to it, the experience of exile can be frustrating at best and devastating at worst. It can be the destroyer of optimism.
Alongside the feeling or reality of exile lies its opposite – hope of return, of reconciliation, of restoration.
Jesus appears to those disciples in their darkest moment. When everything around them is falling apart. When danger lurks around every corner.
And he tells them … hello. And then he points the way back home.
Behind every exile is hope – a belief that while the outcome itself may be uncertain, things can and will be made better through action.
Conflict is natural and inevitable in a world of difference. While it can certainly lead to despair, it doesn’t have to.
Listen to the prophet Jeremiah’s words to his people in exile.
“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce … Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
“...I will come to you and fulfill my promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29: 4-8, 10-14)
How we see conflict and how we respond to exile has a powerful effect on what happens next. Not all conflict needs to be contention. Not all conflict needs to end in despair or destruction.
Conflict can also lead to joy, to prospering, to improved relationships. It may not seem like it when we are in the middle of things, but conflict creates, it inspires, and it promotes powerful change.
None of us knows home, belonging, or return — tangible or spiritual —without struggle. And struggle teaches us to tread more softly, more courageously, more forgivingly through our hurting, hoping, heart-breaking, heart-opening, life.
Exile points us home. We shouldn’t fear it. We should embrace it and let it show us the way.
It is exile that creates space to imagine a restoration – not just replicating what once was, but a new creation.
The apostles aren’t totally convinced that exile can lead to restoration, by the way.
I guess “hello” wasn’t quite enough. Neither was feeling Jesus’s wounds in his hands and his side.
The apostles do return … to Galilee, where Jesus first met them. They leave the work Jesus started behind and go back fishing. I’m sure it felt safer that way.
So Jesus has to come visit them again. This time on the seashore. And he asks Peter a question three times.
“Do you love me more than these fish?”
Peter grows offended with each question. “You know I love you more.”
“Then feed my sheep,” Jesus answers.
The way to return from exile doesn’t come from a place of fear. It comes from a place of love.
Something changed for Peter and the apostles at that moment on the shores of Galilee. Jesus revealed a mission that was larger than they had previously understood. So, they laid down their fishing nets for the last time and started a movement that would change the world.
From a locked room, encompassed by fear … to world-changing with the power of love.
It wasn’t easy. Most of them would lose their lives along the way.
Hello to waymaking.
Are you in exile?
Are you lost?
Does conflict feel hopeless?
Do you desire to return? To reconcile? To lay the foundations of a new relationship on top of the old? To be part of the ongoing restoration?
How do we return from exile? How do we find our home? How do we regain hope and begin the pathway to reconciliation?
It won’t be easy. There will be weeping. There will be vulnerability. There will be uncertainty.
But there is hope. Always hope.
Wayfinder is a website and newsletter dedicated to helping those of us stuck in the exile of conflict find our way home.
So hello to conflict.
Hello to exile.
Hello to waymaking a way out of no way.
The Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama inspired my re-telling of this story in his book, In the Shelter, where he uses the word hello to quite powerful effect both in this story along with many other biblical tales.
Thank you for sharing, such a great reminder that there is always hope!
Always love learning from you Chad. Can't wait to learn more!