> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.belonging.house/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Shalom is reality.
- URL: https://www.belonging.house/shalom-is-reality/
- Published: 2026-04-13T12:52:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-25T00:49:40.000Z
- Description: The difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking.
- Author: Christ John Otto
- Tags: Podcast, #Migrated-1784940061448, #Import 2026-07-25 00:49

Shalom is reality.

0:00

/200

1×

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ed/59/ed590bfa-368b-4bcf-b1f2-6ba9ca9abcdb/content/images/2026/07/3051e938-eefa-4e86-a847-92f8764b12e6_1400x1400-heic.jpg)

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAlleluia Christ is Risen,  
the Lord is risen indeed,  
alleluia.  
  
We are eight days into the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost.  
These days correspond to the Feasts of Passover and Shavuot  
commanded by God to Moses.  
God redeemed Israel  
from slavery in Egypt  
and they were saved through the waters of the Red Sea.  
Fifty days later,  
God took them to the Mountain of the Lord  
and they received the Ten Commandments  
with fire, wind  
and the sound of a trumpet.  
  
Jesus Christ redeemed us through his own blood on the cross,  
and was raised to life from death.  
He saved us through the waters of Baptism  
and on the fiftieth day  
the Law of God  
was released into our hearts  
with Fire, wind,  
and the sound of many tongues.  
  
In these fifty days,  
seven weeks,  
I want to talk about coming into reality.  
Actually,  
I want to talk about the fake and real,  
but that doesn't sound very sophisticated  
and a bit judgey.  
  
We are in a world  
that seems to be becoming more and more fake.  
We are warned that at the end of the age  
deception will become so strong  
that even the elect will be deceived.  
We have to learn what is real.  
  
I began Lent by listening to recordings of   
Leanne Payne from thirty years ago.  
Many of the trends   
that she predicted  
have now happened.  
It was a bit chilling to hear her observations come to pass.  
  
One of the things that she said  
stayed with me through Lent.  
She said again and again  
that she was grateful that she went to a "real church."  
And she observed that what was rising around her  
was not real.  
  
Ironically,  
we have been doing this Sunday church  
for over six years now.  
Amazingly,  
I have been told by other pastors and leaders  
that it's too bad I don't have a "real church."  
After getting over the insult,  
I pressed the person by what they meant.  
  
I have been told  
that a real church  
has chairs.  
Real churches have boards of elders  
who can be called to pray for the sick.  
Real churches have bands,  
screens, and smoke machines.  
Real churches have little plastic cups  
full of chemicals to imitate grape juice.  
Real churches have programs.  
And of course,  
real churches have buildings.  
  
These conversations  
have been pretty depressing,  
and reminded me of an Orthodox priest  
who was a guest speaker   
at the Emmanual Gospel Center  
in Boston.  
The folks in the room began to challenge him  
about the Blessed Virgin Mary.  
He looked at them  
and said,  
"This is why   
I stopped working with evangelicals.  
Ignorance and arrogance  
are a deadly combination."  
  
The culture is screaming because many   
have embraced an illusion in the place of reality.  
  
So over the next few weeks  
we are going to talk about what is real  
and what is not real.  
When I was young  
I learned a definition of the church  
that isn't perfect,  
but it was a good place to start.  
  
The Book of Common Prayer  
says that a church is   
"wherever the true word of God is preached,  
and the sacraments are duly administered."  
  
When you apply this standard,  
you start to see a lot of what is happening  
in a very different light.  
  
Six years ago  
we were reduced to the essentials.  
Because of physical distance   
and the limitations  
of Zoom  
Go removed all the trappings of "ministry."  
We have had nothing  
but the word of God  
the sacraments  
and one another.  
  
And Jesus reduced  
things to their essential elements   
in this episode on the night after the resurrection.  
Jesus does five things.  
He enters the room.  
He says Shalom.  
He sends them out,  
He imparts to them the Holy Spirit,  
and he imparts the ministry of forgiveness.  
  
It is very simple.  
Jesus is resetting reality.  
  
  
First,  
he appears  
and he shows them the wounds.  
The Incarnation  
is not over.  
It is transformed.  
Jesus is the first of those who will have  
a glorified body.  
And this body  
still bears the marks of his death.  
The Word became flesh.  
  
So the first point of reality is this.  
There is no division   
between flesh and spirit.  
God does not reward spiritualizing.  
And the Incarnation  
exposes every activity   
not based in reality.  
Jesus did not appear as a ghost.  
A lot of what people call "Christian"  
is nothing more than  
mental games  
designed to make you feel better.  
And in the end  
this stuff doesn't work.  
Jesus Christ went through  
death and hell  
and came back,  
and has the wounds to prove it.  
And this is one of the keys to reality.  
  
Reality is always anchored in this:  
God became a man,  
and anything that God did  
can and will be experienced in your real life.  
  
Many Christians   
do not want to walk through the process  
that leads to freedom.  
They want the pain to go away.  
Jesus Christ  
endured the pain,  
and calls us to walk with him  
through it.  
And when we do this  
we come to the next thing Jesus does.  
He says  
Shalom.  
  
Your Bible says "peace."  
But I know from the pattern throughout   
John's gospel  
that John is translating   
Jewish thinking into Greek.  
  
To a Western thinker  
Peace is the absence of conflict.  
It is a futile thing  
based in unreality.  
You cannot have real peace  
whenever you try to over look evil.  
  
We are sadly seeing this in the news.  
The pope wants the bullets to stop flying,  
but he does not want to face the moral evil   
that caused forty-seven years of war.  
It is a fallacy.  
  
The Jewish mind thinks differently.  
Shalom is the presence of order.  
When you have shalom,  
you have a right relationship with all of creation.  
Shalom is not that the hurting stops,  
but that the healing is happening.  
Shalom is not the absence of death.  
Shalom is the presence of life.  
Shalom is not the end of chaos,  
but the increase of order.  
Shalom is not regret over the past,  
but rather the transformation into the future.  
Shalom is the ability to be in right relationship.  
And Shalom  
is the feeling that everything is okay.  
Shalom is much more profound  
than the absence of conflict.  
  
That is why there is such a big difference   
between peacekeeping and peacemaking.  
A person who is a peacekeeper  
plays all kinds of games to make other people happy.  
When someone does this  
no one is happy.  
Peacekeeping is trying to stay happy  
within the old order of sin and death.  
Peacekeeping is saying  
if we just pretend that bad people aren't very bad  
everything will just be okay.  
Peacekeeping says that "it's all good"  
and "you be you"  
and we can all coexist.  
  
A peacemaker is very unpopular  
because peace making  
demands telling the truth,  
doing hard things  
and paying a price.  
Peace sometimes means  
as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said,  
killing the man who is driving a car  
into a crowd of school children.  
This is a hard reality.  
Peace making says  
that some people are evil,  
some religions are false,  
and some ideas are bad.  
And Jesus did all things   
and he went through the cross and hell.  
And when he came out,  
he was the Truth.  
He was the Life.  
He was the way.  
He brought Shalom.  
  
The reason Jesus could say  
Shalom to the disciples  
is that he had faced the madman  
in the car  
taken the hit in his own body,  
and overcame.  
When he rose from the dead  
he brought shalom with him.  
He was saying  
you want to go back to Eden,  
and pretend that everything is okay,  
but we are not going back to the Garden  
we are going to build a city   
better than the innocence of the Garden.  
There is going to be order   
in the earth.  
Your job is to take this Shalom everywhere.  
  
And then Jesus says  
The Father Sent me.  
So now I send you.  
And he breathes on them.  
  
This is essential to everything  
in a real church.  
The Father never calls us to do something  
without giving us the ability to do it.  
Right from the beginning  
right after the resurrection  
Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit.  
Yes,  
there will be a release at Pentecost,  
but Jesus is giving them the ability to hear   
the true word.  
He is going to be with them for forty days,  
and he is going to instruct them  
and he is going to lead them into all truth.  
And with this   
Jesus gives them the ministry of reconciliation.  
If you forgive the sins of any  
they are forgiven.  
If you retain the sins of any,  
they are retained.  
  
With Shalom  
and the Holy Spirit  
comes moral clarity.  
Jesus is giving us a cure for sin.  
Forgiveness.  
  
Before this moment,  
there was no forgiveness of sins.  
Sin was not forgiven  
in the old covenant.  
So for Jesus to rise from the tomb  
and to say  
your sins are forgiven  
and that his servants would also forgive sins  
was very radical.  
And out of the forgiveness of sins  
will come Shalom.  
  
So much of what I see and read online  
is not reality.  
Jesus brings us  
into reality and clarity.  
In order to receive Shalom,  
you have to receive forgiveness.  
And if you do not receive forgiveness  
your sins are retained.  
And with those sins comes all the outworking of sin:  
dissension,  
strife,  
dis-ease,  
and that horrible feeling that if you say the wrong thing  
at any moment,  
all hell is going to break loose again.  
It is from this first gift of the resurrection  
the forgiveness of sins  
that we can finally walk into the thing  
we were made for:  
Shalom.  
  
It is the physical reality of his body  
rising from the grave,  
the physical reality of his body in our community,  
the physical reality that the Holy Spirit lives in you,  
and that you can experience the same power  
that raised Jesus from the dead  
that makes it possible for you to forgive   
and receive forgiveness.  
That is the power of the Resurrection.  
  
So as we end this message  
Receive the Holy Spirit.  
If there is anyone you need to forgive today,  
let's do that.  
If you need to receive forgiveness  
receive that.  
And now  
breathe in   
and receive the Holy Spirit.  
Amen.