Sin and Shalom...

It started from a single line from someone describing what "sin" meant.

Their definition was that sin "is the culpable disturbance of Shalom."

For whatever reason, that struck a chord, and subsequently this piece of written word flowed, ready for Easter Day 2021...

The Culpable disturbance of shalom

Shalom.
Peace.
But more than peace.
It’s the balance of it all,
The intention of Creation:
Relationship with man
Relationship with God.
Life itself.

You see, there was this garden,
Or so the story goes,
Where God roamed free,
And people could be found
In the perpetually pleasing presence
Of the one who gave them breath
And life
And purpose
And all was well:
There was “Shalom”

Shalom.
Peace.
But more than peace,
The balance of it all,
The intention of Creation:
Relationship with man
Relationship with God.
Life itself.

But then came the “Culpable Disturbance”
Culpable - Purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently
Disturbance - Interruption of a settled condition
Where choices made which
Purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently
Interrupted the settled condition
And Shalom exits stage right.

The unbalance becomes evident.
The purpose and direction is lost.
And into the vacated stage comes death.
And together we’re 
wrapped up in a word called “sin”,
Entwined in a world we called sinful,
Synonymous with a branding of guilt
Shame
Blame
Not for the disturbance
But for our very existence.

We began to believe
We were no longer in the image of God,
We were the distortion of His Shalom…
We were no longer “Very Good”
We were a shadow of what we should have been.
We were a people rejected, subjected to death.
And justifiably so…

But our existence wasn’t the problem
It never was.
The problem was the pattern
The ripples of the disturbance
That echoed through time
And caught us in their wake
Taking us further from the place
Of Shalom.

Shalom.
Peace.
But more than peace,
The balance of it all,
The intention of Creation:
Relationship with man
Relationship with God.
Life itself.

We became a creation marked by greed,
Lost in lust,
Green with envy,
And focussed on number one.

At our hands
The land was used
Mankind Abused
And the image of God,
Green-fingers of God,
The nature of God
Refused
In anything but the deities we built
For ourselves…
Of ourselves…
Trying to recreate Shalom
In shifting sands.

And while the remnant remembered
Reminisced and Reminded
It wasn’t enough to help us see
The value of life
The intention of love
The balance of peace
Offered by God

So Jesus enters stage left.
Emmanuel,
God, Man as well,
Born into promise and purpose, and preaching potential
Moving, making, mending, reminding,
Healing and helping the hurting
Living and loving and looking
To show us Shalom.

Jesus knew what it was
To love God and live a life of love
Indeed This is how God showed his love:
He sent his one and only Son 
into the world that we might live through him. 

That we might know Shalom as a way of life.

Shalom.
Peace.
But more than peace,
The balance of it all,
The intention of Creation:
Relationship with man
Relationship with God.
Life itself.

And the Son of God,
The Son of Man,
Who lived to show us that we can
Be Shalom restorers
Justice implorers
God Adorers
Died.

But where there is still death
There can be no Shalom.
Death.
Lack of Breath.
The final disturbance banishing the
Life of God from our nostrils
Keeping us from Shalom.

And so death needed defeating
Shalom needed restoring
Once.
For all.
An act designed to remind us
Not of our guilt, our shame, the blame we claimed
For existing,
But of the enduring love of a God who above all
Sought Shalom with us
Through our repeatedly
Purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently
Interrupting the settled condition…
Of getting caught up in the ripples…
Of forgetting who were were made to be…
Of not seeing the Glory of God in ourselves… Others… Creation…

Because If we didn’t recognise it in his life,
We can’t deny it in his death:
This is love:
not that we loved God,
but that he loved us 
and sent his Son 
as an atoning sacrifice
for our sins…
For our Culpable Disturbances.

But where there is still death
There can be no Shalom
Which is why we need the empty tomb
The stone rolled
The Linen fold
The weeping Mary held in the garden
As her tears turn from grief to joy
Appreciating Shalom restored
And finally seeing that

NOTHING can separate us
From the love of God.
Nothing.
Not even Death.

Because we weren’t broken
Weren’t unlovable
Weren’t outside of the image of God
We’d just lost our Shalom.

Shalom.
Peace.
But more than peace,
The balance of it all,
The intention of Creation:
Relationship with man
Relationship with God.
Life itself.

And whilst it might be
That Jesus’ death is
The atoning sacrifice,
The at-one-ing moment
It’s in his re-living that we see it completely
Know it more deeply…

And the culpable - Purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently
Disturbance - Interruption of a settled condition
Of our world
By God
Through Jesus
Was completed.

Where we made choices which
Purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently
Interrupted the settled condition
And Shalom exited stage right,
Now God made choices which
Purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently
Interrupted our condition
And Shalom takes centre stage.

Shalom.
Peace.
But more than peace,
The balance of it all,
The intention of Creation:
Relationship with man
Relationship with God.
Life itself.