Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.’

Words of Jesus Christ to his disciples; and so to us from today’s gospel.

Peace. People speak about peace in many different ways, in many different contexts and mean many different things by it.

There have been times in my life when peace meant having a few precious minutes to myself after the children were in bed. This was literally a time when there was little or no sound. When the chattering and noisy voices of excitable infants had fallen silent. Peace.

But others can find peace amid chattering and noisy voices. Once when I was a vicar there was a woman who lived near my church who very kindly unlocked and locked the building every day when she took her dog for a walk.

But she lived in a house with a husband and other relatives who fell out and rowed all the time. So each evening she retreated to a local pub, which was very small and extremely busy, in order to get what she called ‘a bit of peace and quiet’.

And if you are in Ukraine right now, sheltering in the basement of your ruined apartment block, peace for you is an end to Russian bombing. And for frightened children in those cellars peace would be the cessation of the noise of war.

So what is the peace that Christ promises?

Well, it’s none of the things I mentioned. Christian faith doesn’t change our external circumstances. Christ is not saying, trust in me and all will be sweetness and light in your life and war will be no more.

I think we can begin to understand what he is saying in this way.

Last year I met a woman whose brother had been murdered. They had been very close. The killing had been a random and apparently motiveless attack by a man on drugs. Although this was now some years ago, it had continued to haunt her. Questions kept going round and round in her head. What made the killer do this? Why did he pick on her brother? And so on. It blighted her life.

Then she heard about something called Restorative Justice – the chance for victims of crime to be put in touch with the offenders, where the offenders are willing to take part.

To cut a long story short, she had written to the killer, he had replied, and eventually, in carefully managed circumstances, they had met in person in a Doncaster prison.

She had asked all her questions and many more besides.

I asked her how that had made her feel. She paused for a moment and then said, ‘I felt a wonderful sense of peace’.

A wonderful sense of peace. In one sense nothing had changed. Nothing had changed in all the external circumstances of her life. Her brother was still dead, never coming home again. The murderer was in prison where he would spend most of the rest of his life. She was back to work on Monday morning.

Nothing had changed. And yet everything had changed. She felt a wonderful sense of peace.

I think the peace that Christ brings is something like that. It is not a promise to change our external circumstances. The children will still run us ragged and make a noise. The family will still have its quarrels. There will still be wars and rumours of wars. All the things that bring disruption, sickness, and death into our lives will still be there.

No, the peace Christ promises is something internal.

Let’s just remind ourselves what he said:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.’

The peace Christ gives is not the kind of peace the world gives. It’s not a change in those external circumstances. It’s not about no more struggles in life or disrupted lives, it’s not about no more death or war. It’s something internal, a matter of the heart. The promise is that those who put their trust in Christ can find an untroubled and fearless heart in the middle of all these occasions of human stress and suffering.

The untroubled heart is the heart that puts its trust in Christ by always seeking to do the right thing. To be the Good Samaritan when people are in trouble, even if that inconveniences us. The untroubled heart is the heart that puts its trust in Christ when he says that God is the God of the Living, who will take us to himself beyond the grave, even when death has been brutal and seems so final. The untroubled heart is the heart that puts its trust in Christ, believing Him when He says he will always stand beside us, even in the darkest times, even when we do not feel his presence.

External circumstances will not overwhelm us because our security lies within.

As Christians, we put our trust in Christ. And we will not let our hearts be troubled or afraid whatever life may bring.