Shalom. Salaam. Peace. "Peace be with you". The greeting is not mine, although I gladly extend it to you this morning. It is the greeting of the risen Christ when he met the fearful disciples on the evening of that first Easter Day.

"Peace be with you". What an extraordinary greeting to give to a group of so-called friends who had let him down so badly. They had done very little to justify the gift of peace. The last he had seen of most of his disciples were their backs turned as they fled in terror in the garden. The last word he has heard from Peter was "I do not know this man". And now he confronts them. He could so easily have said: "You cowards. In spite of all your boasting you ran away. Where were you when I needed you most"?

Yet he said nothing of the kind. Instead he came and stood among and said "Peace be with you". "Shalom". That was the word he used or something very close to it. It is a Hebrew word rich in meaning. It is not negative, denoting the absence of something, as a tired mother might say after the children had gone to bed: "Now for some peace". Rather, it denotes the well-being and wholeness that are generated when the fragmented parts of our existence become one. Here, with this one word, we are close to the heart of the Christian faith; to encounter that peace is to look into the face of God and to see there his longing for his world to be reconciled to himself, and to itself. A longing that extends far beyond the rules and rituals that have sometimes threatened to engulf the Church's life - what E M Forster ironically described as "Poor, little, talkative Christianity". A longing that shows his deep love for his creation and his desire that we should experience the fullness of that love.

Here, in this one word, everything that is dear and precious about the faith which this historic building has preserved is summed up; peace between God and humanity, peace in our hearts; and peace in our communities.

First, it speaks of peace between God and humanity. Easter is the culmination of the life and death of Jesus. "He died that we might be forgiven, he died to make us good". The haunting words of the old hymn tells us that the peace given came with a price attached to it-the agonising, brutal, shocking and sacrificial death of God's son. That is why Jesus confronts his disciples with this greeting of triumph because, in some mysterious but nevertheless real way, the cross brought a holy God and sinful, fallible and ignorant people together.

People today often say that they cannot understand how the death of Christ could achieve this. I sympathise with the difficulty of describing precisely how it happened. After all, how can his sacrifice bring about such a reconciliation? It is indeed a mystery to wonder at. Yet the power of sacrifice is still a potent and understandable force in our world. We encounter it in family life in the love of parents that will sacrifice everything for their children. We see it in husbands and wives who live out their promises to be loyal to one another "in sickness or in health till death us do part". We know it too in the long term sacrificial care given by many to disabled relatives. Such love, we recognise to be very costly and deeply creative. These are all examples of the huge, redeeming power of the love that goes the second mile and beyond in the service of others. That is the love shown supremely in Christ's self-sacrifice, risking everything for others. The Cross and resurrection proclaim to our broken world that God has absorbed all human error, and peace is his gift.

Shalom. But such a gift has to be accepted and made part of our confused lives. It has to be taken up and used. A Middle Eastern saying is "if you wish to walk in someone else's shoes, you have to take off your own". If you and I wish to know the peace of God we must follow the peace-giver and walk in his way and bear his cross.

Secondly Christ's gift is one of peace in our hearts. As he came to those disciples that first Easter Day, so he offered them not only peace with God, but peace within themselves.

Go into any bookshop. Look along the shelves and it will not be long before you will find a series of titles offering help to their readers to discover an inner peace built on self acceptance and inner reconciliation.

The search for such a peace is one of the most powerful forces affecting this generation and I do not doubt for a moment that there is something gained from such books. There are wonderful capabilities within each one of us which, if exercised properly, can result in considerable inner healing. Yet the tragedy is that so many of us spend so much time seeking to find such peace within ourselves - whilst at the same time ignoring the one who offers us his gift of peace. Take, for example, the question of forgiveness. No doubt we should acknowledge our faults, analyse and share any feelings of guilt and try to be more aware of our own good and bad points. But what self-analysis cannot bring is a knowledge of true forgiveness. For that forgiveness and that reconciliation can only come as we receive it as a gift from another.

For that is part of the richness of shalom. It is a gift to be accepted and to be integrated into our confused lives. And by the same token, we can then seek to offer it to others. It is not something to be kept to ourselves, but to be shared.

Thirdly Christ's words speak of peace in our communities. If "shalom" means "wholeness" and "making fragmented pieces one" we need only to think of the divisions in our communities to see the urgent need for such a peace - for God's peace - to prevail in our churches and our world. Our task as a Church is to share Christ's peace with his world and the world will look more to our actions towards one another than to our words in judging the significance of our message. Only in a fierce commitment to that "shalom of God that passes all understanding" will we be able to overcome the fragmentation that brings into disrepute the mission of the Church in many parts of our world.

And in the wider society, the need for God's "shalom" is as great as ever. Perhaps this is most obvious in those parts of the world disfigured by violent community conflicts. But there is excessive fragmentation within our own society too. Despite its richness and its many other virtues there are still too many people who are excluded from a proper share in its resources and opportunities. Too many people - especially young people - feel rejected and undervalued. There is too much cynicism - too much suspicion, blame and envy. Racism lurks in the corners of our national life. The high level of crime causes distrust, anxiety, and pain. There is, I believe, a weakened sense of what binds us together despite our differences. There is also profound confusion about the moral rules which underpin a just and good society. Yes, we need the healing power of God's shalom.

Moreover, many people in different sectors of society feel that their life chances are tossed around by powerful, technological, economic and social changes over which they have no control. As Charles Handy put it recently: "the trouble is that the more I see of the world the more I seem to be only a pimple. What difference can I make? Let me just be busy with my own little life. But, even there, there is no certainty".

But there is no need to give way to such despair. For we know the difference God makes to each of us. We know the difference we can make with his help to those near and dear to us, and we know how the culmination effects of what individuals and families do can add up to the tide of Christian love which can transform the world.

And this is where Easter faith still has the power to change our world and transform our hopes. "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again". We shall exclaim in a short while as we recall his death and passion. This is not a wish; it is the heart of the Christian faith. Easter is the banner of the Church's faith, proclaiming that God values each one of us and wants us to join his never-ending task of reconciliation. To be sure this task may seem, at times, hopeless and futile when we look at the world's problems. But no Christian gives up hoping, believing and working for God's peace to prevail. "Peace be with you" and yet God's peace is no sedative. He does not give it to us to take away from the conflicts of the world. Rather those who enjoy that peace find themselves pitched into the centre of the fiercest battles for the soul of humanity. That was true for Jesus as had walked the way of the Cross. It was true for Peter and his fellow disciples as they went to share the Good News. It is true today for many of our fellow believers as they suffer for their faith, whether in the Sudan or elsewhere.

In a short while, as we go from this place, the invitation will be given "to go in peace, to love and serve the Lord". Let us hear them afresh from the Risen Lord. Let us hear them as a cry of victory - for the peace he has won for us. Let us hear them as a cause for rejoicing - for the forgiveness he alone can bring. Let us hear them as a challenge to service - as we go out in the power of his Spirit. Shalom. Salaam. Peace.