A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 5:9; 10:
34-52
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
4rd Sunday of Lent, March 30rd,
2014
"Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Mat 5:9 NRS)
While living in the western German state
of Westphalia, we made several short trips to the beautiful city of
Muenster. A German friend of mind reminded
me that Muenster was the place where, in 1536 a rebellion took place and
Catholics hanged some of the very first Baptists. Cages still hung high up along the steeple,
where some Baptists where starved until the birds finished them off.
But I also remembered that Muenster was
the city where the peace treaty of Westphalia was signed in October of 1648. That treaty was signed ending one of the most
destructive times in Europe’s history, The
Thirty’s Year’s War between Catholics and Protestants. It all began in 1618, when the Austrian
Hapsburgs tried to force a return to Catholicism down the throats of their Protestant
and Lutheran subjects. All of Europe was
eventually drawn into the conflict, but the central battlefield was on German
soil. Though the war was sparked by religious
differences, most of the battle fires were fueled by economics, as Kings and
Princes hired mercenaries to fight.
These hired soldiers where seldom paid, and were forced to live off the
land, plundering towns, villages, farms until they desolated the German
countryside. During those terrible times, an entry in a
German family Bible reported: ‘We live like animals, eating bark and grass.’
No one could have imagined that anything
like this would happen to us. Many people say that there is no God...” By 1630 starvation had reached such a point
in the Rhineland, that cases of cannibalism were reported. By the end of 30 years of war, fighting had
become such a way of life that the mercenaries and their womenfolk complained
that their livelihood was gone. (http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/treaty-westphalia).
Most of us can hardly imagine people
living off hate and war, but in our own time we do know something about terrible
wars fought for racial cleansing in Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan,
and most recently, in Syria. There are
many images from movies that I have forgotten, but I will never forget the
image in the movie, Hotel Rwanda, about the hotel owner who, while bravely trying
to save people from certain massacre, drove his jeep at night up a dark road
that got very bumpy, when he realized he was driving over thousands of dead
bodies (www.beliefnet.com/columnists/moviemom/2004/11/hotel-rwanda.html).
When Jesus spoke his seventh beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers…..” it was
a shout against a world insane with hate, conflict, wars, and rumors of
wars. Jesus’ words still challenge us, and
go against the grain of human nature, saying, if we truly want to live in
peace, we can’t just want peace, we can’t just hope or pray for peace, but
peace is something we must do. Peace is something
we must make happen.
FIRST
STEPS TOWARD PEACE
Learning how to ‘make peace’ starts by learning
from Jesus. And according to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, the first step
toward peace is to realize what is not working.
This is what Jesus meant when he said: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth.' (Matthew 5.38). Jesus
was referring to the ancient law code of retaliation, called Lex Talionis. This early form of law given by Moses was a legalized
form of revenge used in a controlled and fair fashion so the punishment would
fit the crime. Lex Talionis was a way to prevent feuds and vendettas, which could escalate,
get out of hand, and break up the social fabric.
We must understand that it wasn’t so
much that Jesus was against ‘eye for eye
and tooth for a tooth’, (He said he
did not come to destroy Moses’ law, but to fulfill it. Mat. 5.20-21), but Jesus was teaching that
the law itself could not save or bring lasting peace in the world. ‘Eye
for Eye’ might prevent war some war (or it might just start one), but it certainly
doesn’t make peace. In other words, peace
can’t be won or made by only doing what’s fair, even what’s just, or what can be
regulated, but peace can only be won by going to the next level, or as Jesus
puts it, going ‘the second mile.’ “But
I say to you (Jesus says with a shocking word), do not resist an evildoer. But
if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone
wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone
forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile….” (Matthew 5: 38-41). These words sound just as out of touch
with the ‘real’ world today, as they sounded then.
But the point Jesus is making is valid; that
making peace is impossible from a use of negative power. To take the first step toward peace someone
initiate a different kind of power; a positive power that can transform. And in
order to initiate this kind of power, we have to make a shift in our own egos
and in our own power plays. I like the
way James Howell, a pastor in Charlotte, imagines a kind of David and Goliath scenario
with a different outcome: “For a tall,
muscular guy with a twenty-inch sword to be at peace with a little, scrawny guy
with a pebble in his hand, the big guy has to relinquish his bigness, he has to
decide not to tower in intimidation; and the little guy has to decide not to
run, and not to be a sneaky guerilla from jealousy over the big guy’s
sword. When the strong befriend the
weak, dignity and strength are imparted to the weak---although, in reality,
dignity and strength flow both ways” (James
Howell, The Beatitudes for Today, p. 79).
But of course, the big question,
especially if you are in the middle of battle with someone, is who is going to
change or ‘surrender’ first? Will the
one who has the position of position of a Goliath or the one who has the
position of a David be the one who will do the surrendering? As we know from the Biblical story, neither
surrendered, but God gave the victory to the weaker? Of
course, we like it when the ‘underdog’ wins.
This might bring ‘peace’ for a while.
But now, one who is greater than the way of Moses or the way David shows
us still another way to fight and to win.
It is a way that does not fight to win a battle or war, but it is a way
that takes the initiative to make peace.
Could we imagine how political, racial, cultural, religious, or personal
struggles between people might go another way?
The real question of peace-making is not who will win the fight, but who
is willing to lose the fight in order to win in a way that is better for all? Which one would be willing to be the first to
absorb the humiliation, the shock, the pain, and the threat from another before
the fight begins? Of course, what we and
fear is that if one gives in, the other might not. Such a step of surrendering power for the
sake of making peace demands an incredibly big step, if not a leap of
faith. Who is willing to take that first
step?
Jesus believed that the poor in heart would
take that first step. He also believed
that those who mourn, those who are meek, those who are merciful, and those who
are pure in heart are the ones willing to take that first step. They would follow in in these hard, narrow,
and demanding ‘footsteps of Jesus’ because they have nothing to lose and
everything to gain. They will agree to go this way, because instead
of trying to climb the ladder of success and power in the world, they are climbing
Jacob’s ladder, the ladder of heaven and the ladder of these beatitudes. But those who are holding on to power, or who
are afraid of losing, who have not faced their own poverty of spirit, or have
other agendas which are not God’s kingdom, will not easily contribute anything
to make peace. That’s why Jesus later says
that he “did not come to bring peace,
but to bring a sword” (Matt 10.34).
The sword Jesus wields is not a sword to intentionally inflict pain on
others, but it is the sword of the Spirit that is calls us to absorb the pain,
the fears, the troubles and the hurt of others into ourselves. In this way, the sword of Jesus becomes a
cross (Matt. 10.38); a cross we must be willing to take up and bear (even when the
“flesh is weak”. Matt. 26.41) if we
want to take real steps toward peace.
It is no accident, that in the Sermon on
the Mount, it is the follower of Jesus and the one who would do good, not the evil
doer, who is being challenged to take the first step. This is the God-inspired method of the so-called
third way, the non-violent, the transforming way of personal surrender and
sacrifice, which can actually move a violent world a step closer to becoming
more caring, compassionate and peaceful.
In fact, Jesus is challenging
people like us when he says: "You
have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.' But I say to you, Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of
your Father in heaven….. For if you love those who love you, what
reward do you have? Do not even the tax
collectors do the same? And if you
greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly
Father is perfect (Mat 5:43-48 NRS).
The blessing that can come from peace-making requires nothing less from
us than going in the opposite way nature and reason tell us. Peace-making demands something that we cannot
do in our own strength. Peace-making
demands a sort of ‘super-nature’, the kind of ‘moral perfection’ that the ‘heavenly father’ has, because he “is perfect’, says Jesus. Who can do this? Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like a baby
step, but sounds more like trying to jump across the Grand Canyon! Can any person or people---even God’s people---
be asked to make peace possible by doing what seems morally impossible?
FROM
RETALIATION TO A MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION
The ground of peace-making is nothing
less than “Jesus blood and his
righteousness,” (Edward Mote, 1832,
The Solid Rock, Baptist Hymnal, 1975, p. 337). The kind of peace-making Jesus
introduces into the world is grounded in the super-natural, miraculous,
other-worldly gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus wants us build our lives on God’s ‘solid
rock’ of loving action which will prove firmer and stronger than the sinking
sands of hate filled deeds which conquers with short-term power.
How can God ask us to give up our power
for God’s power? God asks us to make peace with each other the same way God has made peace
with us, through the saving death and overcoming resurrection of Jesus. Without the ‘miracles’ of grace you just can’t
get there; that is, you just can’t make
the giant leap from retaliation to reconciliation without God’s help, with
Jesus’ example and without the power of the Spirit. To reconcile with us and make peace, God worked
supernatural ‘miracles’ in this world---miracles of forgiveness, miracles of loving
action and miracles of redeeming grace. Without belief in God’s power to intervene,
you won’t try to make peace---because in making peace is impossible without God’s
help. But if we trust in God, have
faith in God, and believe in God, these kinds of ‘miracles’ can happen, do
happen, and must happen. To invite this
kind of miracle into our lives is what makes the gospel good news. What
kind of ‘miracles’ am I talking about?
I’m talking about the miraculously strange, beyond this world, wholly
other nature of God’s love; a love that moved from retaliating against the
world with wrath and instead, offers grace.
The gospel expresses the miracle this way: "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,
but in order that the world might be saved through him. (Joh 3:17 NRS). Or how about the other ‘miraculous’ text from
Paul: “Indeed (there’s that
word again), rarely will anyone die for
a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually
dare to die. But God proves his love for
us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:7-8 NRS). And most of all, what about how Jesus worked
that miracle, even while dying on the cross, as he does not blame those who are
murdering him, but instead the endures the shame, bears the pain and carries
the agony of the world’s injustice toward him and cries: ‘Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing!”
(Luke 23:24).
Where do we gain the power Jesus had, to
do the work for reconciliation with our enemies rather than settling for retaliation
or revenge? The apostle Paul answers this
in that great passage from 2 Corinthians 5:
“ALL THIS IS FROM GOD, who
reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of
reconciliation; ….. not counting
their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to
us” (2Co 5:18-19 NRS). Do you
understand that Paul is not saying that only a group of special called people
are ‘called’ into the ministry of reconciliation, but he is saying that God ‘entrusted the message of reconciliation to
us.’ And this is not simply a message we are to preach, but it is a message we are all to live. And if we are ‘in Christ’ we can’t help but
live it, because: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has
passed away; see, everything has become new! (2Co 5:17 NRS) In
other words, through what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, by miraculously
forgiving us and making us new people, we are given the power, the calling and
the ability to forgive and be the message
of reconciliation with others.
This message of reconciling peace
certainly became real in the life of Francis of Assisi, who is credited with
the great prayer which begins; “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace! Francis, was a young man of popularity,
privilege, and promise, living a life of comfort and ambition, until war broke
out. As a young man he went out to fight
the neighboring town of Perugia in 1202.
At 22 years of age, Francis was fortunate, not to have been among those
maimed or killed in the fighting, but he did become a prisoner of war. After a long period of imprisonment, he was
finally freed by the pay of ransom, but returned home diseased and
disillusioned.
After spending month’s recovering, an
even greater healing was taking place in his soul. One day, while riding outside of town, Francis
came across a young man wearing the rags of poverty because of war. Francis then got off his horse and gave his
own splendid clothing (Francis’s Father made his wealth in the clothing
business). Then, on another day, Francis
stopped to pray in the chapel of San Damiano, a building that was in decay. There, he heard God’s voice speaking,
“Francis, go and repair my house….”
Taking the words of the Lord literally, Francis used some profits from
his Father’s clothing business to pay for the repairs. Unfortunately, Francis Father was not a
believer, and sued his son for his unauthorized act of charity. At the trial, Francis not only admitted his
deed, but repaid the money, and this removed all this nice clothes, presenting
them to his father with the words, “Up to now I have called you Father on
earth, but from now on I say, “Our
Father, who art in Heaven.”
Now, Francis had only one ambition and
life: to live according to the gospel, living a life without much money,
wearing the same rags beggars wore, and owning nothing that might stir up envy
and violence. He formed a band of
brothers committed to rebuilding God’s church through deeds of peace. This a very important message at the time,
because this was the time of fifth Crusades, the long, drawn out war to retake
the Holy Land from back from the Muslims.
The Christians of Europe were then fighting in the Nile Delta, against
the Sultan Malik-al-Kamil. Though the
Crusade might be winning the war for the Holy Land, it was a war that was
destroying the soul of the church, so Francis asked the cardinal who was
serving as chaplain, if he would bless Francis and a brother to pay a visit of
peace to the sultan himself. The
cardinal warned that the Muslims only understood weapons and should be killed,
not visited, but finally agreed to bless them, believing they would die as
martyrs. It is said that Francis and his
brother left the camp singing, “The Lord is My Shepherd….”
Soldiers of the sultan’s army captured
the pair, beat them, and then brought them before the Sultan, who first asked
if they would become Muslims. Saying yes
would save their lives. But Francis
replied that they can come to convert him; and if they were allowed try and
failed, then he could behead them both.
According to the legend, Francis and the sultan met daily, though
neither converted the other, but the Sultan had gained such warmth and
appreciation for his guests, that he gave them a passport to visit places in
the Holy Land still under Muslim control, and they parted, neither as converts
of the others, but as brothers in peace.
What a different history we would look back upon, and reality we might
know, if Christians had truly carried the cross then and had not slaughtered
their enemies, but had been peace-makers, and had witnessed a miracle of
reconciliation like Francis did?
Isn’t being part of a miracle of
reconciliation (not retaliation), what Paul meant when he put Jesus’ challenge
to ‘love your enemy’ in the most
practical terms of Romans 12? “Bless those who persecute you; bless and
do not curse them…..Do not repay anyone evil for evil, ….. No, "if your
enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to
drink…." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom
12:14-21 NRS). While these words are
meant to be practical, they sound most impractical for a world still locked in
a vicious cycle of hate and violence. But, if the miracle of reconciliation is going
to happen, someone has to have the faith to step outside the circle. In the gospel story, Jesus Christ took the
first step. In Jesus, God stepped out of what we deserve, the right and just retaliation
for our sin, which the Bible says is ‘death’.
By stepping outside the cycle of violence with redeeming love, God has
opened the door for us to step outside the circle too. Nothing has to stay the way it was, because
now, as John writes in his first letter, “If
we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1Jo 1:9 NRS). Through Jesus’ cleansing and atoning
sacrifice, God stepped outside the circle of how things are: “God
was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Cor. 5.19). By making His peace with us, known to us, we are
now empowered to make reconciling peace in the world.
PEACE
AS SOMETHING A CHILD CAN DO
But don’t miss this most important ‘gospel
truth’: Peace-making does not start by us jumping out, trying in our own power and
strength to make our own kind of peace in the world. If you try it in your own strength, you are
sure to fail. Peace-making is a miracle,
whose power comes from God, not from us.
We become peace-makers, not by manufacturing peace, or not by
immediately surrendering to some bully or tyrant, nor by absent-mindedly giving
in to the desires of another, but the miracle of ‘peace’ starts as we receive ‘peace from God’. You
certainly can’t make peace with others, until you are at peace in your own
heart. And contrary to what popular
religion says, you can’t make your own peace
with God, but you can only receive the peace from God that
God has already made with you (Note: The New Testament never instructs us to make
peace with God, but we can only claim the peace that comes from God (see, Rom. 1.7,
1 Cor. 1.3, Gal. 1.3, Eph 1.2, 6:23; Phil 1.2, Col 1.2, 2 The 1.2, 1 & 2
Tim 1.2, Tit 1.4, Phm 1.3, and 2 John 1.3).
We are only contributing to own anxiety
and fear when we think we have to ‘make’ our peace with God. We don’t make ‘our’ peace with God, but we receive
the peace God has already made with us in Jesus Christ. Why is
this important? Because when you fully realize that God has
already made his peace with you, you don’t have to worry any more about making
peace with God, but you ‘keep doing the things” (Phil 4.9) that
‘make for peace’ (Roms 14.9) so you know “the God of peace is with you” (Phil 4.9), as Paul told the
Philippians and the Romans. When you
have the gift of God’s peace, peace-making becomes so natural, that even a child
can do it----a child of God, that is. Isn’t
this what Jesus means when he says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will
be called the children of God?” God’s children are peace-makers because this
is who they have become because God’s peace has transformed their hearts.
Now long ago, I heard a representative from “Peacemaking
Ministries” speak. As pastors we were
told how this national movement could encourage churches to lead the way in making
peace. I thought it interesting to hear
what a professional peacemaker might say about the rise of increasing violence,
struggle, and conflict in the world and even in churches? He began his presentation by quoting one verse
from James: “What cause fights and quarrels among
you? Don’t you know that they come from
your desires that battle within you? You
want something, but you don’t get it?” (James 4. 1-2). Only by gaining a greater desire for what
only can God can give, will we care less about what others don’t or can’t give
us. This is why peace-making is first
and foremost a way of the heart. Only when
we desire the peace God gives, will we ask for the miracle only God can do, and
prove whose child we are. This is how God’s shalom (peace) comes to us, as it begin in us. Amen.
No comments :
Post a Comment