“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”

Scriptures: Psalm 130, Matthew 5:3-12

 

If you drive south on Ft. Apache, crossing Flamingo and before you get to Tropicana, there’s a street going off to the right simply called “Peace”. It goes for almost exactly a mile and then dead-ends into Hualapai. Along the way there’s a Mormon church and at the very end on Hualapai a Presbyterian church, which I guess is appropriate. But one of the things I find strange about it is that all of the residences along Peace Street are gated communities. Now, I don’t often drive down that way, but when I do I find myself musing over whether the residents on those brief blocks find that their lives are somewhat more tranquil than other Las Vegans. Isn’t there some sort of disconnect between the fear that I, at least, associate with gated communities and the ideal of peace? Are there fewer foreclosures on a street named “Peace”? Do people argue a bit less with their neighbors? Well, this is probably futile speculation, but it is intriguing that those who laid out this town would want to give such nomenclature for roadways (actually, there may well be several others; I recently typed an address for someone who lives on “Peaceful Pond Drive”).

Putting the word “peace” into a name or a title is a pretty prevalent practice in our culture. Lots of churches have it in their names. There are even whole denominations which are called “historic peace churches” – most notably the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, and the Society of Friends. “Peace” is a category, a condition, a feeling much to be desired in our society.

And yet, we as a people are so war-like – so quick to use violence and armed conflict as a way to resolve issues. So much of literature seems to depend on getting the “good guys” to win out over the “bad guys” through use of force. Even Shakespeare is frequently cited for the amount of violence in his plays. Last week while working out I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which had to do with an alien race invading and taking over the bodies of humans, and even though the basic premise of Star Trek is to honor life and look for peaceful resolutions to conflict, the only way the script writers, evidently, could find to resolve this conflict was for the Enterprise crew to blast the alien creatures out of existence. (By the way, it may be that humans are the only ones who are known as “peacemakers”; in another episode Lt. Worf says that until councilor Riva came to negotiate a treaty between them and the United Federation of Planets, Klingons had no word for “peacemaking”. But I digress.) We do experience a kind of rush when this sort of killing off of the evil creatures occurs, don’t we? We find it satisfying when “our side” wins – especially if it does so with guns ablazing.

So, given our human nature, it is surprising, isn’t it, that Jesus would put such an emphasis on peacemaking – even to the point of raising the ante for all of us by avowing that those who are in fact peacemakers will be called “children of God”. Isn’t that a designation devoutly to be desired? Oh, in so many ways we already consider ourselves to be God’s children, but here Jesus seems to be making as a condition of that sonship, that daughtership being “peacemakers”. It doesn’t seem to be much of an option, does it? This is what we are called to be.

However, there is ambivalence here, in the life and words of Jesus. Allow me to remind you of a paragraph from my sermon two weeks ago when we were talking about what it means to be persecuted and reviled for the sake of the gospel. That author I’ve been fond of quoting during this series, John MacArthur, points to a disconnect within the Beatitudes as well as within Jesus’ ministry when he says, “It is fascinating to me that the believer who lives in the Beatitudes will be both a peacemaker and one who creates persecution.  You will both make peace and make trouble. There is an almost awesome ambivalence.  The believer is a peacemaker, and yet, the believer is one who stirs up strife.  We hear it from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who said that He came as the Prince of Peace to bring peace, and then elsewhere, He said, ‘I came not to send peace, but a sword.’  There is this constant ambivalence where the believer is, in the world, a peacemaker who is able to make [someone] at peace with God by the presentation of the Gospel.  But on the other hand, where there are those who will not respond [to that person’s] peacemaking effort, [that one] is a troublemaker, and invariably, brings about persecution.”

I went on to point to the famous Harry Emerson Fosdick dictum that “the Christian is one who comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable”. We are called upon to do both: to be peacemakers and to stir up trouble where there is injustice, even though it means we will be persecuted and have “all kinds of evil” uttered against us.

Why, then, does Jesus emphasize that we are to be peacemakers? Perhaps first of all because we do want to lash out when we are being persecuted or see others being persecuted, and so there needs to be a balancing within our very human tendencies to want to use violence and force. But I think there is something more to it than that.

Recall that we have been saying that in these Beatitudes Jesus is talking about spiritual conditions. If we were to take this particular Beatitude at face value we would all need to become pacifists – and indeed there are those for whom pacifism is at the very core of their religious sensibility. But as Chip Bell at Bible.org says, “This verse is not about those who are peaceful nor about pacifists, but rather about those who actively try to promote harmony in the world. Making peace is not a passive activity. Sometimes it requires confrontation when we would personally feel more peaceful if we simply ignored the problem and walked the other way. Sometimes making peace requires taking a tough stand and not giving up. Making peace is a pursuit. It is action, not apathy.”

That’s a very helpful last sentence. We often think of peacefulness as a passive, tranquil, almost soporific state, but it’s actually one in which we must be actively involved. We frequently think of peace as the absence of conflict, but this is simply not the case. To be human is to be in conflict. To be peacemakers is to enter into the midst of that conflict and to find ways that make reconciliation work – without harming the dignity of any of those involved. This is not easy. Being peacemakers takes work – and it’s the kind of work that God has specifically called us to in three ways: finding peace with God (Romans 5:1: “…since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ), peace within ourselves (John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”), and peace that we help others to find (II Corinthians 5:18: “[God] has given us the ministry of reconciliation” – we’ll come back to that).

Politicians and statespeople have not succeeded in bringing about peace (some people have thought that having a woman in a position to effect peaceful solutions would be helpful, but we’ve now had three female Secretaries of State, and none of them seem to have been any better than their male predecessors at resolving conflicts). Somebody said, “Washington has a lot of peace monuments. They build one after each war.” The United Nations came into existence after the end of World War II as an agency of peace, but since that time there has not been one single day of peace in the world, not one day. On the world stage peace may be a “consummation devoutly to be wished”, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet muses, but this is little more than a pipedream, despite the United Nations motto: “To have succeeding generations be free from the scourge of war.”

The Greek word translated here as “peace” is eirene, from which we get the English word irenic. It means “binding or joining together what is broken or divided” and setting them “as one” again. Here is where we find atonement, or at-one-ment. Jesus’ atoning act on the cross for us is meant to make us broken human beings whole. It is also meant to give us our marching orders to help make others whole – to “bind up the broken-hearted” (as the prophet Isaiah says: 61:1). It means that we will not be separate any more – separate inside ourselves, separate from one another, separate from God.

This Greek word is, of course, very close to the Hebrew word that is frequently rendered as “peace”: shalom. But as the Trinity Bible Center points out “peace” or shalom is far more than the absence of conflict. In the Hebrew scriptures ”the word shalom has a deep and complex meaning. It means well-being, materially and physically of an individual or a nation. It means harmony in relationships between individuals or nations. It is understood always to be a gift from God. Shalom is God’s blessing upon [God’s] people. It also carries the meaning of salvation, wholeness and healing….. The universe was created to be in a state of peace….. Peace is the well-being and prosperity of life that results from fully reconciled, healed and harmonious relationships with God, others and all of creation.”

In the 130^th Psalm, which we read this morning, is found the strength of that shalom for the people of Israel: “…hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love…” (that’s that word chesed which we’ve come across before). “It is God who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.” Doesn’t matter what has been done in the past. Shalom comes to bring reconciliation and healing and finally right relationships.

Here’s another example of the power of that word of peace or shalom. Jim Walton was translating the New Testament for the Muinane people of La Sabana in the jungles of Colombia. But he was having trouble with the word “peace”. During this time, Fernando, the village chief, was promised a 20-minute plane ride to a location that would have taken him three days to travel by walking. The plane was delayed in arriving at La Sabana, so Fernando departed on foot. When the plane finally came, a runner took off to bring Fernando back. But by the time he had returned, the plane had left. Fernando was livid because of the mix-up. He went to Jim and launched into an angry tirade. Fortunately, Walton had taped the chief’s diatribe. When he later translated it, he discovered that the chief kept repeating the phrase, “I don’t have one heart.” Jim asked other villagers what having “one heart” meant, and he found that it was like saying, “There is nothing between you and the other person.” That, Walton realized, was just what he needed to translate the word peace. To have peace with God means that there is nothing — no sin, no guilt, no condemnation — that separates us. This is what the peace of Jesus Christ is all about.

And we are called upon to help others find that peace. We do this by putting people into right relationships. I have a confession to make (maybe I’ve made it before): my single favorite verse in the whole Bible is II Corinthians 5:19: “…in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” In verse 18 Paul refers to this as “the ministry of reconciliation”, and that’s the way I like to think about it – the message of reconciliation that we have is our ministry. In this one verse you have encapsulated the whole of the Gospel: through the peace of God which passes all understanding the whole world is reconciled to God; through the grace of God our trespasses are not counted against us; through the ministry of peace which God gives us we are sent out into all the world. Reconciliation, grace, ministry – it’s all there; all that you will ever need.

Whew. That’s quite a bit to pack into what it means to be “peacemakers”. You can see, now, why I wanted to save this Beatitude to the last. Reconciliation is a restoration of peace. It is the forging of right relationships. It is making others – and ourselves – whole. Perhaps the simplest way to put it is that peacemakers make bridges between people. And when we do thus go actively about our peacemaking we are indeed acting as children of God. What a great promise this is! That we will know ourselves to be in very truth the ones that God has called us to be as we act upon our role of building bridges of right relationships one with another. What a blessing!

We have come – not to the end of our Lenten journeys, for those continue on through Holy Week – but to the end of our series on the Beatitudes as keys to an understanding of faith. To summarize what blessing each Beatitude can give us in 21^st century terms:

· to be “poor in spirit” is to sense our true humility which leads us to God’s grace and out of which all the other Beatitudes flow

· to “mourn” in order that we might be comforted is to identify our sinfulness and know that God accepts us anyway

· to be “meek” is to exhibit strength brought under control

· to “hunger and thirst after righteousness” is to help bring others into right relationships – a very close companion to being “peacemakers”

· to be “merciful” is to show compassion and real forgiveness

· to be “pure in heart” is to live authentic lives

· to be “peacemakers” is to reconcile the world to God and to build bridges of reconciliation between others

· to be “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and to have “all kinds of evil (uttered) against you falsely on my account” is to participate along with Jesus in the scandal of the cross.

Through these blessings – these “happinesses” – we are given such marvelous promises: comfort, fullness, mercy, experiencing God, inheriting the kingdom of heaven, being known as children of God. Enjoy these blessings for they are yours.

 

Amen

 

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
April 10, 2011