God's Peacemaking

Colossians 1:15-20
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost 2010

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God,” Jesus said (Matthew 5:9). That’s the seventh of the famous beatitudes or blessings that Jesus pronounces at the beginning of the “Sermon on the Mount” in the gospel of Matthew. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” But five chapters later in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus said this:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10: 34-38).

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” So which is it, do you think? Was Jesus a peacemaker or a sword bringer? And if you are going to follow Jesus, are you going bring a sword or make peace?

The first point in this morning’s sermon has to do with how we read and understand the Bible. Point number 1: If you are going to pick the cherries, then pick the crabapples as well. The cherries are those bright red, sweet and tender passages that everybody loves, like “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be children of God.” The crabapples are those seedy, sour, rock-hard passages like “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Most people leave the crabapples to the birds and the deer. Nobody in their right mind would choose a crabapple over a cherry. Not even the birds and the deer do that: they’ll strip a cherry tree clean before they’ll touch the crabapples. But when it comes to reading and understanding the Bible, you have to take the crabapples with the cherries or you’re not being honest, you’re not being truth-full about how you interpret Scripture. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be children of God.” Jesus also said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” It’s cherries and crabapples, crabapples and cherries in reading and understanding the Bible.

Now, I’m aware of the risk I’m running this morning. It was reported to me this week that one of our middle schoolers went home last week to tell his mother who could not come to church that Jeff preached about peaches. “Really?” she said. “Yep, peaches,” he said. And that’s all he said. He didn’t mention bearing fruit and growing. He didn’t say a word about “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). Nothing about faith and the knowledge of God, about being strong and enduring everything with patience, about bearing with one another and forgiving one another (Colossians 1 and 3). Nope. Peaches. Just peaches. This week, it’s cherries and crab apples. Point number one: you have to take the crab apples along with the cherries when you interpret the Bible.

Point number two: it’s not about the crab apples and the cherries. If all you do in reading and interpreting the Bible is set one passage over against another in opposition, you accomplish nothing more than to draw battle lines between opposing camps for one passage or the other, one for peacemaking and one for the sword.

You might think that the camp for peacemaking wouldn’t have a “battle line,” but it does. I call them “peace hawks.” Those are the people who carry signs for peace, and if you disagree with them, they will gladly clobber you on the head with their peace signs. Demonstrators and counter-demonstrators for peacemaking and for the sword.

It is said that we live in an era of partisanship and polarization. In politics, for example, there are litmus tests and tests of orthodoxy that challengers and incumbents alike must pass. There are tea parties and coffee clatches. There are demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. The same thing is true in Christian faith and practice in the public square: there are proponents of pacifism, and there are proponents of just wars; there are promoters of social justice and promoters of personal piety; there are traditionalists and there are free spiritualists; there are inclusivists and exclusivists. And all both of them use Scripture to support their position.

But the gospel of Matthew tells us it was one and the same Jesus who spoke of both peacemaking and the sword. And if that is so, then it makes sense to think that there must be something else that holds those two sayings together instead of reading and understanding them as competing bases of operations for opposing camps. I think there is. And the thing that holds them together is found at the end of the saying that begins, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” If you read that saying all the way to the end, you come to this: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” The end of the sword passage is at the cross. Now listen again to the end of this morning’s epistle lesson when the apostle Paul speaks of God’s peacemaking: “through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” “By making peace through the blood of his cross.” The biblical sayings about peacemaking and sword-bringing come together at the cross.

Do you remember that school-day science exercise with the magnet and the metal filings? Do remember how the teacher told you to place the magnet on the tabletop and put a piece of paper on top of it? And then you sprinkled the metal filings on top of the paper, and you saw how the filings arranged themselves in the pattern of the magnet’s magnetic field. If you moved the paper around on the magnet, the filings variously stood up and laid down and moved around on the paper. It’s one of those first childhood lessons in science and faith alike that shows you clearly that there are forces at work in the world that you cannot see but that are as real as can be in spite of their invisibility. In Christian reading and understanding the Bible, the cross is the magnet in relation to which all else stands in the same magnetic field, not in opposing camps. So point number 2 is that it’s not about the crabapples and the cherries; it’s about the magnetic field of the cross. It’s about the cross.

Point number 3: God’s idea of peacemaking and God’s practice of peacemaking is revealed in the cross. Colossians 1:20 tells us that God’s peacemaking in the cross is about reconciliation, about bringing parties together. It’s about reconciliation, not annihilation or domination or capitulation. If conflict ends just because no one is left on one side or the other to disagree, that’s not peace; that’s annihilation. If conflict ends just because one side overpowers the other, that’s not peace; that’s domination. If conflict ends just because one side gives up, that’s not peace; that’s capitulation. God’s peacemaking ends in reconciliation or right relationship between previously warring parties. So the first thing to see about God’s peacemaking revealed in the cross is that it is about reconciliation, bringing parties together in a right and healthy relationship.

The second thing to see about God’s peacemaking revealed in the cross is that it is sacrificial. It’s sacrificial, and God is the one who makes the sacrifice. That’s the amazing grace of God’s peacemaking: God makes the sacrifice so that we are reconciled, put in right relationship with God and with one another.

One of the most powerful movie-going experiences of my formative years was seeing the Academy-Award-winning movie Patton in 1970. In it, George C. Scott, who played the larger-than-life character of U.S. General George S. Patton of World War II fame, stood in front of a giant American flag and delivered a rousing speech to the troops. The zinger that I still remember 40 years later went something like this—not exactly like this, mind you, but this is how I remember it; and by the way, General George Patton never said it, but actor George C. Scott did, more or less: “You don’t win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other poor bastard die for his country.”

That’s peacemaking as the world makes peace: annihilation or domination or capitulation of one’s enemies. But the amazing grace of God’s peacemaking through the cross is captured in what the apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:10: “while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.” We were all enemies of God, Paul says. Theologically speaking, we are all poor bastards dying of far less noble things than our country; but God in Jesus Christ, instead of making us die, made peace with us by dying for us on the cross. God’s peacemaking, unlike the world’s peacemaking is always self-sacrificial. God is the one who makes the sacrifice so that we may live—and live abundantly, Jesus says in the gospel of John (John 10:10). Self-sacrifice is the way of God’s peacemaking.

The third thing to see about God’s peacemaking revealed in the cross is that it always brings a sword, and the sword is in this. So long as the world understands making peace as annihilation, domination, or capitulation, there will be divisions among us. We will be divided not only by the things that divide us already—our self-confessed orthodoxies in politics and religion and culture and economics—but we will also be divided on how to overcome those divisions. At one time or another, every one of us has stood in the place of the psalmist who said, “Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war” (Psalm 120:7). We have all experienced that place at some point in our families or at work or at school or at church, much less in domestic and foreign affairs. That’s the dividing sword of the gospel. The sword of the gospel that divides is in answering the call to peacemaking by taking up the cross and following Jesus all the way to the cross where God’s reconciling idea of peacemaking and God’s reconciling practice of peacemaking is revealed. And that was point number 3, remember.

Finally, point number 4. Because God makes peace with us, it is possible for us to seek and to find peace in God. There is a “peace of God which passes all understanding,” as the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi (Philippians 4:7). It is a peace that transcends all earthly conflict and tension. It is a peace that transcends all earthly fear and terror. It is a peace that transcends all earthly grief and loss. When we find our peace in God, we experience a peace on earth that allows us to sleep in heavenly peace. When we find our peace in God, we are able to sing along with songwriter-singer Michael McDonald:

I have come from so far away
Down the road of my own mistakes
In the hope You could hear me pray
Oh Lord, keep me in your reach. . . .

[Your] Love won't compromise
It's a gift, it's a sacrifice
My soul renewed, and my heart released
In You I'll find my peace.

Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.