Peace on Earth
Proper 15 Luke 12:49-59
15 August 2010
If you were to ask almost anyone on this earth if they wanted peace, except for the most committed anarchist, you would be given an affirmative response. Everyone desires peace on earth—which is why, I think, all those Christmas decorations and greeting cards contain that sentiment. Jesus is proclaimed the Prince of Peace by the Old Testament prophets, the angels tell the shepherds that peace is coming to earth, and we all think we know what the prophets and angels are talking about. Then we hear Jesus say this: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Matthew’s version is even more radical: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Are all of those critics correct, then, when they accuse Christianity of being a violent religion? Are we at our typical best when launched upon a crusade?
Jesus never makes it easy for us, does He? This summer I have been trying to preach short, Gospel homilies, which have been really short meditations on Jesus’ words from Sunday to Sunday. The succession of his sayings over the last several weeks, however, has been astounding. If you have been listening and reading with me, you find yourself challenged quite radically. And so it is today.
When you think about today’s Gospel for a while, it becomes easy to see what Jesus is getting at. Look at our desire for peace. In the Middle East just now, both Israel and the Palestinians would say they want peace. But each side will only stop fighting when they have what they want. We want peace in Afghanistan; so does the Taliban. But both sides again will not stop fighting until they have secured their positions. And, as you look around, away from nations and groups to individual persons, you find the same thing. We all want peace and an end to division and conflict—as soon as we have our own advantage secured. When we are set, our assets protected, our future fairly well protected (although we have to remember the story of the rich farmer from a couple of weeks ago) then we are ready to live peaceably with all our neighbors, as long as they respect our rights and our property.
So it is that our desires for peace are really a recipe for continual war—continual strife—or at least, continual competition. It is then quite obvious that Jesus could never have come into this world to give us peace simply and without any further qualification. He couldn’t bless such a self-interested attitude as ours. He couldn’t have brought peace unless he were able to give everyone what they wanted. And even then, who would have been satisfied? In fact, he called upon his followers to divest themselves of such striving and be generous and self-denying, entrusting themselves completely to the heavenly Father.
Of course, that led him to be consumed by the very fire he kindled. The division he came to bring soon engaged him. And he was caught up in a baptism in his own blood. In other words, he paid the price in himself for the judgement he called down upon earth. But, as we know, having gone through the fire of his own kindling, he came out the other side, offering for the first time a genuine peace to this world, the peace of the age to come, where there are no selfish interests to secure. He put to death the sinful old humanity, from which all our problems have arisen.
After his ascension and the beginning of the Church, we see what this looked like in practice from the fourth chapter of Acts: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.” This system was not widespread in the Church, nor did everyone with land or property sell it. People were free to do as they were led. And in the long run, selling everything was not a good plan for the continued existence of the Christian community. Still, the idea that in the Church there was “not a needy person among them” was a powerful witness to the nature of the Kingdom of God.
A recent writer on the age of the early Church attributes its phenomenal growth to a particular early Christian attitude: love for the neighbor. One sign of it appeared during the periodic plagues that spread in the Greco-Roman world. Usually when some disease struck a town, all those with means who were still well, abandoned the place, running for their lives. But Christians tended to stay and take care of their pagan neighbors as well as fellow members of the Church. Many times people survived these diseases simply by being given water and food. You can imagine what the pagan thought of his Christian neighbor when he had recovered.
I know that Jesus ends his lesson today by telling us that we ought to know the times in which we live. I give a lot of attention to trying to figure that out, but confess to a serious confusion. Some people think we are nearing the end of times; others that the recession is nearly over and good times are ready to roll again; still others think that we are in for a hard time of it for at least the next several years, if not decades. Whatever the truth of these suppositions, our calling is surely to find the genuine peace of Christ and announce it to our neighbors by living it ourselves. It is the peace which surpasses all understanding. It is the peace Jesus told his disciples he was leaving with them (John 14:27). “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” As Paul (Romans 14:17) put it, “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Or as James (3.18) said, “A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.