The Blessed Problem: Those who make peace (Matthew 5:9-12, Isaiah 57:14-21, Ephesians 2:11-19)

This is a photo of spoonbill's oyster catchers and pied stilts and I think a gull or two coexisting out on the mudflats at Verona on the Mangere inlet. It is used as an image of the possibilities of living together peacefully with difference... A willingness to share resource and land (Well in this case wetland). 

Our exploration of Jesus beatitudes has been very timely, I think, as it has come in the shadow and aftermath of the March 15^th attack in Christchurch. That has deeply shocked and stunned and sadden us all and asked us to look deeply at ourselves as a nation and how we consider and treat each other, and in particular those who we just may consider ‘Other”.   It’s very timely because it invites us to again focus on Jesus vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, what is at the heart of our Christian faith and the hope that we have and can bring and be in the world around us.

…“that in the face of hatred and violence, we speak of Christ’s love and welcome.

In the face of cursing to bring division and hatred, we speak of the blessing on those who make peace, who seek right relationship.”

And also…

“in how we have seen our nation respond in compassion, care and consolation, support and standing alongside, responding to evil with good, we glimpse the hope of Peace Making… and maybe just a little taste of that Jesus kingdom vision for humanity…”

We’ve been using Scott McKnight’s framework for looking at the beatitudes …

Threeblessings for the humble poor,

Threeblessings for those who pursue righteousness,

And three blessings on those who make peace, which we are looking at today.

 ‘Firstly, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. The Hebrew word for peace is ‘shalom’ which does not just mean an absence of conflict or strife. But rather it has the idea of wholeness, of a matrix of right relationships that underpin the lack of strife. “ A right relationship with God, a right relationship with one another, a right relationship with those who we consider other, or who consider themselves our enemies, a right relationship with created things, our environment  and a right relationship with our material things, our possessions.  So knowing peace was having that matrix sorted. Peace making is being willing to work where those relationship are out of kilter, out of balance, broken, to see reconciliation. Peace-making says Scott McKnight is those who know what it means to be reconciled with God, who know that God is for peace seeking reconciliation with one another.’ Another definition from Charles Quarles is the work of reconciliating two alienated parties, of taking two enemies and bring them into a relationship of harmony and unity”.

 It’s a reflection of the peace-making that we see in Jesus Christ, through his life, death on the cross and his resurrection reconciling us to himself and God. That peace making expressed in the early church doing as they wrestled with what it means to be the new people of God, brothers and sisters together, one body across the splintered factions of  society: Jew and Gentile, as we had in our reading from Ephesians 2, but also the socio-economic barriers of free and salve, cultural barriers like Greek and barbarian, even that most mystifying of barriers,  male and female. But also Peace-making as they Worked out how as this new people who were totally different and held allegiance to Jesus as Lord in a society where Caesar was Lord, were they going to live, as we had in our reading from Romans 12 last week, ‘If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.’ These are the same peace-making challenges that we face today…

 Farid Ahmed is a peacemaker, he lost his wife in the march 15^th Christchurch attack, he amazed the world by offering forgiveness for the shooter, and love and understanding to the shooters family. His address at the national commemoration service on Friday was inspiration a clear articulation of the best of humanity and the Muslim faith. At one stage he said “I forgive so that God will love me”, maybe it was his struggle with English, but I thought you know I think we can have that same kind of understanding in our faith as well. That if we act in a certain way so that God will love us accept us bless us.  But what motives this ability of being a peacemaker is that it is a response to the peace and wholeness we have been given graciously in Christ. We seek reconciliation, we seek to live in peace, we seek to work to see others come to that place of peace and wholeness not to earn it but because  we have experienced in in Christ. 


The first Sunday Kris and I were in Dunedin  for me to train to be a minister,  we went to the local supermarket after church and on the way out this older couple came up to us and said to Kris, ’You’ve got to be Ray and Shona’s girl’, that is Kris’s parents, and even I could kind of guess that the man speaking was kris’s uncle because of the Middendorf family resemblance.  The blessing here is that the peace makers will be called the sons of God. In Jewish and Roman society, children were expected to reflect the values of their father, parent and family, and here the blessing is not that we are earning that position like a reward but that in working for reconciliation and peace we are recognised as being our father’s children. …A chip off the old block as it were…That people will see the family resemblance, not that we look alike, I’m adopted into my family I look nothing like my mum or dad or my sister, but that we act alike…we Love alike… we seek reconciliation alike. At the end there will be a welcome home, because by grace we belong and we fit right in. 


Another example would be this wonderful set of adds for a dog food that had owners looking like their dogs… I’ve got a few of them James just to break up this sermon with some comic relief…  

In Jesus time there were many ways of making peace. Like our own time there was an increase in insurgency, people who were willing to resort to violence to achieve peaceful ends. The pharisees who though that by their own righteousness and separateness they could make God respond and bring about the promise of peace, which caused them to be exclusive and to ostracise vast swaths of their society. The ‘pax roma’ that imposed stability and peace to a diverse and multi-cultural society backed by the threat of the military power of the empire. All tempting options for those who seek peace to take, even Christians.  We are going to move on after today to look at the sermon on the mount  and we will see Jesus way of peace making is so radically counter cultural and different… it’s love your enemies, be people of integrity… be generous… 

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Kind of rounds off the beatitudes because it finishes with the same blessing of the Kingdom of heaven as the first beatitude, and scholars see blessed are you when people insult you persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” as an expansion and explanation of that. Seeking God’s righteousness is to seek Jesus, again Mcknight’s definition is helpful “persecuted are those who seek God’s will in spite of what other want, who love God so much they are faithful to God when oppressed, and who follow Jesus so Unreservedly they suffer for him”. It’s not that we go looking for persecution, but rather because Jesus way, God’s way is so counter culture that we will find ourselves clashing with our culture. If we live in this different kingdom way we are going to find that people will be resistant, they have so much invested in the way things are. 


Jesus expands on what it means to be persecuted by talking of insults, we can all understand that I think, I remember Christian friends at school being deeply upset when the biology teacher in there last year told them there was no place for Christians in his class. False accusations, the early church was accused of cannibalism, because of a false understanding of communion, eating the body and blood of Christ, and incest because husbands and wives referred to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, ironically of being atheists because they did not believe in the roman pantheon, and persecution, physical and legal opposition.

The blessing in both cases is to acknowledge that the reward is greater than the persecution. Knowing Christ being welcomed into his kingdom, both now and with the kingdoms ultimate consummation is greater than anything we suffer now. We can rejoice not in a masochistic way because we enjoy persecution, its not enjoyable, it hurts, it is horrendous, but rather because we know that Christ has faced such suffering and pain and even death for our sakes…  like the disciples in Act 10 that we are deemed worth of sharing Christ’s suffering and because of what God has done for us… Like with the churches first martyr Stephen, we can see a vision of Christ exalted and seated at God’s right hand. 


Charles Quarles again is quick to point out that Jesus is talking here about undeserved persecution, for righteousness sake and for his sake, and warns Christians against getting that confused with being persecuted over our own sin and foolishness, which just may be deserved. We need to look at pushbacks and criticism and even some of the vitriol we are given and ask ourselves serious questions. But also in an environment when peace is equated with simple tolerance and a sort of quasi universalism that we are all the same, we need to realise that Jesus exclusive claims about himself, and the churches affirmation of those things will bring us into conflict and will cause persecution. But we cannot abandon them as they and Christ is the basis of our peace. 

We started our exploration of the beatitudes with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer Perhaps it’s best to leave it up to Bonhoeffer, to tie these last three beatitudes together. Bonhoeffer is a German theologian and pastor who was imprisoned and killed under the Nazi’s at the end of the Second World War.  He said, talking of Christians in imitation of Christ,‘ But their peace will never be greater than when they encounter evil people in peace and are willing to suffer from them.” 

While it’s important that in light of what has happened in our country over the past few weeks that we talk about the beatitudes on a large social scale, its also important that we don’t finish without acknowledging their good news for us on a personal level. That’s best done with a story …

 Matt Woodley concludes the section on the Beatitudes in his commentary on Matthew by sharing such a story…“It was after a typical church business meeting,” He says, “we meet Jesus in a profound way.” A small group had stayed behind and chatted and suddenly a young women shared that during the past week her mother had blasted her with deeply wounding words, calling her ‘worthless’ and heaping scorn on her for her faith in Christ. Others in the group empathised with her, one man shared the fact that he lived all his life with the message from his father that he was decidedly unimportant in his life. Another shared her wrestling with work-a-holic tenancies and trying also to be a good mother to three children. 

Slowly other stories of real need and brokenness came out. Woodley says “the conversation was honest and raw. It was a descent into spiritual poverty, the need for mercy and for at least one-person persecution’. In response to this they prayed…” "Lord, we've tried to be good and happy and loving but we need help-lots of help! We need to learn life from you. So we're going to stay with you and listen." As the Spirit of God came among them they experienced the rich presence and blessing of Jesus. Indeed, ‘says Woodley, “we were on the way with Jesus-not alone but together. We knew that in the midst of our poverty, we were all blessed beyond measure.