Upside Down Living #6 - Peacemaking in a Time of Division
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues in the Beatitudes with Matthew 5:9 looking at peacemaking when the current climate is filled with division and how Christians can still be peacemakers while not being at peace with the world by making two choices.
Message Transcript
Hey, welcome again to Orchard Hill. We are continuing our series Upside Down Living. We are looking at Jesus most famous teaching and the Sermon on the Mount. But before we jump into that today, I just want to let you know a couple of things. Last weekend, we had an outdoor service on Saturday night, and it seemed like a lot of people felt more comfortable coming to that than inside, and so we are going to continue that for the foreseeable future. Maybe until it gets cold. We'll see. But on Saturday nights at six o'clock at our Wexford campus, there's an outdoor service. Those of you in Butler and in the Strip District, obviously you're still meeting in your locations. Also, we made a small change to our Sunday schedule in Wexford, and that is we moved the Chapel Service from 8:30 to 10:30 am. So now there's 9:30, 10:30, and 11:15 am. And, again, if you can register, that allows you to know that when you come into a space, there's social distancing going on. We're doing our best to do that.
And let me just say this. I know that for many, you're still not comfortable coming into a worship service. And we understand that and support that. But let me also say, we've been doing this now for over 10 weeks since we restarted. And at Orchard Hill, to our knowledge, there has not been a person who's come to one of our services with a case of COVID. There hasn't been any transmission that we've known of and so our social distancing and safety strategies appear to be working. Now we realize that doesn't mean that there won't be a case at some point. Anytime you're in a public store or restaurant, anywhere you go, there's a potential. And so, we understand that, but it's really good to be back in the flow of worshiping with other people in our church. And so, we hope that for many of you, you'll be able to start that process of coming back and registering. So, let's take a moment and pray and then we'll jump into today's teaching. Father, we thank you for the chance to gather in Butler County, the Strip District, Wexford, Online, and all over the place. Father, we pray that you would just be our teacher, once again, that my words would reflect your word and content in tone and emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
So, we're going to begin by taking a look at a little video that makes a point, so take a look. All right, now, that is a pretty obvious story about how when you have a fire, you can throw something on it that can make it be bigger, or you can throw something on it that can make it be smaller. And the truth is, when it comes to conflict, we have the same choice. Jesus words in Matthew, chapter five, are these simple words again, in which these Beatitudes are all very simple. They're not hard to understand where he says blessed, or blessed are the peacemakers, for they'll be called the children of God. And when he says this, the idea is, obviously that if we help bring peace to our world, then we are going to be seen as the children of God.
But one question we have to ask right at the beginning, is did Jesus contradict himself? And the reason I say this is because in Matthew chapter 10, verse 34, 35, and 36, Jesus says something that seems almost the exact opposite of this. And so, we need to at least grapple with what he means. Here's what we read. "Do not suppose that I've come to bring peace to Earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against this father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter in law against her mother in law, your enemies will be members of your own household." So, which is it? Does Jesus say I want you to be people of peace? Or is he someone who says you know what, I've come to turn people against each other. I've come to bring a sword. I mean, we understand the mother in law and daughter in law comment, that they're going be at war, but the other ones you say, aren't they supposed to be at peace with one another? That's a joke. That's a joke. The idea here is maybe hard to put together but, in a way, maybe it isn't. And here's why I say that. Because I believe in Matthew chapter five, the Sermon on the Mount is a particular setting that's different than Matthew 10. And so, Jesus is speaking to different groups, if you will. We have a picture here potentially of the place where the Sermon on the Mount took place. This is from an Israel trip a few years ago that I was on, here's the setting that we think is the place where Jesus actually taught this.
And what probably was happening is that people were coming out to him because they saw him as a potential revolutionary leader. And so a group of people that would have been known as the zealots would have said, let's go find somebody who will help us overthrow our oppressors, the government, the Roman government, who is engaging in oppression, and let's find somebody who will help us do this. And so, Jesus has this crowd that's gathered. And when he speaks to them, he says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they'll be called the children of God." In other words, he was speaking to a general audience. About a political climate when he was speaking in Matthew 10, I believe he was giving specific instructions to disciples, because he was talking here to his followers about their sense of mission. And what he was saying is if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're a Christian, there will be a sense in which no matter how much you try to make peace with the world, your values will always be at odds with the culture in which you live to some extent. In other words, if you are a follower of Jesus, there will be some things that you will be at odds within your culture, no matter how hard you try to make them all seem okay. That's why I believe that those two statements aren't that radically different even though on the surface they appear to say something completely different. And if I were to summarize, here's what I would say if you're a follower of Jesus. You cannot be at peace with the world. But you can be a peacemaker in the world. You can't be at peace with the world entirely. But you can be a peacemaker within the world.
So, the question is, how do we do this? And I'd like to say that there are two choices that we need to make if we want to be peacemakers. The first is this, and that is we need to choose true peace over false peace. And I say this because the very idea of being a peacemaker is the idea of bringing two things together that are separated, almost merging or healing something that doesn't belong together. And so often what happens is we tend to think of peace as something that it really isn't. And what I mean by that is we tend to think that if I'm going to bring peace, it means appeasement. One of the great stories of appeasement has been told right before World War Two, and Neville Chamberlain, the premier, Prime Minister of England said, We've achieved peace in our times by giving Adolf Hitler a little more territory and it was appeasement. It was the attempt at appeasement, that didn't bring about peace because all it did was embolden Adolf Hitler. Appeasement isn't peace. Because when we confuse peace with compromise, then we miss genuine peace which is bringing together what is separated."
Thomas a Kempis who was a writer of another generation said this, "All men desire peace, but very few desires those things that make for peace." You see, peace often involves struggle. It involves seeking to understand, it sometimes involves confrontation, it involves forgiveness, and involves all of these hard relational things in order to actually have peace, whereas compromise or appeasement is a way just simply to say I'm going to settle for a false peace.
I read a book years ago, it's called "Getting to Yes", and it was kind of a business/relationship book. It isn't a book that has a spiritual bent to it, but it teaches something that I think applies here. And what it teaches is that there are different approaches to conflict that we all take. And we probably have a default conflict approach. And that often our default approach is wrong. And what they say is that some people, their default to any conflict is to win. And you probably know some people like this, maybe you are one of these people where as soon as you get in a conflict, it's like, I'm right, you're wrong, I win, you lose. And there's always a winner and a loser in every conflict, and this person is always trying to win.
Then there are those who would take a yield approach. The yield person is the person who says, look, you choose, you decide, I don't want to engage in this. So, you always get to decide, I don't, that's the yield approach. Then there's what they call the withdraw approach, which is the person who says, as soon as there's a conflict, I'm not going to engage anymore. I'm not going to yield. I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of that. I'm not going to try to win. I'm simply getting out of it.
And then they say there's a compromise approach. This is where I'll meet you halfway, and you meet me halfway. And we'll compromise together. And that may sound like the best approach. But what the book argues is that's actually not the best approach. Because what happens when you each compromise is neither of you actually get what you want. You haven't actually brought together your concerns. What you've done is, you've simply met each other halfway. And what the book advocates is this idea of win-win. That the way you resolve conflict is that you're so committed to another person, that you're committed to them winning, and you're still committed to you getting something that matters to you.
Now, you may say that doesn't sound particularly biblical, and I understand that, but here's what I'm trying to say. And that is, that resolving conflict, ultimately being a peacemaker, doesn't mean that you give somebody else everything that they want, and you don't get anything. It means that you say I am willing to stand on some principle. But I also want to understand what's important to you. And I want us both to get it. So, let me just put it like this. If you are parents and let's say you have a teenager who wants to go to a school dance, and let's just say for the sake of argument that this is totally hypothetical, no one's going to dances anytime soon, but um, but for the sake of argument, let's just say you have a teenager wants to go to a dance. And let's just say that the mom says, oh, yeah, you should go to the dance. The dance is going to be great. There are good social things that happen here. I'm really excited that you get to go to this dance, and that's, that's her position. And then the dad comes along and says, I don't want you to go to the dance. I used to go to dances. I know what goes on at dances. I know what all teenage boys are thinking at dances. I think it's a bad idea for you to go to a dance. I don't want you to go to a dance.
Now you have two positions, right, to opposite positions. Win says, either you go to the dance or you don't go to the dance, I make the decision. Yield says, okay, go ahead. Withdraw just says, I'm not going to engage. Compromise says, well, maybe you can go for a little while, I can go for a little while, you know, we can figure out something, you go to this dance, not the next one. Win-win says let's find what is the concern behind the position and then address those concerns. So maybe the one parent who says you should go to the dance, is concerned about being socially ostracized, if you don't go, about having fun and good experiences. And the other parent is concerned about some of the things that might happen there that could be detrimental. And so, what you do is you move past the position to the concerns and you start addressing the concerns and you say, how can we bring about peace.
Now, you may as I talk about this, say, okay, what does this have to do with being a peacemaker? Well, everything. Because if you can't resolve conflict interpersonally or help others resolve conflict, you can't be a peacemaker. In Romans chapter 12, verse 18, we're told that we're to live at peace with everyone as far as it depends on us. And that means that we're to do everything possible to live at peace with people. And what happens so often when we're in relationship, is instead of living at peace, we just simply say, I'm done with you. As soon as we hit a point where we say, I don't want to do the hard work of relationship.
You see this, especially today, I don't think I need to talk about the divisions in our country to tell you that we live in a time of division, but people are so quick to write one another off. You have a different opinion on what should happen with schools this fall. Well, you know, I'm done with you. You have a different opinion about what maybe should happen with sports this fall. Now maybe there, it's you don't write somebody off, but it's like you have all of these opinions. And then when it gets to something that's more substantial, we don't say I'm going to live at peace with somebody as far as it depends on me.
In Matthew, chapter five, verse 44, which is just a couple verses later in this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies. I think one of the reasons that he gives this exhortation here is because when we pray for somebody, we can't help but see them as the object of God's love. Here's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this years ago. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by the way, lived in a time of incredible division. I mentioned earlier about Neville Chamberlain, well Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived as a pastor in Nazi Germany and he was one of the people who said this is an evil regime, was thrown in jail, and later killed, executed because of his belief. And when he took that position, there were many taking other positions. And here's what he wrote. He said, "A Christian community either lives by the intercessory prayer of its members for one another, or the community will be destroyed." Intercessory prayer means praying for other people intentionally. Specifically, Jesus says, pray for one another after saying, blessed are the peacemakers. He says he wants you to pray for your enemies. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer now is saying, here's the issue. A church community will either be united because people pray for those who are around them or they won’t, and it will die. He continues, "I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble they cause me. In intercessory prayer, the face of the face that may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of the one for whom Christ died. The face of the pardoned sinner. That is a blessed discovery for the Christian who's beginning to offer intercessory prayer for others. As far as we are concerned, there is no dislike no personal tension, no disunity, no strife that cannot be overcome by intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day." In other words, when you decide to say I'm going to pray for the person who I'm struggling with or the people who are struggling, it will help purify the way that you think, and the way that you interact. And I have found this to be true when I've struggled with somebody in my life, if I pray for them, all of a sudden, I find them to be the object of God's love rather than somebody who I'm just saying that's annoying.
By the way, Proverbs 13:10 says that where there's discord or where there's strife, there is pride. One of the reasons that strife continues in a community and relationship is because we get so locked into our pride positions. And so, the first thing that we want to do, need to do, if we want to be people who bring peace to our world, is we need to say I'm going to choose true peace, bringing people together rather than a false peace.
But there's a second thing that I think we see in Scripture that helps us understand how to bring about peace and that is, we need to choose de-escalating behavior rather than escalating behavior. One author in writing about this put it this way, "The phrase fight fire with fire has never made sense to me. It would seem that fighting fire with fire only makes the fire bigger. Maybe fighting the fire of vengeance with the water of Grace has a better chance of extinguishing the flames. What's really made a mess of this world, has it been grace, forgiveness, turning the other cheek? Or has it been guilt, punishment, vengeance, and retribution?
When we did the little demonstration with the fire, when we're talking about escalating, de-escalating behaviors, every day, every situation, we have a decision to make. Am I going to help this fire grow and become more toxic? Or am I going to help extinguish it? And it is grace, and it is my behaviors, and my alignment to grace that either chooses one of those or the other. And it's yours as well. It's true in your marriage. It's true in your friendships. It's true in your casual office conversations and relationships. It's true, and in a broader context that, that is the choice that you and I have to make every day. And what's interesting today is it seems like we get credit for moral outrage at least on social media and in our culture. In other words, you're seen as being virtuous, the angrier you get about something, or the more up in arms you get about something. And Jesus says, you want to know how you're going to be truly blessed? It's if you choose to be somebody who extinguishes those flames not stokes them.
In second Corinthians chapter 12, verse 20, there's a little verse tucked away that gives us a list of some things that can be escalating behaviors if you want to call them that. Here's how it reads. Second Corinthians chapter 12, verse 20, "I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, faction, slander, gossip, arrogance, disorder." Now you may hear that and say, okay, what do those behaviors mean exactly? Well, quarreling is obviously what it sounds like but included in this is the idea of blaming other people, saying the reason it's this way what they did or what they said. And it's issue expansion. And what issue expansion is, is it's where you start on one issue and then you move to another issue. You've been in this kind of a setting, I'm sure, where somebody says, you know, I'm really concerned about or annoyed with, or don't like, what happened here. And then you say something like, well, yeah, you did that. But here's the issue that I want to talk about. That's quarreling is what it is. It's issue expansion. Jealousy is pretty straightforward. It's the idea of looking at somebody else's plight and saying, I want my situation to be more like theirs. Outburst of anger means threats, sarcasm, mockery. Factions means building coalitions. You've maybe heard this done or seen this. It's where, well, I was talking with your mother the other day, and we agree that you should, that's coalition building, or I was talking with so and so, who's not there, and they said, and what you're doing is you're building a coalition, it's factions. It's saying I'm aligning with certain people. And it's a way to bring about conflict. Slander means basically speaking ill of somebody, but it also probably includes name calling or implied name calling, is bringing up things from the past that have already been forgiven, already been dealt with, gossip is often moralizing. Again, trying to feel secure, superior to somebody. Arrogance is the idea of pride again, that Proverbs talked about. And this is something that we do by prosecuting somebody else in our dialogue. And then disorder is clearly that same thing.
Now, here's the thing. We can go through a list and you can say, well, I should deal with these escalating behaviors, and you can have this list, another list, or whatever list you want. I don't think the issue is a list. I think you and I generally know when we're throwing a flame enhancer onto a fire and when we're not. In other words, especially if you've been in a marriage for a while, you know how to even say something without saying something. Like, you know how to, when they say how was your day, and you're like, fine, you know, and all of a sudden, it's like, well, it wasn't fine. And you just communicated to me you're upset about something with the way you said fine. Right? You know how to do this thing and not to do it. The issue is what is in our heart for this.
And here's why this is so hard in our culture right now, beyond maybe just our personal relationships, in our overall culture, here's why this is so hard. And that is right now, there is such an emphasis on being in the right group. And what this is, is it's a form of pride. It's a form of self-righteousness that says, because I have it right, everyone else is wrong. I'm part of the good people, you're part of the bad people. And what I believe this is, is it's getting our righteousness from our group identities rather than from God Himself.
Now, if somebody's not a believer or follower of Jesus, it makes sense that we would say, what am I going to do to feel good about myself? But Jesus is offering something totally different, so much better to his people. He's saying, you don't need to get your identity from a group or from a rightness or from something in your life where you're saying, I need this in order to feel good about myself because you can have peace with God through Jesus Christ. This is what Romans 5:1 teaches. It says you have peace with God. In other words peace that you extend doesn't come from simply saying, I'm going to master techniques or even I'm going to choose these things, like I'm going to choose true peace rather than false peace and choose de-escalating behaviors, it comes from a peace that's inside that we get from God. And when that's true, then we have the power to go ahead and say, now I want to choose these things rather than simply exist and try to get something back from others in terms of how I choose to live.
You see, we all have context of relationships. Our most important relationship to have peace is us with God, personally, and that comes through understanding our sinfulness. In fact, one of the things that I think the Sermon on the Mount does is it doesn't just say here's how you should behave, here's how you can really be happy, it helps us run into a wall of our own lack of ability. Because here's what I know about me and probably about you. And that is you don't choose peace all the time. Sometimes you choose false peace. Sometimes you choose to throw kerosene onto a fire. And the fact that we do that, is a reminder of our need for grace and that our ultimate peace is rooted only in what Jesus Christ has done. And when that peace becomes real, then we can start to have peace with others, we can start to help others experience peace, and we can do the ultimate work of reconciliation, which is pointing people back to Jesus. In fact, this is what second Corinthians chapter five says in verses 18 through 21. It says that we have a ministry of reconciliation, that God has been at work through Jesus reconciling all people to himself, and he's now given us a ministry of reconciliation. Ultimate peacemaking isn't just helping people get along. It's helping people be reconciled and be brought back together with God. And in order to do that, sometimes we have to walk past our group identities. And simply saying, I'm part of this group and this group is right and the other groups are wrong, they're the bad people, I'm the good people, and say, my real identity is rooted in something so much greater. And you see, when that becomes true for you and for me, then we're able to actually be God's instruments of peace in this world, helping bring reconciliation ultimately, and also helping people get along in a more temporary way.
What's amazing about what God has done, is that he's made peace with us when we didn't deserve it. See, sometimes we tend to think well, I've been a person who God would want to recruit, but the reality that the Bible talks about over and over again is that God's work is completely his gracious goodness to the undeserving. And here's why that is such good news, is because when you enter into that, then you are able to say, it doesn't matter if somebody deserves peace. It doesn't matter what my husband, my wife has done, it doesn't matter how rude this clerk was, to me, it doesn't matter how pigheaded that customer was, or how wrong somebody is in their political view, I can extend peace and grace because I didn't deserve the peace and grace that God gave me, so I can give that to others. And when we experienced that personally, we'll be overtaken with it in a way that says this is how I want to live in the world that's filled with division.
I want to take a moment and pray with you, and I want to just invite you to pray where you are with me. And I want to just ask you first just to identify a place where maybe you're not experiencing peace. What relationship or what set of circumstances right now, are you living in where there's a lack of peace? And ask God what it would look like for you to bring peace to that? Is it a place where maybe you're supposed to be at odds? Or is it a place where you're at odds because of your own stuff? And if so, would you come to the cross once again and say, God, I want to experience your peace so I can offer that in the world and in the settings in which I live. And maybe you're here today, maybe you're online watching, participating maybe after the fact and you have realized, as we've talked today, that there have been times in your life where you haven't been about peace. The Bible calls that sin, and the offer of Jesus Christ is ultimate reconciliation, you coming and receiving what Jesus has done, being brought together with God through what Jesus has done. We call it salvation. And you enter into that by acknowledging your sin and saying, I trust what Jesus Christ has done. And that's the start of peace with God for you. And maybe that's what you want to do today is just simply say, God, I want peace with you that I haven't had.
Father, we thank you for just a chance to gather into understand what your word says, and we pray today that you would help each one of us to understand what peace really is where we live, and to offer that and to be peacemakers. But God even more than that, we thank you for the peace you've already given us through what Jesus Christ is done. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
