Beautiful #7 – A Beautiful Peace
Introduction: Walls
The great American poet, Robert Frost wrote a poem with the line:
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Yet it seems we live in a
world that loves walls.
Sometimes the walls are physical walls like the Great Wall of China,
an ancient wall created to protect a country. It’s so massive that even
though credible sources say this is false, we still believe you can see it
from outer space. One of the most iconic walls of my lifetime was the
Berlin Wall. Who here is old enough to remember when the Berlin Wall
came down? That wall defined the Cold War and the animosity that
existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. But walls
between nations aren’t always ancient artifacts. If we talk about
immigration reform today, the phrase “border fence” will likely come up,
and people will quickly divide into two camps with passionate opinions on
both sides of the wall.
Sometimes there are walls we can’t see, but they are just as powerful.
Walls built in our closest relationships. Walls built out of resentment and
pride and pain. Other walls are built between people based on their
political views or their wealth or their gender or their religion. And we all
know there are walls built based on the color of a person’s skin.
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There are so many walls of so many kinds, it’s like we live in a world
of walls. But still, I think Robert Frost was right: “Something there is that
doesn’t love a wall.”
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Jesus was no lover of walls, and he calls us to reject walls too. We’re
nearing the end of our series called “Beautiful” where we’ve been looking
at 8 surprising statements Jesus made, statements we refer to as the
Beatitudes. And today we’re looking at the 7th of the 8 statements where
Jesus declares: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called
children of God.” (Matthew 5:9 NIV)
When Jesus spoke of peacemakers, he was talking about people who
work to bring down walls. He was saying, “Blessed are the people who do
everything in their power to bring down the walls that divide and separate
us from one another.”
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
You see, in each and every situation where there’s conflict, we’re
either a wall-maker or a wall-breaker. And blessed are the people who
break down the walls.
The Walls We Make
The truth is, we all are wall-makers at times. Most of us in our wallmaking are not building walls because we want to aggressively conquer or
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hurt anyone. Most of our walls are built because we believe that a wall
HAS to be built in order to protect ourselves and our interests. So we do
things, some times little things, at times pretty big things, and we tell
ourselves we’re just protecting ourselves and our interests, that we’re
doing what we have to do.
A lot of the walls we make are made of words. Winston Churchill
had a political adversary, a woman named Nancy Astor, who was the first
female member of Parliament. She said to him one time, "Winston, if you
were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee." And Churchill
responded, "Nancy, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.” Well played, Mr.
Churchill. That is something I would have thought of 3 hours later, and
while it is very funny, it was a wall, a wall that was no joke, a wall built
between two people.
We do the same thing, don’t we? We make walls with our words, and
then we tell ourselves we just said what we needed to say to defend
ourselves or to make our point. But it the end, it’s just a wall.
Sometimes we make walls out of stone-cold silence. A man and wife
were giving each other an extended dose of the silent treatment, and a few
days into it, the man had an early business flight. He realized that he
needed his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM because he often slept right
through the alarm. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence, he
wrote her a note and left it by the bed: "Please wake me at 5:00 AM.” The
next morning he wakes up, and it’s 9 o’clock. First, he’s furious that his
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wife had ignored his request. Then, he finds a note beside the bed. It said,
"It’s 5:00 AM. Wake up."
I (Dave Richa) can totally relate to this kind of wall making,
especially with my wife, where I don’t enter into the danger of a healthy
conflict, but instead fall into the wall-making trap of using silence, or what
some might call “pouting” to get my point across.
See many of the wall-making things we do, whether it’s in our
marriages, our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces; we think
we’re putting up the wall because of what someone else did. We tell
ourselves we are just protecting ourselves. We might even feel wise for
doing so. But James, the brother of Jesus, gives us a different take on our
wall-making. He says:“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t
they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not
have…” (James 4:1-2a NIV) James is saying, “Get real! You put up walls
because you’re mad that you aren’t getting what you want.” In every
situation where there’s conflict, we’re either a wall-maker or a wallbreaker. And blessed are the people who break down the walls.
Peacekeeping does not Mean Peacemaking
(On screen: Matthew 5:9) Peace was a power-packed word in Jesus’
culture. It was the word “shalom,” which means “wholeness, goodness,
the way God intended things to be.” If we really want to understand what
Jesus is saying to us about being wall-breakers, we need to be careful that
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we don’t mistake peacemaking for something that can look like an attempt
at peace, but it’s not peacemaking. I’m talking about peacekeeping.
How many of you watched the World Cup this summer? I know
soccer is not a big sport in America, but if you watched the World Cup at
all, you can tell that the soccer fans throughout the world are crazy! In
fact, in some European soccer stadiums they often put up these huge metal
fences to keep the fans of one team away from the fans of the other
because over the years, literally hundreds of soccer fans have been injured
or killed in brawls between fans of opposing teams. The fences don’t do
anything to bring about ‘shalom,’ the wholeness that Jesus was talking
about. They don’t change the fact that people are willing to get drunk and
beat each other to death over a game. The soccer fences are all about
peacekeeping, not peacemaking.
And we can mistake peacekeeping for peacemaking in our own lives
as well. The classic example is the spouse or parent of an addict who
covers for the addict’s behavior, downplays it, or denies it all together.
Covering it up may keep the ruckus down, but minimizing the ruckus isn’t
peacemaking, it’s peacekeeping.
A father has a rebellious teen-age daughter who is pushing him to the
limits. A wife has a husband who is physically or emotionally abusive. A
co-worker is a bully in the office. We can try to just placate, try to limit
the open conflict so they don’t act worse, all the time telling ourselves that
we are just trying to keep the peace. But peacekeeping can actually be
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wall-making because behind the walls of silence and denial, there is no
real peace. Behind that wall, the problem only worsens. Peacekeeping is
actually wall-making because it walls out the possibility of any real
change.
Jesus never said, “Blessed are the peacekeepers.” He said, “Blessed
are the peacemakers,” the wall-breakers, because “Something there is that
doesn’t love a wall.”
Temple Example
When Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he was talking
about breaking down the walls that exist between people not just so that
hostility can cease but so that true peace, the shalom peace of God, can be
realized.
In ancient Israel we
find a fascinating example
of wall-making and see
Jesus Himself as the great
wall-breaker. I’m talking
about the temple that was
at the center of the worship
of God in Jesus’ time, the temple in Jerusalem. The temple was really a
building comprised of concentric walls, and there were very strict rules
about who was allowed beyond certain walls and who wasn’t.
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They called them “courts,” but they were really walled-off areas.
The first wall was called the Court of Gentiles. If you weren’t a Jew, you
could worship in here, but you couldn’t go any farther.
The second wall was inside that one and it was called the Court of
Women. If you were a Jew, you could go into the court of women to
worship, but if you weren’t a male Jew, you couldn’t go any farther.
Beyond this was a walled-off area called the Court of the Israelites,
which of course meant male Israelites. If you were a male Jew, you were
allowed in this area, but not beyond it unless you were a priest. If you
were a priest, you could enter another walled off area called the Court of
Priests. And inside the court of priests was another court, called the Holy
Place. Only certain priests were allowed into the Holy Place to worship.
And within the Holy Place was another walled off area, called the Holy of
Holies. And only one person, the High Priest, was allowed to go in there,
just once a year. The wall was actually this huge curtain that hung from
floor to ceiling. Even God was kept behind a wall, or believed to be kept
behind a wall, in the Holy of Holies.
The temple had walls based on race, gender and religious standards.
But, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
Jesus’ whole life was about breaking down the walls represented by
the temple.
 He reached-out to the Gentiles that no self-respecting Jew would go
near.
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 He interacted with women that male Jews didn’t even acknowledge
were present.
 He gave no special preference to the religious elite, the ones who
were considered more holy than the rest. In fact, he attacked the walls
that separated them from ordinary people because the religious
leaders were no more special in God’s eyes than anybody else.
Jesus spent his whole life wall-breaking wherever he went.
And check this out… You know that curtain that kept people walled
off from God in the Holy of Holies? Look at what happened when Jesus
died: “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top
to bottom.” (Matthew 27:51 NIV) Can you see the significance of that? It
meant Jesus was breaking down all walls: not just between people and
people, but between people and God. The Apostle Paul said of Jesus:
“For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and
Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he
broke down the wall of hostility that separated us… He brought this
Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him,
and peace to the Jews who were near. Now all of us can come to the
Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done
for us. (Eph. 2:14, 17-18 NLT)
Jesus was a peacemaker. And as his followers, we are called to be
peacemakers too. We are called to be wall-breakers because peacemakers
are not OK with walls. In fact, they hate them!
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So do you want to know what grieves the heart of God? When his
people do the whole wall-making thing just like everybody else.
Christians down through the ages have refused the blessedness of
peacemaking and have instead tolerated and perpetuated sexism, racism,
and classism. Too often we have been wall-making when we should have
been wall-breaking. So the question for us today is we will embrace this
blessing of committing our lives to Christ-following peacemaking?
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
4 Areas of Peacemaking
So where do we need to be peacemakers, to break down walls that we
have allowed to stand for too long? #1 is Between Us and God. This is
the most crucial wall that must come down in our lives, the wall built
between us and God. (On screen:“As for you, you were dead in your
transgressions and sins…” (Ephesians 2:1 NIV) Our sin, anything we do
that is against the will of God, builds a wall between us and him.
Sometimes we don’t recognize the wall that’s between us and God. We
think, “I’m a pretty good person, I help others when I can, I give some
money to charity, I go to church.” But understand, none of that breaks
down the wall of sin between us and God. Our sin separates us from him,
and there is nothing we can do on our own to bring down this wall.
(On screen: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in
mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in
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transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:4-5
NIV)) But God, in Jesus, steps in and does for us what we cannot do. His
sacrifice on our behalf tears down the wall that separates us from God. To
find our way back to him, all we need to do is confess our sin and receive
what God has done for us through Jesus. Friends, maybe for you, today is
the day where you need to say, “I have created a wall by my own sin, and
I cannot bring down that wall on my own. Jesus, do for me what only you
can do.” That’s area #1.
The second wall breaking area may be Between Me and Others.
Many of us have built walls between ourselves and other people. Maybe a
parent. Maybe a spouse or ex. Maybe a son or daughter. Maybe someone
you once called a close friend. What exists between you is a wall of
resentment and hostility and bitterness, or maybe by now it’s cooled down
to the most counterfeit peace of all, indifference. But it’s a wall. And
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” I don’t know who it is, but
chances are we all have a wall up against someone. And I believe the
Spirit of Christ is here right now speaking to our hearts saying, “Break
down that wall.”
It’s some risky stuff, isn’t it? There are no guarantees the
peacemaking efforts on our part will work. But hear the voice of the
Apostle Paul as he urges: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live
at peace with everyone.” (Romans 12:18 NIV) Maybe you’re thinking:
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“I’ve already tried with this person, why keeping beating my head against
the wall?” Look at what the blessing of peacemaking is: “Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9 NIV)
When Jesus says peacemakers will be called “sons of God,” he is saying
we are like our Father in heaven, we are like Jesus, when we choose the
hard road of peacemaking. When we break walls. When we work for
shalom. It cost Jesus his life to bring peace, but he did it anyway. “Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.”
#3 is breaking down walls Between Others and Others. Some of us
need to work in situations between people for peace, between family
members and family members, between co-workers and co-workers. You
might be where you are for a reason. Blessed are the peacemakers who try
to bring peace between people who have built walls.
And #4 is breaking down walls Between Others and God. As
Christ-followers and as a church, we need to remember that this is at the
center of who we are called to be, what we are called to do. Helping
people find their way back to God is the mission of the peacemaker. It’s
who we are called to be. Isn’t that the legacy we want to leave, to follow
in the footsteps of Jesus? To live for the mission of peace he started?
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.”
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
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Conclusion: Corrie ten Boom’s Prayer
I know this can be a hard topic and a HUGE step for many of us.
Some of our walls have been built for so long, and have been reinforced
over the years by so much pain, that we don’t think they can ever come
down. So let’s end with this… As daunting as the call to peacemaking,
wall-breaking can be, the good news is that God doesn’t ask us to be
peacemakers under our own power.
Corrie ten Boom was a woman who a prisoner in a Nazi
concentration camp during WWII. She was humiliated and abused by the
guards, lost most of her family when they were killed by the Nazis. And
after the war, she went all over Europe preaching forgiveness and peace;
and one time after she did, a man walked up to her and extended his hand
and asked if she would forgive even him. You know who he was: one of
the very guards who humiliated and abused her. She says she did not have
it in her to even shake his hand; the hurt and hate were so deep. But she
says she somehow prayed, “Jesus help me,” and she says it was only the
power of God that raised her hand to shake his.
So with that in mind, I want to ask everyone to bow their heads, and
with your head bowed, I want to pray for us, pray the prayer of Corrie Ten
Boom: “Jesus help me…”
Sample Prayer: Father, I know that in this room there are a lot of
walls built up, walls that have been built up for years, maybe even for
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decades. And Father, they have been built up over acts that have deeply
wounded, and for some of us, forever altered our lives.
Father – First, I pray that every person here knows of your deep love
for them, a love that can heal, a love that can bring hope, a love that is
patient, gentle, and kind. And Father, I pray that we first acknowledge the
wall of hostility that we have built up between us and you. There is no
way around it; we have sinned against you. We have left our first love, and
today, maybe for the first time, we own this wall, and in Jesus’ name and
through his power, we ask for this wall to be torn down.
Second, Father I pray for the walls that have been built up between us
and other people. Father, many of these walls we cannot break down in
our own power, and so we echo the words of Corrie Ten Boom, when we
pray, “Jesus, help me.” Help me to be a person who brings your peace,
who breaks down walls, who allows your peace to flow through me.
We pray this all in Jesus’ name – Amen.
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