Relentless Peace Matthew 10:34-39 September 13, 2015 One of the difficulties of a sermon series is that when difficulties arise in interpreting the scriptural passages you can t punt and find another topic and another scripture. Sean and I decided on this series about two months ago and we came up with the topics. The first week was justice and mercy, last week was grace, and this week it is peace. As I just said; one of the difficulties in a sermon series is when difficulties arise with the interpretation of scripture. Well there are difficulties, at least on the surface with this topic. Did you catch it? The Lay Reader read just one verse from what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. And then I read these 6 verses from Matthew 10. Do you see the difficulty? As I worked through these two scriptures this week and I lived with the drama that is the 1
Washington Redskins and RG3, I wondered if Jesus might have been concussed when He spoke the words that Matthew records here in the 10 th chapter of his Gospel. I mean did Jesus forget the words that He spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. He wasn t that far removed from giving that message to His disciples; it wasn t a long time in the past when He said; blessed are the peace makers for they will be called sons of God. Now here He is telling this same group of disciples that while it might be great to be peace makers He isn t one Himself. In fact here He tells them that He didn t come to bring peace but a sword. He would turn families against each. Sons against fathers, Daughters against mothers, Daughter in laws against mother-in-laws, well maybe He didn t have to do too much with that last one. Oh come on, it s a joke. In fact it s been a staple of every stand-up comic who ever worked. Maybe Jesus was the quintessential politician who thought that He could say what seemed to be polar opposites 2
and those close to Him would never leak the contradiction. No Jesus wasn t into misinformation. He always spoke the truth, but the problem with the truth is that we are often so far from it we find it difficult to understand. Let me ask you something this morning; is a sports franchise or a business ever successful, in the long run, if they don t have an end game or a goal in mind? I think we all would agree that the answer is no. Here is another question is a business or that same sports franchise successful for a long time if they don t think about possible future consequences to current actions; even unintended consequences? Again the answer is no. Great example was the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession in 2008. For several years, as I understand it and I m not a economist and I don t know all the ins and outs of what happened, well meaning people in Government, on both sides of the aisle, democrats and republicans, worked to make 3
home ownership a reality for a greater percentage of the country. When I first bought a house in 1997, always lived in a house owned by the church prior to 97, I was required to have a down payment of 20% of the purchase price. If I couldn t do that I had to have PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance which wasn t cheap). I was made to produce my W2 for the past two years plus my tax returns for those same two years. If my work history was inconsistent or my credit score was low I paid a higher interest rate on my loan. In addition the mortgage company wouldn t let that mortgage amount be more than 40% of my take home pay. By the time we got to 2004 I was getting calls from mortgage brokers who were offering my loans at 1 ½%. That would have been great if the Prime Rate wasn t hovering around 6%. I always asked them where they could get money to loan to me at 1 ½% when the Prime was 6%. They all (and I got several of these calls) replied that they bundled their loans 4
so they got better rates. Sure they might have shaved ¼ or a ½% but not 4 ½%. On one occasion when telling them that something smelled fishy in their offer didn t work; I tried another tack. I said that I didn t want to go through the hassle of getting all the documents together to prove that I was gainfully employed and could afford to make the monthly mortgage payments. They told me that the new loan regulations didn t require that I showed all of that stuff. Those law makers who relaxed the rules and regulations for mortgages, I believe, had good intentions. They wanted more Americans to own homes, but they should have been able to fore see the end game and the future consequences. If you give loans to people who can t afford the loans, no matter how good your intentions are, the ultimate consequence will be that these same people will lose those homes and the country will have a major economic disaster. 5
And before you think that there is any political agenda here those new rules for lending were supported by 2 Presidents one Democrat and one Republican. They also were pushed through the Congress by both Republicans and Democrats. I m saying all of this not to give you a political analysis or an economics lesson. I m not qualified to give either. The reason why I gave this analogy was to point out that if you haven t considered the end game then often the best intentions end in disaster. Jesus always knew His end game. His goal/end game was always about bringing people into His Father s Kingdom and not about this world. He wasn t nearly as interested in this world as He was in the one to come. He didn t come to solve the problems that the Jews had with Rome, but to solve the problems that human beings had with His Father. His Father s children were separated from their Father and their God. 6
It s really very simple and I feel that all my messages are all very similar to one another. But I take comfort in the fact that Jesus had the same problem. He was relentlessly about one thing; and that was making peace between God and His creation. Jesus was a relentless peace maker between God and His creation; that s why He came into this world That s why there really isn t a disconnect between these two passages. And yes Jesus was cleared to preach and showed no signs of concussive symptoms. These two passages aren t saying different things. In Matthew 5 Jesus is telling His closest friends, and if you read verse 1 carefully you will see that Jesus gave this sermon only to His disciples. But that s another message for another time. In these verses that we know as the Beatitudes Jesus tells His disciples that they will be blessed if the become peacemakers. Now I m not a scholar in early Church history, but I can t recall one disciple or disciple of a disciple who went out and 7
started peace rallies. I don t remember the early church forming a 1 st version of the U.N. to stop all wars. I own the writings of the early church fathers and I don t recall any of them getting together to write and sign petitions that they sent to Rome to bring the troops home. No, all of those men and women understood what Jesus meant. They were to give their all to bring people into a relationship with Jesus in order that they would have peace with God. They were to work share this message of God s Grace with as many people as possible so that those people would find their way into the Kingdom of God. Now don t get me wrong. I m not opposed to working for peace on this earth. I applaud all those who choose occupations that work toward world peace. But that isn t what Jesus is talking about here or if it was then His statement in Matthew 10 would make Him a man either of contradictions or a nut. 8
On the one hand He tells His disciples that they will be blessed if they work for peace in this world and on the other He tells them that He hasn t come to bring peace but a sword. A man who could make two such polar opposite statements is either a nut or He is concussed and shouldn t have been cleared to preach by His neurologist. No, He was cleared to preach by His Father. And Jesus always had and end game and He always worked toward that end game. His mission was to bring people into His Father s Kingdom. So when He spoke the words that Matthew records in the 10 th chapter of his Gospel He was only talking about what the reality of what would happen. This reality was that some who heard His message would joyously accept the grace that He brought and would follow Him. This simple action of following Him wouldn t bring peace but it would tear families apart. Parents and children at odds with each other. 9
This was never the intention but Jesus understood the world He was a part of and He understood His audience. These were Jews many of whom could never accept that He was their promised Messiah. This wasn t a message that would bring peace, but it was the message that the world needed to hear then and the one it needs to hear now. Like I said 2 weeks ago, we live in a fallen and broken world. And if history has taught me anything we are never going to change that. If the 20 th century didn t teach us that I don t know what will. In 1918 we concluded the war to end all wars and less than 21 years later we had one that made the first one look like a little skirmish and we haven t stopped having wars ever since. Again, please don t misunderstand me, it s great and noble thing to work for peace in this world and I will. I will also work for justice and equality, but in all of these endeavors I know that I will fail. Because this world is broken beyond repair. 10
That is why my greatest efforts will be as a relentless peacemaker for God. To introduce men and women to that grace that Sean talked about last week. This is the grace that brings people into a relationship with their creator. This is a relationship that brings people into the Kingdom of God. This is a relationship that brings true peace, and this is the only peace that will last. But it won t be without a cost, for us to be peacemakers. Jesus goes on in the passage that I read this morning with some pretty harsh statements. Unless our love for Him exceeds our love for anyone else then we aren t worthy of Him. And unless we take up our cross and follow Him we aren t worthy of Him. I m going to offer you 2 caveat s on these statements by Jesus. First this is the Jesus who died on the cross that we might have the grace that brings us into salvation and into God s Kingdom. Again Jesus isn t the purveyor of contradictions. It is by grace that we are saved through faith as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:8,9. So it is also by grace that 11
we have such a love and are able to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We never are worthy of Him. It is Jesus who makes us worthy by His grace. The second caveat is that this is the journey of a lifetime. None of us comes to Jesus Christ with that kind of love that takes up the cross and carries it carries it everyday. This kind of love is something that we grow into as we make the journey. We are called to begin that journey and to continue it for our entire lives. So what do we do with all of this stuff? How are we to become peacemakers for God? Let me offer you one very simple thing; be filled willing to be God s vessel of grace. Jesus was relentless in His pursuit of His Father s children, children created in His Father s image, children who were lost and would be for all time if He wasn t relentless in His pursuit of making peace. 12
It is by grace that people find God s Kingdom. As Sean said last week the early disciples didn t build the Kingdom of God through great preaching. Paul was known as a poor preacher and Peter was known as a great preacher. But if Peter s sermon in Acts 2 is an example of his preaching then it wasn t preaching that caused the church and hence the Kingdom of God to grow so rapidly. It was the Holy Spirit who made men and women vessels of God s grace to the world. Vessels that carried the grace of God to the 4 corners of the world. So let s decide that we are willing to be those same vessels in the 21 st century so that we can be God s peacemakers relentless in our pursuit of God s lost children. 13