"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." Well, who wouldn’t like to be that?! Who wouldn’t want to be a peacemaker and be rewarded by God and by a grateful world? "Blessed are the peacemakers."
The trouble is, it’s not that easy. You and I may fantasize ourselves doing something decisive for the cause of peace, but it’s not that simple.
A friend of mine likes to tell a story on himself. He lives in New York, and had gone to the United Nations to look around. Somehow he got separated from the tour group and found his way, all alone, into the great chamber used by the General Assembly. It was entirely empty -- not a sign of anyone around. No tourists, no guards, no delegates -- no one.
And so my friend conceived a little fantasy. Up there was the great marble podium behind which visiting heads of state and other dignitaries give their addresses. He knew that from that desk various American presidents had spoken, as had assorted Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens, the Pope, the Dalai Lama -- the most prominent people in the world had spoken from that place and had showered their wisdom on the world’s representatives.
Well, thought my friend, since no one is around, I’m just going to step up here and see what it would look like and feel like to be at the podium of the General Assembly of the United Nations. And when he stepped behind that massive desk and looked out at the empty chamber, he began to imagine what it would be like if the room were to be filled with delegates .. and if he had been asked to give a speech.
Well, again, since there was no one around, and since there was no harm in it, my friend just decided to fantasize a bit more, and he started to make up a speech about peace. He began to orate about nuclear disarmament. He looked over to where the Russian delegates would be sitting, had they actually been in the room, and he delivered a scathing condemnation of Marxism and Communism. He then turned to where his own American delegation would have been sitting, had anyone actually been there, and he pounded the podium, blistering American materialism. He spent about ten minutes just telling off the whole world and producing all the answers to all the peace-making issues everywhere around the globe.
It would have been a tremendous occasion, had there actually been anyone listening. And he ended the fantasy imagining himself leaving the platform to the cheers and standing ovations of delegates from scores of nations, all of whom would now go to work to put into place all of his priceless insights.
He then left the General Assembly chamber; he saw a tour group go into a corridor and decided to join them. Not two minutes later they were behind some windows, and the guide was saying, "Out there you see the chamber of the General Assembly. These are one-way windows, so that you can see what is happening in the chamber, but they cannot see you."
It dawned on my good friend that during his ten minutes of fantasy, more than likely several tour groups had passed the one-way windows. And it did not take too much effort for him to imagine what they thought about this wild man up there preaching to an empty chamber!
But I would tell you that many of our efforts at peace-making are just like that. Sheer fantasy. Speaking into empty air. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God". We certainly would like to do that, except that we can only do it in our fantasies. Somehow it never really works out in the real world. Somehow we never get it said, except in our dreams. Somehow we never get the work of peacemaking done so that it makes any difference.
With all that is happening, I know that there has to be a degree of frustration among us this morning about peacemaking. You’d like to do something about the Persian Gulf situation, but what? And how? You may have some convictions about it, but how can they be heard’? You’d like to do something about the drug wars on the streets, but how? Who will listen to you; you make speeches in your own home, but what good does that do? You’d even like to resolve conflicts in your own household, but you just end up working out the answers up in your own head and never really get it done. We are peacemakers, maybe, but only in our fantasies.
But, "Blessed are the peacemakers". How are we going to become effective peacemakers? Let me suggest some strategies.
I
First, in order to contribute toward making peace in the world, you and I have to have peace in our own relationships. If we are going to have anything credible to say and to offer to a war-weary world, then that has to be based in our own peace-filled relationships.
If you look at the world’s grim history, I think you will find that so much of the time when nations have gone to war, it has been because of poor interpersonal relationships. Some king felt slighted by some other king; some powerful person felt insulted by some other powerful person. And the quality of their relationships was so poor that they drove whole nations to war.
I do not want to oversimplify, but I wonder how the world’s history might have been different if people in places of leadership had worked at the personal level to resolve their differences. I wonder what would have happened if President Bush and Saddam Hussein, early on, had decided on a man-to-man face-to-face encounter. Maybe nothing. But then who knows? Do you remember that a few years ago President Carter brought Israel’s Prime Minister Begin and Egypt’s President Sadat to Camp David and made them talk to each other instead of past each other? What happened? Peace broke out, that’s what. One of the ways to world peace is authentic personal relationships.
Well, you and I may not be able to get those two together. Things have gone too far for that. But I do know that what we can do is to confront those whose actions are wrong. When I talk about peace-filled relationships, I don’t mean some kind of namby-pamby milquetoast business. I mean the tough love of confronting someone else with their wrongness.
Again, I do not want to oversimplify. But I have to wonder what difference it would have made in the world’s history had thousands of German Christians stood up to Hitler’s mad pretensions in the 1930’s. Might we have avoided a world on fire in the 1940’ s? What if southern white Christians had stood up to the Klansmen and the Wallaces and the Bull Connors in the 1950’ s? Might we have avoided the anguish of the Civil Rights movement, might we even have avoided the assassination of Dr. King?
The trouble is, I am saying, that most of us are not willing to do that. Most of us are not willing to confront somebody who is disturbing the peace. Most of us do our speeches to empty chambers, in our own fantasies, and we are not willing to take the risk of peace-making – which is confronting the offender personally. If you would be a peacemaker, you have to begin with your own interpersonal relationships; you have to make them right, or else you can never expect to have an effect on the world. If you would be a peacemaker, in fact, you have to tend your own interpersonal relationships by standing up for what you believe to be right; you have to confront those who have offended you. You have to take responsibility for what is happening between you and that other person.
But, as I’ve said, the trouble is most of us don’t do that. We are afraid to do that. We say what we think only to an empty chamber. Why is that? Why can’t we make peace in our interpersonal relationships?
II
So take another step with me. I want you to see that to make peace in interpersonal relationships, we first have to make peace with ourselves. In order to be effective in making peace with others, we first have to be at peace with ourselves.
You see, when you look inside and identify your own feelings, one of the things you see is that how you feel about yourself gets projected on to the way you deal with other people. And so if you do not have peace with yourself; if you have not accepted yourself; if you feel conflicted about yourself, inevitably that will color the way you deal with others. And folks who do not have peace with themselves will get all crossways in their relationships.
Let me illustrate out of my own career. Twenty years ago this coming month I resigned my position as campus minister at the University of Kentucky to come to Washington and work as campus minister at the University of Maryland. I did that not only because I felt called to begin that work at Maryland, but also because things were not good back at Kentucky. My supervisor and I just seemed to have a deteriorating relationship. I would report to him that I was doing this or that with my ministry, and he would answer back in some cutting critique, some sarcastic remark. And it had become perfectly obvious to me that this relationship was in trouble.
So I decided I ought to confront him. I decided I ought to write out for him a justification for what I was doing. And I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote … some of you know what I’m talking about … I am still capable of hammering out the world’s longest memos! I interpreted what I was doing and why I was doing it. I took a few swipes at the person who had had the job before me. I took some more swipes at the students who had not cooperated. I even hinted that if there had been more support from his office, things would have gone better. I really took charge of this relationship; I confronted, just as I’ve said peacemakers ought to do!
The answer came back in a one-sentence letter. "Perhaps now is the time in which you ought to be thinking of changing the geography of your ministry." "Changing the geography of your ministry" – what a complicated way of saying, get another job before I fire you! And so I did.
But what I later discovered is that both of us, both of us, had messed up that relationship because we were not at peace with ourselves. My supervisor, as it turns out, had a serious illness which was affecting him both in body and in spirit, and he did die a couple of years later. He was certainly not at peace with himself.
But I was not at peace with myself either. I was young, immature, insecure – and I needed approval so much that I could not act responsibly to create a peaceful relationship with anybody else. I was too much a mess myself to be able to own and repair a broken relationship with someone else.
In order to be a peacemaker, you have to be able to make peace-filled interpersonal relationships by confronting others with their wrongs. But in order to be able to make these peace-filled interpersonal relationships, you have to be able to be at peace with yourself. You have to be able to own your own feelings, your own immaturity. Now how are we going to achieve that?
III
In the final analysis, there is one and only one way to achieve peace with ourselves, and that is to have peace with God. I see no other answer. I see no other avenue. If we would have peace with ourselves, if we would have a strong self-image, then we must begin by finding peace with the God who made us, who loves us, and who keeps on reaching out toward us.
You see, the Bible teaches that you and I are created in the image of God and after His likeness.. that means that we are made for fellowship with God. That means that we don’t function right if we are out of touch with Him. That means that if we don’t get this one thing right, nothing else will be right.
We cannot be effective as peacemakers out there in the world because we haven’t really learned how to confront one another properly and build peace-filled relationships.
And we cannot seem to build peace-filled relationships because we haven’t really discovered and dealt with our own immaturity and brokenness.
And we cannot fix our own brokenness and grow out of our immaturity -- why not? Because we have not gotten right down to the roots, right down to the ground of our being, who is God, and found peace with Him.
Oh, then hear the word of God for us today. Hear the word of grace and of possibility. Paul in the Roman letter says, "We are justified by faith, so then we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
"We are justified by faith, so then we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Our God has already done the one thing most important for all of this to fit into place; our God has come in Jesus Christ, He has taken into Himself our weakness, our sin, our brokenness; He has mysteriously and wonderfully absorbed into Himself our immaturity, our timidity, our incompleteness. And in His cross He has done what is necessary to bring us home to Himself.
Listen; listen: "While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly … God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us ... while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." God offers us the gift of peace, and if we’ll just receive that, everything else falls into place.
Several years ago a friend of ours died after a long, devastating illness. Those of us who gathered for her funeral felt so low, so lost. We were facing our own vulnerability, of course. We were confronting the fact that we too would someday die, and that it might for anyone of us be this same kind of long, slow, debilitating illness. And I remember how wounded I felt as I sat and waited for the service to begin. But out to the pulpit walked someone whom I knew; unknown to me, he had been counseling with this friend, helping her prepare to die. And just seeing him, knowing him, knowing his spiritual depth ... just seeing him gave me the feeling, "It’s going to be all right. I’m going to be all right." Feeling his peace with God gave me peace with myself too.
Peace with God is given to us. Peace with God is there for us. All we have to do is to trust Christ for it. And everything else will fall into place.
Peace with God makes peace when there is no peace. Peace with God gives us peace with ourselves. And peace with ourselves gives us the ability to create authentic peace-filled relationships. And authentic peace-filled relationships empower us to be effective peacemakers in a war-weary world.
Just begin at the right place. That’s the whole message this morning. Just begin at the right place. Begin as these men began a few minutes ago, accepting peace with God given in Jesus Christ, following Him in baptism. Begin as countless millions have begun, finding peace when it seemed there was no peace, trusting in God’s gift. "We are justified by faith, and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ".
Won’t you begin? Have you begun? Do you know Him? Have you acknowledged Him as Savior and Lord? You want to do something great for the world? Begin by doing something great for yourself ... "reconciled to God through the death of His Son" "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" Yes, peacemakers can start by becoming one of the children of God.
