PRAYER AS PRELUDE TO
PEACEMAKING Ps 85:4-11, Rom 5:6-11, Mt 5:43-48, Acts 10:30-48 Todd Friesen, LMC, November 8, 2009 Series Recap In Life of Brian, Monty
Python’s comedy film (1979), there’s a scene where some people are too far away
from Jesus when he preaches the Beatitudes. Since they can’t hear him clearly,
they mistakenly hear him say: “Blessed are the cheesemakers.” A very funny conversation
then follows about why Jesus would single out manufacturers of dairy products. Thank
you, Aaron, for your excellent reading today and for making it absolutely clear
that Jesus is talking about peacemakers
rather than cheesemakers! We’re now in the 7th Sunday in our 8-part series on the
Beatitudes. Along the way, we’ve been discovering that Jesus’ Beatitudes are
not a “to-do list” but his invitation to enter into a new world—a worldwide kingdom
of peace and grace and wholeness where’s God’s reign has already begun. This
alternate reality is real but can only be seen through the eyes of faith. And
the Beatitudes help us to see what living
in this kingdom actually looks like. As Jesus models in his own life, it
means being poor in spirit and reliant on God, mourning and weeping over the
gap between how things are and how God intends them to be, being meek and
gentle, hungering and for what is right and good, and being patient when
persecuted and under attack.[1]
Making Peace with Enemies But as we all know, seeking first
God’s kingdom in our broken and sinsick world is rarely easy. And let’s
just be honest, the peacemaking and enemy love that Jesus talks about today
often feel impossible, don’t they? Especially when we realize that he’s not
only talking about loving our enemies in far away lands but also the ones
nearby—our rude neighbor, selfish colleague, obnoxious relative, and person who
has deeply hurt us. For this reason, enemy
love has been called “the most admired but least practiced…teaching in
history.”[2] The reality is that making peace with our enemy goes against all our
human instincts. If Jesus didn’t call us to it, I’m quite sure I’d never even consider
it! In fact, before I became of follower of Jesus…I never did! Enemy love
doesn’t come to us naturally. Maybe that’s why I felt the Holy Spirit guiding
me to notice—in our Scriptures this week—how prayer precedes and lays the foundation for making peace with our enemies.[3]
Shalom But before we explore
this link, let’s briefly remember how the Bible literally brims over with the
theme of God’s peace. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom and is found more than 250 times in the Old Testament.[4]
In the Bible, peace doesn’t just mean the absence
of war and violence; God’s shalom means the presence
of three other things as well:[5]
·
First,
shalom means physical well-being: In Gen. 37:14, Jacob asks Joseph to go check on the “shalom” of his
brothers. Do they have enough to eat? Do they have all that they need? ·
Second,
shalom means relational well-being between people and nations: There is fairness
and justice; no one is oppressed or excluded. ·
Third,
shalom means moral well-being: There is ethical integrity, faithfulness, honesty,
and trustworthiness.
Peter and Cornelius The early church
only slowly comes to realize that, through Christ, God has broken down the walls
of hostility that once divided Jews and Gentiles (Eph 2:14). In Acts 10 today,
we see people struggling mightily to live into this new reality. And notice how
God chooses two people of prayer (Peter and Cornelius) to be the nucleus of a
new body, a church of former enemies.[8]
It all begins one
noon when Peter is praying. It’s
lunchtime and his stomach is growling when he falls into a trance.[9] The
heavens suddenly open and three times he’s invited to eat every unclean animal
forbidden by Hebrew scripture: pigs, camels, badgers, buzzards, ostriches, vultures,
and crocodiles (Lev 11). Can we blame Peter for saying: “No thank you”? The Holy Spirit then
leads Peter to go visit Cornelius: a
Roman officer! Now eating pork is one thing, but visiting a hated enemy in
the Roman military headquarters in Later at Cornelius’
home, Peter preaches peace to them “by Jesus Christ” (10:36). And to his great
surprise, the Holy Spirit falls upon these Gentiles and they joyfully begin to
praise God (10:46). Now, Peter finally begins to understand that God’s shalom is
meant for all people! Flowing with God, Peter has everyone baptized.[11]
All of us here—Gentiles!—are part of God’s family because of God’s miraculous
peacemaking ventures like this one. Like Parent, Like Child Both of our readings today from Matthew highlight our identity as God’s
children. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God” and “Love your enemies
and pray for [them] so that you may be children
of your Father in heaven.” One commentator, Ron Sider, says that a core aspect of God’s
holiness—God’s otherness—is that God
loves his enemies.[12]
In Romans 5 today, we learn that
God “proves his love for us” by coming to make peace with us through Jesus
Christ even while we’re still his enemies (Rom 5:10). In the same way, we are called to
reflect God’s holiness as well by loving our enemies. Why? Because this is what
God is like![13]
Like Parent, like child! Making peace is “a family trait in God’s family.”[14] And overcoming evil with good is maybe the most evangelical thing we can ever do. As the Amish
showed us at the Nickel Mines shooting, enemy love rivets the world’s attention
on the awesome and boundless love of God.[15] Prayer But how is this kind of love possible? Think again about your rude
neighbor, selfish colleague, obnoxious relative, or the person who has deeply
hurt you. It’s been said that our best
human instinct is just to be able to tolerate our enemy, our average instinct is to retaliate in kind,
and our worst instinct is to wipe
them out.[16] So how
can we ever hope to love them? Hidden in our Scriptures today, I believe, is our answer: prayer. Prayer intimately connects us to
God—who softens our hearts and melts away our hostility.[17]
Jesus never tells us not to have enemies; he knows that we always will.[18]
Instead, he teaches us to pray for them.[19]
Jesus also models this kind of radical prayer on the cross: “Father, forgive
them; for they do not know what they are doing.”[20]
In the story of Peter and Cornelius, God reconciles Jewish and Gentile enemies through two people whose hearts have been
softened by prayer. Do you remember the story I shared two Sundays ago
about our conference minister’s prayer for God to give him a tender love for
every church in his care? There too, prayer made space for peace with a congregation
long alienated from our conference.[21]
Beginning to Pray for our
Enemy So if we’ve never prayed for our enemy (many Christians never have), how
do we start? ·
We can pray for new eyes—to be able to see God’s image
in them; to see them as a precious child of God for whom Jesus died.[22]
·
We can pray for infusions of grace—to soften our heart
toward this person and to melt away our own hostility and hatred. ·
We can pray for alertness—to be ready when a door for peace
swings open. Without prayer, we often fail to recognize or to seize these
opportunities. ·
But what if our enemy is
unsafe and a danger to us? Then we can simply release them into God’s care and pray
for the grace to forgive them. ·
Above all, we need to
“persevere in prayer” (Rom 12:12), making it a daily habit to pray for the
difficult relationships in our lives… As LMC’s verse for 2009 says: “Ask, and
it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be
opened for you” (Mt. 7:7). “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus says, “for they will be called the
children of God.” Peacemaking isn’t just for far away war zones. It’s something
that must begin in our homes, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our church.
And by God’s design, it invariably begins in hearts that have been softened by prayer… Amen. [1] Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone: Part 1, p. 53. [2] Steve Chalke, The Lost Message of Jesus, p. 127. [3] Some even believe that the whole purpose of the
Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount is to lead us to turn to God in prayer
for what is beyond our ability ever to do on our own. Ulrich Luz, Matthew
1-7: A Commentary. Jesus mentions prayer four times in his Sermon on the
Mount: [4] Perry Yoder, Shalom, p. 19. [5] For more on shalom, see these books: Perry Yoder, Shalom, p. 10-23; Alan & Eleanor Kreider, A Culture of Peace, p. 28; Willard Swartley, Send Forth Your Light, p. 24. [6] Perry Yoder, Shalom, p. 17. [7] Alan & Eleanor Kreider, A Culture of Peace, p. 34. [8] I’m greatly indebted in this section to the many fresh insights found in A Culture of Peace, p. 18-27, by Alan and Eleanor Kreider. [9] Like all faithful Jews, he likely prays three
times a day: morning, [10] Alan and Eleanor Kreider, A Culture of Peace, p. 12. [11]
He even does something that no good Jew would ever do and stays in this
Gentile’s home for several more days. Acts [12]
Quoted in Willard Swartley, Send Forth
Your Light: A Vision for Peace, [13] God makes, it says in Mt 5:45, “his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” About this Volf writes: “…only grace can pry open the door that has been shut in its face. So God continues to give to the ungrateful and to forgive the unrepentant. Christ stands before the closed door of a grace-resistant heart and knocks gently with a nail-pierced hand.” Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 205. [14]
Richard Kauffman, Making Peace with
Enemies (pamphlet). Thomas Long, Matthew,
p. 64. As Jesus tells us today, God makes “his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good” (Mt [15]
J. Daryl Byler, “In the Presence of my Enemy,” The Mennonite, [16]
Willard Swartley, Send [17]
J. Daryl Byler, “In the Presence of my Enemy,” The Mennonite, [18]
This crucial point is made in a number of places. See Richard Kauffman, Making Peace with Enemies (pamphlet).
Jim Schrag, “Habits of the Missional Church,” Equipping, September 2004. J. Daryl Byler, “In the Presence of my
Enemy,” The Mennonite, [19] Glen Stassen, Just
Peacemaking, p. 81. Praying for our enemies means confessing that we
actually have ones! We often hide this reality, but Jesus doesn’t. He knows
that we’ll always have enemies and that we’re always going to need God’s help. [20] Glen Stassen, Just Peacemaking, p. 82. Luke 23:34. [21] Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust, p. 47. He talks about “making room for God in the world by prayer.” [22] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 86. |
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