Sermon: Peace is costly but it is worth the expense

On the feast day of the Holy Trinity, St Peter in his first letter to the Romans, names Jesus the greatest Peace-Maker. This must be one of the most appealing titles of Jesus to the contemporary man in our post modern period. Ours is a world so troubled by all sorts of conflicts and violence. In brief, our history has been a history of wars. We are becoming so used to armed conflicts that we cannot imagine a future without wars! When ‘peace keepers’ declare peace between conflicting parties, we get a feeling that they are buying time to reload their guns, and often times we are right. Man’s experience of lack of peace is not recent. It existed at the time of Jesus and long before. That is why when Jesus said to his listeners, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, it must have sounded strange to the ears of the Jews struggling to live under the dominion of Rome. Many of them were Zealots who were planning some kind of resistance in order to force Romans out of their land. And these are the people that Jesus was calling to be peacemakers! Our situation is not different today. We are all struggling with the turmoil within and around us. This in turn makes us live in a different kind of hostility. Either we are in conflicts with rude people in circumstances which try our patience, or we ourselves do run into our share as troublemakers. And it is precisely in this situation of conflicts and trouble making that St Peter presents to us the figure of Jesus, the greatest Peace-Maker who wants us to follow his example. St. Paul in the Romans 5: 1-5 talks of the special peace and joy that we get due to our faith in God. According to him this peace and joy is so special and different from the one that the world gives: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives....” (Jn. 14:27) With these words Jesus seems to make a rather clear demarcation between two different orders or qualities, of peace. On one hand, the peace that the world can have some hope of creating for itself, and on the other, the peace Jesus offers to give to the world. It is rather clear that Jesus has some idea about the priority, the promise, and the value of each category of peace. For him, the peace he has to give is guaranteed as rock solid, while, at best, all other peace is shaky. (Mt. 7:24-27). Today, all our peace talk and peace literature show that we are having Jesus’ priority exactly reversed. As a result we often think of peace as the absence of conflict. But peace is more than that. God sees peace above all as the presence of righteousness which brings about right relationships. Peace is not just stopping a war; it is in bringing the two parties out of war together in love. God’s peacemakers don’t just stop wars; they replace the causes of war with the righteousness of God. Such peace makers do not aim at a truce but at peace. A truce is when people put down their guns and don’t shoot for awhile. True peace is when conflict is resolved, and the parties to it become friends. Some think that peace happens the instant the war stops. This is not always the case. In most cases the cause of the conflict needs to be resolved so that former enemies can come together as friends. The peace Jesus intended never evades issues; it would not be peace at any price. He meant the kind of peace which conquers the problem and builds bridges between people. It may definitely involve struggle, pain, and anguish! But that is the real peace; it is so costly but always worth the expense Ends