Word of Salvation – Vol. 21 No. 41 – July 1975
The Making Of Peace-Makers
Sermon by the Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on John 20:21,22
Scripture Readings: Ezek. 37:1-14; Matt. 5:1-9; John 20:19-21
Psalter Hymnal: 184; 43 (2,3); 163; 404 (4,5); 406
Brothers and sisters, Boys and girls, Young people, congregation of our Lord Jesus –
One of the most interesting men of our decade – and at the same time one of the most tragic! – is the Jewish boy who became America’s Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger.
His role has been that of a peace-maker, and he must be one at heart, too, because I heard him weep over the radio when it became clear that the talks between Jews and Arabs had broken down. He is a Jew himself but he does not hate the Arabs.
Seeing his grief over those miscarried peace-talks, I felt a tremendous respect for the man, but I also thought: ‘boy, what a job!’
In the meantime Cambodia has been lost and Viet-Nam is too. The very nation Kissinger represents is accused of much of the bitterness and violence of that very Viet-Nam war. But its secretary of State is a man who weeps when men are bent on war instead of peace.
“Blessed are the peace-makers” said Jesus, “for they will be called children of God”.
But then it seems to be almost impossible to be a child of God. For who can make peace when everybody is out to make war? When nobody is willing to “give in”?
We are such an aggressive lot, whether we push a small operator out of business or a slow car off the road.
…Aggressive at home where husband and wife fight for their rights and children elbow each other out of their place at the trough;
…Aggressive even in the church where we get up and make our point, bitingly, with a sharp, distrustful edge, vying even there for first place.
Peace-maker in such a world.
Is that not: tears all the time… tears of frustration and bitter grief?
Well it is. Yes and yet this is the call for you and for me: To be peace-makers.
Shalom-bringers into a world full of strife.
Let us think about that this morning:
THE MAKING OF PEACE-MAKERS
1. they are greeted
2. they are told
3. they are sent… and…
4. they are enabled.
1. THEY ARE GREETED
“Shalom to you” says Jesus again. And now we know ‘shalom’ cannot possibly just mean the normal, absent-minded greeting – “Hello, good day!” As Jesus repeats this word again, we know it must be a proclamation: you have peace with God.
You happy people whose God is the Lord…
You who now know and forever may know the happy sound.
Yes He said it again.
Beaut, is it not?
Just as well, too.
He knows we need this repetition badly.
For we are forgetful.
We have a way of letting our tensions, our fears, our conflicts with ourselves, others. .or God at times get away with us.
We forget sometimes even sinfully,
…wilfully forget,
what Jesus said to us before, what is true more than anything else in the world, what is our hope, our security, our very life:
THAT GOD SAYS TO US: Peace unto you!
…to you of all people.
Peace in the blood of the cross.
And then we hear that at the Lord’s Table. And we are glad as we see the Lord! Or we hear it in a sermon that cuts us to the heart, so we rejoiced: amazed about the grace of our God. But we forgot – we wondered: what was it I was so excited about? But then there is the Lord and He says it to us again.
Most of you have had a Christian upbringing. Your parents told you – in all weakness of course – but they told you that you are called to be children of God. And you got to see it and professed your faith. And something stirred in you: God, it is then also for me? But then you forgot didn’t you? The world is so full of tensions and maybe you’re getting older a bit and you wonder what is the good of it all… you can’t get excited any more. . . and is that not why some go off to other churches where there is more enthusiasm? Because they want to be excited about it . . . they hunger for the sound of Jesus’ voice. The sound to get right into their being: It’s true, also for you: Peace… peace also to you… peace forever – in the blood of My Cross!
But listen to Him then… listen to Him as He speaks to you and He does it here!
He does it again, He repeats it and maybe you now hear it for the first time:
Shalom – peace to you: peace with God and therefore also:
ah yes peace with yourself
– acceptance of the place God gave you
– the family He gave you
– the years of your life He gave you
– the country where you may live
– and the task you may perform
– the brothers and the sisters you may share His gospel with
and . . . then again there is His voice –
The voice that said peace – and meant it and MADE that for you – is then also the voice that calls you.
It called the apostles – unfaithful as they had been – lousy followers of Jesus as they had shown themselves, and yet!
“Peace with you” He said – O wonder of His grace!
But then there now follows:
As the Father has sent Me… So I send you!
Listen carefully now, for before they are sent, the small men, to be peacemakers in a world bent on war, to be Kissingers in a place that will make them weep, BEFORE He does that He first tells them again the Gospel.
AS THE FATHER HAS SENT ME…!
That came first.
– Sent He was to shed His glory and become a Servant!
– Sent He was to become a man of sorrows and acquainted with our griefs!
– Sent He was to bring back to God what was hopelessly lost.
And He did that and completed it.
– Sent He was to bring life and light and hope back to people
who had only deserved death and darkness and despair.
As the Father has sent Me! says Jesus ― and look at Me now ― Did I get defeated? Was My Cross the finish?
As the Father has sent Me! says Jesus ― and look at Me what happened ―
Lo He sent me onto a road of sorrows
but that road led to victory
for the Father so loved the world that He gave His only Son
so that whoever believes in Me should not perish but have everlasting life!
As the Father has sent Me
into battle,
into suffering,
into death, yes,
but also into victory and everlasting song.
So – likewise – I send you!
I send you as My peace-Makers! And blessed they will be because they will be called children of God. The word apostle comes from the word Jesus used here:
as the Father sent Me out
so I send you, My ambassadors.
How lovely are the feet of them that bring the message of peace. That means: these are the messengers the world waits for. The welcome ones, who bring good news! For you see the creation of God is sighing in bondage, the creation of God is groaning in pain
because of death,
because of the pollution of human sin,
because of what man did
when he said he didn’t need God…!
But it is waiting with outstretched neck for the sons of God to appear and tell it of peace. When the laws of God shall again rule everywhere. When beauty and peace and love shall again rule instead of greed and ugliness and war.
Oh the Father did not send Jesus without sword or fire. The Father sent Him to bring division, parents against children – and friends against friends.
Division because he who is not for Him is against Him.
And yet: shalom! Peace.
At last to know my place… at last to love God’s law – not as a way I must earn salvation because Jesus GAVE ME THAT PEACE WITH GOD FULLY PAID FOR BY HIS BLOOD – but God’s law, His good law – as His will that we may again learn and WANT TO do. Peace says Jesus. I tell you now: you go and tell it to others tell it your family, your wife and your children – your tired husband, your ageing father go tell them it is peace, death is dead, we may relax and rejoice before the face of God.
So when your children look at you and wonder: is Dad a child of God, is he saved? must they guess and wonder if the Lord would suddenly take you? Or must you say: I am Dutch, I cannot talk about these things? Listen what Jesus says: PEACE TO YOU.
The Father sent Me to be your Saviour and Lord.
Now I am that whether you feel it all the time or not. I am that because I paid the price for your sins. I am that ― your Saviour and your Lord, so now I send you ― to make known to others the riches you have.
Maybe your words will be halting. Maybe your presentation is rather low-key. Never mind, as long as you remember: As the Father sent Jesus to do it all for you and tell you that YOU HAVE PEACE ― you HAVE what was promised you already in your baptism, you have it if you believe it even with ever so tiny a faith ― now you are sent in turn to tell ― to proclaim to leave no doubt. To be My peacemaker, says Jesus.
Be that in your family — and so you do not just pack them off to catechism or whatever, but you make sure they hear from you. Your life makes tremendous sense because you are privileged to tell THAT to your children. Never think that your being in this life makes little sense.
There are many mothers today who are bewitched by the silly stories that a life spent with the children in the house is somehow stunted and meaningless.
You — or so they tell you — are not contributing to life!
What rubbish! As if you were not the messenger of peace to your children so they in turn can be that to others again. By all means work or seek a task you can do outside the house if you have any time to spare. But Jesus, who sent His disciples first to Jerusalem and Samaria and only then to the ends of the earth, first of all makes you His ambassador of peace to your own household. WHAT A MEANINGFUL EXISTENCE!!
The first thing your children must know and may know from you is that wonderful gift of Jesus. But then you must pray, father and mother, that you will get the courage and the joy to tell them personally who Jesus is to YOU. They should never have to guess about that. They should know. And then these children – with us — may be peace-bringers to the world around us. That means the evangelism task of the church for one thing. That we know we are sent to make others know WHO JESUS IS. This is not just entrusted to a committee. This is not a matter of techniques or programmes. This is the never-ending attitude and message of a Christian who has his eyes open for those he can bring to Jesus.
That means for instance: to bring them here to the place where you hear of Him, and then not only bring them and make them feel warmly welcome, but also to make sure they understood what it was all about, the personal follow up of the Gospel. But apart from that peace to people, in the blood of Jesus there is the peace, the reconciliation of all things to God whether they be in heaven or on earth or under the earth. There is the main reason why we have Christian schools for our children.
Not just to keep them out of bad company and let them hear Bible stories! But to make them see how all things belong to God, and how all things — all of life must be brought back to God. Jesus who was sent by the Father to bring us back to God sends us — yes sends also our children, to bring others and to bring a world back to God. And we make it very hard for our children to ever learn to see that if we send them to places where they learn about the world with God left out.
Oh there will be tears when we go out peace-making. There will be bitter frustration at times because the world is steeped in sin and it still groans. It still sighs in bondage; it wants to sing to God its Redeemer and King but sinful men make it belch, stench — make it utter raucous cries of greed and dirtiness. Even when we want to bring peace in the Church and even when we want to make the church a better bringer of God’s peace in the world you will hear ungodly reactions, you will hear selfish sounds and a lot of lovelessness. In fact, when you hear Jesus say to you:
As the Father sent Me, so I send you
it would be possible that you say like Moses:
I cannot do it! What am I but a lump of clay?
It could be that you say: I am but a dead body, just a skeleton of dead bones.
How can I do this?
Maybe the disciples for all their joy felt that too.
Only so recently they had run away from their Lord, only such a few days ago had they denied their Master. And now: Jesus You send us in to the world…? As peace-makers…? As Kissingers in a world at war…? How can you pick me, pick US, LORD…?
But look then, for He not only picks.
He not only sends but He also (4) ENABLES…
For then He breathed on them and said: “RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT”. Strange that!
Was it the real thing or was it a sign of what was going to come on Pentecost Day, what they — said He later — had to wait for in Jerusalem, the Power from on high?
He breathed on them.
And we are reminded of what God did after He had made man as a lump of clay, on the very dawn of history. Then He made man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and thus man became a living soul, a being alive for God and for God’s creation!
Jesus knew and still knows that by ourselves all our attempts to bring peace even HIS peace that passes all understanding — must needs end in the frustrated tears of a Henry Kissinger. What an impossible job!
But when He breathes into dead lumps of clay they become living souls. When He puts His Spirit (and spirit and breath are the same word in the languages of the Bible) when He puts His Spirit, the Spirit of God, into a man, then that man is no more doing things on his own, but he does it through the very power of God. When Jesus sends people out to be His peacemakers, He makes them His peacemakers. Trust Me, He says, I will do it through you. My Spirit He will make a dead person into a living witness. The Same Spirit that brooded upon the waters and made them bring forth the beauty of sparkling life, The Same Spirit that put the song in the birds and the smell of sweetness into the flowers. That same Spirit I will put in you, so you will be changed. And we know how that became true! We know how that changed these men into wonderful witnesses of Jesus, the starters of a movement that in spite of all weaknesses and shortcomings of men, — has continued to offer this world the only hope it ever has had and the only hope it has now or will ever have. And yet how simple it all looked:
a man blowing,
breathing, on a bunch of other men.
“You go” He says “You go:”
― peace-makers in a world at war with God
― peace-makers to people at war with nature
― peace-makers to aggressive people at war with each other.
Tell them what I did. . . tell them Who I am! And how I made that peace. . . on a cross, dying for you.
Maybe that Spirit will smite you that you will weep first. Weep with tears better even than those of Kissinger. Tears for yourself, You who wasted God’s time, wasted Jesus’ blood. Yes, the tears of a peacemaker are honourable when they are tears for others and tears for a world that like Jerusalem ― when Jesus wept over it ― does not know what is good for its peace.
Jesus had to bring it. We did not know. But that is what that breath does. That simple breath of God, which is not necessarily making me speak in tongues or do other extra-ordinary things. That simple breath of God that makes me new a humble sinner amazed that God loved me. And then a joyful messenger telling tirelessly to children, loved ones, friends and even things, that Jesus did not die in vain and that He did not rise in vain. That God is King forever and therefore we are glad. Dad, your kids are waiting for you. Mum, for you, too. That you bring them this “shalom”.
Husbands and wives, you have a message to your beloved. A message to bring them in tenderness and caring and it is “shalom” ― it may be peace ― The Spirit says it’s possible if you are humble enough!
Workers of Australia, upon whom God has breathed, As the Father sent Jesus to be the messenger and bringer of peace and justice, so He now sends you. Not in your own strength. . . but in His. Not with your own words or ideas . . . but His.
No more dead stock and blocks but living souls.
No more just prey to your own black moods or angry feelings,
but crying out to Him that He will make you new.
For He said it and He said it again.
He is patient, but calls you to be obedient.
Shalom He says yes: shalom!
Peace you have,
so peace you bring.
What a beaut thing to live for.
Amen.