The Way Back Home: The Peacemakers | Part 7

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Okay, here's the problem with introductions.

I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

So over the top.

Give me a break.

But I do, do love Ryan.

I am so glad to be here this morning because I was helping at the beginning of when Awakenings was forming, and Ryan invited me to go with a small group of you down to Aptos area, and we did a weekend retreat on building community.

And it's just fun to see now, years later, what's happened.

And Ryan was hilarious.

So all through the weekend, we're teaching about relationships and community and how long it takes.

And at the end of the retreat, he prayed, God, would you microwave our community?

I'm like, were you listening at all?

But it's just really fun to be here.

And I'm excited to step into your series on the Sermon on the Mount and spend a little bit of time this morning talking about blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

And I don't know about you, but after these last couple years, I could use a little more peace.

And what I'd love for you to do this morning as I'm talking is to just think about in your own life, where is a place that you could apply this to this morning?

Where are you feeling the need for peace?

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Now, what's really important to understand is the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes.

This wasn't a list of one-line adages that if you do each one of them, something amazing happens.

It's not at all what Jesus was doing here.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Beatitudes was painting a picture of what life was meant to be.

It is a sweeping view of a place you never thought existed.

It is an invitation to look at the kingdom of God and to choose it over the world that we live in and integrate and bring the two together.

I think one of the big problems is that you and I were created for a perfect world.

That's in our DNA.

And we live in a broken world.

And I tell God all the time, this was not one of your best ideas.

It's really hard to live in between those two.

To have been woven into the fabric of our lives is Eden, and we are trying to recover it ever since it broke.

That Eden is lost, and its loveliness remains in our hearts and in our imaginations, and we're always trying to find our way back.

So Jesus is painting a picture to say these aren't little adages to try to improve yourself.

This is a picture of Eden restored.

And there ought to be a gravitational pull in us because of this DNA that, like, this is how I want to live.

I'm gonna date myself here, but is there anybody in the room that remake remembers a movie from 1971 called Soylent Green?

Yes! Three of us.

Okay, let me tell you a little bit about Soylent Green.

I'm gonna probably name two actors you have no idea of Charlton Heston, Edward G.

Robinson.

It was an apocalyptic movie.

Yep, they were doing those back, even back in the 70s.

And the world had turned gray and dark and awful.

People had to live cramped together.

There was no color, there was no life on Earth.

They ate a paste called Soylent Green to keep nutrition up.

It was like a nuclear holocaust had happened.

And Edward G.

Robinson and Charlton Heston lived together in this little apartment.

And one day, Charlton Heston came home looking for Edward G.

Robinson and he wasn't there.

And part of what happened in the government, in whatever country this was supposed to be, is they had a program of euthanasia because they needed to get less people on the earth.

So if you were old, you could opt to go into the hospital, be hooked up to an IV, and over 10 minutes pass away.

And when you did, you would lie on a gurney in a surround sound theater, much like this, with screens all the way around you, and to the haunting strings of Vivaldi, they would show pictures of the earth when it was magnificent.

And there were rushing brooks and beautiful mountains with snow on them, and crashing waves and deer coming out to eat in a valley, and Edward G.

Robinson is lying on that gurney watching it beaming with tears in his eyes.

Charlton Heston begins to think, I bet he's gone to the hospital, and he starts to run fast and he runs into the room to stop the procedure from happening, and he is stopped dead in his tracks.

And he is right next to Edward G.

Robinson and he's leaning over and he's looking at the screens and his mouth drops open and he freezes.

Because he never saw the world that way.

Edward G.

Robinson was old enough to be remembering.

And then there's this great scene where he just shakes his head from side to side and says, I had no idea.

I had no idea.

And I remember watching that, I don't even think I was in high school yet.

And being so captivated by that moment.

I have that screenshot picture of Charlton Heston on my phone.

Because this passage that we're reading isn't a list of do's and don'ts.

It's not a map to a behavioral modification program.

It's an invitation to understand this is the way God made the world to work.

And if you fully understand the kingdom of God, your mouth will open and you will shake your head and say, I had no idea.

Spoiler alert, Sorlent Green, the paste they eat, is actually made out of dead people, but that's a whole nother sermon, so we won't go there.

Now y'all are gonna watch it, aren't you?

So in this passage, Jesus is painting a picture and using the Hebrew and the Greek word shalom, which they would use to greet people like a hello, but it is such a rich word.

It really is a word that's depicted in soil and green.

It is, according to Cornelius Planiga, who's a Christian philosopher, shalom is this universal flourishing, wholeness and delight, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder.

In other words, the way things ought to be.

And I think it's really important this morning as we unpack what does it mean to be a peacemaker, that it sits in that context.

And when we do this work of peacemaking, it is divine work that we're doing.

It reflects the nature of who God is.

It reminds us that this is God's deepest desire, is for peace on earth.

So often in Paul's letters to the churches, he opens them up saying greetings from the God of peace and love and hope.

And he closes them describing God as a God of peace.

So for a minute, let's consider the words of Jesus.

Not just this one verse, but what he had to say throughout the Gospels.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?

No, I tell you, I came to bring division.

Father against son, mother against daughter.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Upon reaching the temple, Jesus began to drive out all those who were buying and selling and overturned the temples, the benches and the tables in the temple.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Jesus looked around in great distress and anger at them.

How do we put all this together?

What does it mean to be a peacemaker?

It's not as simple as we might think.

Because Jesus said those words, but he also said the other words that I read.

So we're going to spend just a few minutes unpacking what does it mean to be a peacemaker?

It doesn't mean to be a peacekeeper.

There's a big difference.

Peacekeeping often involves being passive, being avoidant, creating pseudo-harmony.

And here's the danger here is because we gravitate in that direction, we begin to have spiritual formation in following Jesus at an incredibly superficial level in our lives that doesn't withstand the trials because it's just veneer.

Under the guise of being spiritual, we will not say something when we ought to say something.

We will make it our fault and say, it just must be me, and we won't move towards the other person to engage in the kind of difficult but restorative conversations that Jesus had over and over and over again.

And then we end up with pretend community and pseudo-harmony, and we wonder why, way down deep inside of us, we're not satisfied with following Jesus.

We're not called to be peacekeepers.

We're called to be peacemakers.

And there is a big difference.

Couple of things about being a peacemaker.

Anytime you make something, furniture or bread, there are multi-step processes to it.

It's not very simply just a one-and-done type of thing.

So if we are going to engage in the work of being peacekeepers, we have to be committed to a process that has many steps that will incall us to engage and confront and discuss and to move away and give space and time and reflect and to move back together again.

It's a process.

And this isn't just with each other, this is with God.

A few years ago at the church we were a part of on the peninsula, I did a sermon one weekend on the book of Psalm.

And it was fascinating because the word Psalms in Hebrew means praise.

But numerically, there are two-thirds more Psalms of Lament than Psalms of Praise.

What does that mean?

I think what it means is the way to get to authentic praise is through lament.

Because then the praise is real and it's deep, it's guttural.

It will see you through.

It's not chirpy and mindless.

And to that end, I don't know if this church does this, but back when I was growing up, we did something in church called responsive readings.

Probably the same people that watch Soil and Green will know what I'm talking about.

But they would put psalms up on the screen or in your program and you would stand up and you would read them aloud.

And they always, every single time, pick the chirpy psalms.

Praise God with the harps and the lyres, for God is good.

And so when I was preaching on Psalms to make this point about lament, I had everybody stand up and we read three Psalms out loud together as a congregation.

May my enemy melt like a snail on a hot summer day.

May my enemy's teeth fall out of his head.

May my enemy's first child be stillborn.

This too is the word of the Lord.

What do we do with that?

We commit ourselves to a process.

And that's what it means too to follow Jesus.

That the older you get, it doesn't get easier.

You get invited into deeper and deeper levels.

So if we're going to be peacemakers, if this church awakenings is going to be a shining light in the Bay Area for people who are peacemakers, we have to be committed to a process.

Another step in anything that you make is there will be difficulties and mistakes along the way.

It's tough.

And most of us, if we're really honest, want things to go really well the first time out.

And when they don't, we're not quite sure what to do with it all.

There will be difficulties and mistakes, you will be misunderstood.

You will do something wrong that you need to apologize for.

That unity around Jesus for us as Christians is primary and it is the apex, and everything else that we agree or disagree on is secondary and tertiary.

And we have lost that ability.

And Jesus said, hearken back to the people I chose.

I was trying to send you a message.

I can't even imagine Jesus walking in between these two guys, going down the road and listening to them, bicker.

And yet Jesus said, I want you on my team.

There will be difficulties and setbacks and mistakes that you made, and that will be part of your spiritual journey.

I don't think Christians apologize enough.

I think at work, I think in your homes, in your friendships, if you're not saying a genuine I'm sorry, I was wrong three to five times a week, you're not even close.

The truth is every single day we make mistakes, but when we don't own it, we disrupt the foundation of what could be a peacemaking process.

And so to own these difficulties and mistakes along the way.

One of the things Ryan mentioned was that for about 11 years, I worked with an author and a business consultant named Patrick Lancioni, and he does corporate consulting, has this great framework, and he talks about how do you build trust on a team so that you can engage in conflict, which is necessary so you can make great decisions, so you can hold people accountable and get the results you're looking for.

It's just a lovely model.

But it includes conflict on the way to peace.

I remember in 2008, and I don't usually remember the year, but it was in the middle of the downturn in the economy, and my partner and I were working with a young team, and they had grown during that year 33% of revenue, which was pretty unheard of during 2008.

So I remember it pretty clearly.

Very young team, and they had been working together pretty well.

The first day of the offsite, we went through those five things that I just went through with you and talked them through.

And what's funny about being a business consultant is that usually by lunchtime on the first day, everybody on the team has found a way to pull you aside to let you know who the problem on the team is.

In 11 years of consulting, it was never them.

I never once had somebody come up and say, you know, you're gonna find this out sooner rather than later, but I'm the problem on the team.

Nope, nope, nope.

I used to have a refrigerator magnet uh up that said, I didn't say you were wrong, I said I was going to blame you.

I'm just looking for somebody, it can be your fault, not mine.

And so Kent, my fellow consultant and I at lunch, you know, gathered together and, you know, on the count of three, said, and sure enough, this girl named Lisa, everybody on the team said Lisa was the problem.

So we kind of tucked that in the back of our mind, went through how do you deal with conflict.

The second day we were working on strategy.

And Steve, the youngest member of the team, probably in his late 20s, was sitting in his chair, but he looked like a volcano ready to erupt.

And I had no idea why.

And then Lisa started talking about a strategic decision that they were thinking about making, and he just interrupted her and blurted out in front of the whole team.

Lisa, you're a jerk, you never get your work done on time.

And I'm thinking, oh, that's not exactly what we meant when we talked about having conflict yesterday.

And I kind of froze a little bit, like, I'm not sure what to do right now.

So my, and I'm also thinking, we're not gonna get paid, they're gonna ask us to leave.

My coworker, Kent, who is sometimes I would put my fingers up to his neck to see if he had a pulse.

Like he was just the most calm person all the time.

So he just kind of slowly unfolds his six foot five body and chuckles.

Well, that was interesting.

And then he said, Is Steve right?

And everybody just immediately looked at their feet.

When you're a consultant and people are looking at your toes, you know, you just hit pay dirt.

You must dwell in that moment right there.

Nobody would look at him.

And he said, Well, he just said something pretty full of passion that she doesn't get her work done on time.

I think we need to know, is that true?

And so here's what I'm gonna ask you to do.

I'm gonna ask every one of you to answer me yes or no.

I don't want a story, I don't want an explanation.

Do you agree or disagree with what he just said?

And I'm thinking, I I have no idea where you're going with this.

So reluctantly they started looking at him, and everyone except one person said, Steve's right, Lisa doesn't get her work on time and it hurts the whole team.

And the other person, who I think, in a very understandable attempt to be Lisa's BFF, said, No, she's great, there's no problem.

And I'm like, you just told me before lunch Lisa was the problem on the team.

So again, this peacemaking journey has so many steps along the way.

It is so awkward.

So then Kent goes up to the flip chart with a red marker and writes up in the left left-hand corner, Lisa, you're a jerk.

And I'm like, oh, because we were gonna what, forget that he said that?

And why you picked red?

And then he walks over to the other corner of the flip chart and writes, you don't get your work done on time.

And then he said this.

These are two completely different issues.

With your permission, we're gonna get back to the way he said it.

Because I'm guessing he's already thought of four different ways he could have said that better.

But in the meantime, let's start with the issue, and then we'll come back to this.

And I'm thinking, oh, he's just brilliant.

Separate him out.

And so they spent a little time on it.

It was starting to hurt the team that Lisa was late consistently with her work, and finally, I mean, I wish it could have been in the room with me.

Charlton Heston's face was amazing.

Lisa's face was less than amazing.

She was beat red, she was fighting back the tears.

She was that mix between furious and hurt, and she finally said uh I I the one person.

On the team that said, no, you got your work done on time, said, Lisa, is there anything wrong at home?

Now that sounds like a really nice question, but this team had been feeling like Lisa was dropping the ball for over a year.

That is not a nice question, 365 days too late.

And so Lisa just said, no, nothing is wrong at home.

She said, We have grown 33% this last year, and I'm the only high-level administrator on this team.

Every one of you is handing me a third more work, and I'm drowning.

Okay, first of all, how sad on a team it takes a year to unpack that.

But we're all, we want to hide the things that are hard, we want to keep acting like we're okay.

And the CEO was kind of embarrassed because he said, We're making money.

We, Lisa, you can hire somebody tomorrow to help you.

I'm sorry I haven't been checking in on you to find out what was going on.

That's my fault.

They started having this pretty amazing conversation that I could see already was starting to move towards healing.

And then Kent said, Okay, let's move back to the way he said it.

And Steve, 28, 29 years old, stands up and says to Kent, Take a seat.

I'm like, Oh yeah, I like the way you just talked to my partner.

Take a seat.

He said, First of all, I gotta tell you, if my mother was here, she would have washed my mouth out with soap.

And I said to Steve, I was gonna ask for your mother's phone number when you said that, because surely you didn't get raised that way.

And then he said, I am so sorry, Lisa, looked right at her.

And then he said to the team, I'm sorry I sit in front of all of you guys.

But I do think all of you have been feeling this way, and of course they start looking at their feet again.

And then he said, Lisa, listen to me.

Here's what I wish I would have said.

Lisa, I am growing increasingly frustrated this past year when I come to the team meetings and you're not getting your work done on time and it's slowing the rest of us down.

Now, if you can't hear that, you don't belong on a leadership team.

If you can't hear that, you will never, ever grow.

And here's the beauty of this story, and this was not a Christian team, but I'm watching spiritual formation happen in these people who probably all of them don't know God.

I came back a month later to do follow-up work.

That team was almost flawless because they had gone through something really hard together.

Somebody had finally spoken the truth very poorly.

That's okay.

Um, we need to give each other permission to do things poorly in order to do them well.

For any of you that have ever had a toddler, when they're starting to walk, I have a little granddaughter who is just turned one and she's just starting to try to walk.

She is wobbly, she falls down all the time.

I really, I mean, I get down and yell, Francie, come on, come on.

And what I should do because she's doing it so poorly, okay, honey, this is not working.

Um, we're gonna outsource walking because clearly you're not getting it.

But no, we get down and encourage all the stumbles and the falls because we know if she keeps at it, what's on the other side?

The same is true with our teams, the same is true with our families, our relationships, the same is true with God and following God and being able to say hard things to him because that's what it's gonna take to be a peacemaker.

And then the other step in peacemaking is there is joy in the outcome.

It's worth it.

It is so worth it to try to restore Eden a little bit, to get back to understanding the way the world is meant to be, to having, oh my gosh, we just went through really horrible, really awkward, thought I was gonna die conversations, and something is emerging out of the other side of it that is richer and fuller and deeper and more real.

And I'm getting a glimpse, I'm getting a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

So let's just spend the next nine minutes and seven seconds that we have left to talk about two simple things: that this peacemaking process is for us personally, and it's something that we offer others.

Very simply, and I want to go have you go back to what you thought about when I first started.

What was the thing you thought about when I asked you, where in your life do you need peace?

Where is there turmoil and anxiety and overthinking and frustration?

Because that's where we need peace.

So, first, peace is personal.

Peace making is personal.

We can't just go around helping other people make peace.

The call initially is for us to find the way to have peace inside of our own inner world.

And it's a really journey, similar journey to what I just talked about, but it's a really unique kind of peace.

Paul put it this way in Philippians that the peace of God goes beyond all of our understanding.

It makes no sense.

And it will guard your heart and it will guard your mind.

It makes no sense because if we go on this journey, it comes in the middle of circumstances that are anything but peaceful.

Like many of you, I have gone through periods in my life that have been so difficult.

I've had a hard time remembering to breathe.

And one of the things that my husband said to me as we went through some of this together was circumstances are a terrible foundation for our lives.

It's like, wait, I know that, but what I want are circumstances to be right so that I can be peaceful.

And you can try that, it will end up not working.

When it does work, you've mistaken your circumstances for peace.

And it's okay to have good circumstances in life sometimes and be grateful for them.

But this piece that Paul's talking about that goes beyond understanding, that makes no sense and is really protective of your heart and your mind, is in the middle of difficult circumstances.

Circumstances are a terrible foundation for your life.

And part of this journey to find peace personally, at least for me, is 72 times a day having these conversations with God.

I'm trying to build a little place inside of my soul where God lives deeply, where I meet with Him, and then inevitably I walk away from it during the day, and my job is to find my way back, find my way back, find my way back.

Jesus said in John chapter 16, I am never alone.

John 16 · chapter mention

The Father is always with me.

You know, I don't have time to go into this, but lots is being written nowadays about the loneliness epidemic, and I think it's important to pay attention to.

I think it's critical.

I think part of what's missing as part of the solution is not just connecting with other people, and that's important, but it's how do I develop this place inside of me where I'm never alone.

I'm always safe because this is the place in my soul I'm gonna need when life gets hard and when death comes.

So, what is the personal work that I'm doing?

The inner breath sometimes that I have to take.

Way back when my kids were in high school, I used to do this thing called kidnap day, and I would show up at my kids' school, I would call them out of class, and I would just take them out of school the whole day, and we would go do fun stuff.

I said, I just can't be the room mother that brings the cupcakes.

I can't do that.

I can't get on the bus with the field trips.

I will do kidnap day with my kids.

And they just loved it.

It was so much fun.

And at the end of one of the days, my oldest daughter Laura and I were going to see a movie before we went home, and I was running a little late because I jammed too much stuff in the day, and I was in a hurry to get the tickets, and there was this young, probably 16-year-old, skinny, acneed teenage boy selling the tickets.

And he was kind of slow, and I was kind of rude.

You could drop the word kinda out because I was in a hurry, and I wanted to get my daughter in to see the movie, and I knew she didn't notice.

So we got into the movie and sat down and watched the previews, and about four minutes into the movie, she leans over and she said, Why were you so rude to the guy that was selling the tickets?

Huh.

She didn't notice.

Darn it.

And I sat through the whole movie having an existential, existential crisis with God.

It wasn't that big of a deal.

It was 20 seconds.

He was slow.

This is ridiculous.

Because I want to deflect and defend.

I don't want to admit that something's wrong with me, but what I forget is that is the way to peace.

Super counterintuitive.

You think that's not the way to peace because it's not feeling peaceful.

It is the way to peace.

So when we got out of the movie, I brought Laura back over, and the poor kid saw me coming, and he must have just been like, oh no.

Go away, lady.

And I just said, I have to tell you, I'm really sorry.

Oh no, that's okay.

No, I'm I'm really sorry.

I was so rude.

And I was the one that was late.

It was not your fault.

I was rude.

And then he again deflected and said, No, no, really, it's okay.

And I finally said, look at me.

Look in my eyes.

I was a witch.

And Vanna, could I buy a B?

And I am so sorry.

Will you forgive?

Will you accept my apology?

And he did.

And I don't know what he went home feeling or thinking, but that's the kind of work that personally is going to allow us to be peacemakers in our own souls.

And then besides personal, we have been called communally to help each other, like Steve and Lisa eventually did, communally, to bring peace on the earth.

Colossians 1.20 is one of many places where we are given the ministry of reconciliation.

In Jesus, in Christ, all things are reconciled by making peace.

Love you back.

The heathens do that.

You get no credit for that.

That's love 101.

I have a cousin who I grew up with, was like a brother to me.

And life has just taken us both on really tough and good things, and we've stayed in touch all these years, and we could not be at opposite ends of the spectrum on politics, on all kinds of things.

And most people would say, Well, it's family, just don't talk about it.

And we just decided that wasn't going to be the rules for our relationship.

We decided we're going to lean in.

He'll tell me what he thinks politically, and I'll think, I say to him, Kenny, grandma is rolling over in her grave right now.

And then I'll tell him what I think, and he'll say, You're just an idiot.

Yeah, I know.

That's true, but not about this.

And we have a few minutes of that, and then we change the subject.

Then we talk about our kids and the weather and our work.

And we love each other.

And all the ways, and it's not many.

Jesus offered to us this ministry of being reconciled, to being pulled back together.

And often what we do when somebody confides in us, what somebody else did that hurt them, is we side with them immediately instead of to ask questions and to consider the other person's point of view and to hopefully help along the way as we've been helped.

Blessed are the peacemakers, sounds so sweet and lovely, but it's hard work.

It's so worth it, both individually for your own relationship with Jesus and together with the kind of community we're trying to build here.

Because the bottom line is peace is not the absence of conflict or pain.

It is not the absence of conflict or pain, but rather the power and presence of Christ in the midst of our struggle.

I'm going to invite the band up and I'm going to read for you a quote from a man named Faber, who talks about what I think is really necessary for peacemaking, and that is patience.

And he talks in this paragraph about the slowness of God.

In the spiritual life, God chooses to try our patience first of all by his slowness.

He is slow and we are swift.

It is because we are for but a time and he has been for eternity.

Thus, grace, for the most part, acts slowly.

He works little by little, strongly and sweetly, he compasses his ends, but with a slowness which tires our faith because it is so great a mystery.

We must fasten upon this attribute of God in our growth in holiness.

There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God.

Let it overshadow our souls, but not disquiet them.

We must wait for God long, meekly, in the wind, the wet, the thunder, and the lightning, in the cold and the dark, wait, and he will come.

He never comes to those who do not wait.

He does not go their road.

And when he comes, go with him, but slowly.

Fall a little behind.

And when he quickens his pace, be sure of it before you quicken yours.

And when he slows, slow at once.

And do not only be slow, but silent.

Very silent.

For he is God.

Let's pray.

Father, maybe in the Silicon Valley more than anywhere else in our country, we are in a hurry.

Maybe it's not just the Silicon Valley.

Maybe it's our own restless souls.

I am in a hurry all the time.

And I cannot be a peacemaker in my own soul or with other people that I care about if I'm rushed.

And so I pray that you would open my eyes to the invitation you have of the way life is, the peace that is available to me, even if I have to go looking for it 72 times a day, I will find it.

Thank you for being a God of peace in Christ's name.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.com slash card.