Joel D. Kline
September 28, 2003
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
In a book based on the famous prayer of Francis of Assisi, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, Kent Nerburn shares about an experience some years ago during a time when he lived on a native American reservation. An elder in the community took it upon himself to work with young people who got into trouble. The man would listen to each individual, advise him or her, offer stories from their native American heritage, and try to teach some of the ways of their tradition. When the elder felt he had the young person’s “ear” and respect, he would take a Y-shaped stick hanging on the wall of his living room.
One of the prongs of the stick was painted red, while the other was painted black. Holding the forked end of the stick toward the young person, the elder would explain, “There are two roads in life—the red road and the black road. The red road is the way of helping and caring. The black road is the way of selfishness and hatred. The red road leads to life and light. The black road leads to death and darkness. You must choose.”
The elder would not withdraw the stick until the young person had made a decision, grasping one of the branches of the fork. Most chose the red branch, which led the elder to say, “Good. But remember this. The further you travel along either branch, the further you are from the road you have rejected. Now go out and start walking the red road.”
Jesus—did he not?—came offering a similar choice. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus urges us to “enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction,” while “the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life” (Matthew 7:13-14). The psalms begin with a beatitude that echoes the choice between the narrow and wide gates, the red and black forks. The first psalm, serving as an introduction for the remainder of the psalm book, begins:
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of the scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on God’s law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season … (Psalm 1:1-3).
M. Scott Peck some years ago wrote a book extolling the choice of The Road Less Traveled. And Martin Luther King, Jr. surely had a similar choice in mind when asserting, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” The example and teachings of Jesus give focus to that which matters in life, to that about which we are called to speak and to act, to the choices set before us. And at the heart of the life Jesus opens before us is the call to live and serve as peacemakers.
From the song of the angels at the very birth of Jesus, proclaiming peace on earth and good will to all people, to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount extolling us to love our enemies and pray for those who would persecute us, from the apostle Paul’s admonition to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and to serve as ambassadors of reconciliation to the book of Revelation’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth in which all creation shall live together in peace, the New Testament urges us to embrace peacemaking as our vocation.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). So says Jesus in one of the beatitudes introducing the Sermon on the Mount, the largest single collection of the teachings of Jesus. To the disciple who seeks to defend Jesus at the time of his arrest, slicing off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus says, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). And before that, as Jesus prepares to enter the city of Jerusalem on the day we have come to call Palm Sunday, he laments while overlooking the city, “If only you had known, on this great day, the way that leads to peace!” (Luke 19:42).
A.J. Muste, peace activist in the first half of the 20th century, echoes the spirit of Jesus when asserting, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” In our morning Scripture lesson from Ephesians, chapter two, the apostle Paul puts its simply, “Christ is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). The apostle is reminding his fellow Christians of the gift of God’s grace, and then Paul goes on to assert that the acceptance of that gift opens up a whole new way of living before us—a peaceful path that shapes us and affects every aspect of our heart and mind. In Christ old patterns are altered and old barriers are broken down. Paul is talking specifically of the deep divisions of his day between Jew and Gentile, asserting that in Christ the enmity between Jew and Gentile is vanquished, replaced by the creation of one new humanity. And in our day, as we journey with Christ, are we not also challenged to continue this task of breaking down dividing walls of hostility?
The real challenge before us is to live lives consistent with our words of peace. St. Francis admonished his followers, “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have peace even more fully in your heart.” I receive a weekly email from a retired pastor, sent to active pastors with words of encouragement. Some time ago the retired pastor reminded his readers, “There are times when our sermons go unheard, but never do our lives go unheeded. Someone is always watching …What you do and how you do it may speak so loudly that your listeners cannot hear what you say.”
Who among us has not encountered one of those “peacemakers” who is seemingly impossible to live with—the kind so enamored with self, so convinced that he or she has all the answers, that the individual’s behavior drowns out his or her words? It’s one thing to speak of peace, whether peace in the heart or peace at the global level, and quite another to live peacefully with ourselves and within our families, our neighborhoods, our churches, and our world.
In his book The Road to Peace Henri Nouwen reminds us that prayer and peacemaking are integrally connected. Writes Nouwen,
When our actions [for peace] are not based on the act of prayer, they easily become fearful, bitter, and more an expression of survival instincts than of our faith in God … Prayer—living in the presence of God—is the most radical peace action we can imagine. Prayer is peacemaking and not simply the preparation before, the support during, and the thanksgiving after … . In prayer we undo the fear of death and therefore the basis of all human destruction … True peacemaking is based on love, not fear.
Our congregation here at Highland Avenue has a long history of affirming that peacemaking is a fundamental part of the Christian witness. And yet, we are sometimes reluctant to speak and act upon that message of peace too boldly, for fear that we might alienate others. But are there not persons in our community who are looking for a church family that makes the connection between inner peace and peace in a needy world? Are there not those who are seeking a faith community that affirms the value both of personal dimensions of faith and of the social implications of that faith, a church that affirms that God calls us to do justice and embrace the things that make for peace?
To live and proclaim peace in the compassionate spirit of Jesus may well lead us in directions we had not foreseen for ourselves. The story is told of Brother Angelo, one of the early followers of Francis, who one day heard a knock on the door of the friary. When he opened the door, he saw three beggars whom he immediately recognized as dangerous criminals who had been on a rampage of murder and robbery throughout the region. Brother Angelo was incensed that the robbers would come begging, and he began to yell at them, “It’s not enough that you rob honest folk of the fruit of their labors. Now you want to take what little belongings we servants of God have!” And then he turned them away, shouting after them, “You are unworthy of a place on earth. You have no respect for others and you hold the God who made you in contempt. Get out of here, and don’t let me see you again!” But later in the day, when Francis returned and heard about Brother Angelo’s actions, he demanded that Brother Angelo take bread and wine to the men and apologize for the way he had treated them, pointing out that Jesus had instructed his followers to minister to the sick, not to the healthy.
According to the legend, the criminals repent and embark upon a new way of living with Francis and his followers. But we know that there is no guarantee that things will turn out quite so neatly for us. Still, if we bring Christ’s message of peace and reconciliation to bear only upon those relationships and situations in which we are comfortable, what good have we done? And if we allow the hateful actions of others to determine our response to them, have we truly chosen the path that leads to light and life? Are we not called, in the words of the prayer of St. Francis, to sow love in the face of hatred, pardon when we face injury, faith in the midst of doubt, hope in despair, light instead of darkness, joy in place of sadness?
Choosing the narrow way, proclaiming and making peace in the compassionate spirit of Jesus, breaking down dividing walls of misunderstanding, standing firm in our convictions in the face of those things that matter most—is this not our calling as followers of Jesus? May God grant us wisdom and strength as we deepen our faith and embrace the way of peace!