At the Versailles Conference in 1919 the allied powers decided peace meant defeating Germany and then keeping it in a straightjacket for as long as possible. Peace meant punishment and constant policing.
At Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 peace meant killing 200,000 people in one stroke. Peace meant destroying and intimidating to a sufficient degree to end war and then making sure your enemy didn’t get hold of the wherewithal to do the same to you.
At the Woodstock Festival in 1969 peace meant smoking pot and growing your hair down to the ground and driving a rainbow colored VW Beetle and doing all three while making a tie-dye t-shirt.
Such a diverse range of uses makes the word peace seem either vague and idealistic or cynical and manipulative. The New Testament, however, is neither vague nor idealistic nor cynical nor manipulative. It has two words for peace. One of those words is Jesus.
Ephesians chapter 2 gives us perhaps the most concise description of the way Jesus is peace. Here are the five ways that Jesus is peace. All of them center on the word “one.”
1) First, in verse 15, Jesus makes one new humanity. It says he “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” I want to take a moment to explain why Christianity steers a unique path in political thought. One of the most significant questions in modern philosophy is, “Are humans all fundamentally the same, or are we different from one another in ways that aggregate us into separate and competing groups?”
There are two conventional answers to this question. One says, we are all fundamentally the same. This is the bumper sticker that proclaims “One race – the human race.” The assumption seems to be that if we all realize we’re the same we’ll all suddenly be at peace with one another.
The more we ignore or eradicate our differences, the happier life will be. We could call this the sophisticated version of the Woodstock approach.
The trouble is, once you suppress our differences, we become unrecognizable to ourselves, let alone one another, where Peace becomes a form of denial.
The other conventional answer to whether we’re fundamentally the same or different says, no, we really are all different, and asserting our identity is central to our being, even though those differences, often lead to conflict. This is how we got to Versailles. The trouble is it’s also how we get to Nagasaki. Peace then becomes an olive branch covering the nakedness of raw power.
But Christianity says to both of these answers, why do you assume that difference leads to violence? Why do you assume that violence is more basic than peace? Yes, we are all different from one another, but in God’s sight difference creates beauty, creativity, flavor, color, texture, harmony. Violent conflict lurks among the shadows of difference, but antagonism isn’t written into the DNA of difference.
God made us to be different from one another because she had a myriad of different things she wanted each one of us to do. The fundamental difference is the difference between us created beings and God the creator, and it’s in the tension and creativity of that difference that life resides. Harmonious difference is what the universe is all about. Think about someone you’re struggling with right now. You’re probably bewildered or infuriated by their difference from you.
I’m glad I grew up in Winnipeg. I took the bus downtown often to the YMCA or if my violin teacher was rehearsing with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, I would have my lesson there. Those bus rides were a greeting card opened to the world.
Someone speaking Polish there, someone in German over there, another one speaking Dutch. Someone use using Chinese, another Vietnamese or Indian.
grew up with a cacophony of surround sound. You see there’s no use ignoring the difference. The only answer is to find a way to make that difference creative and constructive.
Ephesians says Jesus brings us that peace. It was daunting for him too. The cost to Jesus was his life. Jesus doesn’t abolish difference. He’s the embodiment of harmonious difference. He brings God and humanity together. He brings Jew and Gentile together.
He makes possible and demonstrates and renews a world in which Technicolor diversity can flourish while each entity enriches the life of every other. That’s the kingdom of God.
2) The second thing Jesus does is to transform our fears about being the same. Jesus makes us, in verse 16, one body. When we say the creed we recall how Jesus became a human being like us. He brought divinity into our humanity. But just as significant is what Jesus did in the other direction. He brought humanity into the heart of God.
we say Christians are the body of Christ we’re not just saying that there is a divine dimension to everything Christians do together. We’re also saying that the joy, the blessing, the struggle, the sin and the pain of human striving on earth is taken into the life of God.
This is the paradox of Christian belief: God is utterly different from us – eternal where we are temporal, wise where we are foolish, all-loving where we are self-absorbed. But God is unbreakably connected to us through Jesus in a way that does not diminish God, but only ennobles and enriches us.
The image Ephesians gives us of what it means to be both different and the same is the picture of one body, with countless interdependent parts. And to demonstrate how much that is at the center of God’s purpose and identity Ephesians calls that body Christ’s body.
What’s your greatest fear? For most people the greatest fear is being finally fundamentally alone. The fear of pain and death is only a part of the bigger feeling of being utterly alone forever. And the most destructive things people do tend to arise out of a terror that they are or may become utterly alone. Jesus’ gift of peace to us is to promise that he will never leave us alone.
So this is how these first two priceless gifts fit together. We are different from one another, but those differences can becomes part of the dynamism of our difference from God, leading us not to antagonism, but to kaleidoscopic creativity. But as one body in Christ we are deeply bonded to one another as we are deeply bonded to God.
(3) And the third thing we discover, this time in verse 18, is that we have access to the God in one Spirit. The one Spirit proclaims “peace to those who are far off and peace to those who are near.” One of the most difficult things in life is to balance your care for those who are near, with those who are far off, people of other nations and faiths and citizens.
In Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House he describes one Mrs. Jellyby who spends every hour of the day campaigning about the plight of the people of far-away Borrioboola-Gha while failing to see that her own neglected children are disintegrating around her. And we all know how easy it is to become so wrapped up with a small circle of intimates, so that we can’t register the needs of those outside our own tiny world.
It’s really hard to get this balance right.
It’s hard to be at peace with those far away and at peace with those who are near. It could be that in Ephesians those who are far off refer to the Gentiles and those who are near refers to the Jews. But it’s just as easy to think of those who are far off as meaning those who feel by their life and actions they’ve put themselves beyond the reach of God, and those who are near as meaning those who feel they’re just the most worthy people of all time.
I wonder whether you’re more at peace with those who are far off, or with those who are near. I wonder whether you feel you’ve put yourself beyond God’s mercy, or whether you feel you’re nearer to God than thee.
Jesus is our peace because his spirit reconciles those from whom we are far off and those to whom we are near. Jesus is our peace because his spirit reconciles the parts of us that are far from God and the parts of ourselves that are near.
(4) And the fourth thing Jesus makes, in verse 19, is one household. The three Greek letters ‘oik’ represent the core of the word for home. And the same root gives us the word economics. How does Jesus transform economics? We often take for granted that there’s not enough.
Economics says there’s not enough money, not enough wealth, not enough healthcare, education, GDP, equity, liquidity – whatever there is there’s not enough of it. Whether at church or in Springfield we hear that there’s not enough money, not enough committed people, etc. etc. – you name it, there’s not enough of it.
This week Greeks are worried that if their creditors demand stringent curtailments on spending, then the country will not grow its economy enough, to support the payouts to creditors. So we see conflict, because we’re bound to fight over limited and diminishing resources.
But Jesus is all about abundance. The resurrection of Jesus proclaims that there’s more than enough of the things that really matter, the things that last forever.
There’s more than enough life in everlasting life, there’s more than enough mercy in the forgiveness, there’s more than enough joy in the song of heaven. There’s more than enough love in the peace that passes all understanding.
Jesus’ economics bring us peace because they teach us a secret, which is learning to love the things that God gives us in plenty and never run out. Things like love, joy and peace. Jesus doesn’t give us too much of the things we fight over, because we’d still fight over them. Instead he gives in plenty the things we don’t need to fight over. We call these things the fruit of the spirit. That’s how Jesus is our peace.
(5) And the fifth thing Jesus makes, in verse 21, is one holy temple, one dwelling place for God. This is the climax of the whole symphony.
Remember, step one was, we think difference makes conflict, but in Christ difference makes kaleidoscopic creativity.
Step two was, we think we’re alone and isolated, but Jesus creates and unbreakable bond with us, and with God.
Step three was, we think we’re bound to fight with those close to us or club together against those who are far away, but Jesus gives us one Spirit that reconciles us to those near and far.
Step four was, we think we live in an economy of scarcity, but Jesus creates a world of abundance.
Finally he makes us into one sanctuary. That means he turns us from his huge problem into his simple prayer.
He is transforming us from a battleground to a sanctuary. He makes us the living examples of his salvation. He makes us the embodiments of peace. Finally, he makes us into a peace the world has never before known, where all becomes worship.
That’s what heaven is – the place of harmonious diversity where we as one body, whether saints who know we’ve had a past or sinners who know we have a future, enjoy the things that never run out and where all finally becomes worship.
Now you’ll remember at the beginning I said the New Testament has two words for peace. And I said the first one is Jesus. The second one is you.