Tyler Johnson, MDiv
Tyler is a pastor, a teacher, and a former NASA engineer. He loves to explore truth through God’s word and God’s works. He lives in Kansas with his wife and four children and spends what little free-time he has pondering the mysteries of light.
Of all the Advent themes out there - faith, joy, love, peace, hope, etc. - I find peace to be the most difficult. Ironically, I feel the most conflict when peace is the topic of the sermon I’m supposed to preach. It is one of the more difficult theological concepts for me to penetrate deeply or find wisdom about.
Part of the problem is that there don’t seem to be any great exemplars for what peace looks like. I’m sure they are out there, but it is probably in their nature not to be noticed by the masses and the media. I doubt they are seeking to be influencers or to gain power or prestige for their actions. (And using Jesus as an exemplar doesn’t exactly alleviate the problem. See below.)
A deeper issues arises from the church itself. I legitimately question whether the church, writ large, desires peace. Instead, the church these days seems to mirror the culture in ways that move it away from peace. Too often the church is focused on power and influence, or on defending its rights. It is far too steeped in ideologies and the pursuit of “correct” thinking, both of which take a black-and-white approach to the world. It would seem that many in the church, like many in our culture, would rather fight to be right than actually work towards peace.
It isn’t just the church. This is how most of us behave. We are motivated by ideologies, enamored with influence and power; we are afraid of being wrong, afraid of losing control, afraid of anything that threatens the narratives that we have invested in. We would rather be right, than have peace.
And that is the tricky part. We operate as if peace is found by God taking our side against our enemies. Peace, as we normally pursue it, looks like us being proven right. It looks like Jesus agreeing with us. It looks like our ideologies being sanctified by a handful of Bible verses. It puts us in the driver’s seat. It makes us god. This seems to be the way we seek peace.
But it doesn’t work. This isn’t how peace is found or achieved, as is evident throughout our world. And as such, I believe our concept of peace needs revision.
In the New Testament Jesus is the source of peace. This refines the Old Testament assertion that God is the source of shalom. At Christmas we celebrate Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Paul even goes so far to say that Jesus is our peace. But this is hard, because the ministry of Jesus was rather controversial and divisive.
In Matthew 10, Jesus even says he came to bring a sword and not peace. This sword will divide, even severing the bonds of family. Jesus regularly upset the people he talked to. Either he offended their religious sensibilities, or he was too obscure for them to understand, or his teachings seemed unattainable. Jesus doesn’t seem to have exuded our ideals of peace.
This prophetic nature of Jesus’ ministry seems to give credence to the idea that peace is about being on the right side. But we should note that nobody in the day was the on the right side with Jesus. He was not a zealot or a revolutionary (or an activist in today’s parlance). He was not a scribe or a Pharisee (or a religious authority). He was not a reclusive Essene (or a member of a subculture or counterculture). Jesus had options. He could have sided with a plethora of groups and ideologies. But he didn’t. Instead, his ministry at one time or another confronted and offended each group and every ideology it encountered.
Our goal then is to make sure that we are on Jesus’ side. Which is great, but we easily twist this into Jesus being on our side. In how many ways has Jesus been shaped over the decades to fit the ideals we hold? (The answer is all of them.) What we want is to join Jesus as he takes sides against our enemies. But Jesus hasn’t taken sides like that. He draws the line differently. The truer way to peace is found when we take Jesus’ side against the things that truly threaten our joy.
Peace is not about God siding with us against our enemies, but us siding with God against our idolatries. That is where the real conflict lies. It is our devotion to our idolatries, ideologies, and false identities that require a sword. Christ came to divide us from our allegiance to all the things of this world that draw us away from Him. Which may even include our allegiance to the things that we have committed to in His name. Jesus comes as a sword because we are too selfish and proud to receive him in any other way. The truth cuts us deep because we are accustomed to living a lie.
Restoring peace to the earth is conflictual. No matter how you read the book of Revelation, this seems undeniable. But if Christ’s Kingdom come to earth is the goal. If the renewal of the cosmos is our hope. If true peace comes when the presence of God subsumes and transforms our world into a heavenly paradise, then peace comes through being on God’s side. And God’s enemy is not a group of people. The enemy that must be defeated is not a different version of Christianity, or even a different religion; it is not a different ethnic group, a different political group, or even a different form of governance. The enemy that must be defeated if we are to find peace is the sin that is woven into our very existence. Heaven is only heaven because no tincture of sin is allowed to enter it. We cannot bring even the smallest mite of selfish desire into the New Creation, nor harbor the most insignificant grudge against another human. (See C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce for more on this.)
Because of how steeped we are in the brokenness, selfishness, and sinfulness that pervades our world, the path towards peace will not be peaceful. There will be conflict. But we have to let go of the idea that the primary enemy of peace is external to ourselves. The real conflict lies within us as we seek to receive all the blessings of God without first setting down of any of our rights, any of our false identities, any of our clinging to control. We seek to experience heaven without letting go of hell.
I’m of the mind that the peace we are truly looking for will not be experienced in this world. We are too ensconced in the brokenness. But perhaps by acknowledging the true source of the conflict, by living lives of humility, and by practicing forgiveness we can experience more of God’s peace for ourselves, and maybe even radiate some of His peace out into the world around us. It’s just a theory, but it may be worth experimenting with.