What is This Peace of Christ?
Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 3:11-12
A Communion Meditation by Thomas J. Boone, Ph.D.
December 9, 2007, Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile AL

Despite it’s controversial declarations, a look at the Nobel Peace Prize recipients lauds an impressive cast. You may not have heard of Henry Dunant, but you’ve heard of the International Red Cross, the Geneva Convention, and the YMCA, organizations born from his ideas and passion for peace. On his deathbed, he spoke clearly and simply about the reason for his work: “I am a disciple of Christ.” But, is this the peace for which Jesus died?

Several years later Jane Addams became the first American woman recipient of the prize. Founding the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Women’s Peace Party, she led vast movements to end World War I and established an international peacekeeping organization that the United Nations replaced after World War II. At the root of her activism was her faith born from Quaker roots, yet she was always discontent with the church, which in her view practiced private beneficence and was, thus, completely inadequate to help the disinherited of a single city let alone the entire world. “If we are Christians, we are people of peace. There is no other way for the one who worships God through Jesus Christ,” Jane Addams would say. But, is this really what Jesus promised and wanted from us?

Peace. The theme of our second advent candle forces us to face the grim truth that the world is a hard place and quite frankly doesn’t make much sense if we believe in God. Peace forces us to reconcile our picture of Christ with the way scripture presents Him. In John’s gospel Christ concludes his ministry with these words, “My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, but my peace.” What is that about? It wasn’t about that life would be easy because right after he talks about peace he says they will be persecuted and killed for their belief in Him.

Jesus said something shocking in Matthew 10:34. “Do not think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” This is the same Jesus who said to Peter in the Garden of Gesthemane, “Put away your sword, for all who take the sword shall perish by the sword” (Mt 26:52). And this is the same Jesus of whom John the Baptist prophesied in Matthew 3 that “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Think of that. Baptism with fire. It’s not an image nearly as soothing as water. How many times have you been baptized with fire? With suffering? With tribulation? With trials? Peace isn’t the absence of fire in life, it’s what happens while the God-allowed-fire rages.

Elie Wiesel, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust received the Nobel Peace Prize for his life-long struggle to help humanity understand peace and God out of his personal nightmare of the Holocaust. Wiesel’s writings challenge us to rethink peace and God in a world where horrific Holocausts occur not only in Germany, but in modern day South Africa, Sudan, and Rwanda. Wiesel’s writings suggest that any discussion about peace must begin by admitting that it makes no sense in this world to proclaim faith in a peaceful God. “God has gone mad,” Wiesel wrote. In his novel, Night, he writes, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never.” But, this isn’t the end of the story.

In one of his later books, The Gates of the Forest, Wiesel writes, “A man who is put to the trial, he said must give triple thanks to the Almighty: first for giving him strength to endure the trial, second for bringing the trial to an end, third for the trial itself. For suffering contains the secret of creation and its dimension of eternity; it can be pierced only from the inside. Suffering betters some people and transfigures others. At the end of suffering, of mystery, God awaits us.”

Does this sound familiar? I hope so, because it’s a Jewish man’s affirmation of another famous Jewish man’s belief, whose writings we revere as scripture. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 5:3-4, “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Suffering isn’t the litmus test for peace, because through suffering God enables us to land squarely on hope’s doorstep. And, without God, finding peace in this world is impossible because without Him we’d have to agree either with Nitzsche that God is dead, or with Wiesel’s earlier work that God has gone mad. What is the peace that Christ came to bring?

In our passage today, John the Baptist prophecies about Jesus, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor.” There’s another surprising image for us, if we think of Jesus as the great peace lover. I saw a winnowing fork in a barn once and if you’ve seen one you know you don’t want to be on the wrong end of it. That end can kill you. A farmer thrusting a winnowing fork into hay ripping it apart to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s tiring, arduous work that involves great violence to the wheat, but it’s the only way farmers were able produce a pure wheat harvest. Peace isn’t the absence of painful struggle, because whereas we are the wheat sin is the chaff, and it is painful for God to do his good work of peace in our hearts so that sin has no more authority over us.

Then look at what John the Baptist prophecies next. Jesus “will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” That, too, is hardly what one would call peaceful serenity. Jesus came to eliminate the reality of fallen human nature that threatens all of God’s creation. In Noah’s time God dealt with the problem of sin by wiping everyone out and starting over with Noah and his family. But scripture also says that God grieved over His decision and promised never to do this again. But, this doesn’t mean that the problem of human sin isn’t as grave and serious now as it was then. God simply decided to correct the problem in another way: by attacking our sinful condition that clings to us like chaff on wheat. Jesus is going after your heart where true peace resides. God wants us pure and uncompromising in our devotion to Him.

But to dare to claim this peace is to realize that such a peace comes not by the absence of pain and suffering, war and holocaust, famine and oppression. It comes while Jesus separates the sin from us bit by bit through the process of restoring our hope through suffering. It’s a peace that comes only by putting God first even above family and all others. The peace of Christ comes to us as a gift from God alone where we can say with assurance God awaits us at the end of any hardship He has allowed us to endure. Peace doesn’t try to understand or makes sense of the world and its torment, it simply hopes in God to achieve His will in our lives by any and all means necessary.

I’m not saying that we should stand by passively while wars rage, or while oppression destroys a person’s humanity. We can’t be a church and not have hearts for mission and outreach, binding the wounds of those around us, and struggling against powers and principalities for peace, purity, and unity. We must not live by the sword and we must speak prophetically to any who resort to it.

We must pray that war will cease once it has begun, and we must fight and pray against injustice. But what I am saying, is that we cannot allow these struggles to define us entirely. We must, instead, allow Christ’s peace to define us. We must cling to the promise that God uses all things to His glory for those who love Him. When suffering happens we do not lose our hope, or get angry with God, or lose our faith. Rather like the saints who have gone before us we await God’s perfect will for our lives: we rest in His peace. We must keep the Lord as our highest priority no matter what the cost. We must allow Jesus to do the painful work of separating sin from our hearts so that we can receive all His blessings for us. None of us will ever endure the pain that Christ endured on the cross that we may live forever with Him. As we take communion today, we thank God for His peace that abides with us through all life as He perfects us as His children and invites us to be with Him as saints made pure in this life. Hallelujah. Amen.