5/1/55

Scripture: (Read Matthew 7: 13-27)

Text: Matthew 5: 9; “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

For many months after the guns ceased firing at the end of World War II, there was uppermost in the minds of many thoughtful Americans the problem of building the peace. War had been so devastating, its toll of life and property so appalling, its displacement of people so ruthless, its future portent so bleak, that peace has seemed all-important. Even in the more recent years of tensions and anxiety, of threats and warnings, of national budgets in many countries pyramided by fear of future war, the desire for peace is uppermost in our experience. But peace between nations does not necessarily assure peace within nations. Several countries have been recently reddened with blood although not at war with any other nation.

Suppose that the international scene could be stabilized peaceably, all national issues settled by law and order, and our own national economy so organized as to do away with industrial and racial conflicts. There would still remain the vast area of frictions near at hand, with personal desires for peace of living.

Isn’t there a war-time story of a soldier who, constantly disturbed by his wife’s repeated letters of complaint, wrote home in exasperation, begging her to stop nagging him so that he could “fight this war in peace?” He was not alone in this frame of mind. There is ample evidence of inner tensions beyond the international scene, the economic order, the social derangement.

Joshua Liebman’s best-selling book, “Peace of Mind,” grew out of some counsel by a friend. Having in his youth made out a list of earthly desirables -- health, love, riches, beauty, talent, power, fame, and a few others --- he showed it to a friend who was older and who proved to be wiser. He was told that all these others could be turned into hideous torment without one other thing. And that thing is peace of mind. Stirring as was this discovery for Liebman, personally, it is of even more interest that his book found such wide interest among readers. Apparently there is indeed a very widespread desire for peace of mind. There was for a time almost a “rash” of similar discussion, with the appearance of Sheris’ “Peace of Soul,” Graham’s “Peace with God” and Peale’s popular “Power of Positive Thinking.”

Perhaps a lot of peacemaking begins with the individual person taking the first within himself. For if a person can not be at peace with himself, he is pretty sure to be at odds with other people.

It was characteristic of Jesus’ teaching that this truth stands out in each of the synoptic gospels: “If a house be divided against itself, that house can not stand.” [Matthew 12: 25; Mark 3: 25].

1) The house that is “divided against itself” may have conflict between its inner self and its outer selves. When a person uses all his energy in struggling to maintain a reputation at variance with his inner self, or in putting on a “front” to conceal inner emptiness, such a man is a “house divided against itself.”

“To thine own self be true,

And it must follow as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

2) Or a house may be “divided against itself” in being torn between the forward and the backward pull of life. Physically, we move forward, in space, better than we go backward. But in time, we look backward more easily than we look forward. Finding that hind-sight is better than our foresight, we develop tensions between our forward and our backward tendencies.

Jesus, thoroughly familiar with this personal problem, dealt very directly with it. “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.” [Luke 9: 62]. When a person continues to look back at something he should have put behind him, reopening yesterday’s decisions and weakening himself with useless regrets, he is not fit to be a peace-maker, for his is not at peace with himself.

Jesus had a short, surgical way of cutting one loose from the past when he said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” [Matthew 8: 22]. When a decision is made, or a contract signed, it is harmful to keep opening the rear gates of the mind to hounding worries and regrets. If any mistake has been made, or sin committed, repentance can turn the face toward the future and to hope. Christ can “break the power of canceled sin,” and he “sets the prisoner free.”

3) Another tension destructive of our inner peace is division between our higher and our lower selves. Sometimes we get rid of this conflict by getting down to live at the lower level. The Prodigal Son tried that, but he soon found himself starving on the husks of self-indulgence. Augustine tried it until he was revolted by his own existence. An English medical student, Francis Thompson, tried to escape from his conscience by fleeing “down the nights and down the days,” as he said. But always there was the “Hound of Heaven” breathing over his shoulder.

Christ comes to the man who is trying to find peace on the lower level of his nature, and he disturbs him “with the joy of elevated thoughts;” sets him thinking on whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report, until he creates an atmosphere of wholesomeness in which temptations tend to lose their power.

If one can be at peace with himself, then he is in better position to be a peace-maker in his world. When war clouds begin to appear on the horizon, the cry soon goes up that there is something that goes before peace, and that something is liberty. “It is better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.”

Of course we prize liberty. And surely we should not grovel on our knees before tyrants, at home or abroad. But according to the Bible, there is something that has priority before even peace and liberty, and that is righteousness. Righteousness is the soil from which peacemaking stems. Not so many people would die as soldiers if more of us would earnestly seek righteousness before God Almighty. This should be the deepest desire of patriots on Loyalty Day, or at any other time.

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The search for peace of mind may lead to softness and selfishness. Let us not mistake peace-keeping for peace-making. Now and then it become necessary for a justice or a judge to put a legal requirement on some individual to keep the peace. And so that culprit refrains from provocative acts, not so much because he wants to as because he has to. It requires much more than mere keeping the peace to make the peace wherein there is neighborly understanding and voluntary cooperation.

Jesus could have kept the peace by remaining in Galilean villages, enjoying a degree of popularity; healing, preaching, comforting. He would have been at a reasonably safe distance from the fellows at Jerusalem, who, above all, did not want to be disturbed. But the Master, like all other real peace-makers, felt called not to a sheltered, passive role, but to an active, aggressive program.

The peace-maker may need to enter into controversies, to correct falsehood; but “speaking the truth in love, he grows up into him in all things who is the head, even Christ.” [Ephesians 4: 15]. The peace-maker will keep his conversation above the level of personalities and of things, in the realm of ideas. He seeks the truth without regard to prejudice or propaganda, suspicion or hatred. By sanity of mind and sympathy of heart, he tries to build understanding. The peace-maker has a testing time in his effort to overcome prejudices. Prejudices come from a number of sources. One is social inheritance. At a surprisingly early age we take on the unreasoned likes and dislikes of our families and friends and community. If we would be peacemakers we must watch our opportunity to prevent our children from catching the unfortunate prejudices of their parents.

Another source of prejudice is ignorance. We often dislike most vehemently that which we know the least. The peacemaker strives to know and to speak “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

A splendid story is told of General Robert E. Lee, who was severely criticized, in the early days of the Southern Confederacy, by General Whiting. In fairness, it could have been expected that General Lee would await the time when he could even the score with Whiting. A day came when the confederate president, Jefferson Davis, asked General Lee to come for a conference. Davis wanted to know what Lee thought of Whiting. Without hesitation, Lee commended Whiting in high terms, calling Whiting one of the ablest men in the Confederate Army. An officer present drew Lee aside to suggest that he must not know what unkind things Whiting had said about him. Lee answered: “I understood that the President desired to know my opinion of Whiting, not Whiting’s opinion of me.” There spoke the magnanimous spirit of the peacemaker, pursuing truth undeflected by personal interest.

The peacemaker does not merely discuss the problems of brotherhood between racial and religious groups. He enters into experiences of fellowship with individuals of other groups. He does not rely on accomplishing by agitation what he can do better by demonstration. He prepares for world citizenship by being a good citizen in his own community. He does not pass by, but stops to examine seriously the admonition of Jesus Christ, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.” [Matthew 5: 44]. That is a most searching ethic! But if we are children of God we must take it as our standard.

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Some kind of peace of mind is an urgent necessity for us. Make it peace of soul, if you wish; and certainly peace with God. And by all means let us keep hold of the power of positive thinking. But let us not get the selfish notion that these are sure-cure ways to personal serenity and security, or certain paths to sweetness and light. They were not so for Jesus. His integrity led him right into trouble, into serious conflict with evil, and to a cross of physical suffering and death. Peace of mind is not necessarily relaxation. But it is integrity.

Note that Jesus did not formulate this beatitude by saying, “Blessed are the peace lovers,” or “blessed are the peace keepers,” but “blessed are the peacemakers.” He had a way of disturbing complacency. His ways were and are most demanding. When he said to Peter, three times, “Lovest thou me?” and Peter said, more and more vehemently, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” Jesus gave him something positive to do: “Feed my sheep.” [John 21: 17].

When Jesus told the parable of two houses built, one upon shifting sand and one on solid rock, his appeal was to the doer: “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock. [Matthew 7: 24].

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It is doubtful that “positive thinking” alone will prevent mumps or cure cancer. But positive thinking will send one to consultation with the doctor, and to helping with the cause of finding prevention and cure of cancer.

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There are great issues and causes today which await the espousal of dedicated peacemakers. Much of our world is gripped today, and threatened further, by communistic materialism, by determination to revolt against inhuman poverty, and by open rebellion against racial discrimination and exploitation. Whether or not the world is to have peace depends directly upon those who will bring into play effectively the forces of Christianity on the world’s basic problems. Communism, relying on lying propaganda, pushing moral restraint aside to gain its materialistic ends, is not the answer to the earth’s needs. It is just another new and terrible tyranny.

Francis Sayre says that in our fight against communism, the issues were defined 2000 years ago. Jesus taught that belief in the ultimate supremacy of material force leads only to disaster. The very essence of his teaching was based upon the superiority of spiritual and moral values over material ones. This is the only faith that can build peace in the world.

Concerning human poverty, Jesus’ teaching also took definite form. To suffering humanity, and to those who have the resources and power to alleviate suffering, he gave the parable of the Good Samaritan. He taught that the supreme values in the world are individual, human personalities. They must be welcomed in such a faith.

And Jesus taught the essential brotherhood of all people under the Fatherhood of God. There is an equality of standing in true brotherhood that must be applied forthrightly to racial and creedal and class differences.

And the peacemakers are the people who, forgetting their own woes, and rising about their own concerns, will apply the spirit and the ethic of Jesus to the needs of others today.

We may think of Francis of Assisi as one of those saintly, harmless souls who loved children and squirrels. But to understand at all the greatness of soul that made him a force for right in his day and through days since, we need to remember that he lived, and applied his faith, in a time of great stress and conflict. It was the time of the Crusades. Europe was roused to a frenzy of hatred against Moslems in the holy city of Jerusalem. The hills of Palestine were soaked with the blood of Christian men and even of children, and of Moslem alike. But Francis contemplated the love of Christ until he caught the glow and fire and persuasive push of His Spirit.

You can see the peacemaker in his famous prayer, with which we close this morning. (Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi).

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

It is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 1, 1955.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, June 11, 1961 (2nd service).