We Have Peace

[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church during our worship celebration on July 23, 2006.]

Ephesians 2:11-22
Nearly two weeks ago, fighters from the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon entered Israel, killed Israeli soldiers, kidnapped two, and then demanded that Israel submit to a prisoner swap. Israel responded with a major assault on Hezbollah which has also targeted Lebanese infrastructure like airports and power stations. The pictures of innocent children wounded and killed in the fighting, as well as those of fleeing people, have tugged at all our hearts.

While a recent report indicates that Year 2005 saw the fewest major armed conflicts worldwide since 1991, going from a high of 31 down to 17 last year, we in America have all been especially aware of war ever since September 11, 2001. Most of us probably have family members or friends who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, for whom we’ve offered urgent prayers for protection. We yearn for peace. We crave peace not only among nations and religions, but between ourselves as individuals and within our own souls. Peace often proves to be elusive, though.

Our Bible lesson for today was written either by the apostle Paul or one of his early students to the Christian church in the city of Ephesus, located in what is now Turkey. This congregation was apparently in some conflict. It seems that some Jewish Christians there cast doubts on the relationship that the non-Jewish, or Gentile, Christians had with God. They pointed to the Jewish religious rituals, like circumcision, which they had undergone and claimed that without the Gentiles' submission to such rituals, their faith was incomplete. They weren’t really close to God, they were told.

It was to bring peace to troubled Christians in the congregation at Ephesus that this section of the letter that appears in our Bibles was written. It begins by addressing the Gentiles. Read the first segment of it with me:

So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision” —a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

The writer of our lesson is inviting the Gentile Christians, now angry with the Jewish Christians and concerned that their relationship with God hung in the balance, to remember how their relationship with God began. It started not with them conforming to some religious ritual or with doing some good deed. It didn’t even start with them. Their relationships with God didn't start with them! Nor do our relationships start with us!

But we often get this wrong. A few years ago, an issue of Reader’s Digest told about a man, named Bill, who had donated more than 100 pints of blood through the years. There are undoubtedly many people who owe their lives to Bill’s kindness. But how do you think they’re viewed in heaven? Maybe he was joking, but this is what Bill had to say on the subject: “When that final whistle blows, and St. Peter asks, ‘What did you do?’ I’ll just say, ‘Well, I gave one hundred pints of blood. That ought to get me in.” If Bill really believed that, he was in for a big surprise. It’s only the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us of our sin and makes us acceptable to heaven!

Our peace with God has nothing to do with anything we do and everything to do with what Christ has already done for us on the cross! Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ and trusts that He shed His blood and rose from the dead for us has peace with God and with themselves...forever.

Our lesson makes another point. Now, read the next part of our lesson with me, please.

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.

These words were addressed to both the Gentile Christians and to the writer’s fellow Jewish Christians. By the giving of Himself and our faith in Him, Jesus establishes another sort of peace.

Two men had long been at odds with one another. Then, within months, each experienced tragedy in their lives. One man lost his wife in a terrible accident, the other his son to a sudden heart attack. Trying to deal with their grief, both made appointments to speak with the pastor who, unlike some pastors you could name, was a very smart person. She deliberately arranged for these two men to unavoidably meet one another as one appointment ended and the other began. Then, just to make sure they spoke, she announced that she needed to make a phone call before visiting with the second fellow.

As you might expect, the two found that they had several things in common. One, of course, was their grief. The other was that, as their appointments with the pastor demonstrated, they saw Jesus as the One Who could sustain and encourage them and give them hope.

You’ve often seen me during the children’s messages have the kids scatter throughout the sanctuary and then, from their varied starting points, step closer and closer to the cross here in the front. The point is that as Jesus draws us all to Him, we are also inevitably drawn closer to one another.

The Church is Jesus’ family and in it, we can experience peace with God and peace with each other. Jesus can knock down the walls that may exist between us, washing them out in the flood of His charitable love that accepts us and empowers us to accept and love each other. This is one of the things I love most about our congregation: When you folks to the part of our worship when we share the peace of God, you really do share the peace of God!

Read the last segment of our lesson with me now, please.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

All who believe in Jesus Christ, no matter what our backgrounds, no matter what our past sins, no matter what our faults, are the living bricks of a living building called the Church. Jesus Christ lives within us. Nobody but the members of Christ’s Church, our lesson tells us, is equipped to share and spread the peace of God with the world. Jesus lives within us!

That’s what makes the Church different from any other institution on the planet. The Rotarians, the Kiwanis, the Boys and Girls Club, the Chamber of Commerce. Those are all great organizations doing great things. But Jesus only lives in the Church!

Lutheran pastor Mike Foss tells the true story of attending a prayer breakfast in his community where he was seated next to an African-American pastor he only identifies as Bishop Collins, a man who has started four different churches in the rough inner city areas of Minneapolis. He’s done this in spite of the fact that he himself could play it safe by serving in churches close to his own home in the Twin Cities suburbs. Foss writes:

Bishop Collins turned to me and said, "It’s not hard to love our neighbors as ourselves. I am an African-American and you are white. Yet we are brothers in Jesus Christ—we don’t see color! Peace comes between us because our hearts have been changed by God. That’s why I plant congregations in the roughest parts of the city. Only Jesus Christ can bring individuals peace and, when the neighborhood sees and hears from individuals the love of Jesus Christ, they have hope… and the neighborhood changes.”

Our neighborhoods, our homes, our families, our marriages, our schools, our places of work, and the entire global neighborhood can change when people are connected to Jesus Christ! He is our peace!

People lack peace the world over--from White Oak Road to Beirut.

• If you believe in Jesus Christ and know that He lives in you, don’t ever doubt that God has made peace with you.
• If you believe in Jesus Christ and know that He lives in you, don’t ever doubt that God can help you make peace with those from whom you may be alienated.
• And if you believe in Jesus Christ an know that He lives in you, don’t ever doubt what you can do to share the peace of God with others in this world that needs His peace.

Commit yourself today to sharing Christ with others, ask God for His help, and let Him use you as He has generations of ordinary saints like you and me to spread His peace!

We know that the world needs peace of Jesus Christ. You have it. Don’t be stingy with it: Share it this week!

• Tell a friend about Christ.
• Invite someone to worship.
• Take time to listen to someone’s hurts and promise to pray for them.

When you and I do these things like these, hearts will be changed by God! We'll truly be sharing the peace!