August 17, 2025 "Jesus the Peacemaker"

10th Sunday After Pentecost

Jeremiah 23:23-29

Psalm 82

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Luke 12:49-56

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you

 from the one who calls us to partner in making peace. Amen.

There are some gospel passages

 that make me want to add a question mark

 to the end of the reading.

 The gospel of the Lord?

 Praise to you O Christ?

 Because on the face of it,

I’m not sure if it is good news.

 Today’s gospel is one of those texts,

Jesus is literally preaching fire,

 “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!...Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!…You hypocrites!”

The gospel of the Lord?

What is going on here?

This is quite a contrast

 to the image we usually have of Jesus,

the Jesus who heals the sick,

 forgives sinners, gathers children in his lap,

the one who is gentle and humble of heart

 and yes that is Jesus,

but the Jesus in our gospel is also Jesus,

one who has come to transform the world,

to turn it on its head,

 so that Samaritans are the good ones

 and ungrateful second sons are welcomed home with a party

and blessed are the poor, and hungry and mourning,

 and those who stay alert waiting for the Lord.

 ‘Do you think that the powers of this world

are going to take this transformation kindly?’

Jesus is asking his disciples,

having already once told them

 what will happen to him,

 the kind of death he is going to die.

 And still this image of Jesus proclaiming division

 is hard to hear,

hard to wrestle with.

I was struggling with what to say this week

when I remembered a sermon that I heard

when I attended the festival of homiletics this spring.

The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale

preaching a sermon on unity in the body of Christ

based on Ephesians chapter 4,

said something that I’m still thinking about:

 she made a distinction between peacemakers

 and peacekeepers

 saying: “peacemakers are painfully honest about the lack of peace and are willing to upset the status quo.”

this is in contrast to peacekeepers

 who don’t want to rock the boat

whose goal is to not upset the status quo.

 The problem of course

 is that until God’s kingdom comes into its fullness

the status quo is not peace,

 it is absence of conflict,

 or at least an appearance of the absence of conflict for those in power,

 the price of which is always paid by the poor and marginalized.

Jesus is not a peacekeeper.

Jesus is a peacemaker

and in our gospel passage for the day

 he is being painfully honest about the lack of peace

 and the conflict that will arise in the pursuit of peace,

 true peace,

 shalom

he’s being honest about the seemingly extreme things

that will need to be done

 for the sake of peace,

for healing.

 We know from our own lives

 that sometimes extreme things

are done for the sake of healing and health,

Look at surgery, or chemo to treat cancer.

These are violent acts against our bodies

And Yet they are necessary for life

 because not doing them,

maintaining the status quo

 leads to death.

Of course there is always a risk in these measures,

 they take a leap of faith into the unknown.

Like the leaps of faith the ancestors in the faith had to take.

As we hear in Hebrews,

while Jesus is the culmination of God’s peacemaking work

 God has been at work upsetting the status quo for a long time

and all the while

 partnering with people who had to step out in faith

for the potential of something better than the status quo.

 Abraham left his homeland,

the people of Israel crossed through the Red Sea,

 though don’t you think there was a bit of hesitation

 before they stepped out between the walls of water?

 Of course when they saw the Egyptian army chasing after them

The dry land through a divided sea seemed like a much better option

 and out they stepped

away from slavery into freedom.

Of course it wasn’t an easy transition

- there was lots of complaining in the wilderness,

Among other struggles

 and that’s part of the point from the author of Hebrews,

even as they hold up the ancestors in faith

they also recognize that these were not the good old days

somehow easier or better

 while the ancestors showed great faith

as they were working to be peacemakers with God

it wasn’t easy

there were consequences for their actions

 “Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.”

and they suffered all of this

not for individual glory

 but as part of God’s disruptive story,

 a story that is now at our chapter,

now it is our turn to join with God in making peace,

in disrupting the status quo,

and as daunting as that may seem

 we are assured that we are not called to this alone,

 we are surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses

 who paved the way before us,

and not only do we have the great cloud of witnesses

We have Christ

“the pioneer and perfector of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

In our baptisms we have been joined to Christ,

his death and resurrection

 and therefore we have been called to join in the making of peace

 even as the process will bring division and conflict,

 but we persevere,

 because as Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale also observed:

 while peacemakers are painfully honest about the lack of peace

 “peacemakers never give up trying,

 because peacemakers realize that we need each other,

 that it is God’s will that we are one.” Amen