Peace-Maker Or Piece-Maker?
Sermon
Topsy-Turvy: Living In The Biblical World
Gospel Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost (Middle Third) Cycle C
A hard, hard word has been laid on us this morning -- a word so hard that I would rather be almost anywhere than standing in this pulpit right now. It is one of those hard sayings from the mouth of Jesus: "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!"
I thought Jesus was the peace-maker, didn't you? And now he tells us, no, he's the piece-maker.1
And if that were not enough, Jesus goes on to describe what sacred institution he is about to tear into pieces -- the family! "They will be divided: father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
Well, if you didn't know it before, you certainly know it now: the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the gospel of health and wealth and power and success. It is the gospel of the cross, the gospel of piece-making.
Flannery O'Connor, the Roman Catholic short story writer, wrote in a letter to a friend: "What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."
The cross. That's where Jesus is headed as he speaks this hard saying. And, in case you're wondering, it's the same place where this sermon is going: to the cross.
Jesus is the piece-maker. Even when it comes to the family, it seems that Jesus is snipping off a piece over here or tearing a hole over there. Can you think of anything flattering that Jesus had to say about the family?
Quite the opposite. When he is twelve years old, he ditches his family on a trip to Jerusalem. They spend three days looking for him and finally find him in the Temple talking to the rabbis. When they scold him for his behavior, he just tosses it back to them, "Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?"
Later on, at the age of thirty, Jesus leaves his family and his father's carpentry business in order to begin his ministry. His mother and his brothers come after him, but what does Jesus say when he is told that they are standing outside, wanting to see him? He kisses them off! He points to his followers and says, "These are my mother and my brothers, those who hear the word of God and do it."
And if none of that is stark enough for you, how about this, from Luke 14:26: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." Don't you wonder what James Dobson, head of the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, does with a passage like that?
And it wasn't just Jesus' own family that he tore into pieces; he broke up a bunch of others as well. James and John were in the fishing business with their father; "Zebedee and Sons," the sign probably read. Jesus comes along and says, "Follow me," and they do! They leave their father Zebedee standing there with the nets still in his hands. No wonder several preachers have commented, "Jesus broke the hearts of more than one First Century Near Eastern family."
So what is it, Jesus, is it "piece-making" or is it "peace-making"? There is a hymn in the Lutheran Book of Worship that deals with that question, and coincidentally those Galilean fishermen happen to be the subject of that hymn as well. It's titled "They Cast Their Nets."
William Percy wrote this poem back in 1924. It's all about the peace of God and how the shadow of the cross -- "piece-making" -- is all connected to "peace-making."
They cast their nets in Galilee,
Just off the hills of brown;
Such happy, simple fisherfolk,
Before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen....
Now so far this poem has focused upon the kind of peace we usually think about: peace as calm serenity and contentment. You have all experienced that kind of peace, too, haven't you? Maybe for you, too, it was while you were fishing -- by yourself -- on a calm lake -- quiet -- just you and the birds and the fish. You and I might call that scene peaceful, but Percy says, that's not what the peace of God is all about.
Contented, peaceful fishermen
Before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts
Brimful, and broke them too
Brimful, and broke them too.
What does Percy mean, a peace that breaks the disciples? A peace that tears them into pieces? We find out in the next verse:
Young John, who trimmed the flapping sail,
Homeless in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
Head down was crucified,
Head down was crucified.
The peace of God is not calmness. It is not contentment. It is not the absence of conflict. Percy knows what God's peace is all about. It is a wholeness. It is being at one with God, being at one with God's will for us. And even if that means dying in exile, as John did, on the island of Patmos, familyless -- that is peace. Or even if it means being crucified upside down in Rome -- the way the legend tells us Peter died -- that is peace. It is piece-making that leads to peace-making.
The one line that has always intrigued me in that poem is this last one: "The peace of God, it is no peace, But strife closed in the sod."
Strife closed in the sod. Well, I know that William Percy was a southern farmer, a plantation owner. Is it a farming image, pointing to the struggle and hard work, the blisters, the aching back that it takes to make the soil produce? That God's peace is not a quiet contentment, but that it grows out of struggle and difficulty and pain and suffering? That peace, wholeness, comes after being cut in pieces?
I think so. Let me tell you more about William Percy, who lived nearly all of his life in Greenville, Mississippi. When he took over his father's plantation in 1929, he decided to operate it on the basis of the Golden Rule. For example, every plantation back in those days had a commissary where the black share-croppers bought their supplies -- at exorbitant prices. But not Percy: he sold everything at cost and charged no interest.
When the Ku Klux Klan came to Greenville, Percy spoke out against them vehemently. Percy raised three orphaned children, sent penniless young people to college, helped the jobless find jobs, and supplemented the salaries of black preachers in the area.
And remember, this is all in the 1920s and 1930s: forty years before the civil rights struggle. But that is how Percy followed God's will. You know what that would have gotten him, don't you? Conflict and struggle and pain and suffering -- piece-making! -- in the State of Mississippi in the '20s. And yet that is where he found God's peace, "the marv'lous peace of God."
And here's the good news, people: Jesus submitted himself to that piece-making. "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!" He's talking about the cross! At this point in his ministry the cross is still ahead of Jesus, but it's like a magnet, and he feels himself being pulled toward it. It is on the cross where Jesus is torn into pieces in order to become the peace-maker.
Through his death on the cross, "the strife closed in the sod," Jesus has created a new family -- the Church! The Body of Christ! And you and I under the waters of our baptism have been drowned into that Church -- torn into pieces! -- and have been washed into this new family of God.
Did you know that in the early Church baptismal fonts were often made in the shape of a coffin? You see, it's a dying to ourselves ... being torn into pieces ... and rising up to a new life in God's peace, "the marv'lous peace of God." That custom continues among some of the Christian churches in Africa, where a little child to be baptized is brought into the worship room carried in a coffin. It is piece-making which leads to peace-making.
Sometimes, you see, there needs to be a cutting clean in order for there to be healing, in order for there to be wholeness ... a piece-making in order for there to be peace. On the television show 48 Hours, they featured the "Horse Boy" of the Dominican Republic, a boy whose legs were deformed at birth. Instead of his legs bending backwards at the knee, they were permanently fixed forward at a ninety-degree angle, so that the only way he could walk was on all fours, like a horse.
An American doctor brought him to this country for surgery, radical surgery. The only way for him to be able to walk normally was to have his legs amputated and then be fit with artificial limbs. And that was the boy's wish: to be cut in pieces in order to be whole, to be at peace.
And, yes, sometimes that piece-making happens in families. A preacher once preached a sermon about this new family of God, that we in the church do not believe in "family values" but we believe in baptism. A rather tough, prophetic sermon that was bound to offend some people.
But a college student later remarked that she found it comforting. Comforting? "Yes," she said, "it was comforting to know that God has something else in mind." Her family life was a mess. Her sixteen-year-old sister was on birth control pills; her older brother was in an alcohol treatment program for the second time. And just after she arrived at college she received a letter from her mother telling her that she and her dad were getting a divorce. "I have had to come to the sad conclusion," she said, "that I probably can't save my family. I didn't know that God had something else in mind."2
Don't get me wrong. Family is important, but it isn't God.
Nikos Kazantzakis was excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church because of his novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. Instead they should have made him a saint. The Christ that Kazantzakis wrote about had one last hallucinatory temptation while he was hanging on the cross -- the temptation to renounce all this suffering business and instead get married to Mary Magdalene, make love, have babies, and in his old age sit on the porch with his grandchildren. Kazantzakis' Christ said "no" to that temptation, and he died: the piece-making of Jesus that led to making peace for you and me.
"And the peace of God, which passes all understanding ... (even the peace of God which sometimes breaks us into pieces) ... will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Amen.
____________
1. George W. Hoyer, Proclamation: Pentecost 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 20. (I am indebted to George Hoyer for his pun: piece-making and peace-making. In order to communicate that to the congregation, the preacher may want to have those words on two different signs, briefly lifting up one or the other to make the point clear.)
2. William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, July--September, 1998, p. 29.
I thought Jesus was the peace-maker, didn't you? And now he tells us, no, he's the piece-maker.1
And if that were not enough, Jesus goes on to describe what sacred institution he is about to tear into pieces -- the family! "They will be divided: father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
Well, if you didn't know it before, you certainly know it now: the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the gospel of health and wealth and power and success. It is the gospel of the cross, the gospel of piece-making.
Flannery O'Connor, the Roman Catholic short story writer, wrote in a letter to a friend: "What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."
The cross. That's where Jesus is headed as he speaks this hard saying. And, in case you're wondering, it's the same place where this sermon is going: to the cross.
Jesus is the piece-maker. Even when it comes to the family, it seems that Jesus is snipping off a piece over here or tearing a hole over there. Can you think of anything flattering that Jesus had to say about the family?
Quite the opposite. When he is twelve years old, he ditches his family on a trip to Jerusalem. They spend three days looking for him and finally find him in the Temple talking to the rabbis. When they scold him for his behavior, he just tosses it back to them, "Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?"
Later on, at the age of thirty, Jesus leaves his family and his father's carpentry business in order to begin his ministry. His mother and his brothers come after him, but what does Jesus say when he is told that they are standing outside, wanting to see him? He kisses them off! He points to his followers and says, "These are my mother and my brothers, those who hear the word of God and do it."
And if none of that is stark enough for you, how about this, from Luke 14:26: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." Don't you wonder what James Dobson, head of the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, does with a passage like that?
And it wasn't just Jesus' own family that he tore into pieces; he broke up a bunch of others as well. James and John were in the fishing business with their father; "Zebedee and Sons," the sign probably read. Jesus comes along and says, "Follow me," and they do! They leave their father Zebedee standing there with the nets still in his hands. No wonder several preachers have commented, "Jesus broke the hearts of more than one First Century Near Eastern family."
So what is it, Jesus, is it "piece-making" or is it "peace-making"? There is a hymn in the Lutheran Book of Worship that deals with that question, and coincidentally those Galilean fishermen happen to be the subject of that hymn as well. It's titled "They Cast Their Nets."
William Percy wrote this poem back in 1924. It's all about the peace of God and how the shadow of the cross -- "piece-making" -- is all connected to "peace-making."
They cast their nets in Galilee,
Just off the hills of brown;
Such happy, simple fisherfolk,
Before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen....
Now so far this poem has focused upon the kind of peace we usually think about: peace as calm serenity and contentment. You have all experienced that kind of peace, too, haven't you? Maybe for you, too, it was while you were fishing -- by yourself -- on a calm lake -- quiet -- just you and the birds and the fish. You and I might call that scene peaceful, but Percy says, that's not what the peace of God is all about.
Contented, peaceful fishermen
Before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts
Brimful, and broke them too
Brimful, and broke them too.
What does Percy mean, a peace that breaks the disciples? A peace that tears them into pieces? We find out in the next verse:
Young John, who trimmed the flapping sail,
Homeless in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
Head down was crucified,
Head down was crucified.
The peace of God is not calmness. It is not contentment. It is not the absence of conflict. Percy knows what God's peace is all about. It is a wholeness. It is being at one with God, being at one with God's will for us. And even if that means dying in exile, as John did, on the island of Patmos, familyless -- that is peace. Or even if it means being crucified upside down in Rome -- the way the legend tells us Peter died -- that is peace. It is piece-making that leads to peace-making.
The one line that has always intrigued me in that poem is this last one: "The peace of God, it is no peace, But strife closed in the sod."
Strife closed in the sod. Well, I know that William Percy was a southern farmer, a plantation owner. Is it a farming image, pointing to the struggle and hard work, the blisters, the aching back that it takes to make the soil produce? That God's peace is not a quiet contentment, but that it grows out of struggle and difficulty and pain and suffering? That peace, wholeness, comes after being cut in pieces?
I think so. Let me tell you more about William Percy, who lived nearly all of his life in Greenville, Mississippi. When he took over his father's plantation in 1929, he decided to operate it on the basis of the Golden Rule. For example, every plantation back in those days had a commissary where the black share-croppers bought their supplies -- at exorbitant prices. But not Percy: he sold everything at cost and charged no interest.
When the Ku Klux Klan came to Greenville, Percy spoke out against them vehemently. Percy raised three orphaned children, sent penniless young people to college, helped the jobless find jobs, and supplemented the salaries of black preachers in the area.
And remember, this is all in the 1920s and 1930s: forty years before the civil rights struggle. But that is how Percy followed God's will. You know what that would have gotten him, don't you? Conflict and struggle and pain and suffering -- piece-making! -- in the State of Mississippi in the '20s. And yet that is where he found God's peace, "the marv'lous peace of God."
And here's the good news, people: Jesus submitted himself to that piece-making. "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!" He's talking about the cross! At this point in his ministry the cross is still ahead of Jesus, but it's like a magnet, and he feels himself being pulled toward it. It is on the cross where Jesus is torn into pieces in order to become the peace-maker.
Through his death on the cross, "the strife closed in the sod," Jesus has created a new family -- the Church! The Body of Christ! And you and I under the waters of our baptism have been drowned into that Church -- torn into pieces! -- and have been washed into this new family of God.
Did you know that in the early Church baptismal fonts were often made in the shape of a coffin? You see, it's a dying to ourselves ... being torn into pieces ... and rising up to a new life in God's peace, "the marv'lous peace of God." That custom continues among some of the Christian churches in Africa, where a little child to be baptized is brought into the worship room carried in a coffin. It is piece-making which leads to peace-making.
Sometimes, you see, there needs to be a cutting clean in order for there to be healing, in order for there to be wholeness ... a piece-making in order for there to be peace. On the television show 48 Hours, they featured the "Horse Boy" of the Dominican Republic, a boy whose legs were deformed at birth. Instead of his legs bending backwards at the knee, they were permanently fixed forward at a ninety-degree angle, so that the only way he could walk was on all fours, like a horse.
An American doctor brought him to this country for surgery, radical surgery. The only way for him to be able to walk normally was to have his legs amputated and then be fit with artificial limbs. And that was the boy's wish: to be cut in pieces in order to be whole, to be at peace.
And, yes, sometimes that piece-making happens in families. A preacher once preached a sermon about this new family of God, that we in the church do not believe in "family values" but we believe in baptism. A rather tough, prophetic sermon that was bound to offend some people.
But a college student later remarked that she found it comforting. Comforting? "Yes," she said, "it was comforting to know that God has something else in mind." Her family life was a mess. Her sixteen-year-old sister was on birth control pills; her older brother was in an alcohol treatment program for the second time. And just after she arrived at college she received a letter from her mother telling her that she and her dad were getting a divorce. "I have had to come to the sad conclusion," she said, "that I probably can't save my family. I didn't know that God had something else in mind."2
Don't get me wrong. Family is important, but it isn't God.
Nikos Kazantzakis was excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church because of his novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. Instead they should have made him a saint. The Christ that Kazantzakis wrote about had one last hallucinatory temptation while he was hanging on the cross -- the temptation to renounce all this suffering business and instead get married to Mary Magdalene, make love, have babies, and in his old age sit on the porch with his grandchildren. Kazantzakis' Christ said "no" to that temptation, and he died: the piece-making of Jesus that led to making peace for you and me.
"And the peace of God, which passes all understanding ... (even the peace of God which sometimes breaks us into pieces) ... will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Amen.
____________
1. George W. Hoyer, Proclamation: Pentecost 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 20. (I am indebted to George Hoyer for his pun: piece-making and peace-making. In order to communicate that to the congregation, the preacher may want to have those words on two different signs, briefly lifting up one or the other to make the point clear.)
2. William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, July--September, 1998, p. 29.