Brothers and sisters,
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and
our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the Prince of Peace, yet He says that He
has not come to bring peace but division. What do we do with that? We all know
the wonderful Advent prophecy from
Isaiah which declares the coming Messiah Jesus to be “Wonderful counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace.” But how do we reconcile Jesus
being the Prince of Peace with His own words declaring that He has not come to
bring peace but division?? If Jesus is the Prince of Peace then why would He bring
division? Maybe we need to consider what Jesus means by peace.
Does a
doctor bring pain or relief from pain? Consider that recovery from even the
most advanced surgery will often involve weeks and perhaps months of painful
recovery. So can it be said that the doctor brings pain?? Yes. And the pain is
an unfortunate but necessary pre-cursor to the relief that will come after the
recovery from surgery is over. And so the doctor is not defined by the pain he
or she brings but the healing. And so does Christ Jesus bring peace or
division?? The answer is both. But He is not defined by the division He brings,
but that division is a pre-cursor to the peace He promises.
Those who
truly understood what the person and work of Christ Jesus would do and
accomplish understood this. When Simeon held the infant Jesus in his arms he
declared that since he had now been allowed to see Jesus he could now depart in
peace. But then Simeon also said of Jesus that He was appointed for the fall
and rising of many in Israel. And the rising and falling that Simeon speaks of
is necessary to bring about the peace that Jesus comes to bring.
You see
these words of Jesus seem odd only if one is going by a strictly worldly
definition of “peace”. A worldly definition of peace sees peace as merely the
absence of conflict. It’s the “peace” that spreads the lie that Jesus is just
one of many ways to God. It’s the peace that says it doesn’t matter what you
believe as long as you are a “good person”. It’s the peace that says offending
people is the greatest of sins, regardless of whether you are on the side of
truth. But such peace is a mirage and a lie. At the end of the day it can’t
even be said that such peace is the “absence” of conflict, but really it is
just the avoidance of conflict. It’s a concept of peace that has no real
understanding of good and evil, of light and darkness, of right and wrong, and
by default of life and death.
It’s the
same false “peace” that was being spread by the false prophets from the Old
Testament lesson. These were the false prophets who sought to fill God’s people
with vain hopes. They spoke visions of their own minds and not from the mouth
of the Lord. And they said continually
to those who despise the word of the Lord that it will be well with them. They
told everyone who stubbornly follows after their own heart that no disaster
will come upon them. They coddled evildoers and liars. And of course there are
many examples of false-prophets from today who proclaim visions from their own
minds and not from the Word of God. You don’t have to look too far to hear
leaders in the church undermine the authority of God’s Word. Some of the most
popular Christian books are written by pastors and evangelists who have
embraced false-teaching.
But this is
where Jesus brings division. He is not a God far away. He is Immanuel, God with
us and He separates truth from untruth, good from evil, light from darkness,
right from wrong and life from death. A
worldly concept of peace pretends that all of these can co-exist. But Jesus
knows that real peace; the peace that He brings; the peace that surpasses all
understanding, requires division. And He, Jesus is the point of division. He is
the dividing agent.
What people
believe and say about Jesus divides families and friends. It even divides the
church in to true and false, committed and uncommitted, true believers and
hypocrites. And truly confessing the name of Jesus can cause pain and anguish
and suffering. You see, even though Jesus is the Prince of Peace, He calls us
to take a stand to declare our commitment to Him and our trust in what He has
done and does for us. And that kind of
stand can be seen as divisive.
But as our
Lord says through the words of Jeremiah in the Old Testament Lesson “Is not my
word like fire?”. Jeremiah was describing how the division would be for the
house of Israel. And the Gospel lesson opens with Jesus echoing this by
declaring that He has come to cast fire on the earth.
This is
the type of stand that those heroes of the faith mentioned in the lesson from
Hebrews were called to take. Look at all they did. Abraham offered up Isaac;
Isaac blessed his sons, Jacob wrestled with God; Joseph saved the sons of
Israel from famine; Moses stood up to Pharaoh and led God’s people through the
wilderness; the people crossed the Red Sea; Joshua brought the walls of Jericho
down; and Rahab welcomed the Israelite
spies. I could stand up here and say, if you want to be a good Christian then
you need to try to live your life like these people and do what they did.
But this is
not about what these great heroes of the faith did. It is about God’s gracious gift of faith to
these men and women whom God elected. When we look to the work of our own hands
to justify us, we miss the point. The stand that all of these heroes of the
faith took was not about themselves but it was about the One in Whom they
looked to for salvation; the One who had bestowed His great and glorious promises
to them.
Abraham,
Isaac Jacob and all the rest of them looked to the one true God-the God who
makes Himself known, who promised to come to save us-the God who is love
itself. The saints of old looked to the promised Christ. Notice that each
example that the author of Hebrews gives is prefaced by the phrase “by faith”. It was “By faith” that these great works were
accomplished.
And their
faith is our faith. We believe and confess our faith in the same God. Just as
God spoke to them He speaks to us through His Word. And it is through that very same Word that we
are brought to faith. It’s through the same Word that the Holy Spirit creates
faith in us. This is why we speak of faith with a definitive article-the faith.
It is the faith passed down to us and created by the Holy Spirit. It is as the
catechism declares: “In the same way the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens
and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus
Christ in the one true faith.”
We cannot
even trust in Christ without the work of the Holy Spirit, who creates and
sustains faith. There is nothing that we can do that can make us worthy to
stand before God. We tend to think of
ourselves as being born on a fence where we choose between two sides of the
fence. On one side, we see darkness, sin, and death and on the other side we
see light, forgiveness, and life. And we think of our faith as being our
choosing the good side. But the fact is
we are born dead in our trespasses and sins, which means we are born on the bad
side of the fence, and were it not for the intervening work of Christ Jesus we
would remain there. You see, in baptism, Christ Jesus cleanses us of our sin
and fills us with the washing and regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit
and creates faith in us. In baptism we are rescued and carried by Christ across
to the good side of the fence.
This is why
Hebrews 12 encourages us to look to Jesus who is “…the founder and perfecter of our faith,…”. But our own sinful nature along with the
voices of false-prophets and false-teachers that permeate the culture that our
Lord divides us from are constantly seeking to tempt us back to the side of
darkness and death. And so we are to look to Jesus. We are to cling to His
Word. He is the way and the truth and
the life. He is the love of God incarnate. He is our salvation.
We look
not to the world and their distortion of peace for our salvation. We look to
Christ because He looked to our salvation before we even could. He looked toward that hill on Calvary where
He endured the cross in our place; where He endured the Father’s full wrath for
you; where He made the all-atoning sacrifice for you. He was not afraid of the
humiliation and shame that was inflicted upon Him. He knew it would come with
the division that He brought. But He also knew it was the path He would have to
go down in order to redeem you with His own blood.
And so by
the faith Jesus created in us we look to Jesus, and by faith we behold Him, we
see Him in our midst in Word and sacrament. By faith we know that we have been
joined to Christ’s death and resurrection in baptism. By faith we trust that
the forgiveness proclaimed by the pastor is Christ’s forgiveness. By faith we
receive the body and blood of Christ Jesus in the Lord’s Supper. By faith we
recognize that the Word of Christ is the only sure and certain hope that
creates faith in us through which we receive eternal life in God’s glorious
kingdom. And finally by faith we witness God’s consoling love in the work of
our hands and others. And so here in the church among faithful believers in
Christ gathered around His Word is where we look for salvation. Here Jesus is
in our midst in Word and sacrament. He is our love and salvation and He is in
our midst because He promises to be with us and it is only through Him that we
have been divided away from the bad side of the fence and graciously placed in
the good-side with all those heroes of the faith before us.
Amen
