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THE ABC showed an interesting documentary
recently. One participant was a Buddhist monk who is
able to create his own sense of peace and contentment
just by meditation.
This man can actually control how his brain produces
serotonin, endorphins and dopamine, all involved in
making people feel happy. He doesn’t need drugs, he’s
a walking drug factory!
MODELS OF PEACEMAKING
There are three competing models for peace in our world,
and people tend to go after one or another of them,
or perhaps a mixture of them all.
Buddhism typifies one of these models. It is
popular in the West today because our Western culture
is a feel–good culture. A strong emphasis in Buddhism
is that we can, by self–discipline, create our own bliss.
In fact, it is an idea from Hinduism, refined in Buddhism.
And that monk on TV was living proof that it can be
done. People can learn to control the things that make
them feel at ease and peaceful.
This is an emotional model of peace, a peaceful,
happy feeling approach.
This program didn’t just ask the man, “Do you
feel peaceful?” It put him in a scanning device, it
pumped dyes into his veins, and it watched as the monk
meditated and the dyed blood flowed to the parts of
the brain where these good feelings come from.
You or I probably could not do it. He can. He
has learnt how to.
If that man had been in Spain last week with
trains being blown up around him, he could have sat
there and said, “Om!” and hardly felt the chaos in the
outside world.
OK, I’m exaggerating. And I wouldn’t want to
suggest for a second that that man would have thought
it morally right to ignore other people’s sufferings.
But I am suggesting that the capacity to feel peaceful
is not the same as having peace.
In a world where we often feel overwhelmed by
the chaos all around us, many people seek that kind
of peace.
There is a second model for peace which is typified
more clearly by Islam, and that is the model of law.
It is a legal model of peace.
Muslims will tell you that Islam is about peace.
They tell you, quite truthfully, that the word, “Islam”
has the same Arabic root as the word, “salaam”, which
means peace.
Islam means submission, and salaam means peace.
They say that submission means peace. If you submit
to what Allah wants, as declared by his laws in the
Qur’an, you will have peace, and so will others who
make the same decision.
In Islamic countries, where sharia law prevails,
everyone is obliged to submit, and those who do not
submit do not survive. When there is a clash of interpretations
of some law, the Islamic teachers have to make a judgment
about which interpretation will prevail.
I would never want to suggest that all Muslims
are terrorists or that no Muslim can feel compassion
for those who suffer. That would just not be true.
But a strict Muslim, one who takes a fundamentalist
approach to his faith, would be justified in saying,
“These people who died or were hurt in the train bombing
in Spain have suffered because their country did not
submit to Allah’s will. I have peace about it because
I am submitted; but, sadly, there can be no peace without
that submission.”
The third model competing for the world’s attention
is a relational model. It’s the model Paul speaks of
in Ephesians 2. It is a model where Jesus is the key
to peace. Instead of telling us to learn to control
our feelings, and instead of telling us to learn to
control our behaviour, it tells us to learn to manage
our relationships, beginning with Jesus.
Paul says,
...now in Christ Jesus you
who once were far away have been brought near through
the blood of Christ.
EPH 2:14
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one
and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of
hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its
commandments and regulations.
There is no mention
here of how we feel; nor is there an appeal to law.
Instead, Paul says that Jesus has abolished the law
with its commandments and regulations.
We are brought near to God the Father, and near
to each other “...in Christ Jesus.”
EMOTIONAL AND LEGAL MODELS FAIL
Let’s think a bit about
these models again.
Think about the emotional model. You can see
its shortcomings. In the end, it does not need to get
involved with other people and their needs. It always
carries the risk of becoming totally self–absorbed.
Few people realise that our own bodies manufacture
chemicals which are very similar to drugs like morphine
and heroin and quite a number of other drugs. That is
why these drugs work so quickly and become so addictive.
Imagine if, each time you felt bad, you could just give
yourself something that took away all that pain.
You’d want it for every stitch you got from running
for the train.
We’ve all met serious drug abusers. We all know
how self–absorbed they become. That’s the risk in the
emotional approach to peace. We might get some short–term
benefits from feeling more content; but, in itself,
it does not encourage involvement with others.
Or the legal approach. You’ve seen it in some
church people, who are full of legalisms and repel others
rather than attract them.
When I was in my teens, I attended a church with
rather legalistic tendencies. And I was content enough
there, because I could be quite happily legalistic.
When Mrs Dale’s roof blew off in a storm one
Saturday night, two of the men went immediately and
tied tarps over the roof. On Sunday morning, all the
younger deacons went roof mending instead of going to
church.
I was a deacon, so I went with them. But I felt
very uneasy that we were breaking the Sabbath by working
on Sunday. I even questioned the decision. And one of
the older deacons reminded me that we can rescue an
ox that has fallen down a well, even though it was on
the Sabbath. So I felt a bit easier. He also reminded
me that we have to love people, and that that can be
more important than attending a service sometimes.
I’m glad Mrs Dale’s roof blew off, because it
challenged my self–righteousness! Im sorry that Mrs
Dale and her two kids had to suffer it, though. It was
only months after Mr Dale died, too. She needed compassion
and care, not laws and regulations!
But laws and regulations sometimes seem very
attractive.
You listen to the John Lawses and the Derryn
Hinches on talkback radio or to the Alan Joneses and
their ilk on TV. All of them tend to push a “tougher
laws” line.Even those who have a point ride it like
a hobby horse.
The theory is, maker it harder to commit a crime,
make the rewards less and the penalties greater for
those who do commit crimes, and they’ll all be good
little boys and girls, and we’ll all live happily ever
after.
And did I tell you about the Tooth Fairy?
Prohibition in the US was one attempt to legislate
crime away. And crime just became bigger and it passed
from small criminals to criminal chains, to the gangs.
Or think about the white settlement of Australia.
The late 1700s were among the worst times in English
history for harsh penalties. We’ve all heard of convicts
transported to Australia for stealing a loaf of bread
or a needle and thread. Most were here for forgery,
robbery and similar crimes, in fact. But the point is
that the punishments were harsh.
It didn’t stop crime. All it did was fill the
prisons, and then fill old ships anchored in the various
harbours, and, finally, it began to fill the colonly
of New South Wales as well.
Harsh laws don’t prevent crime. They make it
harder to detect and they put more people into prison
for minor offences, and they teach the clever ones how
to be hypocrites.
The end of slavery, better welfare services,
more powerful unions and more justice for the poor did
more to reduce crime in England than all the harsh laws
ever did. Revivals of Christianity did more to reduce
crime than harsh laws did. “Tough on crime” is a formula
to get politicians elected, not a formula for greater
public safety!
RELATIONAL PEACE
So we are left with the third option:the relational
solution.
Paul’s point in Ephesians is that Jesus has acted
to break down the differences which separate people.
And it is in relationship with Jesus that we find an
external peace which is reflected in inner peace.
What I am saying is this: in Jesus, we find peace
with God. In Jesus, we find the basis of peace with
other people. And, having peace at those levels, we
also find peace within ourselves.
Here are Paul’s words:
For he himself is our peace,
who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier,
the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his
flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.
His purpose was to create in himself one new man out
of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body
to reconcile both of them to God through the cross,
by which he put to death their hostility.
He came and preached
peace to you who were far away and peace to those who
were near. For through him we both have access to the
Father by one Spirit.
Let’s take this apart, component by component.
Paul describes Jesus as our peace. Meditation
is not our peace. Law is not our peace. Jesus is our
peace. That is why Jesus came and the angels promised
peace on earth to men of goodwill, but the world doesn’t
have peace. Only those who are rightly related to Jesus
by faith in him are subjects of the peace he offers.
For the rest, he provokes strife, because he is the
man who can’t be ignored, the one who challenges our
rose–tinted view of ourselves.
Second, Paul says that Jesus has made the two
one, and destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of
hostility.
Paul is talking about Jews and Gentiles here.
In those days, the Jewish fundamentalists were every
bit the terrorists that Al Quaeda is today, and the
Romans were as cruel as the US has been in Afghanistan
or Iraq. Jews and Gentiles just did not trust or like
each other, and killings were common.
But Jesus brought them together.
I was reading an Anabaptist on–line magazine
last night, and found a little note about how, in his
lifetime, Jesus brought a tax collector like Matthew
and a zealot like Simon together, had them walking arm-in-arm
down the street and calling each other “brother”. The
writer said that the early Christians didn’t so much
argue for what could be as draw attention to what already
was. Jesus had broken down barriers — already!
But never imagine that this was a low–cost option.
We read that Jesus plan was
...to create in himself one
new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this
one body to reconcile both of them to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
This
was no simple task. If you followed the proceedings
of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, you will
know how difficult it was to get at the truth, to get
people speaking to each other and confessing before
each other the evil they had done.
There has to be a dying to self before peace
can come in its fullness. Just as Jesus died on the
cross to bring us into unity, so we have to die with
him, so that we can surrender our old prejudices, so
that we can walk free of a law which invites us to judge
those who are different, so that we can find peace with
God and with each other.
In the 1720s, a band of Christians refugees arrived
in the Eastern parts of Germany, escaping persecution
in Czechoslovakia. They settled at a town called Herrnhut,
on the estates of Count Nicholaus von Zinzendorf, who
was a devout Christian himself.
Zinzendorf was appalled to discover that these
believers were in open conflict, they recognised different
leaders, they found fault with each other over minor
technicalities, they spoke Christian language, but they
didn’t live Christian lives, because there was no peace
between them.
Zinzendorf went around the pastors. He told them
that this situation had to change. He told the pastors
to teach about the cross, to show what sufferings Jesus
bore for us, to bring us to God. He told them to preach
devotion to the Christ who died.
They did that. They did it for months. Then,
on 13 August, 1722, they all gathered in the Berthelsdorf
Parish Church for communion.
As they met around the Lord’s Table, the Lord’s
Spirit came on them. As Paul wrote,
...through Christ we both have
access to the Father by one Spirit.
When the Spirit came,
their hearts were broken. They realised their sinful
separation from each other. They repented and came together
in unity. Revival came to Herrnhut!
M Scott Peck says that the formation of community
— the breaking down of separation and the creation of
unity in peace — has four steps. At first, everyone
acts nice, and seems to be in unity with the others.
But then comes a period of chaos, as the falsity of
the original image is revealed. If the group takes the
risks and faces the chaos, if it goes through the chaos
right to the end, then comes brokenness, as they abandon
their hypocrisy and lay their lives down for each other.
That brokenness is like how Jesus was broken on the
cross for you and me.
But there is a fourth stage in the formation
of community, a resurrection stage. The broken people
are raised up alive in a new unity of purpose and desire,
a new community which draws people in by the power of
the Spirit within it. That is revival! That is the source
of peace!
This Easter, meditate on the cross! Reflect on
its meaning, and let the Spirit of Christ show you that
sacrifice until each of us owns it and lives in it and
glorifies God through it. AMEN! |
