The Prince of Peace. That’s one of the
titles we give Jesus, of course, “The Prince of Peace.” It sounds really
good, right? I mean, who would not want
to be known as the Prince of Peace?
It has a Biblical basis, of course. It comes from the
book of Isaiah. Chapter Nine, Verse Six
says, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is
given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” That’s one of the Old Testament prophecies of
the coming of Jesus.
And I’m not denying that’s who Jesus is.
I’m not at all trying to argue that Jesus is not, in fact, the Prince of
Peace referred to in Isaiah. But the question is, how do we square that
title, the “Prince of Peace”, with what Jesus said in our reading from Matthew
for today? In that passage Jesus, the Prince of Peace, says, “Do not suppose
that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace,
but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter
against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies
will be the members of his own household.’”
That’s quite an agenda for the Prince of
Peace, don’t you think? Jesus not only specifically denies that he has
come to bring peace, he says he’s going to turn families against each other.
We tend to think that family quarrels are one of the worst things that
can happen to us, and here’s Jesus specifically saying that’s he has come to
split families apart. What’s up with this?
Well, I don’t think Jesus said all this to
incite violence. After all, this is still the same Jesus who told us to
love our enemies and pray for people who persecute us. This is the same
Jesus who said that if someone slaps us on the left cheek, we should turn the
right cheek to them as well. I don’t think what Jesus says here is
intended to contradict any of that.
Here’s what I think this is about.
We tend to think of peace as involving compromise. Whenever there’s
a dispute, we think, well, let’s just have each side give a little.
Nobody’s ever totally right. If
one side says this and the other side says that, well, the truth must lie
somewhere in-between. So let’s all just compromise and work together and
we’ll come up with a peaceful solution to everything.
And there are times when that’s true.
But there are times when it’s not, and I think Jesus recognized that.
There are times in life when we have to take a stand. There are times in life when we have to say
“This is right and this is wrong.” The truth cannot compromise with falsehood--as
the saying goes, a half-truth is a whole lie.
Virtue cannot compromise with vice--virtue mixed with vice is no virtue
at all. Righteousness cannot compromise with sin--sin will overcome the
righteousness. Sometimes, we cannot
compromise. Sometimes, we have to take a
stand.
And whenever we take a stand, there are
inevitably people who are not going to like the stand we’ve taken. And
sometimes, those people are going to be upset with us for taking the stand
we’ve taken. And that’s going to cause
conflict, whether we want it to or not.
Jesus did not go around looking for a
fight. But Jesus was not afraid to take a stand. And Jesus knew that, when he took a stand,
there were going to be people who did not like it. And that caused
conflict. Families were split
apart--some people believed in Jesus as the Savior, others did not. Communities were split apart--some people
following Jesus, others thinking he was a fraud and a blasphemer.
Religious communities were split apart, too--while most of the Pharisees
were opposed to Jesus, the Bible tells us of some who did believe and followed
him.
And sometimes that conflict resulted in
violence. Ultimately, it resulted in the most violent act of all--the
killing of Jesus Christ on a cross. It did not have to be that way. Jesus could have compromised with the
Pharisees. Jesus could’ve said, “Okay,
I’ll back off a little. I’ll stop talking about being the Son of God. I’ll stop healing people on the Sabbath
day. I’ll be sure to follow the
religious laws, and I’ll be sure to recognize your authority.” If Jesus
had done that, there’s a good chance the Pharisees would’ve gone for it. And Jesus would not have been killed.
Jesus could have compromised. But he
knew God did not send him to earth to compromise, with the Pharisees or with
anyone else. He came, as our reading from Romans says, to die for
us. Even though we were sinners, even
though we did not deserve to have salvation, Jesus gave it to us. Jesus
could not give us salvation by compromising.
He could only bring us salvation by taking a stand and seeing it through
to the end. Jesus knew that there are
some things worth dying for. And Jesus knew that people are worth dying
for, too. Again, “Very rarely will
anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might
possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While
we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
But whenever I hear that verse, “very
rarely will anyone die for a righteous person”, I think of another group of
people. And on this Veterans Day, you may already know who it is. It’s the men and women who have served this
country in the United States Military.
When someone joins the military, they are
taking a stand. When someone joins the military, they do so knowing that
they are putting their lives in danger. They have no control over where
they are going to be sent. They don’t
know what they may be asked to do. They know that they may be asked to
risk their lives, and that they may in fact be killed. When you’re in the military, that’s part of
your job description.
The people who join the military don’t
want to die, any more than anyone else does. But they’re willing to do
it, because they know that sometimes you cannot compromise. You have to
take a stand. And so they do. They risk their lives to do it. And they don’t just risk their lives for
righteous people. They do it for all of us. They do it for people who are righteous and
who are not righteous. They do it for
people they love and people they don’t even like. They do it for many,
many people they will never meet. They
are willing to risk dying for everyone in this country.
And they don’t just risk their lives so we
can live. They risk their lives so we can have the way of life that we
do. The risk their lives so we can have freedom. They risk their lives so we can say what we
think and do what we want to do. They risk their lives so we can vote on
who the leaders of the government will be, rather than being told who they’re
going to be.
They also risk their lives so that we can
be here this morning. They risk their lives so we can sit together in a
warm sanctuary and worship God. They risk their lives so we can declare,
without fear, that Jesus Christ is the Savior.
We tend to
take that for granted. We just assume that we’ll always be able to get
together on Sunday morning to worship God. But there are many places in
the world where people cannot do that. There
are many places where people have to worship God in secret, for fear of being
caught and punished. There other places where people are told they have
to worship a certain god, and have to worship that god in a certain way. And again, if they don’t do that, they run
this risk of being arrested or even killed.
You and I have the freedom to worship the
true God. We have the freedom to do that in whatever way we choose.
And of course, others have the freedom to worship a different god, or to
worship no god at all. One of the reasons all of us have that freedom is
because of the willingness of the members of the United States Military to take
a stand, to put their lives on the line, and to die if necessary, to protect
and defend that freedom.
Jesus Christ did not compromise. He
took a stand. And because he did, he was
killed. He died for us. He died so
that our sins can be forgiven. He died so that, by our faith in him as
the Savior, and by God’s incredible love and grace and mercy, we can have
eternal life with him. There is nothing in this world that can compare to
that. We should always be incredibly
thankful for that.
But people who have served and are serving
in the United States Military take a stand, too. They are willing to die
for us, too. They cannot give us
salvation, but they can and do protect our lives in this world. They’re
willing to die to protect our freedoms, including the freedom to worship God
and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And when we
spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, we give others the chance for salvation.
So on this Veterans’ Day, and every day, let’s be thankful for those
people who have served and are serving in the United States Military. And
let’s honor them by taking a stand.
Let’s use the freedom they have given us to go out and spread Jesus’
gospel to everyone we can.
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