Clayton J. Schmit - "Waging Peace That Is Rooted in Christ" (June 13, 1999)

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-	The epistle reading for this morning	0:09
	is from the book of Romans, the fifth chapter	0:11
	where Saint Paul writes,	0:15
	"Therefore, since we are justified by faith,	0:18
	"we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ	0:21
	"through whom we have obtained access	0:25
	"to this grace in which we stand	0:27
	"and we boast in our hope	0:30
	"of sharing the glory of God.	0:31
	"And not only that	0:33
	"but we also boast in our sufferings,	0:35
	"knowing that suffering produces endurance	0:39
	"and endurance produces character	0:41
	"and character produces hope	0:44
	"and hope does not disappoint us	0:47
	"because God's love has been poured	0:49
	"into our hearts through the Holy Spirit	0:51
	"that has been given to us.	0:52
	"For while we were still weak,	0:55
	"at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.	0:58
	"Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteousness person,	1:02
	"though for perhaps a good person,	1:06
	"someone might actually dare to die.	1:07
	"But God proves his love for us	1:10
	"in that while we were still sinners,	1:13
	"Christ died for us."	1:15
	The word of the Lord.	1:19
	(congregation mumbling)	1:21
	Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace to you	1:25
	from God our Heavenly father	1:27
	and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.	1:28
	(singing in foreign language)	1:35
	I begin with a hymn this morning	2:34
	that I can see most of you have not heard before.	2:36
	I can see some of you are sitting out there trying	2:40
	to figure out what language it is.	2:42
	It's not Spanish, it's not French,	2:43
	it sounds a little bit like German	2:46
	but you can't pick out any of the words.	2:47
	The hymn is Hungarian.	2:50
	In fact, it is the Hungarian National Hymn.	2:52
	For those of you who speak Hungarian,	2:56
	you can readily see the connection	2:59
	between the hymn and the lesson from Paul.	3:00
	For the six or seven of you that don't,	3:03
	I'll be glad to explain the connection.	3:05
	The melody, as you can tell,	3:09
	is stately and poignant.	3:11
	The text is poignant as well.	3:14
	The text is a prayer for peace	3:18
	by a people that have suffered long throughout history	3:19
	many kinds of persecution.	3:23
	During the Counter Reformation, for example,	3:26
	Hungarians were terrorized	3:28
	by the Catholic Church	3:30
	and over the centuries, they have been brutalized	3:32
	through countless wars.	3:35
	So their prayer in this hymn	3:38
	is that God will grant them a time of peace	3:39
	for they have suffered so much in the past	3:42
	that their pain is sufficient even for the future.	3:45
	But peace, as Hungarians know,	3:50
	is hard to come by.	3:54
	100 years ago, on the eve of the 20th century,	3:57
	diplomats from all the leading governments	4:00
	of the world gathered together in The Hague	4:02
	for what was called	4:05
	the first International Peace Conference.	4:06
	It was held not to conclude a war	4:10
	or to settle any disputes	4:12
	but to focus on building a world	4:14
	of lasting peace.	4:16
	It dealt with issues of disarmament,	4:19
	international law, dispute settlement.	4:22
	A second conference was held in 1907	4:27
	and a third one was scheduled for 1915.	4:29
	It was canceled.	4:33
	World War I came along	4:36
	and somehow it got in the way of talking about world peace.	4:37
	The century that followed	4:43
	has been the bloodiest century in human history.	4:44
	Over 93 million people have died	4:50
	in that 100-year period.	4:55
	Over 93 million people died	4:58
	in wars that raged around the world.	5:01
	A small percentage of them,	5:07
	only 5,000 or so lost their lives exactly 55 years ago	5:08
	this week trying to fight their way	5:14
	onto a miserable four-mile stretch of sand	5:17
	known as Omaha Beach.	5:20
	Three weeks ago, the world finally got around	5:25
	to holding that third International Peace Conference	5:27
	at The Hague.	5:29
	Over 10,000 people	5:30
	from the around the world gathered together	5:32
	to discuss for one week guess what?	5:33
	Disarmament, international law,	5:36
	the settlement of disputes.	5:40
	The hope once again	5:43
	is that the coming century,	5:44
	the golden 21st century	5:45
	that we all look forward to	5:47
	might finally be an era of world peace.	5:50
	If you live in Kosovo,	5:55
	you might be of the opinion	5:58
	that we are off to a pretty lousy start.	6:00
	If we have learned anything at all	6:06
	about peace since that peace conference, it is this,	6:07
	peace is hard to come by.	6:10
	Peace is not a pipe dream,	6:15
	it is something that can exist.	6:17
	Saint Paul talks about it in today's lesson	6:18
	as if it something that is real and attainable.	6:21
	Why then is it so hard to come by?	6:25
	It is, if we dare to paraphrase Paul,	6:31
	the lack of peace that passes all understanding.	6:34
	The funny thing is that Slobodan Milosevic	6:42
	has always wanted peace.	6:44
	He's wanted it all along.	6:45
	He's just wanted it on his terms.	6:48
	They were terms that the rest of the world could not accept.	6:52
	No one wants war really, everybody wants peace.	6:56
	We just want it on our terms.	7:00
	Hammering out our terms of peace often takes the tools	7:03
	of war and so this morning,	7:06
	armed peacekeepers are marching into Kosovo.	7:11
	Whether we wage war or we wage peace,	7:16
	the result is the same.	7:20
	People are displaced, people hunger,	7:22
	peace suffer, people die	7:26
	and at best, only tentative solutions are won.	7:31
	Just 12 miles from the pews	7:37
	in which you are sitting this morning	7:39
	is a place called Bennett Farm.	7:42
	It is the site of a great Civil War surrender.	7:44
	You'll have to excuse me being a Yankee by birth,	7:49
	I still haven't gotten used to calling it the War	7:51
	of Northern Aggression.	7:53
	Out there at Bennett Place,	7:57
	so close to here,	7:59
	Confederate General Joseph surrender the bulk	8:02
	of the Confederate army	8:05
	to the Union General, William Sherman.	8:06
	It was a surrender completely on Union terms.	8:10
	Peace on our terms, that's what all people want	8:16
	but we forget what that means.	8:21
	Mark Twain wrote a story called "The War Prayer"	8:25
	that reminds us what it means.	8:28
	He tells of a church	8:31
	that was gathered one Sunday morning	8:32
	on the occasion of sending the town's boys off	8:33
	to fight in the war.	8:36
	A long prayer was offered	8:38
	for the aid and comfort of the soldiers	8:40
	for their courage in battle,	8:42
	for their defeat of the foe.	8:45
	It was a moving, passionate, eloquent device	8:48
	that was able to unite the assembly	8:51
	in its desire for peace,	8:53
	peace, of course, on their terms.	8:55
	At the conclusion of the prayer,	8:59
	an aged character walked down the aisle	9:00
	and stepped forward	9:05
	to deliver an unexpected message.	9:07
	"I come," he said,	9:11
	"from the throne bearing a message from God Almighty."	9:13
	And then he began to translate the prayer	9:19
	that had been spoken into the unspoken words	9:21
	that revealed the prayer's true meaning.	9:23
	"Oh Lord, our God,	9:27
	"help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds	9:29
	"with our shells.	9:33
	"Help us to cover their smiling fields	9:34
	"with the pale forms of their patriot dead.	9:36
	"Help us to drown the thunder of the guns	9:38
	"with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain.	9:40
	"Help us to lay waste their humble homes	9:44
	"with hurricanes of fire.	9:46
	"Help us to ring the hearts	9:49
	"of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief.	9:50
	"Help us to turn them out roofless	9:54
	"with their little children	9:56
	"to wander unfriended the wastes	9:58
	"of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst.	10:00
	On and on he went telling people	10:08
	of the true meaning of their prayer.	10:11
	Twain concludes the story with this wry comment.	10:15
	"It was believed afterward	10:19
	"that the man was a lunatic	10:21
	"because there was no sense in what he said."	10:23
	Peace on our terms,	10:29
	that's what everybody wants.	10:30
	And lest we feel too shameful about it,	10:33
	remember that such was the peace of biblical days.	10:36
	In an alternative reading for the day,	10:40
	the 19th chapter of Exodus has God speaking	10:42
	to Moses on Mount Sinai.	10:45
	And God says,	10:47
	"Tell the Israelites,	10:49
	you have seen what I did to the Egyptians	10:51
	and how I bore you on eagles' wings	10:53
	"and brought you out myself."	10:55
	What God forgot to mention was that while the Israelites	10:59
	were being born to freedom on the wings of eagles,	11:03
	the Egyptians were being drowned in the sea.	11:05
	Well, that's one kind of biblical peace,	11:10
	total annihilation of the enemy.	11:14
	It is no surprise then	11:19
	that people were impatient with Jesus.	11:22
	He had charisma,	11:26
	he knew how to speak,	11:28
	he knew how to hold an audience	11:29
	and sway a crowd,	11:30
	put a sword in his hand	11:32
	and you would have a real leader.	11:33
	People would follow him anywhere	11:35
	but he did not take up the sword.	11:38
	He took up a cross	11:42
	and for those who wanted peace on their terms,	11:46
	Jesus was a stunning disappointment.	11:50
	The human way of peace,	11:57
	it always involves tremendous cost	11:58
	but it is the only way we know.	12:02
	"The habit of war is hard to break,"	12:05
	one writer said	12:06
	and even Desmond Tutu,	12:08
	during the dark days of Apartheid said,	12:10
	"Why not war?	12:14
	"Indeed, we have no choice."	12:16
	But maybe there is a choice.	12:22
	Perhaps there is a choice	12:26
	but it comes not on our terms.	12:30
	It comes on God's terms	12:34
	and it begins not with international conferences held once	12:36
	or twice every 100 years,	12:38
	it begins with individual faith,	12:40
	it begins with the faith that people have in Jesus	12:44
	who took up a cross instead of a sword.	12:47
	It begins with Christ whose only weapon was his word	12:51
	and whose battle was with evil itself.	12:54
	For those who haven't heard,	12:59
	Christ won that battle.	13:02
	We have faith not in an insurrection,	13:05
	but in a resurrection.	13:10
	"Therefore," says Paul,	13:13
	"since we are justified by faith,	13:15
	"we have peace,	13:17
	"peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."	13:19
	Not a peace that comes through diplomacy,	13:22
	not a peace that comes by committee,	13:24
	not a peace that comes and goes,	13:26
	not a peace that simply gives evil men	13:28
	and evil women time to plot another war	13:30
	but a peace that brings us into a free	13:36
	and certain connection with the God who made us,	13:38
	not a secular, tentative kind of peace,	13:42
	but a spiritual peace	13:47
	that flows from faith	13:49
	and works its way into the world by the faithfulness	13:50
	of that contrary cross-bearing, sword-shattering people	13:53
	that bear his name.	13:59
	What is this peace that comes on God's terms?	14:02
	Paul can't seem to tell us enough about it.	14:06
	"It is a path comes from grace," he says.	14:08
	You stand in a summer shower out under the bursting heavens,	14:13
	you are soaked to the skin, bathed with fragrant rain,	14:16
	chilled by its coolness, refreshed	14:20
	and cleansed in its flow.	14:22
	It requires no plunging	14:25
	or diving to get at its wetness.	14:26
	It simply rains upon you,	14:29
	a baptismal bath.	14:32
	That is the nature of this peace.	14:35
	As hard to achieve as it is to get wet	14:37
	"for you are justified by faith," Paul says,	14:43
	"and not by the works of your hands,"	14:45
	not by fretting and striving after peace,	14:47
	not by meeting in committees and councils	14:49
	and conferences and camps,	14:51
	not by decimating your enemy	14:53
	and dictating your terms.	14:55
	You get this peace simply by standing	14:58
	in the rainfall of grace.	15:01
	What is this peace that comes on God's terms?	15:05
	"It is a peace that is worthy of boasting about," Paul says,	15:10
	"for the goodness of God belongs	15:13
	"to those who believe	15:15
	"and so we boast and we brag and we rejoice	15:16
	"in the hope that the glories of God are part	15:19
	"of this shower of grace.	15:21
	"There is simply nothing else to boast about," Paul says	15:24
	except that God has won the battle.	15:29
	There are, to be sure, still skirmishes around the world,	15:33
	some of them rather large,	15:35
	some of them perhaps even right in your very homes	15:36
	but they are like those island-bound fighters	15:41
	in World War II	15:43
	who continue to fight for months	15:45
	and for years after the war ended	15:46
	because they had not been told it was over.	15:48
	But Paul tells us the battle has been won	15:52
	with the cross, not with a sword	15:57
	and that, my friends	16:01
	is a peace to rejoice in.	16:03
	I once had a professor from the plains of North Dakota,	16:08
	a theology professor and he's a simple man	16:13
	who never lost his folksy charm.	16:15
	Part of his charm was that even though he lived most	16:17
	of his adult life in the city,	16:19
	he still speaks with a rich northern farm accent.	16:21
	His words are thick and rough,	16:26
	they tumble out of his mouth	16:30
	like hay bales falling off a truck.	16:31
	It's far from the gentile Southern tones	16:34
	that you usually hear spoken from this pulpit.	16:37
	He doesn't speak with finesse	16:41
	but he does have a knack	16:42
	for helping ordinary people understand the Gospel	16:44
	and he once told us	16:49
	that if you're going to preach the Gospel,	16:50
	you have to preach it in such a way	16:52
	that it's gonna make it sound so good	16:53
	that people say, "Oh, I need that.	16:56
	"Gimme some of that, gimme some of that	16:59
	"and then give me some more."	17:02
	Paul's right.	17:05
	If you make it sound that good,	17:07
	people are going to rejoice.	17:09
	What is this peace that comes on God's terms?	17:13
	It is a peace that enables us even to boast	17:18
	of our troubles	17:23
	for we know that suffering produces endurance	17:26
	and endurance produces character	17:28
	and character produces hope.	17:30
	Here perhaps is the greatest mystery	17:33
	for those who do not stand in grace.	17:35
	Luther had it right	17:39
	when he observed that it's the very opposite	17:40
	that seems to be true.	17:41
	Suffering produces impatience	17:42
	and impatience rejection	17:45
	and rejection despair and despair eternal confusion	17:47
	but it doesn't have to be that way.	17:53
	What would it be like to be at peace	17:56
	even in the face of your troubles?	17:58
	Like many of you, I have a close friend	18:03
	that died from cancer.	18:05
	There was no reason in her later years not	18:08
	to be bitter.	18:11
	She lived too little and died too young.	18:13
	I would visit her but even as a pastor,	18:17
	I had few words to say	18:18
	that could cut through the morphine	18:21
	and bring her any comfort.	18:22
	I would remember how lively	18:26
	and robust she had been,	18:27
	even as I watched her dwindle day by day.	18:29
	Yet somehow, the closer she came to death,	18:33
	the more she was able to understand the word	18:39
	of Saint Paul	18:42
	for suffering produced an endurance	18:43
	that enabled her to live with tremendous pain	18:45
	and endurance produced a character	18:49
	that shined forth with the light of Christ	18:51
	and character produced hope,	18:55
	hope to the extent that one day she was able	18:57
	to tell me this.	18:59
	You know, pastor, if I could go back to full health today,	19:02
	but had also to take back my former level of faith,	19:07
	I think I would refuse it.	19:11
	It's not that faith is any less precious	19:15
	but it counts as very little	19:17
	when I see how close I have come to Jesus.	19:19
	How can you be in anguish	19:25
	and still brag on your troubles?	19:27
	You can only do it	19:30
	if you know the peace	19:31
	that comes on God's terms.	19:33
	Six weeks ago, my daughter's fourth grade school teacher	19:37
	was driving home from work	19:41
	when an oncoming driver crossed the lane	19:44
	and hit her head on.	19:46
	Her husband, a man of prayer,	19:50
	took up the vigil at her bedside	19:51
	at the intensive care unit over here at Duke Hospital.	19:53
	For weeks, the young woman lay in a coma,	19:58
	lingering somewhere between life and death.	20:00
	One day when he was allowed,	20:05
	the young husband went in to visit the man	20:07
	whose carelessness had nearly killed his wife.	20:09
	Deep in grief and uncertain all together	20:14
	that she would live,	20:17
	the young men forgave the driver for what he did.	20:20
	Before he could leave,	20:25
	a man in the next bed asked if he could speak to him.	20:26
	He had watched the interchange	20:29
	between the bereaved husband	20:32
	and the sorrowful driver.	20:33
	He had seen the pain on the young man's face	20:35
	and watched as the hand of grief reached out	20:37
	to touch the hand of remorse.	20:42
	He could imagine the taste of the tears	20:47
	that ran down each man's face.	20:49
	He had seen the young man's lips quiver	20:52
	and utter the unspeakable, gentle words	20:56
	that came from some vast hidden library of love.	21:00
	For what you did to my wife,	21:06
	I forgive you.	21:12
	Seeing all of this,	21:17
	the man asked if he could speak	21:19
	to the young husband about God.	21:20
	If the power of God could break through such pain	21:23
	and bring forgiveness in the face of grief,	21:25
	then that was a God he wanted to know.	21:29
	What is this peace that comes on God's terms?	21:34
	It is a peace that comes through the love of Jesus.	21:37
	It is the shalom of those whose shattered lives	21:40
	are held together by his life.	21:43
	It is a peace that sets aside anger,	21:46
	resentment, self-righteousness,	21:49
	even justice, all for the sake	21:51
	of forgiveness and love.	21:54
	What kind of peace is it that comes on God's terms?	21:59
	It's the kind of peace that makes an unbeliever	22:03
	in a hospital bed cry out, "There it is.	22:06
	"That's what I want.	22:09
	"That's what I've been looking for.	22:10
	"Gimme some of that."	22:12
	It's the kind of peace	22:16
	that makes a woman dying of cancer say,	22:16
	"That's what I need.	22:19
	"Gimme some of that.	22:21
	"You can keep good health, just gimme some more of that."	22:22
	It's a kind of peace that makes the world cry out,	22:28
	"Gimme some of that.	22:32
	"Gimme me some of that Jesus.	22:34
	"We've tried it on our own.	22:37
	"Now gimme some of that."	22:40
	My friends, if you want to work for world peace,	22:43
	wage a peace that is rooted in him.	22:50
	Amen.	22:55

Item Info

Title:

Clayton J. Schmit - "Waging Peace That Is Rooted in Christ" (June 13, 1999)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 1:24. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 23:00.
We all want peace in our terms but we are called to wage peace that is rooted in Christ, who did not pick up a sword but a cross and who offers peace that surpasses understanding to all that allows to boast and rejoice even in our suffering. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r45d8nw28

Date:

June 13, 1999

Speaker:

Schmit, Clayton J.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

Romans

Chapter and Verse:

Romans 5:1-8

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0963
ref10083_l0b
uachapelsermaud
duke:320441
dcrau001607
ark:/87924/r45d8nw28
3d96f425-9eec-48e6-ab13-52b4e07c3890

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