Servants of God's Peace

In his Sunday sermon Pastor Jeffrey Rudy touched on a passage from the Letter of James “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment." (James 2: 12-13. NRSV) In this passage James appears to have Zechariah 7 in mind:

The word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying: Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. But they refused to listen, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears in order not to hear. They made their hearts adamant in order not to hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the Lord of hosts. Just as, when I called, they would not hear, so, when they called, I would not hear, says the Lord of hosts, and I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro, and a pleasant land was made desolate. (Zechariah 7: 8-14)

We hear echoes of this passage from the Book of the Prophet Zechariah not only in today’s Scripture reading but also elsewhere in James’ Letter. In this passage itself we find a parallel of our Lord’s teaching as well as James’.

In his teaching Jesus drew from what God had inspired the authors of the Old Testament to set down, the things that God had revealed to them. Like their ancestors the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were refusing to give heed to God’s words, “Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.” Rather than they were focusing on the minutia of the ritual law.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law could not be faulted for their observance of these regulations but rather for the spirit in which they observed them. It was legalistic and lacking in kindness and mercy. It was also self-serving. As one woman commented on Facebook, they were using God to manipulate others. She was not referring to the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law but to modern-day Christians. Her observation was a valid one and one which we need to consider in evaluating our own words and actions. We can wittingly and unwittingly do the same thing.

One obvious example is the prosperity gospel preacher who promise generous blessings from God in return for his congregation’s generous giving to him, bilking the members of his congregation of their hard-earned money to line his own pockets, congregants who may be barely living above the poverty level. Other examples may be less self-evident.

This may explain why Christians and their pastors have become the object of distrust; They are perceived as acting from ulterior motives. They have secret reasons for saying or doing what they are saying or doing.

While we tend to think of ulterior motives as negative and wrong, the evil intentions of an evil person, and to judge anyone who admit ulterior motives as a bad person, that is not necessarily the case. Someone can have good ulterior motives. For example, they may genuinely care about someone else and do not want to see them come to harm, physically psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

It is tempting to see Jesus as a wandering rabbi, or teacher, who offered his own interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, and whose interpretation of the Old Testament got him into trouble with the religious authorities of his day. But the New Testament recognizes in Jesus more than an itinerant preacher. Jesus is offering those who flocked to hear him and became his disciples more than a fresh interpretation of the Old Testament. The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law opposed him and plotted his death because he claimed a special relationship with God. He called God his heavenly Father. He described himself not only as the Son of Man but also the Son of God. His followers recognized in Jesus the Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and Jesus did not deny or dispute their recognition of him as the Christ. We tend to treat Christ as a part of Jesus’ name but in actuality it is a title. It is Greek for Anointed One.

Jesus claimed that his teaching was not his own. It was what he as the Son had heard from God, the Father. It was what God had given him to teach. In his Bread of Life discourse in the Gospel of John, Jesus refers to a passage in the Prophets section of the Old Testament. “And they shall all be taught by God.” (John 6:45 Phillips) Those whom God is drawing to him would recognize that his teaching is God’s. Those who trust in him have eternal life.

If Jesus was who he claimed and generations of his disciples have seen his death and resurrection as confirming his claim, then his teaching ad example takes on far greater weight than we can imagine. We can choose what authority that we give to the teaching and example of a sage, someone who in our estimation has sound judgment and has attained a high measure of wisdom. Jesus’ teaching and example, on the other hand, has authority of its own, independent of whatever authority we might choose to give them over our life. The authority of Jesus’ teaching and example is one to which we must bow if we are truly his disciples.

The specific passage that Jesus is paraphrasing comes from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, “I myself will teach your people and give them prosperity and peace.” (Isaiah 54: 13, GNT) Through the Prophet Isaiah God spoke of a day when all children would become his disciples and he would make peace abound for them, peace in the sense of shalom. Shalom goes beyond the absence of conflict. It embodies tranquility, harmony, wholeness, completeness, healing, and salvation. Broken relationships are restored, not only our relationship with God but also our relationship with each other. Everything is set to rights.

Shalom is arguably fundament to Jesus’ teaching and example. When Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room and said, “Peace be with you,” and breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he was doing something more than greeting them and imparting to them the Holy Spirit, he was passing onto them what had been his mission—to spread God’s peace, his shalom. Through his suffering and death on the cross Jesus had made peace between God and ourselves. He had put right our relationship with God. It was the disciples’ turn and in our time our turn to bring God’s peace to a world deeply in need of God’s peace.

But what about God’s kingdom” What about God’s righteous reign? God’s peace and God’s kingdom are not separate. Where God’s peace is so is God’s kingdom. Where God’s kingdom is so is God’s peace. Those who enter God’s peace enter God’s kingdom. Those who enter God’s kingdom enter God’s peace. Mercy and kindness are found in God’s peace as is love for one another. Mercy, kindness, and love for one another is also found in God’s kingdom.

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to be servants of God's peace. We are called to be instruments of mercy, kindness, and love.