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SINGAPORE — What was supposed to be a surprise going-away…
Did Jesus come to bring division?
How Christ-followers can be peacemakers in a world intent on tearing itself apart.
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SINGAPORE — A single Bible verse can ruin a perfectly good sermon.
A few months back, minister Mit Vikraman invited me to this bustling, business-minded city-state in Southeast Asia to celebrate with his congregation, the Moulmein Church of Christ.
The church had paid off a large debt it incurred while reconstructing its building. Its members also were hosting a somewhat-surprise retirement party for my good friend Dave Hogan. (He found out about it, party pooper.)
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I asked if they’d let me preach on Sunday during my visit. I was eager to share stories from our new “In Search of Shalom” series about Christians around the globe crossing geographic, ethnic and economic barriers to serve as instruments of peace.
Sure, Mit said. Did I want to pick my own text or follow the lectionary they’ve been using?
“Oh, the lectionary, for sure!” I said, after which I clandestinely turned to my phone and googled, “What is a lectionary?” I learned that it’s basically a list of Scripture readings for each Sunday of the year. If you want to cover a variety of topics in a calendar year, it seems like a good idea.
Erik Tryggestad shares a story about Ukrainian refugees during his sermon.
Or it seemed like a good idea until I saw the Scripture I’d been assigned to go with my sermon on Christian peacebuilding. It was Luke 12:49-56, in which Jesus says, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”
Too proud and stubborn to renege on my lectionary promise, I started praying and reading.
How can we, as Christ-followers, be peacemakers in a world intent on tearing itself apart when Jesus himself said that following him would create division? Are we called to live in perpetual conflict with all who refuse to believe as we do?
“How can we, as Christ-followers, be peacemakers in a world intent on tearing itself apart when Jesus himself said that following him would create division?”
I was taking an online course called “Introduction to Christian Peacebuilding For Church Leaders” at the time, so I put the question to my fellow students. It’s a free study offered by Peace Catalyst, a nonprofit with connections to Churches of Christ and independent Christian Churches.
My class represented a variety of faith groups working all over the globe — the United Kingdom, Cameroon, Nigeria, even Jordan.
They pointed me to Autherine Lucy, a young woman who disrupted the peace on Feb. 3, 1956, when she enrolled as a graduate student in library science at the University of Alabama. She was the first African American ever admitted to a White public school in the state. The Ku Klux Klan burned crosses nightly on campus. Riots broke out. Lucy feared that the mob would kill her. She locked herself in a room in the university library and prayed for strength.
Autherine Lucy desegregated the University of Alabama.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a sermon about how Lucy “disrupted the peace.” He quoted a sister passage to the one in Luke in which Jesus says, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). What Jesus is saying, according to King, is “I come not to bring this peace of escapism, this peace that fails to confront the real issues of life, the peace that makes for stagnant complacency. … Yes, it is true that if the Negro accept his place, accepts exploitation and injustice, there will be peace. But it would be an obnoxious peace.”
The “obnoxious peace” of Jesus’ day was the Pax Romana, a 200-year period known for sustained Roman imperialism, prosperous stability, hegemonic power and relative peace and order. Those who dared disrupt the Roman Peace were nailed to pieces of wood near city entrances to serve as cautionary tales for everyone else.
Many of those who opposed the early church weren’t as concerned about its teachings as they were about its potential to disrupt the Pax Romana. In the city of Ephesus, a silversmith started making problems for Paul and the church because they endangered his idol-making business. A comical shouting match followed as people flooded into the city’s theater — most of them without a clue as to why they were there. (Half of them thought it was about the Cracker Barrel logo.) Finally, the city clerk stepped in and told the people “we are in danger of being charged with rioting” (Acts 19:40).
As the church moved into the Roman capital, so did the disruptions. Roman historian Suetonius wrote about Emperor Claudius, who ruled from A.D. 41 to 54. “Since the Jews were constantly rioting under the leadership of Chrestus, he (Claudius) expelled them from Rome,” Suetonius wrote in “Lives of the Twelve Caesars.”
Members of the Moulmein Church of Christ study a Chinese-language lesson provided by the Alpha ministry.
The historian thought that someone named Chrestus, a common Roman name, was behind the disturbances.
I’m pretty sure he was confusing that name with someone else.
Eventually, the Jews returned to Rome, and they found the church very different from when they left. It was full of Gentile Christians. To help them find common ground Paul wrote them a letter that we now call Romans.
“The peace for which Paul advocates in Romans isn’t merely the absence of conflict. It’s shalom — the deep, abiding peace of equality to which Jesus calls us.”
Emphasizing that point, Paul opens his letter by combining a Greek greeting (charis) with one in Hebrew (shalom) — “grace and peace.”
The peace for which Paul advocates in Romans isn’t merely the absence of conflict. It’s shalom — the deep, abiding peace of equality to which Jesus calls us. It’s a state of wholeness, completeness, wellbeing and flourishing that’s robed in grace and justice. It’s a peace that allows believers to dwell and work together when the world tells them they should be enemies.
But what of this “division” Jesus talks about in Luke 12? Just after these words, he warns that “they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother.”
I’ve seen this. A few years ago, as refugees from the Middle East flooded from Turkey into Greece and, from there, across Europe, I traveled to Vienna, Austria. I worshiped alongside brothers and sisters who read Farsi-language Bibles. They had left the relative peace of the Islamic Republic of Iran because they had visions of the cross.
Following Christ caused massive disruptions in their lives — and division. One couple had their first child on the way. I asked them if they thought their parents would ever get to meet their grandchild. The wife burst into tears, and I regretted asking the question.
Thankfully, these new Christians had a family of faith there in Vienna, with believers from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Erik Tryggestad sings hymns alongside Thailand missionary Robert Reagan and church members from across Asia during the “Bricks to Blessings” banquet hosted by the Moulmein Church of Christ.
Jesus is a disturber of the peace — the obnoxious peace of stagnant complacency that accepts injustice and maintains the us-versus-them status quo.
Division from that imperfect peace is a necessary step toward shalom — real peace that passes understanding.
That’s the peace for which I pray.
ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected].
