Blessed are the Peacemakers
The Spiritual Formation of a Reconciler
Recently I was invited by Desire Street Ministries to discuss a workshop I’ve been putting together over the last few months called, “Blessed are the Peacemakers: The Spiritual Formation of a Reconciler”.
The work of reconciliation and justice work is extremely hard. This is why Desire Street states; “Studies show that a vast percentage of the leaders of urban ministries last less than five years in their work. The pressures are tremendous, and the discouragement that accompanies it can be devastating.” I was reminded of the challenge of racial reconciliation on a trip to a city just outside of Atlanta leading up to the Jesus+Justice Gathering that OneRace put together. As I drove through the city on the way to the church, I passed a monument to a Confederate General in the town square.
I was there to meet with a group of 20 pastors, ministry and community leaders at a local church in the area to share about the work of OneRace and to invite them to the Jesus+Justice Gathering. The meeting was going okay as I shared about God’s heart to unite the church, the story of OneRace, my own story of journeying into racial reconciliation and then I opened it up for any questions. One young man expressed his frustration at a post that OneRace had made last year about anti-racism work, another vented that OneRace wasn’t doing enough around one specific topic, and another shared that he wasn’t going to get involved with OneRace if they didn’t speak to an issue close to his heart.
I walked about of that meeting completely drained and was reminded once again how divided the church is around race, culture, and class. As I drove back into the city Abba Father was gently enough to remind me that I had not done the interior work to prepare myself for a meeting like this. So, I began to pray, meditate, and write and what came out of that time is this workshop on, “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” As in all things, the Spirit has me work on content for my own sanctification.
Two years ago the Spirit led me back to reread the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” I was astonished what Jesus does in this simple statement and why I’ve never noticed it before. He connects two main thoughts, peacemakers and children of God. We can only be peacemakers in this world when we embrace the reality that we are God’s beloved children! Peacemakers are trying to bring two opposing sides together in Christ and we can’t be enmeshed on either side of the two opposing groups we’re trying to bring together. My false self of codependency has forced me to make the mistake of both. I’ve tried and utterly failed to be the saviour for the marginalized community and also trying to fix those that are actively participating in the marginalization. We live in between two different worlds. I’ve had two friends defund me for being to liberal and talking about police violence, and another because we’re not talking about reparations.
We first and foremost have to embrace that we are God’s children! This is why Howard Thurman wrote in Jesus and the Disinherited, “The awareness of being a child of God tends to stabilize the ego, and results in new courage, fearlessness and power. To the degree that a person knows this that he is a child of God, he is unconquerable from within and without.”
Martin Luther King Jr. writes in Strength to Love; “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit. He recognizes that social change will not come overnight, yet he works as though it is an imminent possibility.” We have to build up an inner strength in Christ to be able to fully live into Christ’s ministry of reconciliation.
The Five Principles that I developed with the help of some reconciler friends are below;
Embrace that we are God’s beloved children.
Christ alone is the reconciler. He longs for reconciliation and justice more than us.
Allow the Holy Spirit to prune the deep parts in us that have been conditioned by culture.
Be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
Be differentiated by developing a non-anxious presence in the midst of chaos.
1) Embrace that we are God’s beloved children.
To really be a peacemaker, you must embrace the reality that you are God’s child. Why? Because peacemaking is really, really hard. When we start to be sanctified out of culture and disciple others out of culture, we will be attacked, judged, criticized, and sometimes thrown out. Calling out the fallen elements of majority culture will lead to being attacked. No one likes prophets. Prophets always get killed!
“As the Beloved of my Heavenly Father, “I can walk in the valley of darkness: no evil would I fear.” As the Beloved, I can “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils.” Having “received without charge,” I can “give without charge.” As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved, I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praisewhitouth using it as proof o my my goodness. As the Beloved, I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved, I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.” Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son
The beach is here through the indwelling presence of Christ!
The same peace and presence of God that I experienced recently at the beach is available to me here and now through the indwelling presence of Christ. “There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is the “angel with the flaming sword.” Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes “the angel with the flaming sword” to be placed upon your altar unless it be a pat of “the fluid area of your consent.” This is your crucial link with the Eternal.”
Deep peace in Christ does not come with the externals, but a deep peace inside of me that is so rooted in God’s presence right now, embracing the reality that the hands of the Father are always on me at all times!
On the Island of Peace, we’re already complete in Christ.
“Completeness is the positive aspect of peace that heals us from always needing to strive after the one magical thing or person that will finally satisfy us.” Todd Hunter
It’s a place where I don’t live in cockiness or condemnation, but in a humble spirit, knowing who I am in Christ. It’s a place where I am not looking to prove myself.
The hands of the Heavenly Father rest on our shoulders calling us His beloved.
“It is the place within me where God has chosen to dwell. It is the place where I am held safe in the embrace of an all-loving Father who calls me by name and says, “You are my beloved son, on you my favor rests.” It is the place where I can taste the joy and the peace that are not of this world. “Yes, God dwells in my innermost being, but how could I accept Jesus’ call: “Make your home in me as I make mine in you”? “Nevertheless, my intense response to the father’s embrace of his son told me that I was desperately searching for that inner place where I too could be help as safely as the young man in the painting.” (Henri Nouwen: The Return of the Prodigal Son)
“Each one has to deal with the evil aspects of life, with injustices inflicted upon him and injustices which he wittingly or unwittingly inflicts upon others. We are all deeply involved in the throes of our own weaknesses and strengths, expressed often in the profoundest conflicts within our own souls. The only hope for surcease, the only possibility of stability for the person, is to establish an Island of Peace within one’s own soul.” (Howard Thurman)
“Home is the center of my being where I can hear the voice that says; “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rest” — the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam; the same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light.” (Henri Nouwen: The Return of the Prodigal Son)
“There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is the “angel with the flaming sword.” Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes “the angel with the flaming sword” to be placed upon your altar unless it be a pat of “the fluid area of your consent.” This is your crucial link with the Eternal.” (Thurman, Meditations of the Heart)
“In Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman insists that to fight and struggle against oppressive powers and principalities requires a spiritual reservoir that can only be filled through the practice of spiritual disciplines like silence, contemplation, meditation, and prayer. Jesus “recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny.” Thurman warned his peers during the mid- century civil rights struggle against severing the labor of working for social justice from the spiritual roots, which give such work its vigor and sustaining power. Thurman reminds that the way of Jesus was trod by one with his back against the wall and that only by connecting to the Spirit of life and justice can we sustain movements for social change.” - Christianity Today
It’s a place where you need nothing from anyone or anything, where you get it all from Christ. It’s a place where you are in true contentment and peace. Paul was in a Roman prison with Christ when he wrote in Philippians 3; “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.”
Philippians 3, which Paul describes in detail about the six roles that he lost in order to come to a place of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. It’s being reminded that I am God’s beloved child and am free from what others think and oftentimes what I think of myself. The Island of Peace is a place of complete freedom in Christ.
“Again and again he came back to the inner life of the individual. With increasing insight and startling accuracy he placed his finder on the “inward center” as the crucial arena where the issues would determine the destiny of his people.” (Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, 21)
We’re already complete in Christ.
“Completeness is the positive aspect of peace that heals us from always needing to strive after the one magical thing or person that will finally satisfy us.” Todd Hunter
Culture is constantly telling us that we need to qualify ourselves by what we do and this also plays into reconciliation and justice. But, the good news of the gospel is that in Christ, we are already qualified! The real question we’re asking is, am I good? Our sense of goodness does not come from anything we do or accomplish, but from the love and mercy of Abba Father that declares that we are his beloved.
2) Christ alone is the reconciler. He longs for reconciliation and justice more than us.
“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” (Isaiah 65: 17) The Hebrew word that Isaiah uses here for create is, “bara”. It means to shape or create. It is God’s work to create a new heavens and new earth, we merely respond to what he’s already doing.
Center the Great Reconciler - “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:19-20) Jesus is at work reconciling people to himself, reconciling people to each other, and reconciling this fallen and broken world to himself. Jesus must be the center of our efforts to change the story. He must be the reason, motivation, and the impact of our engagement must reflect him. We must never forget that Christ is doing the reconciling, we are but co-laborers with Jesus. And what a joy it is to partner with the great reconciler as he reconciled all things to himself.” Josh Clemons
“God’s commitment precedes our won.” (Dignity Serves) “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1: 6)
2 Corinthians 5: We have been given the ministry of reconciliation
“Take the long arc of reconciliation.”
Minister with an understanding that the church did not arrive in this place overnight. There has been hundreds of years of racist laws that have led us to the place we’re in now.
You’re in a place of rest at times, learning to hold the work of reconciliation and justice loosely. Don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re going to make a ton of mistakes. Don’t be performers for others.
Take a Sabbath and regular times of rest! “Sabbath is about Lordship. We don’t do work for God, we co-labor with Christ.” (Josh Clemons)
3) Allow the Holy Spirit to prune the deep parts in us that have been conditioned by culture.
As we journey to seeing how we’ve been conditioned by culture, is embracing your belovedness. (principle one). As you move out of culture and begin to see it’s sinfulness, it will attack you.
But what matters the most is not what culture thinks of you, but what God thinks of you as his beloved! I’ve had to let go of the people pleaser in me, because you can’t be a people pleaser and a reconciler!
4) Be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
Not looking to the system for a sense of identity or validation and it will attack you. Calling out the cultural superiority in others will lead you to being attacked.
5) Be differentiated by developing a non-anxious presence in the midst of chaos.
Abba Father is well pleased with His Reconcilers:
“And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Mark 1:11
Jesus begins his earthly ministry in Mark 1 by hearing the Heavenly Father declare over these amazing words; “THIS IS MY BELOVED CHILD, WHOM I LOVE, WITH YOU I AM WELL PLEASED.”
“Who am I?” asked Merton, and he responded, “I am one loved by Christ.” (Abba’s Child: Brennan Manning)
It’s taken me years to discover and own this truth; that I am loved by God simply because I am His child and nothing I can do will make him love me more. I am His and He is mine. The Heavenly Father is well pleased with Dan Crain and ultimately with you as well.
“Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” Galatians 4:6
The affirmation and approval we get from Abba Father is nothing like the affirmation and approval we attempt to get from culture.
I’ve struggled with codependence all of my life, and this affirmation that I am Abba’s child has healed me in the work of reconciliation. We are called to speak the truth in love and sometimes this means relationships will be strained. Once we recognize that are God’s children and get our affirmation solely from him, we need nothing from others.
Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)
“People pleasing is an unconscious attempt to control someone’s opinion of you.” The Holistic Physchologist
“It has rightly been said that those who are the most detached on the journey are best able to taste the purest joy in the beauty of created things. Detachment is the great secret of interior peace. Along the way, in this journey with Christ, we get attached to (literally “nailed to”) behaviors, habits, things, and people in an unhealthy way.” Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
“Here’s what happens to us all – we seek horizontally for the personal rest that we are to find vertically, and it never works. Looking to others for your inner sense of well-being is pointless. First, you will never be good enough, consistently enough, to get the regular praise of others that you are seeking. You’re going to mess up. You’re bound to disappoint. You will have a bad day. You’ll lose your way. At some point, you’ll say or do things that you shouldn’t. Add to this the fact that the people around you aren’t typically interested in taking on the burden of being your personal messiah. They don’t want to live with the responsibility of having your identity in their hands. Looking to people for your inner self-worth never works.” (Paul Tripp)
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free! Galatians 5:1
A liberating salvation is both spiritual and physical.
We must develop healthy rhythms of solitude with God!
In order to develop this Island of Peace within our soul we must get away to be alone with Christ and to spend time with him in the scriptures, hear his voice and reflect upon in what ways we have failed to love freely, realize our original glory and confess that we are God’s beloved. I really know no others way than solitude with God and simply being with him. All throughout the gospels we see Jesus withdrawing away to be alone with the Father. I have often wondered what Jesus actually did when he was praying with the Father. We must model this rhythm of Jesus in order to love freely.
“In Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman insists that to fight and struggle against oppressive powers and principalities requires a spiritual reservoir that can only be filled through the practice of spiritual disciplines like silence, contemplation, meditation, and prayer. Jesus “recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny.” Thurman warned his peers during the mid- century civil rights struggle against severing the labor of working for social justice from the spiritual roots, which give such work its vigor and sustaining power. Thurman reminds that the way of Jesus was trod by one with his back against the wall and that only by connecting to the Spirit of life and justice can we sustain movements for social change.” - Christianity Today https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/june-web-only/jesus-and-disinherited.html
Pay attention to how Christ is reconciling our divided lives.
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2.20
Christ’s Spirit that lives in us is a reconciling Spirit and is reconciling our divided lives internally.
The degree to which you’ve entered into your own oppression, is the degree to which you can enter into the oppression of others and the racial history of our country. If you can’t hear the cry of your own oppression, you will never be able to hear the cry of the oppressed.
God in Christ saves the sinful oppression in my own heart in order to move towards the oppressed in our world. Once we face and our honest, confess and join our lives is when Christ really sets us free.
Robert Mulholland says it like this, “The source of a loving union with God lies in God’s unfathomable love for us. Think of it—Jesus says that God loves you in the exactly the same way that God loves him! To respond to such love with the love of your total being draws you into that loving union with God for which Jesus prays.” (The Deeper Journey)
“What chance is there of loving and respecting others if I refuse to meet and listen to the many sides of myself? How can I be a reconciler if I shut my ears to the unreconciled conflicts within myself… Now I begin to see that the spiritual life is based on a basic honesty which enables me to recognize that everything I find difficult to accept, bless, forgive, and appreciate in others is actually present within myself.” Martin Smith, A Season for the Spirit
Building up your Island of Peace
We must develop an “Island of Peace within our soul.” (Howard Thurman)
“Each one has to deal with the evil aspects of life, with injustices inflicted upon him and injustices which he wittingly or unwittingly inflicts upon others. We are all of us deeply involved in the throes of our own weaknesses and strengths, expressed often in the profoundest conflicts within our own souls. The only hope for surcease, the only possibility of stability for the person, is to establish an Island of Peace within one’s own soul. Well within the island is the Temple where God dwells—not the God of the creed, the church, the family, but the God of one’s heart.” (Meditations of the Heart: Thurman)
The key element to developing your Island of Peace is to recognize whatever nourishes you the most in Christ. What scriptures, songs, places, books, or people point you back to reminding you of who you are as God’s beloved child? In this season of life in addition to these texts of scriptures, I have been diving deeply into the scriptures and Peter Scazzero’s Emotionally Health Spirituality and using the resources he’s developed to nurture my walk with Christ.
I love reflecting on the Ephesians 1 text for my Island of Peace. God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. He chose us in him before the creation of the world. He predestined us for adoption to sonship. We have redemption through this blood. We’ve been forgiven. His grace has been lavished on us. He has made known to us the mystery of his will. We were chosen. We were marked in him with a seal of the Holy Spirit.
“Externalities are to do with our doing; internalities have to do with our being; and Christianity is about who I am in Christ, not what I do for him.” Tim Keller
Be patient with others as God is patient with us.
God works on his own time, not ours. It’s not our job to fix people, but to love them as Christ loves us. This doesn’t mean we don’t point out their cultural blindspots, we trust God to open up opportunities.
This is why a reliance upon Christ’s spirit is so important to open up the hearts and minds of others that have been impacted by culture.
We cannot learn to love others well until we have learned to allow God’s love to be made complete in our lives. The disciple whom Jesus loved, John, says in the fourth chapter of his first letter, “We love because he first loved us.” And it is since that we are the beloved of God in Christ, we can now love others as the beloved.
The inner strength of Paul to confront Peter
Think about the dynamics surrounding this confrontation. Peter was the leader in the early church. He’s the one that addressed the crowd of thousands at Pentecost in Acts 2. He’s the one that receives the vision of Gentile inclusion in Acts 10.
Paul is new to the church. He’s not established himself as one of the main leaders.
Paul is firmly rooted in God’s love and identity as God’s beloved child. He says as much in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
In Philippians 3, Paul talks about everything he has lost for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ. He lists out seven specific roles he had within his Jewish culture, 1) circumcised on the eighth day, 2) of the people of Israel, 3) of the tribe of Benjamin, 4) a Hebrew of Hebrews; 5) in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6) as for zeal, persecuting the church; 7) as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
Paul can confront Peter because he was sanctified out of the Jewish Cultural Superiority and fully rooted in the love of God and can now call out what Peter is now falling back into.
Paul confronts Peter to his face in front of the whole church in Antioch. Think about this dynamic!
Don’t go alone! We need others to remind us of our belovedness!
We also need a strong support system of Christ followers to live into Christ’s ministry of reconciliation. We need others to be reminded of who we are in Christ. At the end of the letter in Philippians, Paul says this, “And my God will meet all of your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” We know Christ meets the deeps needs we have, but also fail to recognize how Christ meets needs. What is his avenue? Through other people and primarily his church. I share everything with my wife, I see a Christian counselor, walk intimately with a group of men where we confess struggles and sins, visit the local NA club, and are always listening to how Christ wants to speak to me through others. We need others in our lives to confess sins to, but to also be reminded of our original glory, of whom God has created us to be and to literally say to each other, no you are not known by your sin, you are God’s child!
We then turn towards the “other”;
We cannot live into Christ’s ministry of reconciliation externally if we are not willing to allow Christ to enter deeply internally into the pain of our divided lives. A huge problem in the body of Christ is that we are trying love others when we are not even aware of God’s deep love for us. We cannot love the other if God’s love has not been made true in the deep interior parts of our lives. We cannot be reconciled to each other if we are not first reconciled internally.
Because of this Island of Peace that Christ has built up in our lives, we turn outwards in freedom towards others. As Martin Luther says in “Freedom of a Christian”, We in turn do to others what Christ's has now done to us. We “put on” our neighbor as if we were in their place because of the work God has done in us. A Christian no longer lives in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor. “He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor.”
Recommended Resources:
Read the through Gospel of Mark and notice how before Jesus was a servant, he was the beloved.
Jesus and the Disinherited: Howard Thurman
Meditations of the Heart: Howard Thurman
Let Your Life Speak: Parker Palmer