On November 15, 1969, 500,000 people stood outside the White House protesting America’s involvement in the Vietnam war. The crowd sang, “all we are saying is give peace a chance.” Interspersed between refrains activist Pete Seeger shouted, “are you listen Nixon?” This went on for ten minutes and perhaps could have gone on longer if some of the peace protesters had not started throwing rocks and sticks which caused the police to respond with a massive tear gas attack that dispersed the crowd.
The song, “Give peace a chance” was written by John Lennon during something called a bed-in for peace. If I understand this correctly, John Lennon and his bride Yoko Ono invited the press into their hotel room to look at them laying in bed wearing pajamas. Apparently, this was to be like a sit in, except instead of sitting outside in the cold in front of government building they were cuddled up under a down comforter at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal Canada (they first tried a hotel in the Bahamas, but it was too hot, so they decided to relocate their bed-in for peace to Canada). I am not sure how laying in bed all day was going to bring about peace, but If that is what it means to be a political pacifist, then sign me up. Tomorrow morning when my alarm goes off, I am going to roll over turn it off and spend an hour or two protesting for world peace. Michelle, you don’t have school tomorrow, could you bring me breakfast in bed, or don’t you support world peace?
I am sure I am grossly underappreciating the part John Lennon played in encouraging world peace, but I do find it ironic that they guy who wrote the theme song sung by 500,000 peace protesters doesn’t seem to have actually done that much to bring about peace. In my experience peace doesn’t just happen. Peace is something you have to work for. It requires a great deal of time, effort, and energy, not only to establish peace but to maintain peace. It is when people fail to do the work required for establishing or maintaining peace that friendships are ruined, families are torn apart, and world wars are fought. What I am saying is if you want to give peace a chance, you have to do more than sing a song or lay in bed.
If you really want to give peace a chance, I suggest you take a closer look at Romans 12:14-21. These verses read like a how-to manual for establishing and maintaining peace. I think you will find that these verses are going to be useful in every aspect of your life. You can apply the lessons learned in these verses in your office building or school as you seek to establish or maintain peace with your coworkers or classmates. I think you will find these words to be more effective in keeping the peace between neighbors than well-built fence. As parents deal with their children and children deal with their parents, they will want to pay attention to these words. Likewise, every husband and wife, who don’t want to end up battling it out in divorce court, will want to hear what God has to say in these verses. Basically, what I am saying is, if you ever find yourself in a room with another humanoid, I think you will find Romans 12:14-21 to be useful.
I am eager to dive into these verses, but you can’t really talk about establishing and maintaining peace with people around you without first thinking about the peace of God that transcends all understanding. By nature, you and I are not very peaceful people. In fact, before the Holy Spirit created faith in our hearts we were described as being “hostile to God”[1]. Our hostility could have, would have, and honestly should have brought about our eternal destruction. However, our God, at great personal cost to Himself, established peace between Himself and us. The Son was sent to live a life of perfect peace in our place and to die for our countless acts of aggression against God’s holy law. Then after the path for peace had been paved with the blood of the Son, the Holy Spirit invaded our hearts and established a kingdom of peace inside of each of us. Daily the Holy Spirit has to patrol the dark recesses of our hearts in order to root out lingering hostilities and maintain the peace.
Because of the considerable efforts and energies of our God of grace, we, who once were hostile to God, now enjoy the peace of God that transcends all understanding. With that peace in mind, let’s see what we can do to give peace a chance in our other relationships. I say “give peace a chance” because of what it says in verse 18. There Paul writes, “18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Did you notice the double qualifier? Paul speaks of peace as an uncertain possibility because there is no guarantee that even after you do everything you can do; even if you follow the advice Paul gives you in these verses, there is no guarantee that you will be able to establish and maintain peace with other people. There are some people who are (literally) hell bent on disturbing the peace, but even those who aren’t, even those who, by the grace of God, want to live peacefully with other people, those people still have lingering hostilities hiding in the dark recess of their heart. That is why Paul gives us the impression that living at peace with everyone is kind of a long shot.
You cannot control how other people will react to your efforts to establish peace. However, if you want to at least give peace a chance there are, according to Paul, a couple of things you can do. In verse 14 Paul writes, “14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse”. Granny used to say, if you can’t say anything nice about someone don’t say anything at all. Based on what Paul writes here, I might challenge granny a little bit there and encourage you to find something nice to say about them. I mean, don’t lie. Don’t assign virtues and qualities to people that do not exist. You can’t say a person is sweet if they are bitter all the time. However, if you try hard enough you can find something nice to say about everybody. Admittedly, it might be harder to do with some than others, but even if you are dealing with an especially mean mamajama, there is always something good you can say. Maybe they are a good parent, or maybe they are kind to animals, or maybe they have good penmanship. You can find something nice to say about everyone. Jesus was able to even find something nice to say about the soldiers that were nailing His hands and His feet to the cross. He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. In other words, Jesus acknowledge that these were not nice people but at least they were ignorant, they were not knowingly torturing the Son of God to death. Considering the circumstance, I think calling the soldiers ignorant was a very nice thing to say about them. It takes a little effort, but if you want to give peace a chance, find something nice to say about the person who is antagonizing you.
In verse 15 Paul tells us what else we can do to give peace a chance. Paul tells us to, “15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn”. When a person is being all kinds of nasty it is really easy to route against them. It is easy to be upset when good things come to those who dish out bad on a daily basis. Conversely it is easy to feel like the tragedy or misfortune that befalls such a person are their “just deserts”. It is easy to feel such feelings, but those feelings aren’t going to give peace much of a chance. All such feelings do is cement us in opposition against the very people we are trying to establish peace with. We are better off trying to have a little empathy for the people with whom we are trying to establish peace and try to understand what is going on in their lives that causes them to rejoice or mourn. A little empathy goes a long way in giving peace a chance.
In addition to the empathy, we feel for other people, Paul encourages us to give peace a chance by seeking to understand them. In verse 16 Paul tells us to, “16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited”. Living in harmony with others has a great deal to do with your ability to understand where someone is coming from. This comes out better in the Greek, but in this verse, Paul encourages us to seek to align our thoughts with the thoughts of others. To do that Paul warns us not to be so conceited that we are of the opinion that our thoughts are so much more valuable than the thoughts of others and that the only thoughts that matter or are worth listening to are our own. To recycle the verbiage of the gurus who write about such things, we are to seek to understand before we try to be understood. It may be trite, but it is true. If you can park your ego long enough to consider the thoughts of others to be at least as valuable as your own and therefore worth listening to, then you will at least give peace a chance.
Even if a person persists in being an antagonist after you have said nice things about them, tried to empathize with them and understand where they are coming from, in verse 17 Paul says there is still a chance for peace as long as we, “17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody”. We have all walked away from a confrontation thinking “oh, I should have said this or done that to put that jerk in their place.” It seems we often think of the best insults after the argument is over. I think that is a gift from God. I cannot help but wonder if maybe God makes us temporarily tongue tied so that we don’t say something that will cause an even bigger disturbance of the peace. It might feel good to flay the flesh from your antagonist with your sarcastic tongue but what will such words say about you? Will your coworkers think of you as a peaceful person when they hear you tear someone apart? What lesson will your children learn if they hear you speak to your spouse with a harsh tongue and biting words? Paybacks have a way of not only preventing peace with an antagonist but disturbing the peace you have with others. Paybacks feel good in the moment, but they don’t give peace much of a chance. Better to count to ten, then count to ten again, then wait two more months before deciding how you will respond to an antagonist. Not only will it give you time to cool off so that you can think more clearly, but it will also prevent you from doing or saying something that will make things worse, and it just might give peace a chance.
Paul feels so strongly about his final piece of advice that he takes two verses to articulate it and backs it up with a couple of proof passages. In verses 19-20 Paul tells us, “19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” I once sought to heap burning coals on the heads of a husband and wife who were talking bad about me behind my back. They were of the opinion I was the worst pastor in the WELS. Which I thought was odd because to my face they had often told me that I was one of the best. I can’t remember what it was that riled them up but in the midst of their slander campaign against me they asked if I would come over and help them put together a new grill they had bought. My first instinct was to tell them to go pound sand, but, as He often must do, the Holy Spirit pushed me out the door and onto their back patio. I spent three hours putting together their grill. The entire time I was thinking about this passage and hoping that my kindness was heaping coals on their heads. I cannot say that my heart was in the right place as I assembled that grill and as a result, I missed out on an opportunity to give glory to my God. However, despite my sinful attitude, coals were being heaped on the heads of that couple, those coals caused them so much pain and suffering that it drove them to repentance and not long after their grill had been assembled, they were once again telling people I was one of the best pastors in the WELS. What I learned from that encounter is two things. First, I have a shameful capacity for pettiness, but secondly and more importantly I learned God is so much more equipped to deal with an antagonist than I am. God in His omniscience knows how to heap coals on the heads of an antagonist not to cause them to suffer like I wanted but to lead them to repentance like He wants. If we want to give peace a chance, we have to learn to let it go and trust that God is better equipped to deal with an antagonist than we are.
Say something nice, have a little empathy for what they are going through, try to understand where they are coming from, count to ten, let it go and trust that God is better equipped to deal with an antagonist than you are. These are the things we can do to give peace a chance. Unfortunately, as I think about my interactions with other people over the years, I must confess that I have not always given peace much of a chance. And as I hear about the relationships you have with the people in your life, I suspect you can make a similar confession. By not doing all we can do to give peace a chance we have damaged our relationships with other people, we have endured unnecessary conflict, and worst of all we have sinned against our God.
Thankfully, our God of grace works hard to restore the peace. Time and time again the Holy Spirit calls us to repentance, the Son washes us clean of our sins, and the Father forgives us for disturbing the peace. Out of gratitude for the peace that God is constantly working to preserve with sinners like you and me, we think about the relationships we have with the people around us and if it is possible, as far as it depends on us, we do whatever we can do to give peace a chance. Amen.
[1] Romans 8:7