What Peace Really Demands: The Myth of Quiet Peace

In last week’s sermon, we cleansed the sanctuary of competing allegiances. Now we are called to go deeper. Not merely to dwell in a sanctuary freed from idols, but to become peacemakers who step beyond its walls. Not keepers of calm or maintainers of the status quo, but active, embodied peacemakers in a world trained by violence, sustained by pride, and shaped by fear. 

Matthew 5:9 reads, “Happy are people who make peace, because they will be called God’s children.” Notice the active verb: those who make peace. Not people who desire peace. Not people who talk about peace. Not people who simply avoid conflict. But people who make peace. People who work at reconciliation, justice, and transformation, even when it disrupts the settled world.

Yet for generations, the Church has misunderstood peace. Too often we have presented it as a passive virtue. Peace, in many circles, has come to mean quietness, orderliness, or neutrality. We’ve confused silence with reconciliation. We’ve called the absence of conflict the presence of peace. If we’ve learned anything from the prophets, from Jesus himself, and from the wisdom of the early church, it’s that peace isn’t passive. Peace is not a lack of trouble, it is a presence of justice, of reconciliation, and of God’s transforming love. Real peace costs something. It’s active, intentional resistance to violence, indifference, and pride. It’s a holy disruption.*

Jesus Didn’t Say “Blessed Are the Peacekeepers”

This distinction matters. To keep peace is often to maintain the existing order, even if that order is unjust. Peacekeeping assumes that quiet is preferable to conflict, even when conflict is necessary to confront sin. It’s why so many churches have been complicit in racial injustice, economic inequality, and gender-based harm. They preferred to keep peace than to make it. 

As we read from scripture, Jesus blesses the peacemakers. To make peace requires initiative, courage, and sacrifice. It means facing brokenness head-on. It means telling the truth, even when it disrupts. It means naming harm, challenging systems, and refusing to let lies masquerade as harmony. Jesus didn’t shy away from conflict. He entered conflict with love, calling out both religious leaders and imperial forces, not as an aggressor, but as a reconciling agent. His way of peace led to a cross, not a crown.

Peacemaking is not conflict avoidance. It is the sacred, Spirit-led work of stepping into the breach with compassion, courage, and clarity. It is choosing love over retaliation, justice over comfort, and community over compliance. When Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he meant those willing to resist the sword of Caesar with the cross of Christ.*

Wisdom from Above: The Way of Peacemaking

The writer of James, in 3:13–18, offers us a deeper lens into what peacemaking looks like. “Are any of you wise and understanding?” James asks. “Show that your actions are good with a humble lifestyle that comes from wisdom.” He then draws a sharp contrast between two forms of wisdom. Earthly wisdom is unspiritual and demonic, rooted in selfish ambition and envy, and producing disorder, violence, and evil. Godly wisdom is from above because it is pure, peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine.

These two wisdoms are not abstract concepts. They are ways of living. The wisdom from below aligns with the gospel of the nation. It is competitive, hierarchical, bent on proving, winning, and dominating. It is the wisdom of empire, the logic of conquest. It shouts down opponents, clings to power, and masks insecurity with bravado.

The wisdom from above? That’s peacemaking wisdom. It listens. It yields. It refuses to mirror the aggression of the world. It doesn’t puff up. It bows down, not in submission to injustice but in humble solidarity with the vulnerable. It allows for repentance, reconciliation, and trusts in transformation as it cultivates relationships. James gives us a glimpse of its fruit: “Those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts.” Peacemaking plants justice. Peace doesn’t grow from control, it grows from compassion.*

The Peace of Christ Rejects the Sword of Caesar

This is the heart of our message today. The peace of Christ refuses the sword of Caesar. It resists the national interest when that interest demands war, coercion, or the marginalization of others in order to obtain, as The Beverly Hillbillies said, “black gold” or precious metals from the ground. 

Too often, Christians have baptized the ambitions of empire, calling conquest a form of protection and domination a form of security. We have justified wars, policed borders, dehumanized migrants, and aligned ourselves with national interests as if they were divine interests. We have waved flags over battlefields and steps of the capitol while forgetting that Jesus told Peter to put the sword away. The church has, unfortunately, adopted the worlds mantra of attack first and ask questions later, but, of course, we have “christianized” the language saying “just do it and ask for forgiveness later”. 

Peace in the kingdom of God does not come through strength but through surrender, not to enemies, but to the Spirit of God. It does not come through military dominance, but through relational investment. Open & Relational theology helps us here. It reminds us that God does not coerce. God persuades. God invites. God works in and through relationship, never overpowering but always luring creation toward beauty, truth, and goodness.

When we act in peace, we reflect the relational nature of God. We do not dominate or subdue others. We listen. We learn. We embody a different story. Wesleyan theology echoes this in its understanding of sanctifying grace. The grace that shapes us to be holy is not a one-time fix. It is an evolving relationship with ongoing transformation. Peacemaking is not a one-time act. It is a lifestyle of holiness in public. Scripture does not only define God as love but also defines God as holy. Peace encompasses all that is loving within the holiness of our most high God.*

Living Peace as Cultural Confrontation

Peacemaking, then, becomes a countercultural act; it’s who we become in our becoming. We grow in grace and wisdom toward holier, more loving ways of being, ways that reject empire and embody the kingdom. It does not merely stand apart from war, it confronts the culture of war. It challenges the rhetoric that glorifies violence, the industries that profit from it, and the policies that perpetuate it. Peacemaking names the idol of nationalism that demands loyalty above justice and calls it what it is: a counterfeit gospel.

To live peace is to stand in opposition to the myth that war makes us safe, that might makes right, that our enemies are less than human, therefore, expendable. It means calling out systems that dehumanize migrants, criminalize poverty, and racialize fear. It means reshaping our imaginations, not around winning, but around healing.

In our everyday lives we are called to co-create peace with the Prince of Peace guiding us along the way. Peace doesn’t mean everyone agrees with us. Peace means we are faithful to the ways of Jesus even when the world mocks it. Peace means we don’t scapegoat. We don’t retaliate. We don’t prop up ideologies that bless violence. Peace means we speak against maintaining the strongest military force that can threaten blow the entire world up if we don’t get our way. We resist the militarization of our borders, our police, our cities, and even our language.

Peace is not the absence of tension. It’s the presence of prophetic tension. It’s standing in the middle of a broken world with our eyes fixed on a new one. Living peace means naming the idol of nationalism. It requires questioning injustices cloaked as patriotism. It means dismantling systems that criminalize poverty and oppress racially diverse communities. It offers a vision of human dignity that transcends citizenship, race, or nationality. It’s declaring that Jesus is Lord, and politicians are not.*

The Church as a Peace Movement

So, what does this mean for us, church? It means we stop pretending that peace is optional. Part of Christian discipleship is understanding that we must be a peace movement, not a political part or a lobbying group. It is the very identity of God’s children. We must be a people so committed to Christ’s peace that we look foolish to the world. A people so stubborn in love that our neighbors actually take notice. You know the neighbors I talk about (Canada, Mexico, China, Russia, Korea, Venezuela, et.al.)

We must teach our children that the peace of Christ costs something because it is worth the investment. Christ isn’t boring old news, it’s the only good news for the world that can actually change a hard stoney heart into one that continuously cares for someone other than our self. The gospel message demands that we love our enemies, not just tolerate friends. The message of peace demands we ask different questions: not “How do I win?” but “How do I heal?” Not “What is legal?” but “What is just?” Not “How do I stay safe?” but “Who is not safe yet, and how can I stand with them?”

We must make our churches laboratories of peace and sacred places where people practice truth-telling, forgiveness, listening, and deep courage. Our worship should form us for the work of peacemaking, not pacification. Our prayers must shape our politics. Our communion tables must teach us how to sit with people we disagree with and love them anyway.

To be a cupbearer of God’s love is to offer peace, not poison. To be an ambassador of Christ is to carry the ministry of reconciliation, not the armor of conquest. The Church must be known not for what it opposes but for the peace it plants, the justice it pursues, and the hope it embodies.*

A Final Invitation

This week, I invite you to examine your understanding of peace. Is it active or passive? Is it rooted in the cross or clothed in the flag? Is it shaped by Jesus or shadowed by Caesar? Ask yourself: where have I kept peace when I should have made it? Where have I remained silent when truth needed speaking? What wisdom have I followed, the wisdom from below or the wisdom from above?

Let us choose to become peacemakers. Let us reject the wisdom of pride and violence. Let us be, as James reads, those who sow seeds of justice with our peaceful acts. Because when Jesus said, “Happy and Blessed are the peacemakers,” he was not handing out a slogan. He was inviting us into a way of life. May we accept that invitation with courage and faith. May it be so, in Jesus’ name.

Let us pray: God of peace, who speaks through burning bushes and broken bodies, we confess that we have often settled for silence when your Spirit calls us to speak. Forgive us for the peace we have kept when we should have made it. Empower us with wisdom from above that we might become sowers of justice. Teach us to walk in your way of peace, even when it costs us comfort or approval. Help us to follow Jesus, the true peacemaker, with integrity, imagination, and love. In his holy name we pray. Amen.