Peacemakers

"Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else." - from 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

This is a sermon preview for the fifth week of our 1 Thessalonians series. 

Visit FBCM’s Church Center Channel to view video live stream (live) or audio version of sermon (published week after).

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Those who get payback or those who are peacemakers. We have a choice on which we will be.

In a lecture on forgiveness, and its limits, Elizabeth Bruenig described her two children fighting. They knew hitting each other was against the rules, punishable by the docking of allowance. But they also knew there was an exception: if you did not instigate or start the fight, that is, if you were acting in self-defense, you were not considered the aggressor. Your allowance would remain. After all, you had the right to defend yourself.

But this led to a situation where, after every fight, both children claimed the other started it. Being the unfairly attacked became sought-after status. Elizabeth Bruenig began to wonder if adults behaved the same way:

Consider the state of social media, where people frequently go in order to find something to be angry about, so that they can express their anger in ways that would typically be forbidden but are permissible in cases only of having been wronged. Had the social media user not sought out an example of someone doing something offensive or outrageous, they wouldn’t have anger to discharge, but it seems to me that acquiring anger and the right to discharge it is precisely the point. [emphasis mine]

Sometimes, we want to be wronged, so we can do what we otherwise couldn't: pay back. It is this that the Apostle Paul tells us explicitly not to do.

As the Apostle Paul ends his letter to the Thessalonians, he gives his characteristic mix of final greetings and admonitions: sending his best to those he is writing to and entreating them to live lives worthy of the grace he has proclaimed.

Among other things, Paul asks the church at Thessalonica to "[m]ake sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else." Paul, in other words, wants them to give up their right to give even. He doesn't want them to seek after the righteousness of being in the right, because they have been wrong. "They started it!" is not enough for a community to be as God wishes them to be.

Instead, peacemakers seek the good for each other and everyone else. Justice should not be ignored, make no mistake, but the peace which reigns in the community of God asks more than wrongdoing be punished. It asks that peace be upheld by something much more positive: the Holiness of God, which sustains us, individually, and as a body.

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it." - 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

As we close this letter, we attend to the Good News that God "will do it" in us: he will make us peacemakers. Join us as we explore the implications of living in the peace of God.