Brian's Sermons

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9 When I visit in the nursing home or hospital, I like to ask if there are any prayer requests – besides the obvious. I would visit Betty Hammond at Jenkins, and her prayer request was always the same. She would ask me to pray for peace. I knew she wasn’t being flippant or casual by asking – this wasn’t a Miss America contestant saying, “What I really want is world peace.” Betty truly wanted to see peace on earth. I think in our inner core, we all want peace. The difficulty is how we define peace. With everything going on in the news, you might have missed that last week marked the twelfth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. Would there be peace if we somehow “won” there? What about if we immediately withdrew our troops? Or, perhaps a more legitimate question – will there ever be peace in the middle east? Is peace simply the absence of fighting, or, as someone once said, is peace simply when both s...

... for they shall be called sons of God. Peace is a hot topic right now. After all, we’ve been involved in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for seven years – and we don’t know when it will end. As a nation we’re spending a lot of money on the war, and for a lot of people, it doesn’t seem like we’re getting the "bang for our buck" in the Middle East. Many Christians continue to debate the war; is it a just war? Is there really such a thing? This isn’t a new debate, however. There were Jews of Jesus’ time, even among his twelve disciples, who were called Zealots. This was the militaristic arm of the Jews, those who hoped to throw off the Roman rule. They sought and hoped for a warrior Messiah who would flex his muscles and return the power to them. Unlike us, most of whom enjoy relative peace, Israel only experienced peace as long as they obeyed their Roman rulers. The idea of pax romana allowed people to live like they wanted to, as long as they didn’t bother Rome. Was that re...