Peace Making
Word
Key ideas and phrases:
- Peacekeeping: Goal = peace around you (personal comfort)
- A passive way to stay away from conflict. “Don’t rock the boat”.
- Result = peace around me and conflict within me
- Peacemaking: Goal = peace/shalom/wholeness in all things
- An active pursuit of true peace in and through conflict.
- Result = being identified as a child of the Peace Maker
Read the following:
- Matthew 5:9, Matthew 8:23-27
- How do these passages connect with the key ideas and phrases above?
- What is Jesus’ response to conflict in Matthew 8?
- How is Jesus a “Peace Maker” instead of a “peacekeeper”?
- Matthew 5:9, Ephesians 2:11-22
- How is Jesus described in this passage?
- What are the implications for us?
World
- How does our current Christian culture practice “peacemaking”?
- How is this different from the peacemaking of Jesus?
- If “peacemaking” is the beatitude of Jesus, what would the beatitude of the world be?
- It is no surprise that our world today is very broken and divided. In what ways does the world work to promote peace? How is that working? Share examples.
- How is this different than the peacemaking of Jesus?
Us
- What relationships or situations in your life are broken right now?
- How are you tempted to be a “peacekeeper”?
- How can you be an agent of peacemaking in those situations?
- Think of your spheres of influence (family, church, neighborhood, community, country, world). What are small action steps you are willing to take to begin living a life of peacemaking in these spheres? What small actions steps are you not ready to take?
If we pursue peace, we will end in conflict. If we pursue the Peace Maker, we will be called children of God.