MATTHEW 5:9

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

TO PONDER:

I can’t read today’s verse without thinking “Blessed are the cheesemakers…” from a Monty Python movie released way back in 1979, a movie I was banned from watching by the church I was part of. Now, in the church’s defence it was a controversial film, it was banned in Ireland for being “blasphemous”, which it kind-of is.

In the comedy, a group of people were listening to Jesus as he was delivering the Sermon on the Mount. Being too far back, the group of random people ended up exchanging insults and eventually blows because they misheard the teaching of Jesus.

The whole Sermon on the Mount was shocking in content, controversial in its challenging of the status quo, and was considered to be blasphemous to the religious and non-religious alike. Jesus’s own people were living under occupation of a conquering military force, waiting for the Messiah to arrive in power and might to overthrow the invaders, and then the Messiah arrived preaching things like “peacemakers”, extreme forgiveness, and loving your enemies.

The way of Jesus continues to offend today for the very same reasons as it did in the Monty Python movie and 2000 years ago because Jesus came as a peacemaker to restore relationship with God and humanity, to destroy religion and replace it with grace.

Religion focuses on 'doing' while grace focuses on what's already 'done'! Religion is man’s attempt to reach God, grace is Jesus coming to earth to reconcile the earth with the creator, and when he took his last breath on the cross he exhaled it with the words, “It is done!”

We are blessed when we continue in sharing the “done” with everyone we come into contact with, when we are carriers of God’s grace and his ambassadors of reconciliation.

PRAYER: Jesus, God of grace, Thank you for those last words on the cross when with your last breath you said “it is done” bringing an end to the doing of religion and ushering in the done, the enabling of my relationship with you. Amen.

Today's devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay WestSide