February 14, 2010
“Tearing Down Walls, Breaking Barriers”
Ephesians 2:11-19
Franklin Circle Christian Church
Rev. Allen V. Harris
 

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Matthew 5.9:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God
Mark 5.34:
He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Romans 12.18:
If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
1 Corinthians 14.33:
for God is a God not of disorder but of peace.
Hebrews 12.14:
Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

John 14.27:
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Matthew 10.34:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
James 2:15-17
If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
1 Peter 3.11:
let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it.

Ephesians 2:14-19
For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,

Jeremiah 6:14-16
They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace’,
when there is no peace.
They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
yet they were not ashamed,
they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
says the Lord.


If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.  We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. — Martin Luther King Jr.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
- In a 1955 response to an accusation that he was "disturbing the peace" by his activism during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, as quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound : A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr (1982) by Stephen B. Oates

Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled — the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains — its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets... Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by election, neither can they take it by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
Abraham Lincoln, Address to Congress (4 July 1861)
 

Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2010 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096