Today I come to you with two questions for us to consider.

The first is this:

Is Christianity war or peace?
The second, and related question:
Is Christianity hard or easy?
Now both of these questions seem to have different answers to them
depending upon the passage of scripture you read from in the Bible.

For instance, on the one hand Jesus promises to his disciples that he
will give them peace,
a peace, he says, that the world cannot give,
a peace that that the world cannot take away.
A peace, in other words, that passes understanding.
In passage after passage we see this promise made or alluded to
I Corinthians 7:15 says that God has called us to peace.
Galations 5:22 tells us that peace is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit
working in our lives.
Ephesians 2:14 states that Christ himself is our peace,
and time and again God or Christ is referred to as the Lord of Peace.
With all the peace being mentioned in scripture,
one would think that the Christian life would be a rather peaceful
endeavor.

But a look at other passages of scripture might convince us otherwise.

The best passage to examine in order to get an opposing viewpoint is
found in today's reading from Romans.
Here Paul is describing a struggle that is,
on the one hand,
an intensely personal battle.
On the other hand though,
Paul would seem to be speaking for all Christians who struggle with
good and evil,
with the decisions they make,
and the actions they carry out.
Basically Paul in writing these words is saying,
I don't have a clue why I do some of the things I do.
On fact, I even end up doing some of the very things I hate most.
The good that I want to do, I don't.
And the evil that I want to avoid doing, I do.

To put this in more personal language,

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and to use a phrase I’ve already used several times,
On the one hand, I want to do what is right,
but on the other hand,
I often end up doing the exact opposite.
I am miserable,
and I am powerless to overcome this dilemma,
this problem on my own.

If there is a better description of Christian life as a type of warfare,

I don't know about it.
Paul's words pretty much sums things up in that area.
And we know exactly what he is talking about, don't we?
How many of us have tried and tried to do the right thing,
only to fail,
and sometimes even to turn around and do the very thing we didn't
most want to do?
How many of us try to reform our lives,
try to make ourselves better,
only to find that so very often,
we have taken one step forward and two steps back?

We make promises to attend church more frequently,

to get more involved in things,
to read the Bible every day,
to say our prayers faithfully,
not to yell at the kids,
and to say only nice things about the neighbors down the street or
across the aisle.

But what happens?

You know what happens as well as I do.
We end up with a lot of good intentions and a bunch of broken
promises.
Broken in the warfare of the soul,
the battle between good and evil that is fought each and every day in
our own hearts and lives.

On the one hand,

Jesus promises us his peace,
but on the other hand,
the peace we often experience seems little more than a temporary

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and tenuous cease fire in an ongoing war between right and wrong.

The same sort of thing can be said in answer to the second question
as well.
Is Christianity easy or hard?
On the one hand, in today's gospel reading for instance,
Jesus tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light?
But on the other hand,
the demands and costs of discipleship can be quite high,
and Jesus doesn't pretend that they aren't.
The same Jesus who said he had easy yokes and light burdens is the
same Jesus who told his disciples that in order to follow him they had
to pick up and carry a cross.
This same Jesus also said that if somebody loved family more than
he or she loved him,
then that person wasn't worthy of being his disciple.

Jesus also went so far as to say,

and this ties in with the first question,
that he did not come to bring peace on the earth,
rather he came with a sword.
All these things Jesus says to his followers in chapters 10 and 11 of
Matthew -
in the space of just a few paragraphs.

And if you want to hear more about the cost of following Jesus,
you can read about the rich young ruler.
Jesus told this young man that he had to sell all that he had and give
it to the poor before he could be his disciple.
Is Christianity easy?
Is it something we can slip right into without giving a thought as to
how painful it might actually prove to be?
And are we more likely to experience more or less peace when we
follow in Christ's footsteps?

The Lord knows it wasn't easy for Jesus.

God knows Jesus experienced precious little peace.
And in the end,
doing God's will cost Jesus everything he had,
even his life.

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Can we who follow Jesus expect anything different in our lives?
How do we answer the questions for today?
How can we reconcile these seemingly disparate views of being a
Christian?

I think we are provided a clue to the answer by Paul himself when he

asks a question at the end of today's reading.
The question being:
"Who can set me free from this body of death?
And then he gives the answer:
Thank's be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

You see, if we try to improve ourselves,

if we try to make ourselves into better Christians,
if we attempt a kind of self-improvement course designed to create a
new and better version of ourselves,
we are bound to fail,
and our lives,
our Christian lives are going to be filled with struggle and pain.
It will seem as if we are engaged in a war.
It isn't easy, and we are not going to have any peace if we try to do
the impossible by ourselves.
We cannot now, nor will we ever be able to save ourselves or make
ourselves better people or Christians through our own actions and our
own self-will alone.

It won't work.
It never has, just ask Paul.

So what can we do?

Where do we turn?
Who can free us?
The answer to these questions for each of us is the answer that Paul
himself gives.
We don't have to do it ourselves because it has already been done for
us by and through Christ.
We need to turn to him and to accept the fact that he has done it all
for us already.
Jesus lived, suffered and died for us.
We only need to accept this fact and lean wholly on Christ and his
grace to be sufficient for our needs.

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And then,
and only then,
will we have the peace Jesus talks about.
Then and only then,
will we find the easy yoke and the light burden.
Then and only then.
will we ever see any true change in our human nature and in our day
to day living.

Is Christianity war or peace?

Is It hard or easy?
Well, on the one hand, living a Christian life can be very hard,
it can be a constant battle,
it can even be hell,
it we try to live it on our own,
trusting in our ability and strength.

On the other hand, however,

it can be a life filled with peace,
it can be the easy yoke and the light burden,
if only we trust in Christ, his love, his strength.
The answer, the choice, as always is ours to make.