Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, and we’ve been talking this summer about what that looks like in real life.  For years I have been advocating a simple system for conflict resolution:  if it’s minor, let it go.  If you can’t let it go, speak directly to the person who has upset or offended you.  And if that doesn’t work, then involve a third party to help work through the dispute.  Three easy steps to conflict resolution!  Ha!  Although those are three good steps, they are rarely easy.  Still, I think these are good rules to live by.  If someone hurts you or upsets you, if it’s a minor issue, let it go.  Give others the benefit of the doubt, give them the grace you’d like them to give you.  If you can’t let it go, don’t gossip or triangulate.  Speak directly to the person who has hurt you.  Of course, sometimes that is not safe.  And sometimes it doesn’t work.  Sometimes getting a third party involved can be a needed help in sorting through conflict.

But what if the problem is not easy to define?  What if it’s not one specific thing that has happened, but rather, it’s more like we’re at sixes and sevens with each other?  On a grander scale, what if we seem to be caught up in a culture of conflict?  What do we do when the world has just flat out gotten angrier?  How can we be peacemakers in a very unpeaceful time?

One thing we can do is to recognize that the world is indeed changing.  A few weeks ago, I read about a theory called “Spiral Dynamics”.  It was developed in the late 1990’s by some social scientists and researchers who have observed that civilization tends to progress and regress in predictable ways, from one level to another.  They have given these levels colors, starting with beige for the survival of the fittest mentality seen in our earliest civilizations.  Then cultures progressed to the purple phase, which was a tribal system, like we read about in the older parts of the Old Testament.  After that developed the red phase, which was ego-centric instead of focused on the tribe.  This level is characterized as creative and energizing, but people were people beholden to powerful rulers, like we see in the later parts of the Old Testament.

But as conditions for living changed, cultures changes.  The “wild west” mindset of the red period gave way to a time of conformity, predictability, rules and order.  This mindset is labeled blue, and it describes the culture in which Christianity became an established religion and grew in the 300’s and beyond.  It also describes the culture of post World War II, when the church in America as we know it was largely formed and grew.  As church members today, we are products of what Spiral Dynamics calls blue thinking.

Growing out of that is the orange mindset, which emphasizes success, achievement, and growth.  Also, competition, greed, and materialism.  This orange mindset sought to take the good of the blue and maximize it!  This mindset is also part of our church culture. Any time you hear a bishop talk about growing your church, increasing your giving, having a mission statement and a vision statement and goals and measuring outcomes, this is all highly orange thinking.  None of those kinds of things are ever discussed in the New Testament!  Much of what we consider leadership in the church today has nothing to do with scripture.  We are all highly influenced by the culture, the times we live in.

The blue and orange mindset times were nourishing soil in which to grow institutional churches.  But now we are seeing society shift and change beyond the blue and the orange, to a level Spiral Dynamics calls green.  People shaped by the green cultural norms aren’t particularly interested in conforming and everyone trying to fit in.  They are very concerned about people who don’t fit the norms.  They value acceptance and celebrate diversity.  They care about the environment, and justice, and self-expression much more than they care about traditions and programs and things many of us hold dear as part of our Christian faith.

The Spiral Dynamics theory explains a lot of why we have so much conflict in our world today.  We are living in a mix of blue, orange, and green values.  Not to mention how the pandemic added to the movement back toward red, a regression to people taking the law into their own hands, violence and looting and chaos that we haven’t seen in a long time.  We are living in a society that is at odds within itself.  We are living in a society that is trying to work out which values are going to carry the day.  And at times, that makes it feel like things are spiraling out of control!

Since the start of the pandemic, I have heard many people wonder aloud, and ask me directly, about the end times.  Are we getting close to the time when Jesus is going to come again and get this world straightened out?  I don’t know.  Jesus said even he didn’t know!  We do know that we are closer than we’ve ever been to whatever climax God has planned for the world God created and loves so deeply.  But after hearing about spiral dynamics, I think we have another possible explanation to consider when we think about the chaos of our times.  We are living in a period of intense upheaval and chaos, in part, because people are changing!  People are different, and not just different in all the usual ways we think of them being different, in terms of preferences and abilities and appearance and the like.  People have different values, sensitivities and cultural norms.

And these differences among people are not necessarily predictable.  People living in the same zip code have been formed by very different cultural ideals.  Gosh, even people raised in the very same household can have very different values!  And it’s not directly tied to age.  Some older people are more likely to express “green” values; some younger people are more likely to express “red” values.  You can’t tell just by looking at someone!  That sets us up, in church and in the community at large, for clashes like many of us have never seen before.

I am wondering, does this theory of Spiral Dynamics resonate with you?  To me, it explains a lot.  It gives us a framework for seeing the chaos and upheaval in our world as almost normal.  Cultures go through these predictable transformations, throughout history.  Upheaval of the magnitude we are seeing it these days is actually not unprecedented.  When we think about the stories and history compiled in our holy scriptures, we see change from the individual, beige worldview, every person for him or herself; to the purple, tribal worldview, like the twelve tribes of Jacob.  There was no safety or security apart from the tribe.  Gradually, the people clamored for a king—a shift from the purple worldview to the red.  As we move into the New Testament, the Roman Empire has taken hold of Israel and surrounding regions. There was order and predictability.  A very blue time!

Throughout all of these shifts, the Bible continually reminds us that God never changes.  But conditions for living change. And as a result, society changes.  No matter what the future holds, we can trust God to be with us in all of it, just as God was with all the iterations of mindsets and social structures for generations of people before us.

Our Lima Church Council is now reading together the book, “Weird Church”, which is where I first heard of the theory of Spiral Dynamics.  The authors, Paul Nixon and Beth Ann Estock, are two United Methodist researchers who want to help churches continue their work in sharing the good news of Jesus to all people in all places.  Their thesis, the idea that our culture is shifting according to a predictable pattern and therefore churches can begin now to adapt, gives me hope.  If “green” values do in fact emerge, it is likely there will be less racism, agism, sexism, and the like.  Hopefully as a human race we will be united in caring for our planet Earth and more focused than ever on caring for each other.  The world will likely adopt many of Jesus’ values!  But people will be much less likely to be interested in joining a church as we know it.

I share this information this morning because we are called to be peacemakers in our world.  And we cannot make peace with a world we are busy fighting against.  We might not like the changes that are happening, but they are happening!  We tend to see the world as we want to see it, but Jesus said it is the truth that will set us free.  We need to pray and ask God to help us see the world as God sees it.  Even if we are scared or angry about the upheaval in our society, we still live in a world that God deeply loves.  We still share planet Earth with people God loves so much, God sent Jesus to show us how to live well and save us from a life of futility.  Instead of fighting the changes in our midst, or hoping Jesus will come again soon, we have another option:  we can face the reality that times are changing.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.  The prophet Jeremiah lived about 600 years before Jesus—roughly two and a half millenia ago!  What he wrote about faithful living is as true today as it was then.  Blessed are those who trust in the Lord.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.  These trees, they don’t need to fear when heat comes and their leaves will stay green, because they have deep roots that can soak up the water of life.  These trees don’t need to be anxious in a time of drought, and they will continue to bear fruit.  This is what God wanted for the people in Jeremiah’s day, who were living in an unstable, tumultuous time.  And it is what God wants for God’s people now!  The ins and outs of daily life have changed drastically since Jeremiah’s day, but being rooted in God—that is an idea that has not changed at all.  There is a lot about our future that is completely out of our control.  But we can indeed choose to be rooted and grounded in God.  We can put our trust, not in the institutional church, nor in a particular pastor or author or celebrity, but in the Lord.  And if we will anchor ourselves in God, we will continue to bear fruit, even in the harshest environments.

Amazingly, being rooted in God is what allows us to be flexible and bend and adapt to new circumstances.  We are rooted and grounded so we can respond to the continual movement of the Holy Spirit, who is always doing a new thing.  This is not a uniquely Christian concept.  The Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu lived about the same time as Jeremiah.  In his famous poem, “Seventy-six”, he paints a picture that reminds me of describes an important quality for peacemakers:  the ability and willingness to yield.

 

A man is born gentle and weak.

At his death he is hard and stiff.

Green plants are tender and filled with sap.

At their death they are withered and dry.

 

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.

The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

 

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.

A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

 

The hard and strong will fall.

The soft and weak will overcome.

 

Earlier in our worship service we read Psalm 46, with its famous verse, “Be still and know that I am God.”  As the world changes, as cultures shift and societies adapt, I expect we will often feel like the world is angry and conflict is everywhere.  But the more things change, the more they stay the same.  God is still on the throne.  God is still at work for God. When we pass through deep waters, God will always be with us.  So be still.  Know that God is good.  Put your trust in God, sink your roots down deep, and face the future unafraid.  Blessed are the peacemakers—faithful people who are like trees planted by a stream, nurished, fruitful and flexible.  Amen.