7. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." (Matthew 5:9)

Isaiah 11:1-9; Ephesians 2:11-22

"Peace"

Peace, like love and freedom, belongs to the great words of our life and of our time. Everyone wants it. The Greeks wanted it. The Jews wanted it. The Romans wanted it. There has been and there is a universal longing for peace through all the ages.

Yet, few believe that we can actually have it.

There have been intimations of peace. There was a time when countries used to have ministries of war. That is no longer the case. We now have ministries of defence. And many governments have or encourage Peace Institutes. There are specialists in confidence building among the nations. There is a whole machinery related to the United Nations that deals with getting rid of weapons, especially nuclear weapons. Many international treatises deal with arms reductions. Land mines and biological and chemical weapons are officially shunned everywhere.

So peace is in the air – in all areas of life.

But do we believe in it? Is it worthwhile to openly confess that we as the friends of Jesus are not only for peace; that we are not only peace lovers, but that we are in fact peace makers? Is it time for the major churches, indeed the major religions, to repent of their complicity in matters of war, and join the traditional peace churches – the Mennonites, the Quakers and the Brethren – in their witness to Christ?

Or is peace making, as far as the world is concerned, an illusion? At present, after a period of hope, the signs out there are not very hopeful. You see, many governments, including the US and Australian and even the new Iraq governments have said that pre-emptive strikes remain a political possibility. That is another way of saying that when we are confronted with problems – and problems and human conflicts will always be there – violence and war are the only way we know to deal with them. No wonder that violence is flaring up all over the world. Obviously neither the United Nations Charter of 1945 nor the call of the world's churches to a Decade of Non-Violence have made much difference in our hearts – and what goes on in our hearts becomes manifest in the political and military establishments.

The persuasive power of war and violence is so strong, and the peace witness of the churches and religions is so weak, that many or even most Christians have resigned to the idea that war, like poverty and sickness, will always be with us.

But the beatitude about making peace is still there!

So, what do those Christians, who believe in the inevitability of war, who say that peace in the world is an illusion, do with Jesus' word: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God"? Or what do they do with the statement from the Pauline churches that "Christ is our peace", and that Christ "came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near" (Ephesians 2)?

They say that it is not the churches' task to talk about peace in the world, but to concern itself with peace of the soul with God. The beatitude would then mean: "Blessed are the evangelists who preach peace with God, they will be called children of God." But if Jesus meant that, then he could have said so. There was plenty of language available to speak about preaching and evangelising. No, I think that honesty demands that we need to take the call to peace making more seriously.

Peace making does not mean doing nothing. It has to do with "making" something. Among Jewish Rabbis it was said: "All commandments are to be fulfilled when the right opportunity arrives. But not peace! Peace you must seek and pursue." Peace making has nothing to do with passivity. Peace needs to be waged. Peace making is not weakness, but the opposite: it is strength, inner strength. It is a way of life which comes from a heart that is filled with the love of God; not just with a god, but with a God who is love. God and peace belong together.

Let us hear it again. The Peace dream.

The Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, is not known for its non-violence. But in the midst of a world that is still marked by patriarchy, slavery and war, there grows a tender plant!

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

What does this tender plant stand for? It stands for a dream! It stands for a dream of peace in a violent world.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. …. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:1-9)

What do we do with a peace dream like that? Especially in light of the fact that that dream has been fleshed out in the world by Jesus Christ?

There is an interesting book out there, called "The Ethics of Memory" (Avishai Margalit, 2002). Let me use this suggestive title to suggest to you that our beatitude invites us to make an important decision.

In our memories we have the two streams.

The peace-dream is one. It has a long and strong standing in the human story. For us Christians the dream has touched the earth. It has become part of our history. By faith and baptism we have become part of that dream. It has been kept alive by the peace movement, by the peace churches and by countless women and men and young people whose conscience spoke "peace", not "war" to them.

The memory of war and violence is the other. This memory has touched many of. We may have fought in New Guinea or Europe or Vietnam. We may have sat at home, anxiously waiting for a sign of life from husband or son or daughter. Loved ones may have been killed or injured in war. Every day the media keeps the memory of war and violence alive. We all remember the genocide in Rwanda where a million people were cruelly slaughtered. This is what a bishop from that country said: "The best catechists, those who filled the churches on Sunday, where the first to go with machetes in their hands." You see, their ethnic identity, being Hutu or Tutsi, was stronger than their Christian identity. And therefore the memory of violence became determinative, rather than the memory of peace and non-violence.

My friends, we are invited to become part of the story. We have to make a decision. A moral decision. An intentional decision. We have to decide, which memory we want to keep alive. Which memory we want to actively pursue, and which memory we would like to fade away.

We have been given a life. We have some talents and some money and some education. It is our responsibility now to decide, how shall we use what we have? Mainly for ourselves? Mainly for our racial or ethnic grouping? Or mainly for God, and therefore for peace? With the corollary, of course, that being obedient to God is in the long run also the best for ourselves and for our country!

There was a group of people sitting together when the news came through that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been murdered. After moments of stunned silence, someone in the group exclaimed: "why are we still alive?" What he meant, of course, was: Are we with him? Are we on the same train? Are we committed to non-violence? Are we willing to count the cost and pay the price? Or need we be ashamed that we talk of Jesus and faith and love but we are not engaged in waging non-violence - like brother Martin was?

"Why are we still here?" To keep the dream of peace alive! To believe that it can change the world. It is God's dream. The dream must touch us and convert us. The vision must create hands and feet, and release our will.

Waging peace comes from a new heart, a new spirit, a new vision. It calls for a conversion from a God who may support violence to a God who identifies with the victim of violence, raised him from the dead, and thereby created a new reality.

There is a reward for the peace makers. God will know them and God will name them.

The name that God will give to the peace makers is "children of God". They are on God's side. They are the ones who try to make God's dream for the world happen.

In the engagement for peace they will come ever closer to God. As children grow into the intimacy of a loving parent, so the peace makers will become more and more intimate with God.

Like Jesus, the "son of God", so the peace makers as "children of God" have no other passion but, in obedience to God, flesh our God's will for the world. And God's will for the world is shalom, peace, well being.

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

Thorwald Lorenzen
18/07/2004