“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be
called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).
This beatitude of Jesus, which pronounces blessing on those who make
peace, can be easily confused with peacekeeping. At the risk of sounding trite, if there is no
peace, how can it be kept? What is this
thing, peacemaking, which results in being called children of God? What does it look like?
We are
counseled by the psalmist to “seek peace, and pursue it” (34:14). What does seeking peace look like?
One time,
I was at a meeting of local ministers, and the discussion turned to making and
seeking peace. I believe it started
after someone said that seeking peace in the Middle East was hopeless. Scriptural warrant for that comment was
provided. Added to that was a complaint
about those who “seek peace at any cost.”
I asked, “What’s wrong with that?”
The response characterized those who seek peace at any cost as making
peace with those who oppress others—those who are unjust. I pointed out that where there is no justice,
there can be no peace. We’re fooling
ourselves with an illusion of peace.
Of
course, peacemaking is not limited to the political arena, with nations dealing
with each other. And those who oppress
and are unjust to others need not be dictators; we encounter that in our daily
lives. (Too often we’re the ones who oppress others!)
No, peacemaking is first of all a personal matter. It comes from within. If we ourselves don’t have peace, we will be
limited to making peace as a skeleton, so to speak. It won’t have any flesh; it won’t have any
real substance.
This is
where peacemaking as a spiritual reality comes in. An interesting thing about it is how it is
interrelated to Jesus’ other beatitudes.
The meek and the merciful, those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness: these and the others
exemplify what peacemaking is all about.
We don’t
magically become peacemakers. It takes
practice; it takes work. It means facing
the violence within ourselves. It is
necessary to recognize the junk within—that which delights in misfortune, that
which is fearful, that which doesn’t care for the other. That’s some messy business!
I ask
myself, “How committed am I to peacemaking?
How committed am I to wading through that messiness within? How willing am I to sift through the detritus
and cacophony of violence in order to discover the purity and harmony that is
always the gift of God?”
There’s
a piece of peace to peacefully piece.
