Rejoice

Keep calm and carry on. That’s what they say. I was raised by a mom who is a natural peacemaker. She knows how to calm everyone down and resolve conflict and “keep the peace.” The reverse is also true that if mom isn’t at peace, you likely aren’t either. Peace keeping is a skill and for a long time I thought that is was one that carried over into my own life. One who seeks to help everyone “keep calm and carry on.”

And yet, over the course of these past couple of weeks reading the beatitudes, I began to really wonder what a peacemaker looks like? What does it really mean to make peace? Perhaps a better way to understand this makarios or blessing is to know that the word for peacemaker here actually means “those who work for peace, who make peace.” Micha Boyett rephrases this beatitude to say “blessed are the ones who serve peace.”

So what does it look like for to serve peace?

Is peace just the absence of conflict? Is it just remaining neutral and keeping everyone calm? In my own life I began to wonder, has peace keeping just turned into a form of people pleasing? If so, that isn’t really peace at all is it?

How do we recognize the peace of Christ vs. the peace of empire? You see, peace was heralded by the Roman empire as well. Raniero Cantalamessa reminds us that “In New Testament times kings, and the Roman emperor in particular were called peace brokers. Augustus listed at the top of his accomplishments establishing peace in the world through his military victories, and he had the famous Altar to Peace built in Rome.”

What has the altar of our peace become today?

Cantalmessa asks “How then do we understand when Christ said “Do you think that I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, bur rather division (Luke 12:51)? The issue is understanding what kind of peace and unity Christ came to bring and what kind of peace and unity he came to remove. He came to bring peace and unity to whatever is good and leads to eternal life, and he came to remove the false peace and unity that only lulls the conscience to sleep and leads to ruin.”

A few days ago the White House posted a reference to this very passage of Scripture. It was an image of the profile of the President with a tagline saying “Blessed are the peacemakers, both at home and abroad.” Are we able to tell the difference between the way government builds peace and the way Christ does? Can we distinguish between the unity, peace, and kingdom Christ came to usher in and the unity, peace, and kingdom Christ came to dismantle?

Blessed are those, happy are those who are are peace workers. Peace makers. Peace builders. Peace brokers. Those who live in service of peace. What does this kind of peace look like?

Does the way of peace come by brutality and force? It is the way of fear and death? Does it look like solidarity and standing with and for others? Is it held in peaceful protest or shouted in the streets? Is it found in the neighbors gathered with candles or the clergy across all denominations and faith traditions kneeling in prayer before they are arrested? Is it the path of peace paved by prayerful walking like the Buddhist monks? Is it kept by those who stand and keep watch during the bilingual worship service at La Mision UMC like my friend Dan was sharing with me last week. Is it built by taking an old parsonage and converting it into a community center to serve the community, especially the HIspanic community, also what our sisters and brothers in New Albany are doing. Is if found in those who have begun gathering in the streets to sing out, singing “everyone, everyone, everyone of these people are ours. Just like we are theirs. We belong to them. And they belong to us.

Rev. Eric Severson who traveled to Minneapolis to join clergy in prayer shared his experience. He said “the story that stayed with me the most was about an organizer who arrived late because they were delayed from delivering breastmilk to a family with a newborn. The baby was hungry. The mother had been abducted by ICE. I can’t stop thinking about that moment: a volunteer walking through the cold with a bottle of milk. A woman who expressed her own milk for a child that wasn’t hers. A family receiving it with gratitude. A baby finally fed.”

Michael Beck says “as we are inundated with videos of American citizens being publicly brutalized, I invite us to prayerfully ask one simple question: who, in these confrontations, is acting in the way of Christ?”

Might we join in the prayer of St. Francis in praying “O Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

Make me a channel of your peace, a broker of your peace, a reflection of your peace, a servant of your peace. How might this prayer look for you?

Isaiah 52:7 envisions this in saying ““How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation.” The letter of James also has a lot to say about peace in saying

Micha Barton says “There are not promises from Jesus in the Beatitudes or in his sermon that by loving our enemies they will be transformed into our friends, or that peacemaking will always create a world free of abuse or war. But he does promise makarios to those brave and wise enough to serve peace, knowing that peace comes not through disengagement but only through generous confrontation.”

“Living in peace requires that we take our individual and communal work toward restorative justice seriously, even when the roots of injustice are deeper and stronger than our individual power. …peacemaking is never about winning. It’s about humility and possibility, forgiveness and embrace, and in the way of Jesus, it’s nonnegotiable”