The
peacemakers, says Jesus, will be called children of God. This comes pretty well at the end of the
Beatitudes, perhaps because real peacemaking has certain pre-requisites already
mentioned – such as purity of heart, poverty of spirit, humility and meekness,
hunger and thirst for righteousness – all part of the job description of a
peacemaker. These days we have
professional mediators, reconcilers, people who conduct family group
conferences, conflict resolution and such things. It’s an art and a study in itself, and people
become qualified and experienced. To
bring warring parties together, to institute constructive dialogue, to clarify
the issues between people, to create a climate in which people may start
listening to each other, to find hitherto hidden pathways of understanding and
trust… All of that seems to me to be our
culture and society at its best. It is a
very noble ministry.
Other forces in our culture resist any
suggestion of peacemaking. Enemies are
enemies. Injuries in the past remain so,
until they are acknowledged and paid for, and even long after that, and we do
not forget. The proper outcome of injury
is punishment, and the proper response to pain is pain – the one biblical quote
many people know is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, because of its
primitive logical simplicity and its rhythmic resonance – never mind that Jesus
specifically abrogated it.
Jesus sees peacemaking as a Godlike privilege
and duty. Peacemakers are children of
God, because they are like God. Jesus
was a Jew, and peace in his language and culture is shalom, which is a much wider concept than simply the cessation of
hostilities. Shalom is more than the TV turned off and the shouting, punching
and knifing stopped. In Hebrew it can
also mean health, well-being, a sense of prevailing justice and rightness,
right relationships. Peacemakers are
shalom-makers. To do that, they need shalom in their own hearts and
relationships. They need to have found
out what to do with their own anger, hatred and resentment, and all the poison
of the past. Gandhi was one day visited
by an utterly distraught Hindu man who said his wife and children had been
wiped out in a Moslem attack. There was
no way he could do what Gandhi taught, to love and seek peace. Gandhi said:
I know a way. Find an orphaned Moslem child and raise that
child under your own roof – as a Moslem.
I would guess that each of us knows at least
one family where feuds and resentments persist from year to year if not from
one generation to the next. Most of that
may have become irrational and not accessible by discussion and
negotiation. But those of us who are
friends with silence and stillness know at least where the springs of peace
are. Our own hearts are open to be moved
and changed. We are peacemakers in our
own families and clans, simply by the fact that we do not have enemies, we do
not harbor resentments or have any desire to see others suffer even what they
may deserve. It has become impossible
for us to live that way, if we ever did.
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