Making peace is one of our remits from Jesus. It’s in the Beatitudes: Blessed are the peacemakers… they will be called children of God. Peacemaking, in Jesus’s teaching, is up there with being pure in heart, poor in spirit, meek, merciful, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and being among those who mourn. St Paul picks it up in his Letter to the Romans: If possible, as much as it lies with you, live peaceably with all.[1]
The assumption is that living peaceably and making peace flow from each other – peaceable people will tend to be peacemakers. There is an episode of M*A*S*H in which the surgeon Hawkeye Pierce is exasperated beyond endurance at daily trying to reassemble healthy young bodies ripped around by high explosive. He hi-jacks a Jeep and charges in to the top level peace talks at Panmunjom. Of course the most he can achieve is to make his impassioned speech about the utter futility of the Korean War – and treat the top general’s dyspepsia – before he charges furiously back to post-op. Hawkeye was making peace the best way he could. Perhaps the greatest obstacle for peacemakers is that so many people actually prefer conflict, or assume it is somehow a way of resolving differences. Realists will tell you conflict is inevitable. The human cost becomes “collateral damage”. Most of us can think of families in which conflict persists, pointlessly and poisonously. So much of our sport is somewhat guided conflict. Our politics is all about winning or losing, often at the cost of abuse and humiliation, tribal disputes, playing games with the truth.
You will have noticed Paul’s careful provisos… If possible, as much as it lies with you, live peaceably with all. He knows well that it’s not always possible. He knows that conflict can get easily out of hand, and as far as it lies with you can be not far at all. Family disputes… church disputes... tribal feuds including racial strife. A society free of conflict is unimaginable… and in any case, there are plenty who will want to inform us that conflicts serve useful purposes and shake out what is bad in us... like lifting the cap on the old fashioned car radiator to release the steam. Well, what is bad in us is dealt with much more wisely, over time, in a discipline of silent prayer and stillness. I would in any case rather live in peace, in shalom, that rich Hebrew concept that brings together not just tranquillity but also health and justice, kindness and goodness, and truth.
Being a follower, as Jesus saw it, entails a personal rejection of aggression and violence, in all its subtleties including violence of words and attitudes. Peaceable people become peacemakers, even at times when nothing is actually said, by being at peace within themselves. And that, I think, is Jesus’s first work… settling peace within us, as we make space for that, and allow ourselves to be truthful and reconcilers.
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