Blessed are the peace makers

Captain Kirk and the cult of just warfare

The thing about the original series of Star Trek is that, regardless which sector of the galaxy they were exploring, or which homogeneous planet they landed upon, it always ended in a scrap - usually between Captain Kirk and a bloke in fairly unconvincing make-up on an equally unconvincing set. Looking around at the current crop of summer blockbusters, its clear to see that this model - the good guy overcoming evil by force of arms - remains a central theme in our culture. From Bond to Batman, Iron Man to Avatar, the forces of good invariably prevail through a combination of righteous valour, luck and vastly superior weaponry.

Let’s face it: in our culture, good guys with guns are cool. Under fire and outgunned, they always prevail and the forces of evil - whether alien robots, international criminals or rogue scientists - are brought low.

This idea of heroic combat is not limited to the silver screen - in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere we can see real men and women taking up arms to fight injustice. Just like in the movies, our media has painted a black and white world full of good guys and villains for us to cheer for and jeer at in turn. As a consequence of this narrative, in recent months we have seen Americans gleefully celebrating the assassination of Osama Bin Laden while NATO forces are bombing Libya for the protection of civilians. Indeed, we even find ourselves pondering whether assassinating Gaddafi isn’t perhaps the best way to end the stalemate and suffering in Libya?

Wrestling with pacifism

As a man, I have to admit that military hardware and martial heroes like Bond are strangely alluring. As a student of history, I am aware of many occasions when not standing up in the face of injustice would seem not to be not only counter-intuitive but unforgivably negligent. We need only think of the Second World War, or the Rwandan Genocide. However, the problem with this whole narrative of Just Warfare and martial heroism is that it lies in direct contradiction to Jesus’ teaching on peace and justice. As such I find myself wrestling with pacifism and increasingly identifying myself within that school.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims: “Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called Children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) It’s just one sentence among many now familiar and powerful phrases. Its quickly read and passed over, but it’s worth spending some time considering more closely.

Sermon on the Mount in context

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered in a context of imperial subjugation by Rome and domestic political unrest. There is some disagreement about how significant the Roman presence was in first century Palestine, but it is clear that Jerusalem - once a great centre of influence - was now little more than a backwater town on the fringes of civilisation. While some Jews were happy to keep their heads down and make do, others were less than satisfied with the status quo.

Banditry was common in hinterlands and border regions where government authority was ambiguous, where peasant gangs reacted to their lack of opportunities and influence by ransacking the homes of the wealthy out of spite. Often the leaders of these bandit gangs would portray themselves as a kind of royalty, wearing purple robes and stolen crowns - the Godfathers of Galilee.

Another group responded to Roman rule with

more organised insurrections. The most famous of these movements was the Zealots. The Zealots staged several violent revolts including one around 4 B.C. in Sepphoris, the Capital of the Galilee and home of the wealthy elite, only four kilometres from Nazareth. The revolt was crushed by the Romans; hundreds of people were crucified or sold into slavery. Since Nazareth was a thoroughly peasant village, it is likely that at least some Nazarenes were sympathetic to the revolt and perhaps even participants with the Zealots. This event would certainly have been a traumatic part of the collective memory of those listening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

A third brand of resistance was apocalyptic prophesy. Charismatic, prophetic individuals attracted followers by using symbolism from Jewish liberation history to preach the imminence of the restoration of Israel by divine action. One such prophet lead his followers from the wilderness to Jerusalem where he promised that by marching around the city, God would act on their behalf and overthrow the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. The prophet sought to re-enact the people of Israel's journey from slavery to freedom and Joshua's triumph over Jericho to provoke similar divine action on behalf of first-century Jews living under occupation.

Among the crowd it is possible that each of these types of people were represented and indeed most will have expected Jesus himself to fall into the final category - the apocalyptic prophet preaching doom to the Romans and puppet regime. However, the message that Jesus brought - blessed be the peacemakers - rejects violent action (whether by man or God) and challenges his listeners to embrace a different path.

In this teaching and others, Jesus challenges us all to adopt a response to conflict that is more constructive and ultimately more difficult than taking up arms. In his own life, he responded to persecution and violence with love and self-sacrifice that perplexed, frustrated and transformed the lives of his enemies (as well as costing him his own). We have convinced ourselves that fighting evil with force is a righteous response to injustice - that we are the good guys standing against the evils of the world, but we should remember that Jesus never said "Greater love has no man than this: to kill those who oppress others”.

A creative response to conflict

Responding to aggression with peace sounds mad, especially in light of the injustice we see on the news every day, but it is perhaps not as foolhardy as it first seems. The illusionist Derren Brown - a man with a particular insight into the human character - tells an interesting story in which he confounded a violent aggressor.

"A couple of years ago I was walking back from a hotel at three in the morning. A guy came up to me looking for a fight. Rather than playing the authority game he was trying to set up, I said to him 'the wall outside my house is four foot high' to confuse him. His eyes glazed over and all the adrenaline left him. He was still on the verge of hitting me but then I said 'but when I was in Spain, the walls were really, really low.'

"What I did induced a state of complete confusion and in that state you're desperate for something to make sense so that you come out of it. He burst into tears and I ended up giving him advice on how to cope with his girlfriend - they'd had a fight."

Now I’m not arguing that Derren Brown is a perfect role model, but this story illustrates that when Jesus promotes a non-violent path, it doesn’t mean we have to tolerate violence or to ignore it, but rather we should find ways to respond to it creatively.

Peace

Whatever our intention, however well meaning we may be, we cannot make peace through conflict. At best, tensions are suppressed, but they remain unresolved, waiting. Ultimately, even the best intentioned violence only ever leads to more violence.

However, not doing anything is no a response either. Well meaning words and platitudes are equally unhelpful - especially to those suffering. As the Derren Brown story illustrates, to be true peace makers is to embrace our creativity and confound evil with love.

The United Nations

Last summer, Victoria and I visited the UN in New York. Throughout the building are provocative quotes and statistics about the state of the world and the work of the UN. One of the quotes that stood out was from Eleanor Roosevelt, who said: “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” Another observed that “Like war, peace must be waged.”

In light of these rousing statements, it was distressing to learn that the total annual UN peace keeping budget is less than 0.5% of all global military expenditure.

It was former American President and General Dwight D Eisenhower who lamented the rise of military spending at the expense of tackling injustice in more creative ways. In his final speech as president he reminded the world that: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed – those who are cold and not clothed.”

Eisenhower was right that there are better things to spend our resources on that weapons or war, better ways to bring justice than with the sword and semi-automatic. Spending more on peace keeping isn’t the answer however, since it still conforms to the idea of meeting violence with violence, or at least the threat of violence.

No, the role Jesus challenges us to embrace is not that of peace keepers, but peace makers - an active, creative posture. But what on earth does that mean? How do we rise to this challenge? Must we wander into conflict zones with face paints and footballs?

Life as it should be

The truth is that we can be peace makers wherever we are. Although so far we have been considering peace in terms of the absence of armed conflict, the Hebrew word for peace - SHALOM - is not limited in this way, but rather refers to things being ‘as they should be’. As Radiohead might put it, peace, shalom, means everything in its right place.

This is not a new commission that Jesus presents to his audience. Being peace makers - shalom makers - was a role that God entrusted to Adam when he charged him to tend the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Being a good steward of creation is to cultivate Shalom - to bring harmony, balance. Later in Genesis, Abraham and his family were charged with modelling Shalom - life as it should be - to the nations.

In light of this legacy, Jesus’ encouragement to be peace makers becomes more accessible - if still challenging. To be a peace maker is to bring shalom, which means to bring healing and wholeness, to lives, people, the world. To bring shalom means deliberately looking for the shattered, the hungry, the lost, the down-trodden, and to act in such a way as to bring change.... to feed, to liberate, to raise up. Therefore, when Jesus calls us to be "peacemakers," He is calling us to be the ones to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world.

Justice Matters

Being a peace maker therefore is to do more than talk the talk. But where to start?

Since January this year a small group of friends have been gathering in coffee shops and homes around Finchley to wrestle with this very question. Out of this small gathering of activists, optimists and ordinary radicals has grown Justice Matters - a new community for people seeking to make a difference, an effort to start doing something - however small our individual contributions may be.

Justice Matters held its first public gathering before the summer. We had 25 people join us to

discuss the social justice issues close to their heart - from poverty to sexual violence against women, water and sanitation to political oppression. The theme of the evening - aside from being an opportunity to meet some like-minded people - was to encourage one another that our individual efforts to be peace makers are not lone acts of delusional hope in an ocean of darkness, but rather form vibrant sparks in an incandescent network of shalom bringers. Together we can - together we are - making a difference.

Making even the slightest dent into these global problems may seem impossible, but the worst thing we can do is not act because the task seems too great. Even one step for the better is worth taking: Every hungry person fed and watered, every woman rescued from sex trafficking, every older person granted dignity, every tribesman given economic independence, every child immunised against a preventable disease - each of these is a victory for shalom.

When he calls us to be peace makers, Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God is more than well-meant words and a warm glow inside. Rather it is a call to action. In the Church we can be guilty of thinking that praying against injustice is enough. Certainly, prayer is vital - we cannot achieve real change in our own strength, but as Shane Claiborne writes in the book Follow Me to Freedom:

“When we pray for the hungry, let’s remember to feed them. When we pray for the unborn, let’s welcome single mothers and adopt abandoned children. When we give thanks for creation, let’s plant a garden and buy locally grown fruit and vegetables. When we remember the poor, let’s reinvest our money in micro-lending programs. When we pray for peace, let’s beat our swords into ploughshares and turn military budgets into programs of social uplift. When we pray for an end to crime, let’s visit those in prison. When we pray for lost souls, let’s be gracious to the souls who’ve done us wrong.”

 

Don't worry if you feel small and that you have only a little to give. As the environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill says: “The question is not, ‘Can you make a difference?’ You already do make a difference. It’s just a question of what kind of difference you want to make."