The Blessedly Funny Dressers

The Blessedly Funny Dressers--September 13, 2018

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." [Matthew 5:9]

Here is a hard truth that I have to stare down:  being a peacemaker is not the same as being a pleaser, the same way that peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of wholeness, of right-relationship, and of justice.  Being a pleaser is about trying to blend in with the goal of being liked.  It's a way of pretending you don't have opinions or wants, or at least silencing them, in a trade-off so that the people you are trying to please will like you or accept you or think better of you.  In other words, even though being a pleaser looks like it is about being focused on other people, it is really a roundabout way of trying to take care of yourself and your own insecurity.  It's about blending in with the crowd so that you can be accepted as one of the crowed.

Being a peacemaker, on the other hand, is not about winning friends for yourself or your own sake, so much as it is about offering yourself up to mend what is broken elsewhere. And, by contrast to being a pleaser, being a peacemaker just might make you stand out with a holy peculiarity.  "People notice peacemakers because they dress funny," writes Walter Brueggemann, "We know how the people who make war dress--in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism.  But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness--dressed for the work that is to be done."

All of this might seem contrary to our intuition and against the grain of common sense.  We say someone is "being diplomatic"--a sort of peace-making term, you'd think--when he is using a soft-touch with his words and make everybody feel happy and no one feel offended.  We say that someone is trying to "keep the peace" in her family if she tries to placate the angry ones around the table by pleasing everybody.  But maybe peacemaking isn't about blending in or getting people to put on fake smiles and make compromises.  Maybe peacemaking isn't the same as having a "go-along-to-get-along" attitude.  After all, an awful lot of violence in history has been perpetrated by people who were "just going along" with what someone else directed them to do.  It is nearly unspeakable how many lives have been snuffed out by people who were convinced at the time that they were "just following orders" or "complying with the law" and who were willing to please the people around them without so much as a word of protest.  

So let us be perfectly clear--the ones who keep silent when others are being stepped on are not "the peacemakers."  The ones who are so afraid of not being accepted themselves that they will not speak up and cause trouble when others are being kept out in the cold, they are not "peacemakers," either.  The ones who appear calm because they are indifferent, who appear to stay on an even keel because they have found a way to block out the suffering of others around them and keep it from rocking their boat, these are not "peacemakers."  This is not the blessed life, because peace, even "inner peace" is not the same as numbness.

To be a peacemaker is not a way out of the world's conflicts, or a way to avoid sharing the heartaches of those around us. It is not about being a "rock" that "feels no pain," or an "island" that "never cries," like in the Simon & Garfunkel song.  If we are going to be Jesus' kind of peaceable people, we will not purchase calm in our own lives at the cost of apathy toward everyone else's.  Rather, for us, being peacemakers will lead us into the turmoil around us, into the places where someone needs to speak up for those who are being stepped on to stand with them, and into the moments where others' hearts are troubled.  "The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod," says the old hymn, before concluding, "But let us pray for but one thing--the marv'lous peace of God, the marv'lous peace of God."

And that will make us stand out.  Like the firefighters headed into the burning building while the fearful crowds are running out of it to save themselves, we will be sent back into the troubled places to be presences of peace, to be comfort for the sorrowful and courage for the fearful.  We will be sent to be the presence of the God of peace for others.  And in so many words, that is exactly what Jesus says himself:  peacemakers will be called "children of God," because people will be able to see in us a peculiar family resemblance to the God who stands in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to bring them through it, whole, safe, sound, and at peace.  People will call us "children of God" as we do the strange, self-giving work of peacemaking, because people will recognize the character of God in us.  Peacemakers look funny, Walter Brueggemann says--and he is right.  In a world where so many others are trying to dress to fit in, we are called to look like our peculiar God and his particular Messiah, who ran into the fire for our sake on a cross, and who dresses us in his kind of work-clothes to follow after him.

O God of peace, keep us odd and standing out from the crowd by our peculiar calling to be a peaceable people--people who have learned from our God how to be presences of shalom in troubled places, people who share a family resemblance with you.