Through Peaceable Eyes--February 3, 2023

Through Peaceable Eyes--February 3, 2023

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

Peaceable people aren't naive--but they do see things differently.  And there is something we can learn from the practice of peacemaking if we want to be people who love like Jesus.

Okay, before we go any further and risk confusing "peacemaking" with "faking a smile" or "telling people who have been unfairly treated to suck it up in the name of diplomacy," [which, to be honest, are sometimes the way these conversations can go], let's get something clear.  Genuine peace is not the same as when bullies intimidate people into silence.  As Dr, King put it, "peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of justice."  And as poet Amanda Gorman said it so poignantly, "Quiet isn't always peace."  It takes more courage to be a true peacemaker, not less.  It takes a greater capacity to speak up for justice to be done, not a willingness to settle.

So the goal of peacemaking is not merely to paper over deep conflicts or to sweep our differences under the rug.  And it is certainly not to coerce people into silent submission while others trample on them or harass them. When an invading nation, for example, tells those it is attacking, "We only want peace," that's a bad-faith euphemism for "We want you to accept being subjugated, and we will call it peace when you surrender to us."  That ain't real peace.

But what peacemakers do have is a different vision of how things can be.  They see the world differently, and consequently can recognize possibilities that others are unable or unwilling to see. In particular, peaceable people know the truth that everything is not a competition.  They know that every scenario does not have to framed as a zero-sum game where my success can only come at the price of your defeat, or where I can only get what I want by denying it to you.  Peacemakers are capable of seeing that everybody has a right to have what they need in God's world, and they will not quietly settle for resolutions where some get to claim "victory" while stepping on the ones they see as "losers."  That's the thing: there don't have to be losers at all.

And to a world still bent on the idea that there can only be success for Me and My Group if we win against You and Yours, the notion of peacemaking will sound like foolishness, or weakness, or both.  The logic of that mindset says, "You've gotta get them before they get you, but one way or another, someone has to come out on top, and someone has to be the loser... and to the victors go the spoils."  And it means a way of life where everyone else has to be seen as a threat or at the very least as competition for resources that there just aren't enough of.  So it's no wonder that so many in the world around us think that peacemaking is a waste of time or actively dangerous--genuine peacemaking seeks a kind of resolution that doesn't depend on vanquishing enemies, but rather on ending the animosity between us.

That change of perspective--that I don't have to define my success in terms of how I compare to you or anybody else--is what connects love and true peacemaking.  To love someone else requires the ability to recognize that their needs are as valid and worthy as your own, and it means refusing to give in to either envying what they have or boasting about what you have in comparison.  It means seeking their good with the same care and intentionality as you seek your own, and maybe even that their good is connected to your own well-being.  All of that is at the root of peacemaking, too.

And in the bigger picture, that makes sense of why the Scriptures talk about Christ as the One who has "made peace" between us and God, and who embodies God's love for us, even when we have made ourselves enemies of God.  God refuses to believe that God's goals have to be achieved at the cost of our well-being.  God refuses to put divine self-interest over the interests of a hostile humanity.  God has chosen to love us even when we are loveless, as the old hymn puts it, because God doesn't see success as a zero-sum game. And when we see that we have been loved that way--that God has made peace with us from God's side of the relationship in Jesus--we cannot help but come to see things from that same new perspective as well.  We start to see the world--and the other people in it--through the peaceable lens of divine love.  And that means we stop seeing other people as competitors we either envy or gloat over, but rather as siblings in a family who are beloved of God just as we are.  Perhaps that is exactly why Jesus says that peacemakers are to be called "children of God"--they see their place alongside everyone else as members of God's own family.

Today, regardless of what anybody else thinks of you, and whether anybody else approves, dare to see the world through the lens of God's love for the world.  Dare to see the world from the perspective of sufficiency rather than scarcity.  Dare to see others as people worthy of love and their needs as worthy of attending to.  That's what it looks like to take Jesus' love seriously.

Lord Jesus, help us to see ourselves and our neighbors the way you do--in peaceable love.