Wednesday, May 18, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Who needs peacemakers in wartime?
That was the headline of a Plough Magazine article, published a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Plough is the publishing house of the Bruderhof, which means a “place of brothers.”
The folks here are Anabaptists, who have been committed to non-violence for several hundred years. So as the author asks, what do they do in wartime?
It is now urgent that we pour ourselves into the task of becoming peacemakers, of fashioning peace out of war. A peacemaker will tell the truth: he or she will be bold in naming evil. However, words alone do not make peace. Peace is not a virtue that can be signaled. It must be built by actions of love.
This is not a new problem.
There arose no little dissension and debate with Paul and Barnabas about whether the Greek converts should be circumcised.
They put the question to higher authorities, to the Apostles in Jerusalem. Many words were said, especially by Paul and Peter, and a compromise was hammered out. As with most compromises, no one was completely satisfied. But the agreement gradually became the “new normal.”
One way to think of compromise is as a way to spread suffering across everyone equally. Every ego must be downgraded, just a bit. Jesus talked about this as pruning, which he himself underwent:
My Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every branch that does, he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
That sounds like suffering to me. And Jesus passed that lifestyle on, he spread it around. Learn to live humbly with each other, he said, by learning to live with me.
Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. I am the vine, and you are the branches.
Most organizations thrive when its members “follow center,” when they are dutiful and obedient. In my two years as a “Moonie,” I heard that every day. All of us were members of small cell groups. Each group had a leader, and we were taught to do anything that person told us to do. Could be a fascist army, could be a Ukrainian army, could be an orchestra or a football team. Even the cells in my body thrive when they act like the cell groups in the Moonies.
And at least when Jesus is the leader, things go well.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
Countless examples from history and sociology beg to differ. But Jesus requires us to lay down our egos to “remain in him,” and that just doesn’t happen much. Even when we want to, we don’t know how. The Plough article has two suggestions:
We should be humble in realizing that we do not understand peace.
This re-asserts God’s insistence that we turn to him for better definitions, instead of fabricating them ourselves. We need groanings of prayer more than diligent reading, as Bonaventure said.
Jesus’ love is unconditional. He directs actions of love and compassion first to the poor, the helpless and the weak, but demands the same even for our enemies. This is the hardest, and arguably the most important part of being a peacemaker. We do not pretend not to have enemies, but we know what Jesus tells us to do for them.
I’ve always had a fairly short fuse, except when I pray unceasingly for my enemies. I imagine that’s true of many peacemakers. They are rarely passive, and often their skin hardens as they live in a hard world. Pushing back is always too easy and often exactly what happens, at least to me. I become judgmental and stop listening.
Except, as I said, when I pray unceasingly for my enemies. Make the words come out. Again and again.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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