Blessed are the Peacemakers

Everyone talks at the same time at our dinner table. It’s a cacophony of voices, loud chewing, and forks clanging on plates. Its boys jostling for milk and salt and attention; laughter, politics, ridiculous comments, and someone always asking why we are having chicken again. And with the events in our country these last few days, it has been exceptionally loud as they try to make sense of what they have seen and heard. My attempts to tame it into submission and bring about a peaceful discussion have been about as successful as trying to keep someone from spilling milk. Peace just doesn’t always come the way I think it should and I’m struggling to figure out what it should look like.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Jesus stood on a hill surrounded by throngs of people packed in tight and straining to see and to hear him, and he spoke those words. Blessed are you when you make peace. His words echoed off the edges of the hilltop and the people struggled to make sense of it. Roman rule was harsh, and he was speaking to those who had had little power, little money, little influence, and no way to escape the harsh authority bearing down on them. They thought he had come to remove them from this. They thought he had come to overthrow what was so wrong with the world at that time. They were picturing horses and battles; thrones and rulers; getting back what was rightfully theirs. And instead, he fed them bread and fish; told them to be meek and humble and to go back into their regular lives and make peace.

And as we walk through these days and watch our nation intent on setting itself on fire; everyone drawing lines and building walls on their side of all the issues, I can’t stop hearing the words Jesus spoke. Blessed are the peacemakers. What does that mean for us, though? As my boys’ voices rise and fall full of angst over the events of the day and the state of our country, I realize I may have peace all wrong.

You see, I want to achieve peace and wrangle it into submission. I want a kind of peace that I can lay over the chaos that swirls in the world around me. “If I can just find a little peace…” But here’s the thing. That’s not what Jesus meant. God did not send his son as The Prince of Peace to come into our world and bring us a warm and fuzzy feeling that removes us from the push and pull of this life only to make us feel better about it all.

The peace that God sends is different. It comes as a baby born in a manger on a dark and cold night in the middle of a most tumultuous time in history. Peace comes as a man walking dusty roads with a ragtag bunch of followers pointing to an upside-down kingdom where the last are first and the weak are made strong. Peace goes to the wounded and the down-trodden. It walks into the darkness and swallows it whole. “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he, himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:13-14).

Jesus is the peace that comes near. He comes to us; to the chaotic dinner table, with the loud kids and the spilled milk, into the hard discussions about the broken world that happen in our houses, in our offices, in our neighbors, and with those who see things differently. And he knows that it matters what we say. It matters how we respond to the events happening in our country. We are the ones called to be the salt and the light, the meek and the humble; the makers of peace.

Because peace here on earth changes everything. Jesus came into this world not to remove us from it, but to teach us how to walk through it; to share his “unforced rhythms of grace” with us that we might bring his peace wherever our feet may pass.

So, here’s what I think we might all need to remember about the blessing that Jesus declared for the peacemakers. Maybe we need to hear it a bit like this:

Blessed are you today when you listen, blessed are you today when you refrain from sowing seeds of division and instead pray for God to heal our land. And blessed are you when you humbly admit that you’re not always right; when you remind a friend that God is still on his throne and he is not anxious about how this is going to all work out, and blessed are you when you seek the peace of the city, the state and the nation where God has placed you by loving the people he puts right in front of you.

Lest we begin to think that what we say and do does not matter, remember Jesus preached peace to ordinary people on ordinary mountain tops in the middle of an extraordinarily divided time because he knew that peace on earth really does begin in the heart of each one of us. We are the peacemakers. We can change the world one conversation, one prayer, one deflected argument, and one humbled heart at a time. May it be so with each one of us today.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Alleluia Amen.