Thoughts on the Beatitudes, Part 9b: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Once upon a time there was a stunningly lame song, the chorus of which began, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” I am profoundly sorry to any of you who now have the trite words and melody stuck in your head. For those who have never heard this ditty, I implore you not to look it up on YouTube. And yet, now that I have sliced and diced said tune like a Ronco Veg-O-Matic, let me say that the refrain’s sentiment is something that I will take up further along in this post.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

As is the case with any positive human state, peace is the subject of innumerable claims as to how we attain it. For John Lennon, we just have to imagine. According to the Dalai Lama, we need a well-mixed sauce of education and “warmheartedness.” Oprah Magazine says that we need to  “(live) happily ever after with the person we turned out to be.”* And so on. Despite a history of consummate ineffectiveness, such ideas hold an almost irresistible appeal for us humans, flattering as they are to our sense of importance and power. All in all, the quest for peace reads more like a Walter Mitty-esque daydream rather than a journey toward a conclusive resting place. In my years of providing mediation in a variety of diverse conflicts, I have seen how easily people throw up roadblocks to reconciliation, even when the parties profess a sincere longing for it.

Attempting to find or create peace on our own is one of humanity’s noble tragedies, especially given that a.) We are demonstrably ineffective in completing the task and, b.) God has provided one who preached peace (Eph. 2:17); who made peace (Col. 1:20); who speaks peace (Mark 4:39) and who – at the heart of the matter – IS our peace (Eph. 2:14). Messiah as the source of peace does not just appear out of the blue, however. From the first signs of disorder in the world, God is at work to bring wholeness to his creation and to overcome the forces of chaos, violence, and enmity.

The divine desire to bring peace is a constant refrain of Scripture that expresses many of God’s attributes – his sovereignty, his compassion, his justice, his mercy among them. Everything from nature – “He stills the roaring of the seas, and of their waves” – to his people’s enemies – “and the tumult of the nations” (Pss. 65:8) comes under his power and will. As Job found in his encounter with God, the Lord is able to lead around even powerful Leviathan the way Dmitriy Khaladzhi handles one of his horses. And as the Israelites discovered throughout their history, their God was eager to bring them into the same shalom that characterizes the relationships among the three Persons of the Trinity.

Peace is one of God’s great promises and a true expression of his heart of love toward the creatures he has made. It is out of this love that the Father sent the Son as a peace offering, knowing that he alone can become the focal point for God’s ultimate purpose, which is to “unite everything, both in heaven and on earth” (Eph. 1:10). The last chapters of the Book of Revelation fill out the picture of that unity, presenting a universe where God has banished sin, suffering, hatred, fear, and every other destructive impulse that frustrates

The images in Revelation are of a re-integrated world, one where every relationship displays the healing and restoration that only grace can accomplish. In that renewed world, we find a place in a universe that doesn’t terrify us; where the strong no longer dominate or oppress the weak; where the rattling of sabres becomes impossible as the nations beat them into plowshares.

But that glory is yet to come at the fulfillment of the Beatitudes’ eschatological vision. What about now? What does the Father want for us as bearers of his peace? The first, and most obvious answer begins at the cross, where Jesus’ blood brings about the reconciliation of our selves with God. Making this statement risks sounding like I’m giving a simplistic, “We know that” Sunday School answer. And yet we must not really “know it” or our lives would be freer from the anxiety and discord that mark our lives. The truth is that we continually need to receive peace from Jesus if we are to experience the relational integration that allows us to become peacemakers. The cross is where Jesus accepted as his own burden all the ways that I do harm in the world as a sower of dissension and alienation.

Indeed, every Beatitude grows from God declaring that he is for me even though I was against him. To be poor in spirit, merciful, hungry for righteousness, meek – every state of discipleship happiness that Jesus declares has begun with him, exists because of him, and comes to pass in us in and through him.

Now let’s get back to Oprah. While the platitude from her magazine is indisputably shallow and even silly, there is a hint of truth to it. I certainly don’t want to “(live) happily ever after with the person (I) turned out to be” – as if putting smiley faces over all my sin and frailty makes all the folly and evil that I have committed or had committed against me disappear like some children’s fantasy story. On the other hand, reconciliation with God does open us to peace with ourselves. When we see Christ bearing our selves on the cross – and that means every sin, wart, strength, goodness and blemish together – we come to accept important aspects of who we are as creatures: the blessing and limitations of having no independent existence, and the specific manifestations of how the Lord has made us.

Coming to this kind of peace with my self, which I find to be a continual challenge, is crucial to moving in grace toward the Lord’s future purpose with me. To not accept the flawed but gifted self in whom the Spirit is working is to struggle with useless regret and unhelpful reproaches. Being who we are, doing what we have done, or failing to do what we ought to have done are all part and parcel of the ground that grace comes to transform. The deficits of past and present are swallowed up in God’s gift of hope for each moment that comes after. He does not just endure me, he acts toward me based on his loving vision of what he has made me to be. In essence, he sees Christ in me, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).

I have found that, as I accumulate more years to look back on, the temptation is to judge myself by worldly measures of achievement and stature. In such moments, I lose not only peace with myself, but contentment at what the Father has done in me. During one of these periods of unhealthy self-recrimination, the Lord led me to a different exercise: to recall three specific times when I had been able to display integrity in the face of serious trials and to acknowledge, and give thanks for the reflection of his character in my words and actions. Strangely enough, the result of this examination was not pride, but a kind of joy that recognized the thread of grace that God had woven through my life.

We can take another step forward and say that peace with my created self (and with God) is also crucial to walking in peace with my fellow human persons (and, by extension, with society and creation). One of the substantial fruits of meekness is freedom from the need to be in competition with others, to raise myself at their expense, or to live by comparison with them. I am at peace with God’s workmanship in me; I am equally at peace with what he has created in you. I can bless your times of success, encourage your pursuit of ministry, rejoice in your accomplishments, all without fearing being denigrated in doing so.

And then one step farther I arrive at the gospel call to be actively integrated in my real and costly relationships. Forgive as Christ forgave; do not let the sun go down on your anger; do not hold your brother or sister in contempt; forebear each other in love; as far as it depends on you … O how we squirm under the Peacemaker’s commandment to do such violence to our precious dignity. I have recently experienced a prodding to consider seeking reconciliation with a brother from whom I’ve kept a long-standing distance (OK, that’s my weak way of saying the Lord wants me to do this). I utilize my random excuse generator to avoid doing much more than vaguely thinking it would be good to consider maybe the possibility of perhaps …

With one final step we come to the closest imitation of Jesus: Being like him, a peacemaker and a reconciler of men and women caught in every level of conflict – with God, with others, with themselves. The more we walk in the peace of Christ that he offers through his own death and resurrection, the more we become those who “announces peace” by bringing the gospel, the more we can stand as intercessors for God’s people and the world, the more we reflect our call as sons and daughters of God.

And it all begins (and ends) with him.

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*http://www.oprah.com/spirit/how-to-face-reality-and-make-peace-with-yourself/all