Peace on Earth, a homiletical meditation

A Reflection on the Eucharistic Lessons for Peace
January 15, 2009

The longing for peace wells from deep within Christian tradition. We wish each other the “peace of the Lord” after our absolution at every Eucharist. Priests often bless us with the hope that the “peace of God, which passes all understanding” will remain with us always. St. Francis prays, “Lord, make us instruments of your peace,” and we have prayed with him for centuries. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus tells us, “for they shall be called the children of God.” We expect a “peaceable kingdom” one day, despite Jesus’ telling us that, in the interim at least, it may feel more like a sword.

Just lately, largely out of feelings of deep sorrow and futility during the on-going combat between Israel and Gaza, I have begun to believe that we humans can have peace at any time, of our own volition, if we (both sides of any conflict) really want it. Our problem is that we don’t want it, from either side. What we want instead is the accomplishment of our own will, at least that of the governing powers. If one side claims to want peace, it is because they recognize that they are not prepared to pay the price of war. Sometimes, they have to anyway, if the strings are being pulled from afar, say Lebanon or Tehran. But having their own way remains what they really want even more than peace.

Carefully reading the lessons for this occasion brought all that home to me, and added the realization that, if we are to have peace, it must come from God. We await God’s decision to give the gift of peace to his creation, knowing that the gift of peace is wrapped up in the Parousia itself and will come only when Jesus returns to bring it. God could intervene at any time, of course, to do it, but I am not sanguine on that score, else why wait this long. He seems to be waiting for something.

Yesterday (January 14, 2009) on satellite radio, I heard a reference to an Israeli activist, whose name I missed, describing a shift that has occurred in him in recent years. It sounds as if he would be a member of my generation. In the 1960’s, he said, he and most of his peers hoped and longed earnestly for peace between Israel and her neighbors, a true, durable, adaptable, comprehensive peace that could bring an end to all the fighting between Israel and her adversaries.
Now, he says, he is more pragmatic. He wants to see progress toward peace, some evidence that, in one area of life or another, relations are working out better. He denies that the conflict between Israel and Palestinians, for example, is over religious differences. He says it is really over control of the land and its resources, over the opportunity for self-rule and self-determination, over educational opportunity, and safety for one’s family. Approached in that way, great strides can be made, not to resolve every difference, but to make things better and create an atmosphere of increasing hopefulness and willingness to cooperate. There is no “plan for peace,” no “peace process,” no “road-map.” Peace will never happen in one fell swoop. It will grow incrementally.

Peace cannot be imposed from outside, says this activist. There are only two ways to accomplish it, resolving the dispute through diplomacy or through warfare. Either of those processes must be allowed to work itself out to its conclusion in order for any effect to be achieved. (Given the staggering imbalance of power—and resulting loss of life-- between Israel and Gaza, any suggestion that the two sides should just “fight it out,” coming from an Israeli, is gross and offensive. But while efforts to achieve a cease-fire continue, I am willing to walk a few steps down this path for the sake of the argument only.) He continues: If a cessation of the violent activities is coerced from outside prematurely, all that happens is that the resentments and hostilities fester until the control is removed; then, they break loose with even greater violence. He cites the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia as examples. While there is an absence of fighting at the present time, there has been no rapprochement among the ethnic groups. Their issues with one another still exist. Therefore, there is no peace.

If he is right, and I must admit that he has a point, then we might well despair. Perhaps U. N.-brokered peace treaties should only be approached in the contest of providing a mechanism for continued, mediated negotiations and not as an end in themselves, hoping the original problems will just go away. Nevertheless, diplomatic negotiations over differences can only work when both sides truly desire peace (see paragraph 1 above); when their other powers, military, economic, and political, are evenly matched; and when both see that the alternative is too awful to contemplate. That happened ultimately with the U. S. and the Soviet Union, particularly in the awful contemplation category, and the two never fought a “hot” war, except by proxy. Where there is an imbalance of power, the one with more must have a prodigious, and I would even assert, Christian, conscience. That happened, not without unfortunate lapses, in India’s struggle for independence from Britain. Or the weaker one must have protectors feared by the powerful one, as in the case of China and Taiwan. By and large, however, what is the point of diplomacy when one has the means to assert one’s will simply by the exercise of raw power, as in the case of the U. S. and Iraq? None of this bodes well for the accomplishment of peace on earth, “peace in our time.”

I’m back now to why we don’t and can’t have peace on our own merits, because we don’t really want peace, we want to have our way. Christian tradition has a label for this malady. We call it Original Sin, and it has never gone out of practice, even when it has been unfashionable to acknowledge it.

Someday, God will decide that enough is enough and give us all a good swift kick in the seat, set us down on sore backsides, and explain to us in no uncertain terms why this kind of behavior will be no longer acceptable. Come to think of it, he has done the explaining part several times already. Eventually, it will have to be “listen up, and respond—or else!” But in the meantime, does that mean we must live with constant war and conflict?

In the larger picture, I’m inclined to think it does mean that. Microcosmically, though, there is more to it. There is an antidote to war and violence, and that antidote lies solely in the Gospel. It is not a matter of a simple practice of non-violence, although that way of life certainly has its attractions and rewards. There is something that precedes and underlies even that, and it is the transformative process of conversion to Christ. It involves all of the shifts of mind, body, and spirit that have been advocated by preachers and evangelists, protestant and Catholic, over the ages. One must “believe” in Jesus, as Messiah and Son of God. One must accept him as “Lord and Savior.” In brief, one must submit one’s own will to his will, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

All of this is scary, and fraught with dangers and paradoxes. If I “believe,” that does not mean that I never have questions, wondering thoughts, or even doubts about certain things. If I accept his Lordship, that does not mean that I will not have, or should not have, questions and issues about how that lordship is to be exercised in my life. For example, I believe strongly that submission to the will of God does not necessarily mean submission to the instruction of all or any of his eager spokesmen on earth, whoever they may be. We’ve lost too many monks to ocean billows, too many pilgrims to papal crusades, and too many sad, sweet children of God to Jim Joneses to latch onto that. It doesn’t even mean a strict, rigid, or dogmatic adherence to the law of scripture, whether it’s Moses’ law, the prophets’ dicta, or St. Paul’s strictures. Rather, it means a serious, humble, and careful attention to the spirit of all scripture, guided by the Spirit of all scripture. It is the Spirit of God to whom I must submit my will, not to the spirit of Pope, prophet, or preacher.

We will never do this fully and permanently. That should not stop us making the attempt, for in the attempt is the reward. In order to do it, we have to get to know the Spirit we wish to have informing our mind and our will. That means spending some time together. It means actually knowing the scriptures we will comb and consult for guidance. It means sharing and consulting with other followers of Jesus whose sincerity and wisdom we know and have come to respect. It means—well, check the Baptismal Covenant: that is as concise a statement of life in the Spirit as I can recall.

In seeking to conform our wills to the will of the Divine Three-in-One, we will become practitioners of peace. Instruments of peace. Peace-makers. Children of God. It follows that the more of us that there are practicing this bold and noble enterprise, the more peace there will be in our world. That makes Evangelism sound not so bad after all. And if this all sounds, still, unfathomable as a human accomplishment, of course it is. In the end, peace will come to God’s world when God chooses to give it as graceful gift. In the meantime, it never hurts for us to ask for it. Yet in asking for it, maybe it would be even more effective if we grew to desire it.

That, too, will be God’s gracious gift.