Blessed/happy are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.
I have had several things in my mind this week as I have thought about this text, and what I would say to you today. The first of course is the text itself: Blessed/happy are the peacemakers. You may be relieved to know that we have only one more beatitude left after this one - but it's a humdinger. But there is also the lectionary text for this Sunday - the story in Luke about what happened after Jesus first spoke in the synagogue in his home town -and since I am preaching this Sunday in a local church, I have been thinking of it too. And then of course there have been the events of the Martin Luther King week - especially the controversy among some over inviting Harry Belafonte to give the keynote address. And also there president's announcement and defense of his decision to commit more troops to our military actions in Iraq.
As I said, I have been thinking a lot, but, as you expect, I will be very brief in what I say to you. Peacemaking is the theme. Jesus said peacemakers are happy or blessed because they will be known as God's children. Yet the common experience of peacemakers is that they are called communists, cowards, fags, traitors, troublemakers, and any number of obscenities. That is what happened to Martin Luther King. It's what happened to Harry Belafonte (if you don't believe me, just read the D and the blogs it references). And of course that's what happened to Jesus.
I notice, of course, that Jesus' promise is framed in the future tense. They "will be" called children of God. Will be. Much later. At the time, they are often reviled.
President Bush is of course banking on that. He has told us that he is sure that he is right, and that future generations will thank him for what he is doing. So said Richard Nixon, so said Lyndon Johnson - so said Winston Churchill, so said FDR. It's hard to know at the time, isn't it?
I think about Jesus going back home to Nazareth and preaching in his hometown synagogue. His fame had spread. Home town folks heard that their boy had been healing people and performing miracles. So of course they expected a good show when he came back home. He started of well enough, preaching from a prophecy promising release of the captives, good news to the poor. But then he refused - or was unable - to perform any miracles. Indeed, he told them that Elijah didn't perform miracles in Israel, but at the home of a foreigner. And Elisha did not cleanse an Israeli leper, but a Syrian. And the people were so inflamed that they wanted to throw him over a cliff. Saying that God does not always favor US was dangerous then, and it's dangerous now.
I know the feeling. When I was a student, from a very small town in Alabama, I returned home from my fancy northern college during the Vietnam War and went to my local draft board, where I had decided to register as a conscientious objector. It was a small county. I and my family were fairly well known. I had carefully thought about my position, had read all the literature, and knew all the rules. I knew my rights; I knew the procedures. I walked into the local draft board and told the lady who had been doing that job since before World War II that I wanted to apply for conscientious objector status, and that I would like the forms, please. Her jaw dropped to the floor. She said they had never had anybody apply for conscientious objector status before, and that she didn't have any forms. Then she asked me if my daddy knew I was doing this. The, when I persisted in asking her to get the forms so I could complete them, she told me that she would do it, but if she lived, she would make sure I was declared 1-A and eligible for service in Vietnam immediately. She ended by telling me to go home and pray about it. I did, and I decided I would go to divinity school.
I have never known if what I did was an act of courage or an act of cowardice.
The reason I tell you this story is simply to affirm that even when we think we are trying to stand for peace, we incur wrath and anger and sometimes violence. We are accused of being troublemakers or traitors. Standing for peace, as Harry Belafonte and Martin King and Henry David Thoreau and Emma Willard and do many others have discovered, may even get you jailed - or killed.
It's kind of puzzling, isn't it, that Christians can talk so much about peace, but be so often supportive of war. Harry Belafonte, who was a close friend of Martin Luther King's, stated that Dr. King once told him: "I'd rather have 500 ex-convicts in our movement than 15000 Baptist ministers." I had never heard that Dr. King quotation. I can only guess what Dr. King, the apostle of non-violence, meant by it. I think it means that ex-convicts are likely to be actors, while ministers are only talkers.- that ex-convicts know a certain reality of the world that ministers do not. Maybe. But maybe Dr. King means that convicts know more about what it means to suffer than ministers do. -that convicts have nothing to lose and are more honest than ministers are. I don't know. But I find myself challenged and indicted by that statement.
Actually there are two contrasting strains of Christian theology in the world today. One of them (called the post-millennial) sees the possibility and duty that Christians can contribute to a better world, where peace and justice come to prevail. The other, with many adherents in our own country, sees the world as hopeless. Peace is an illusion. The world will get worse and worse until Jesus returns to earth. The only thing we can do, according to this view (called the premillennial), is to try to restrain evil. It makes a difference which we believe.
There was an article in yesterday's New York Times, written by an economist, who calculates the present cost of the Iraq war as 1.2 trillion dollars. The administration, at the beginning of this venture, projected a total cost of $50 billion. Lawrence Lindsay, a White House advisor, was fired after he said publicly that the war would cost $200 billion. Both estimates, according to David Leonhardt, the economist who wrote this article, are tragically low. Mr. Leonhardt's point is to ask his readers to think about what else could be done with $1.2 trillion - a figure beyond most of our imaginations. Here is his list. He says we could do all of this for $1.2 trillion:
We could do - not one of these, but all of them. So he says. But we have believed that those things are impossible, while we have believed that the Iraq war is a necessity.
It makes a difference what we believe. I believe that we are here, not to make war, but peace. It is hard, but not impossible. It requires courage, because there is no passion as deadly as the passion for war. BUT IT CAN PREVAIL. It must prevail. It will prevail. And I believe that those who work to make it prevail will be called the children of God. Amen.
copyright©2007
Richard R. Crocker
