In the previous post I played around with the Beatitude, "Blessed are the peacemakers." The use of compound words like peace-maker, peace-builder, or peace co-ordinator, allows us to offer any amount of perspectives on the attitudes and activities that contribute to the creation of peace in a fragmented, divided and conflicted world.
However. "Blessed are the peacemakers" is more than praise for peaceable people. Jesus ties the blessedness to the present practices and future identity of those for whom peace is a life project, a way of life, a habit of the heart, a work of both industry and art. But above all, peacemaking is a labour of love to God and to all children, women and men whose claim on our goodwill is quite simply because that is what God requires of us.
Peacemakers are "Blessed" because they are acting towards others just as God has acted to them. Peacemakers are called the children of God because they bear and demonstrate a family resemblance to the God of peace, they do unto others as God has done unto them. Peace is what they do, and peacemakers is who they are; our character is exposed in those actions of ours that tell the honest to God truth about us.
After a full exegetical analysis of this saying of Jesus, Robert Guelich concludes:
Peacemaking therefore is much more than a passive suffering to maintain peace or even bridge-building or reconciling alienated parties. It is the demonstration of God's love through Christ in all its profundity. The peacemakers of Matt 5.9 refers to those who, experiencing the shalom of God, become his agents establishing his peace in the world." 1
This is both present reality and future promise, this family likeness and declared status as children of God. When all the life is lived, and all the results are in, and we stand before God to have our say about what life has been about, what has mattered most to us, what we have given ourselves to and cared about, God is going to be interested in how far we have been makers of peace with others and between others and for the sake of others.
My guess is that peacemaking isn't the first quality assurance test we would apply to how we go about our lives, and how we conduct our relationships, business, conversations and friendships. But it is a defining identity marker of the child of God. And here's the scary bit. To be called out by God in order to be announced as those worthy of the peace prize in heaven, well, says Jesus, that is to be Blessed! As Scot Mcknight comments, "The Beatitudes look at people now, through the lens of an Ethic from Beyond. Kingdom realities are now occurring through the peacemakers." 2
All of this is fine, until the next time we know the uncoiling of resentment from offence, or the remembering of past hurt, or simply that eruption of self-will that isn't prepared to give in without an argument. We all have powerful drivers and hair triggers, our own ways of filing and indexing grievances, and feelings of vulnerability and insecurity that make us defensive.
And Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers".
Blessed are you, all of you, who get to know yourselves well enough to know you are already loved beyond your imagining, who have heard the God of peace bid you welcome, who believe and realise the Kingdom of God is amongst you, within you and ahead of you – so get on with it, live it!
Forgive, show mercy, love, walk humbly, love mercy, and make peace as God's child. To be called the children of God is to know ourselves acknowledged by God as those who are known fully, and drawn into the intimacy of fellowship with God, who is the God of Peace – peace on earth and good will to all people. Aye, that!
- Robert Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount. A Foundation for Understanding. (Waco: Word Publishing, 1982) 92. In my view this is still the first choice commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. I'll explain why in another post.
- Scot McKnight, The Sermon on the Mount. Story of God Commentary (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2013) 46.
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