As well as the hermeneutic of love, on which I have previously written once or twice, I am equally fascinated by the imperative of peace. I tend to think of the term "imperative" as strong and forceful, energetically purposeful, persistently assertive, likely to override other legitimate and alternative viewpoints. Used with certain other words it can be less than peaceful – for example to pursue a "territorial imperative", or legislate an "economic imperative", or promote a "political imperative", even, and perhaps especially those actions deemed to be imperative in the interests of that many headed originator of monsters, "security".
But I'm not prepared to yield a word that is strong and forceful, energetically purposeful and persistently assertive. And while it would be nonsense to override other alternative viewpoints in the name of peace, that doesn't mean I'm prepared to surrender the moral imperative of peace-building, peace-making, peace-seeking, peace-arguing, even if it means costly peace-paying and patient peace- praying.
All of this comes out of spending time on the new tapestry on the word Shalom. My guide and mentor on things eirenic and pacific is Walter Brueggemann. Few biblical scholars have such a prohpetic gift of debunking, demythologising, deconstructing and de-clawing the ferocity of language used to justify economic, military and religious aggression. His wee book Living Toward a Vision is now in its third reading on my desk. Much of his later writing is in the same hopefully defiant tone of Kingdom critique of the powers that be.
Alongside that early manifesto on Shalom, is his commentary on the Psalms a decade later with its hallmark analysis of faith, God and disrupted human experience encountering disruptive grace – orientation, disorientation, re-orientation. And that re-orientation after fear, fire, anxiety, tragedy, depression, conflict and many another sideswipe from life, is another, and life renewing form of peace, shalom.
Having spent some time forming and shaping words for love, wisdom and grace, it seems a providential but predictable step to bringing those three within a more practical and inclusive worldview – shalom as that which we seek for ourselves by seeking it for others; peace as both gift and goal; the common good a life aspiration because it is an essential for human life if we and our planet are to flourish; indefatigable goodwill, which means the persistent presentation of kindness, embodied expression of mercy, a continuing in the community of the love of God in Christ which is rooted in the Eternal Community of Love which is the Triune God.
The God of hope, the God of peace,
the God of grace, the God of wisdom,
whom we know as the God who is love,
fill us with all hope in believing,that peace is possible
because made possible in Christ,
and that peace-making is an imperative for ministers of reconciliation,
and that the Prince of Peace has defeated the Prince of the Power of the Air,
and that the Lamb in the midst of the throne
subverts all other pretenders who clamber on to thrones of their own making,
and God's unmaking.
In the name of the Prince of Peace.
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