How difficult it is to sustain such a vision in a world that in many ways is more violent than ever. Violence comes in smaller packages but with potentially more damaging results than ever before. Hearts are aflame with ancient hatreds, and the desire for revenge, in some cases, is rooted in the distant mists of time and maintained at white-hot intensity century after century.
The church is not immune from the violent culture in which we live. We take our cues from culture. We borrow ways of thinking, speaking, acting. Our conflicts do not involve physical weapons, but are carried on in the same spirit and with the same passion as the culture wars, and often with the same tactics that we see all around us.
Is our world so different from that of the Old Testament prophets, priests and kings or from that of John, Jesus, Paul, the apostles and the Evangelists? Not really. While there have been many wonderful advances, especially in the last hundred years, there have been just as many steps backward into the primordial history described in the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.
The peace promised by the prophet and embodied in the work of our Savior escapes us, and yet it must be sought, through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is our peace, the one in whom God has reconciled the world to himself. Finally, God’s peace — in Christ — is a gift.
The condition of peace is justice and the rule of righteousness. Human efforts are always proximate, limited, and will never in and of themselves achieve the shalom of God which is God’s will for all people. To believe that our stratagems have the capacity to do what only God can do is delusion of the highest order.
This Lenten season — at a time of great conflict in the world and in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — God’s people should focus on God’s will for the peaceable kingdom, emerging in our midst even now if we have the eyes to see it; God’s work in Jesus Christ through whose suffering God’s peace has been accomplished at great price; and the ways that make for peace — in the world and in the church.
Peacemaking — the believer’s calling — has for 20 years been lifted up as a theme for our life together. And it is a suitable banner under which all can march — more light churches, confessing churches, peacemaking churches, evangelism churches, “unaffiliated” churches. Christ’s church includes all those who belong to Paul, Apollos, Cephas and unnumbered others. Each one came not through human choice or volition but rather through the call of Christ Jesus by means of the Holy Spirit. Christ is not divided. He is one and so is his church, because the church is his body.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone (1Corinthians 12:4-6, NRSV).
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