Blessed Are The Peacemakers . . .
Restoration Review · 1979
(Volumes 21)
PEACEMAKERS, NOT PIECEMAKERS
As
we begin this series on the great beatitude it is well that we keep
our spelling straight and therefore our thinking. It is the maker of
peace that is blessed, not the maker of pieces, the
peacemaker and not the piecemaker. The point is not as
superficial as it seems when one realizes that the history of the
church reveals as much piecemaking as peacemaking, if not more.
Pieces and peace have one thing in common: it takes
considerable effort to achieve either. It takes effort and some skill
to tear up a home or a church or any beautiful human relationship.
Left alone, folk will get along with each other fairly well. While it
is true that it is easier to destroy than to build, one nonetheless
has to work at it to fracture a relationship that is rooted in love.
So
with peace. It is the peacemaker that is blessed, not the one
who is merely for peace. If peace is up for election, all our
sisters and brothers will vote for it. They even love peace,
and that of course is to their credit. But the beatitude is not
talking about folk who are for peace or who love peace,
but those who are makers of peace. The lover of peace may do
nothing to bring it about. He stands ready to enjoy the fruit of
peace once others cultivate it, but he is not going to stick his neck
out or get his nose bloodied.
Many
a soul says in the face of difficulties, I don’t want to get
involved. But is this not what Jesus is saying, Blessed are
those who are willing to get involved and do something for their
fellows. There are many things, of course, that are none of our
business, and there are times for us to remain silent and keep our
nose out of things. But there are times when we are morally obligated
to speak up and do something, even if it may subject us to criticism.
Jesus is offering his blessing to those who are willing to make
themselves vulnerable. The person who is unwilling to take chances
will never be a peacemaker. Peace is like war in that it is something
that has to be waged if it is effective. This beatitude blesses the
person who cares enough to act.
Our daily
paper recently carried the story of a Chicago lad who had been
confined to an apartment for two full years by an obviously sick
mother. She would not open the door even to pleading relatives, and
when the landlord called for the rent, she passed the money under the
door. Only at odd hours when no one was around would she venture
forth and then only long enough to purchase bare necessities. The
apartment had no heat, no lights, no radio or TV, no refrigeration,
and the little boys’ playmates were goldfish and a hamster.
There
were numerous people who knew of the child’s plight, and they
all said, Ain’t it awful. But one of his aunt’s
not only loved peace but resolved to make some of it for a bewildered
little boy who needed to be in school and for a sister who needed to
be in the hospital. So she went to work. Since she could not persuade
her sister out of her self-imposed prison, she went to the school
authorities, who sympathized with her but would do nothing. The
county welfare office referred her to one agency after another.
Nobody would do anything about it. She at last found a volunteer,
unpaid social worker who agreed to help her.
They
finally got the case into court and a judge issued a detaining order.
It took two policeman to break down the door and enter the apartment.
They carried the mother away, kicking in protest, to a mental
hospital. They found the little boy in a dark corner, clutching his
hamster, now cold and dead in his hands.
The
little boy is now back in school where he belongs and the mother is
receiving the treatment she needs. That is peace, and it did
not come simply because someone cared, but because someone cared
enough to act and to keep on acting. As we read such an account we
all applaud the woman’s efforts, but she was the
peacemaker in that case, not we, and she receives the
blessing, not we. How often do we see injustices, maltreatment,
slander, misrepresentations, some wrong to be set right, some soul to
be liberated, and do nothing. How many of us, had we known of
this boys’ plight, would have done more than say, Somebody
ought to do something about that!
A
personal illustration comes to mind because I heard of it only today.
A couple that came to our congregation from another one in our town
told of how they finally overcame enough of their prejudice against
me to start visiting our assemblies. Their suspicions were warranted,
for the elders of their church brought in two prominent preachers for
the purpose of excoriating the new church, to which several of their
families were fleeing for refuge. Both men made it a point to
discredit Leroy Garrett, who is a part of the new congregation.
The
couple was warned not to read anything I wrote and were rebuked when
a copy of this journal was seen in their home. My character was
assailed and my motives impugned, and this by people who never bother
to read what I write or to say one word to me, even though I have
many times sat with them in their own assemblies.
Amidst
all this one of the officers of the church, who is of a different
spirit, quietly said to this couple something to the effect that what
these people were saying about Leroy Garrett was not true. “He
is not like they say he is,” he confided. This was enough to
cause this brother and sister, wracked by an oppressive leadership,
to investigate further.
They
decided to risk association with one who had been branded a very
dangerous man. They told me today that one of the most beautiful
surprises in their lives was to see for themselves what Leroy Garrett
is really like.
We now
have a meaningful relationship, enjoying and helping one another. And
this because a brother was willing to stick his neck out and say a
word in defense of one who was being badmouthed by “those who
are somewhat.” It would have been safer for him, his position
being what it was, to have said nothing. Many there are who will hold
their peace in the face of injustice, even when their testimony could
make a difference. They fear they might be cast out of the synagogue!
“He is of age, ask him,” is one way out, that I recall
from Scripture.
James
3:18 is an exciting verse along this line: “Righteousness is
the harvest that is produced from the seeds the peacemakers planted
in peace” (Today’s English Version). The peacemakers
plant in peace and the fruit is righteousness. The piecemakers
plant in discord and the fruit is division. We have God’s
word for it that we shall reap what we sow. If as peacemakers we sow
in peace, strife, jealousy, animosity, viciousness will never be our
fruit. Only righteousness, and so we find the poet saying,
“Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psa.
85:10).
These
great truths should encourage us to reach out in mercy. Aged folk may
be a lot of trouble, but they so badly need our tender loving care.
It is easy to ignore the lonely, for that’s why they’re
lonely, everybody ignores them! Everybody loves the winner, but how
about loving the loser? In our slim-conscious world, how many of us
really accept the fat, as they are? The brutalizing experience
of a divorce is compounded when the church censures instead of
showing mercy. Peace produces righteousness. They kiss each other.
Legalism and sectarianism may also be in some kind of an embrace, but
the end product is oppression and depression.
Our
heritage that we call the Restoration Movement comes from men who
were fed up with partyism and all its littleness. They were men who
stood tall and had high ideals. They sought for ways to unite with
their sisters and brothers in all the sects, not for excuses for
remaining separated from them. They were free, open, liberal souls
who wrought out principles of unity, not isolated, exclusivistic
partisan who used the Scriptures to justify sectarianism. They were
men and women of vision rather than division. It was their disgust
with “the jarrings and janglings of sectarian strife”
that led them to launch a unity movement. We are not likely to have
their vision of a united church until we catch their repugnance of
the party spirit.
It
takes hate to produce a maker of peace. William Barclay, the late
beloved expositor of Scotland, was a great admirer of our Abraham
Lincoln. He likes to tell of how Lincoln was incensed as he watched a
black man sold on the auction block. “I’ll crush that
system to hell!,” Old Abe was heard to say. This was Barclay’s
view of a meek man: one who never gets angry at the wrong time but
always gets angry at the right time. The peacemaker hates all
those things that are indignities upon the human spirit, and he seeks
to overcome them. One who has a hands-in-pocket attitude toward the
evils that beset us will never be a peacemaker.
The
piecemaker is a certain breed of cat. He is so ego-ridden that
he’ll wreck a home or a business or a church or a nation for
his own aggrandizement. Or he is so party-oriented that he is vicious
toward anyone or anything that threatens the security of the party.
He cares nothing for hurt feelings or discouraged spirits in his
passion to defend the party, which must be right about everything.
He would preside over an infallible system. He chooses to leave
the church strewn in pieces rather than to seek that peace to which
we are all called (1 Cor. 7:15).—the Editor