Making Peace

 

Text: Matthew 5:1-12

There is a scene in the Monty Python comedy “Life of Brian” where Jesus stands on a rocky hill, speaking to the multitudes gathered below. Some distance away stands a small group, bickering among themselves, who can’t quite make out his words. At one point, one man asks another, “What did he just say?”

“I think he said blessed are the cheesemakers!” the other replies. 

“Blessed are the cheesemakers?” a nearby woman cries, “What’s so special about cheesemakers?” 

The scene is good for a laugh, but listen: Jesus may not have said “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” but what he did say probably sounded equally ridiculous to his actual listeners, and no less ridiculous to us today.

Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who mourn, who are hungry and thirsty. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are those who are persecuted. And perhaps strangest of all, blessed are the peacemakers.  

Peacemakers. Those who make peace, who are in the business of peace. Peacemaking is not a passive term - it’s not giving in or a simple refusal to fight. Peacemaking is something one does through action, deliberately. And it isn’t popular, making peace, even though one could argue that there is always a lot of demand for that kind of work.

But people tend to think of peacemakers as a little weird, as dreamy idealists, ineffective, maybe even crazy. Peace making, working for reconciliation, making broken things whole, could be dangerous and is likely to fail - who’d want to do that? It seems a futile action.

Jesus’ career was mostly about action, even though many verses in this Gospel are concerned with his words. His words come after, and in light of, his actions, though. Jesus healed people. He made them whole. And this was so wonderful, so desperately needed, that people came from everywhere and brought their friends and family and neighbors to Jesus - they hauled them out of their beds or the ditches they were dying in and brought them to Jesus so that Jesus would make them whole.

And so this discourse about blessedness, this pronouncement of the beatitudes, comes out of the work of Jesus among the broken people in his world.  

The poor, the meek, the grieving, the hungry for food and the hungry for justice, the oppressed and persecuted, and also the peacemakers.  They, Jesus says, they are blessed. And we should all see those people through that lens.

And then Jesus makes a surprising turn: You, you also are blessed when people dismiss you or taunt you or revile you when you work to make peace. When they think you are out of touch with reality for working to be merciful. When they shun you for working for justice.  When they laugh at you for your idealism.

Because peace making, mercy-giving, comforting, justice-doing are the actions that Jesus holds up to us as blessed. Making people and their communities whole, healing their woundedness, is the work Jesus gives us to do through these words he speaks from the mountain.  

We always read a form of the beatitudes on the Feast of All Saints. Jesus didn’t really say anything about saints, but I can imagine that he might say, blessed are the saints: see how they acted courageously, see how they acted faithfully - they were willing to be thrown to the lions; they were willing to stand up to power mongers; they were willing to give away all their possessions; they were willing to live and work among lepers; they were willing to persist in translating the gospel using only one finger because that was the only part of their body that still worked; blessed are they when they acted in ways that other people would find futile and crazy.  

And then he would make the turn right here in this room and say to you - blessed are YOU when YOU act courageously and faithfully even if people think YOU are crazy and tell you YOUR actions are futile. Blessed are you when other people think you are weird for mercy-granting, for justice-doing, for peace-making, because everybody knows that won’t help you get ahead in life. Blessed are you when people think you are dreaming when you do the work of peacemaking and others treat you badly for it. When they think you are out of touch with reality for working to be merciful. When they mock you for working for justice and laugh at your idealism. 

Blessed are you, says the Prince of Peace, for this is how YOU will show the world what the kingdom of heaven looks like.