Is it too late for divine peace to transform history?
It is nearly Christmas as I sit down to write on the subject of “peace.” On my way to the office, I passed a department store message sign with the words, “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men,” and was struck by the deep and widespread attraction that even our secular world feels for that ancient angelic promise.
Everyone, it seems, desires peace. But most want it on their own terms, and few are willing to pay somebody else’s price. For example, the eyes of the world, and especially of those who love Jerusalem, are focused on the fragile and often faint negotiations for peace between Israel and her Arabic neighbors, including and especially the Palestinians—yet most of us will admit that our longings for peace in that land are a “hope against hope.” Perhaps the political price is simply too high for either to pay.
How ironic it is that, according to Luke’s gospel, it was out on the hillsides near Bethlehem—the same land that today provides the setting for violence, hatred, and suspicion, along with flickering hopes for peace—that the promise of Shalom was offered to the shepherds tending their flocks. Of course, the ironies do not stop there. The announcement of peace was a direct judgment and divine commentary on the Pax Romana (“Roman Peace”) that had been announced and enforced by the military might of Caesar Augustus. In the proclamation of God’s peace on earth being somehow connected with the birth of a baby in Bethlehem, the angelic announcement laid bare Caesar’s peace for what it was: a coercion of the poor and powerless to submit to the Roman fist. Peace that is offered to and through a helpless, vulnerable child is of a decidedly different nature!
It is noteworthy, too, that the Messiah’s birth was announced to a few common shepherds, of all people. Shepherds, it was believed, were not to be trusted; they were shifty and prone to lying, and in subsequent rabbinic writings, their testimony was considered inadmissible in court. How ironic, then, that God should announce these glad tidings to them—after all, who would believe them anyway? But perhaps that is the point of God’s Shalom: it comes not with overwhelming demonstrations of power to coerce us into compliance; rather, divine peace appears quietly and humbly, luring us and beckoning us to open ourselves to its mysterious workings in our lives and in our world.
It seems to me that, if indeed we Christians believe that Jesus is God’s Shalom spoken to God’s world, we ought to take more seriously the nature of this peace as revealed in the angelic announcement and subsequently in Jesus’ ministry. For while He did not, to be sure, remain a helpless baby in a stable, He happily identified the nature of God’s reign with little children and taught His disciples that “the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves” (Luke 22:26).* God has offered to the world peace personified, but it is obvious that this peace comes not from military coercion or demonstrations of power but from a willingness to be radically vulnerable and open to others. Jesus, who “is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), exemplified such peace repeatedly in the Gospels—in His conversation with a Samaritan woman, in His table ministry to prostitutes and tax collectors, in His death on the cross.
Are we willing to follow Him in such radical steps of peace? Unfortunately, the story of the Christian presence in world history is riddled with countless trends and examples of hatred and suspicion against the “other.” (Compare that story to Jesus’ attitudes and actions toward the “other” of His setting, such as Samaritans and lepers.) The “other” has included, for example, women, minorities, heretics, and, probably most often, Jews. Historians tell us that without the longstanding tradition of Christian anti-Judaism that infected Western civilization, it is highly doubtful that the Nazi Holocaust could have occurred. This is a sobering judgment and gives a lie to the Christian claim that angels announced the birth of the Prince of Peace.
I believe that we are at a critical juncture in history. We who profess the name of Jesus are being offered another chance to embody God’s Shalom, to follow Jesus as radical peacemakers who, in Jesus’ words, “shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9, KJV). In order to truly be those who create Shalom, we are being called upon to rethink our longstanding attitudes of suspicion, fear, and hatred toward the “other.” This journal is, and may continue to be, an instrument of God’s peace whereby Christians reach out with humility, vulnerability, and love to Jews as exemplary of all those “others” to whom God offers Shalom.
In the book of Ephesians, we who are Gentiles are reminded that there was a time in our history when we were without the hope of a Messiah, strangers to God’s people Israel, cut off from the covenants, and alienated from God. But Jesus, God’s Shalom, “came and preached peace to you [us] who were far off and peace to those [the Jews] who were near” (Ephesians 2:17, RSV). Is it too late for divine peace to encompass us, to transform us, and to infiltrate history with hope? I think not. Let us commit ourselves anew to the hard, and often painful, labor of peacemaking in our lives, relationships, land and world. Shalom!
*All biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard version unless specifically indicated.
Michael Lodahl, Ph.D., Professor of Theology, Northwest Nazarene College, Nampa, Idaho
