Introduction: Blessed are the Peacemakers
Derek Poole

Comment
Mark Houston

From the Director
David Porter

Peacemaking
Arthur Chapman

Gentleness: An attribute of Peace
Graham Cheesman

A Long Road to Healing
David Porter

All Taigs are Targets
Neil Smart

God's Holy Warrior
Alwyn Thomson

Book Reviews
Alwyn Thomson David Porter

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THE HOLY WARRIOR
It seemed simple enough — God had made a promise and now that promise was fulfilled in the birth of a baby. The angels announced the good news and the world was filled with the mystery of the Word made flesh.

Yet even as the brightness of his glory began to shine, a shadow was already appearing. 'This child,' said Simeon to Mary, 'is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.' (Luke 2:34-35)

The shadow gave way to a darkness that seemed to eclipse the promise of peace. In the heart of Herod, a puppet King doggedly protecting his position, a terrible violence was born. Peace? Not for Herod's soldiers, obediently butchering the innocent. Not for the mothers of Jerusalem, mourning the slaughter of their little ones.

The Prince of Peace had brought a sword. The light of his life provoked the darkness. The healer wounded. The violent reaction that accompanied the birth of Jesus was to accompany him throughout his whole ministry. In his wake, there was conflict and division. His works provoked fear and prejudice and his words awakened hate and violence.

Why did the Prince of Peace stir such hostility and conflict?

The Mighty Brought Low

Once a great kingdom in its own right, Israel by the time of Jesus was reduced to the status of a minor province of a much greater Empire. The throne of David was empty and the people were ruled by Roman lackeys and second rate bureaucrats. Those who had inherited the mantle of the priests, prophets and teachers of wisdom were bound by their traditions, a pale reflection of the heroes of the past.

The land that once flowed with milk and honey was barely able to sustain the ordinary people who clung on to economic survival.

The promise of Shalom had become a vague memory. Peace? justice? Well-being? Wholeness? There was precious little to be found in Israel. Yet God had promised and the people were waiting.

The Battle Belongs to the Lord

Like all afflicted people Israel longed and hoped for peace, peace with justice. But they had a clear idea of how it would come about. If the cause of their distress was their enemies, then deliverance would only come with the defeat of those who oppressed them. Only through the triumph of God's anointed over Roman occupation would the land be free and God's true peace be established. It was hardly a novel idea. There was plenty in Israel's history and the Scriptures to convince them that this was how God would work. God was, after all, Israel's Holy Warrior.

Every year as the people celebrated Passover they heard again the Song of Moses, sung as the armies of Egypt perished in the waters of the Red Sea:

The LORD is a warrior;
The LORD is his name. (Exodus 15:3)

God, the warrior, who brought the people out of captivity also brought them into a new land. When others stood in their way, God gave Israel military victory. The great fortified city of Jericho fell before Joshua ( Joshua 5-6 ). Yet this was no ordinary clash. God initiated the battle. God, through the ark of the covenant, led the people as they marched around the walls. God determined the strategy and claimed the spoils of war for himself. This became the classic pattern of Holy War. God fought on behalf of his people against their enemies.

A Mighty Hand And Outstretched Arm

God established Israel in a land flowing with milk and honey. But what did they make of it? Was Israel a place of peace, justice and well-being? Far from it. In the books of Kings and Chronicles, we hear God's repeated judgement on the leaders of Israel: 'He did evil in the eyes of the Lord.' Far from being a place of peace, Israel was a land of idolatry and rebellion. Far from being a place of justice, Israel was a land of oppression and exploitation:

They trample on the heads of the poor
as upon the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed. (Amos 2:7)

Faced with a nation that had failed to seek peace and pursue it the prophets began to tell the story of God the mighty warrior in a different way. God's promise of protection, given to Israel in the covenant, was conditional on the people's obedience:

If you fully obey the Lord your God ... the Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven... However, if you do not obey the Lord your God ... the Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them in one direction but flee from them in seven. (Deuteronomy 28:1,7,15,25). The prophets understood the implications when the people did not. The mighty hand, the outstretched arm and the outpoured wrath, once turned against Israel's enemies was now turned against Israel — the enemy of God (see Deuteronomy 5:15; Ezekiel 20:33-34 ). The Holy Warrior was now fighting against his people, not for them.

God will Come

God's ultimate judgement was to take his people out of the land and send then into exile. During the time of the exile God did not intervene as he had in the past. In the books of Daniel and Zechariah God again makes himself known as a warrior but in new ways. No longer did God fight Israel's battles against human enemies. Instead, God gave the people a vision of a time when he would intervene in a decisive way. The Lord would be king over the earth and Jerusalem will be secure ( Zechariah 14:9-11 ).

God had protected his people in the past. Their exile was the result of God's judgement on their disobedience. But they could look forward with hope — even though the present was a time of fear and insecurity, God would come. Peace add justice would reign.

Binding the Strong Man

So Jesus came claiming to be the fulfilment of God's promises ( Mark 1:15 ). Would this man throw out the Romans, depose the Herods, restore the throne of David, unite Israel and bring peace to the land? The people thought it unlikely. Yet in ways they could not discern, Jesus the Prince of Peace was still the Holy Warrior. The trouble was that they had identified the wrong enemy. Jesus was not among them to overthrow Rome, but to overcome the strong man - Satan - who resisted the coming of God's kingdom ( Luke 11:21-23 ). Jesus had come to fight against and destroy the forces of evil that kept humanity oppressed and suffering ( Mark 1:23-28 ).

This was not what an oppressed and angry people wanted. Their world was shaped by power, violence, exclusion and fear. They wanted something immediate and revolutionary. The peace and justice they sought did not require the destruction of these forces, simply their rearrangement on terms more favourable to Israel. Their understanding of God's vision of peace was shallow. They believed they could establish it through the mechanisms of violence.

Jesus' vision of peace, his proclamation of a new way, subverted and challenged both Rome and Israel. If the peace of Rome was a far cry from the peace of God, so was the kind of peace dreamed of in the hills of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem. In the end, no one knew how to deal with this unlikely peacemaker. If the people of Israel were disappointed, the rulers of Israel were nervous. Jesus, far from bringing peace, threatened their carefully constructed peace. Together, people and rulers conspired to rid Israel of this troublesome preacher.

Day of Wrath, Day of Triumph

As Jesus went to the cross he endured the wrath of humanity and the wrath of God. But humanity's victim was God's peacemaker. He was also God's warrior defeating the powers of evil through his triumph on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. And as the beginning of the gospel was marked by the proclamation of peace, so too the end of the gospel:

While they were still talking ... Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' (Luke 24:36)

Principalities And Powers

It was left to Paul to work out all the implications of Jesus' death and resurrection. In his death, says Paul, Jesus has defeated humanity's enemies — not the Greeks and the Romans, but the principalities and powers ( Colossians 2:15; Ephesians 1:21; 1 Corinthians 5:24 ). Other enemies of humanity were overcome too. What Jurgen Beker has called the 'apocalyptic power alliance' — sin, flesh, law and death — was defeated.

Yet Jesus triumph did not bring his followers rest. As seen in Ephesians 6:12-17 and other passages Paul makes clear that for Christians there is still a fight to be fought. However, once again the stress is on a different kind of enemy — the cosmic forces opposed to God which are the source of violence and conflict among humans. The church's battle is not against flesh and blood, and in this spiritual battle we are disarmed of our human weapons and equipped with the weapons of God.

The promise of Christ's ultimate victory could have led to triumphalism or militancy. Paul countered this by constantly reminding his hearers that 'the sign of triumph was an instrument of weakness and shame: the Cross — the paradoxical hallmark of Paul's theology'. (Longman & Reid)

Violence, Peace, Justice and Politics

Why all this talk of war in an article on peace? Because — even as Christians — our understanding of peace and justice are too narrowly political. Even as Christians, we aspire to achieve peace through as much violence as is unavoidably "necessary".

We point to the biblical witness of a God who fights for his people against injustice and evil. Yet, in the process, we lose sight of the true nature of God the warrior. We linger with the vision of Joshua at Jericho and forget Jesus. A God who executes justice on the flesh and blood enemies of his people appeals to us much more than a God who suffers at the hands of those enemies and conquers through death and suffering.

It is easy to see peace and justice in purely political terms. We ask what hinders peace — and answer according to our political convictions. We see the injustice against ourselves and our own. We aim to overcome those who deny us justice. However, that will not achieve disinterested justice for all.

Peace was political for Jesus' contemporaries. Jesus did not see peace in political terms. No doubt in pursuit of peace and justice, they put him to death. For us too, our methods of pursuing peace can betray our claims to follow the Prince of Peace.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

In a world full of violence, how do we make peace? In a world where the pursuit of peace is so often used to justify violence, how should we live?

It is clear that talking will achieve little by itself. Otherwise peace people on peace trains and peace marches, making peace pledges in peace talks and peace processes would have brought us to paradise. Christians must first be peaceable people in the Christian community — the Church. It is pointless, not to say embarrassing, when Christians talk of a new way of living, but show so little evidence of it in the life of the church. That is of course proof that the gods of this world — violence, bitterness, conflict and suspicion — have a more powerful grip on us than we suppose. Only in living out forgiveness and reconciliation in the Christian community can we begin to be peacemakers. However, an embrace of these virtues will show up problems of division and conflict deeper than we expected.

The second requirement is that Christians should abandon self-serving concepts of peace and justice. A great many freedom movements have worked for the redistribution of power — from the haves to the have-nots. Many freedom fighters have used violence as a means to wider justice. Christians should see such struggles for what they are in the light of God's justice.

Biblical faith involves Christians in a deeper exercise of discernment. All human visions of peace and justice are cast in political terms. Not all are equally corrupt. The church is called to critical reflection, but there is a place for active Christian involvement in shaping social values and practices.

The church can fall into the trap of playing the game by somebody else's rules. The other more common pitfall is that the church becomes a defender of the social structure it has helped to create. Where these things happen, the church no longer gives clear witness to Jesus the peacemaker.

Jesus involved himself intimately with his society and its search for peace and justice — but his was an uncomfortable presence. He confronted everyone and comforted none. His vision challenged the status quo — and allowed no other to take its place. That should be the role of the church.

Finally, Christians must wait. This is the truth of the prophetic vision. True peace and perfect justice are the eschatological gift of God. The greatest contribution the church can make to bringing about peace and justice is to join with John in praying:

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20)

Alwyn Thomson is Research Officer with ECONI and is currently involved in the 'God, Land & Nation' project. He is author of a number of ECONI publications, including his most recent book, 'Politics of Holiness'.