Peace is Jesus’ way. It is his gift to everyone: “Peace be with you.” Those who want to learn from Jesus, receive the gift of peace and share it with others. One sign of our doing so is our willingness to be at peace, as Jesus was, with different people. Our differences with people might be slight, such as skin color, ability, or age. Or, they might be deeper. We could have a difference that presents a challenge to our identity or experience. This is the difference Thomas presents to Jesus in this Sunday’s Gospel. Thomas doesn’t believe Jesus is Resurrected. However, it’s precisely at that point of difference being accentuated that Jesus then shared his gift of peace with Thomas. Jesus then let Thomas touch his wounds. The wounds were inflicted by those who reject Jesus’ way of peace – the warmakers who killed him. Being in touch with Jesus, the wounded healer, means we share our gift of peacemaking. We share it with the doubting Thomas’ of the world. We share Jesus’ way of peace most especially with the warmakers of the world. They promote the most illusory yet strident and extreme difference. They promote difference to the point of enemy making justifying wholesale slaughter. Warmaking never has and never will kill off Jesus’ gift of peace to all people. Nor will it kill off our commitment to be peacemakers as well.
Warmaking is clearly a sign we are rejecting Jesus and his gift of peace. It is a sign we are clearly out of touch with Christ Jesus. If we are warmakers or supporters of warmakers, we are out of touch with the pain and suffering warmakers inflict on so many other Bodies of Christ today. Warmaking is diverting all people, certainly Christians living in the United States Empire. Warmaking is diverting us from the peacemaking mission we have from Jesus. We are being influenced to relate to others as if they are our enemy, especially in conflict – no matter how small – rather than relating to people as our brother or sister in Christ. We are being encouraged toward a desire to defeat people and withhold compassion from them, rather than being loving towards people as was true of Jesus. We are also being goaded into behaving violently with people instead of exhibiting the creative and healing practices of Jesus that make for peace.
Persons identifying themselves as Christians, especially nationalists in the public eye who promote warmaking, are among those people most responsible for diverting disciples from Jesus’ peacemaking mission. George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Pat Robertson, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and so many others, are proving they are not disciples of Jesus, in other words, they are not learning from him. They are not receiving Jesus’ gift of peace and sharing it; they are rejecting it. National media will continue to refer to these and other warmakers as Christians so long as we who are trying to learn from Jesus don’t give witness to peacemaking as the Way of Christ instead.
Prayer: Giver of all Difference, guide me to share your peace with someone who is different from me.
Question: What stories of peacemakers guide my life?
April 7, 2013 Gospel John 20:19-31 Second Sunday of Easter