Toward an obedient peace practice

Let’s be honest. Many of us pay lip service at best to the idea of the Anabaptist peace position. While our theologians and historians dutifully define it in print or other presentations, many pastors rarely refer to it except in sermons near November’s Remembrance Day. Many of us never research the theme, nor discuss it at length with fellow believers. It’s an uncomfortable topic, one that heats up or makes awkward otherwise lovely Christian conversations.

But, there is simply no way to have credibility as a Bible believer without recognizing how amply Jesus proved that anyone who names God “Abba” will live as a peace child. Jesus demonstrated that purposeful surrender of everything in the interests of God’s peace is the only workable weapon against sin and evil. In life and in death He made known the method that makes God’s rule real on earth.

It’s impossible, biblically, to see the rule of God as anything other than that which provides and proves peace – not secular wellness but a holy wholeness – to the human community. The Old Testament champions the banner of shalom over any trumpet call to war. In the New Testament, Christ’s life is a drama of non-retributive forgiveness, His victory won through resurrection power. God’s purposes have always been to redeem, restore and regenerate. God knows that soul peace exists for individuals, and that full-health kingdom life can be enjoyed in our families, communities, ethnic groups and, ultimately, nations.

My refugee Afghan friend Mohammed rejected his inherited faith when he saw first-hand what evils people do while naming and claiming God as their master. The tortures he endured, and executions he witnessed, took away his confidence in religion as such, but he was willing to affirm there must be a God who cares about how badly we humans serve Him.

One day he came to my church; it was baptism Sunday. Afterwards, in awe, and with tears in his eyes, he said, “I see that it is possible to be washed, not in blood, but in peace.”

Yes, the biblical message of God’s revelation, holding true from Genesis to the last book about last things, is that God’s rule is marked by His desire to reconcile all things to Himself. It is this desire that led Jesus to embrace even the cross.

Our Confession of Faith states this very thing, then adds: “Believers seek to be agents of reconciliation in all relationships, to practice love of enemies as taught by Christ, to be peacemakers in all situations. We view violence in its many different forms as contradictory to the new nature of the Christian.” In other words, sure evidence of Christ’s new life in me is that I am an active witness to peace.

War on God’s terms

“There is a war going on in the universe,” wrote John E. Toews in The Power of the Lamb, required reading at one time for all Mennonite Brethren pastors. “But it is the war of the lamb. The war must be fought on his terms. . . . And the goal of the war we fight is not to kill men and women, nor even to protect our lives and property. Rather, it is to take every thought captive to obey Jesus Christ as Lord.”

The year was 1972. I was a Bible school student on a summer mission trip in Europe. At a camp-style worship service in Germany I sat beside a soldier on leave from active duty in Vietnam. Deeply moved by the elation on his face while singing praises, I was horrified later while he described how he enjoyed eliminating enemies with a helicopter machine-gun.

He spoke about the “rush” of watching bullets strafe earth in puffs behind fleeing men until he “took ‘em down.” Sick to my stomach, I walked away and never spoke to him again. I confess that for a while I think I wished this brother dead. Violence is close to the heart.

Our world is torn and broken. It everywhere proves over and over again why the soul-saving, life-renewing grace and goodness of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, needs to be proclaimed and demonstrated. We’d do well to cease our denying of, or smug philosophizing about, the necessity of a peace theology. Instead, we need to make peace-obedience more and more meaningful in our lives.

But how do we do that?

We’ll need to be both intentional and reckless.

Peace power through prayer

We should be intentional in our exercise of the theme, or spirit, of Christ’s peace. Exercise is the perfect word here. Muscle-making through sometimes painful and repetitive means gets us into better physical shape. Similarly, one develops “peace power” through concentrated periods of contemplation on Christ’s presence as the sole peace-making influence in our own lives and through us in the world.

I’m speaking about prayer and meditation on the Word. There are excellent resources available to us to teach and lead us into those forms of prayer that quiet anxieties and transform feverish activity-oriented church, career and civic lives into journeys where we sense the heartbeat of Jesus for this planet and see our world through His eyes. The wonder of this kind of exercise is that it’s not that painful, when consistent.

But, people say, you have to take a workshop, walk some talk, do ministry, serve the flock. Isn’t contemplative prayer a self-serving retreat from important other things? Let’s think about that awhile. Let’s take a meditative walk through our global village; call it a “What Would Jesus Do?” workshop. As we reflect, both on the world we inhabit and our Prince of Peace, we will grow in our peacemaking capacity; we will gain wisdom for what we should do.

Intentionality – especially when it grows out of biblical, prayerful reflection – is essential.

Risking open hearts

Then there’s the need to be a little more reckless.

In a book delightfully entitled Lion and Lamb: The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus, the evangelistic Catholic writer Brennan Manning asks: “Are you dying daily to self?” Then he defines Christ’s famous peace-obedience call, saying, “to die to self is to live to others and to God. . . . You come to your brothers and sisters accepting your own brokenness. Not fearless and tearless, not unscarred and unshaken. Quite the contrary: you are a wounded healer, dreadfully vulnerable.”

Without doubt, we’ll bear an effective peace witness globally through raising money for MCC so our stamp, “In the Name of Christ,” can be made visible. But buying deep-fried fritters or quilts, or slapping backs of relief workers as they leave town for the Deep South or elsewhere, will be much more meaningful if our own lives of fellowship at home are sustained and deepened through genuine sharing with one another of our own broken and needy selves. As we risk exposing our hearts to others, we also open ourselves to inner peace.

Am I part of an honest small group where life’s hurts and hopes get regular attention and support? If not, I need to take the risk. The best peacemakers are motivated by a confidence they have learned through interactions – interactions that prove an open heart toward others and self is a strong weapon that can “force” miraculous breakthroughs and bring peace to hard hearts.

Forgiveness frees

Brennan Manning speaks further of God’s bold love in sending Jesus, and how the glorious stepping forward to new life on Easter morning is “an empowering to a life of reckless confidence regarding our past, our present, and our future. It is confidence and nothing but confidence, immense, unshakable, reckless, raging confidence that leads to love, to life, to freedom, to Jesus.”

Yes, Jesus-followers must learn that true obedience always faces us with questions about freedom. For others. For self. It’s with the business of “the freedom of forgiveness” that our peace-obedience requires real and reckless risks.

From what do I need to be released so that life and love can grow and flow? What secret sin holds me from peace within? Is there someone I have yet to forgive, someone who might find soul-calm if I loosed them from an obligation of guilt or shame?

A member exited my church in a huff after I mustered enough pastoral courage one week to suggest our congregation might be more blessed if he would commit himself to his and his family’s spiritual journey, rather than commandeering a campaign to muster participation in his pet projects.

Months later, near November 11, I phoned and asked to visit. I told him I was pleased he’d found a fine church to attend and support, and I apologized for any disrespect he may have felt in my comments earlier that year. He told me I was a stubborn young man, and unspiritual. I countered that I remained disappointed in his perspective on things. With a solid but sad handshake, we parted ways.

I was chaplain of the local hospital a few years later when he was brought in after a stroke. He welcomed my visits and prayers. Before I could leave, he would always instruct me to do something for him: get a nurse, a paper, a fresh glass of water. I didn’t mind. Once I told him, “We’re a couple of men who like each other even if our ideas don’t.” He smiled.

On our last visit before his transfer to a long-term care environment, he asked me to put slippers onto his cold feet. As I kneeled before his wheelchair, he placed his good hand on my head and prayed with tender words for my family. It was our last connection; at the funeral I realized we’d come to the finest farewell.

Too often we inhabit our own guilt, or our grudge about the guilt of others, as if life is safer in that space or we may save power there. But that makes a pathetic heart-home; peace finds no lasting room in it. Do we dare believe that God might boldly lavish graceful peace upon our scarred or scared faces if we opened a certain door?

What could happen?

What could happen in my local-to-global existence if I devoted myself to the practice of peace obedience? Would I:

• Pray daily not to avoid problems or confrontations but to meet antagonists in ways whereby I learn to love with more creativity and power?
• Study the habit of that infuriating relative or colleague to determine whether it’s a mirror in which to see some flaw in my own character, or a matter for sincere prayer-work on their behalf?
• Ask my pastor if our church could hold a special service where we’re invited to the communion table to place written confessions about persons, problems, even “positions” into an old pail painted with a sign like “Grudges & Such,” so someone could ignite it, and we could re-engage some relationships with fresh candour and courage? (Should we prepare this table for our upcoming convention?)
• Take the time to find and read literature that makes the biblical peace position come alive for me?

Do I dare believe that God might indeed boldly lavish His peace wherever I go, because of me?

Doug Schulz, recently pastor of Vineland (Ont.) MB Church, is currently teaching at Hamilton District Christian High School in Ancaster, Ont.