Praying for Peace (MIdweek Message)

Michael Pendry’s installation at San Francisco's Grace Episcopal Cathedral of The Doves (2,000 origami birds) Jan. 2019.

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

January 8, 2020

Praying for Peace

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall

be called the children of God.”  (Matt 5:9)

“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” Psalm 122:6

“Come now and look upon the works of the Lord,

What awesome things he has done on earth. 

It is he who makes war to cease in all the world;

He breaks the bow and shatters the spear,

And burns the shields with fire.” Psalm 46:9-10

We say we are a peace-loving people, a people with only good intentions for all, a people wanting only life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people: freedom and family, God and country.  Some of us say we are a Christian nation. 

But the fact is, we are a brutal people, a war-like people.  We spend more money on military armaments than the next seven countries combined.  We regularly wage war as an instrument of foreign policy, and are as often as not the first side to “go kinetic.”  In an earlier age, that would have marked us as the aggressor, the initiator of war.   We don’t use our constitutionally mandated method of declaring war, but rely instead on legislatively granted blanket authorizations for the executive to use armed force.  Domestically, we insist on a person’s right to use guns.  And though we say this is for self-protection, the number killed each year dwarfs any reasonable estimate of those killed in self-defense. 

I have heard friends of mine—otherwise good and gentle people—argue that the use of torture against terrorists is justifiable and effective, though the people most experienced in interrogation and intelligence gathering say it is neither effective in gaining useful information nor defensible:  it only increases the hatred against us, and puts our own soldiers and citizens at risk of such abuse by our enemies.  Besides that, they say, it is just plain wrong and immoral, deforming us and the human tools we use to accomplish it and twisting us into brutes and monsters.  We become moral dwarves finding ourselves constantly in ethical hot messes. 

I have heard others defend the U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945, though J. Rueben Clark, a constitutional lawyer and high-ranking U.S. diplomat of the mid-20th century, said at the end of World War II that the bombs undid three centuries of development of just war theory and the law of war, and was the “crowning savagery” of a war that saw far too many inhumane and savage deeds on all sides. 

“But how are we to defend ourselves?” ask those who are tempted by the idol of All-in-a-good-cause-Violence. 

Jesus said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”  He also said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called God’s children.”   He said these things amid real human struggle and horror, in the world of Roman Imperial oppression, a context rife with many reasons for devastating violence and self-defense, not in an idyllic stress-free world. 

Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America says that our culture embraces the idea that there is no problem so severe that it wouldn’t improve if we could just shoot someone.  Walter Wink called this the false “myth of redemptive violence.”   To this, Jesus says, “pray for your enemies,” and “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him your left.” 

Nations and communities, of course, need to be able to defend themselves, as do individuals and families.  But to turn this necessary evil into a cult of power, honor, and machismo is where it becomes idolatrous.  As Ghandi said, “If everyone lives by the rule ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, the whole world ends up blind and toothless.” 

Building peace is a complicated, demanding, life-long task, since it demands listening to our enemies and striving to build justice and fairness for all.  But in another way, it is simple: let go of grudges, anger, and a desire for revenge.  Live mindfully in the present, watching carefully what we do, say, feel, and think. 

Pray for peace.

--Fr. Tony+
  

Marc Chagall's Peace Window, United Nations Building, NYC