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Anna Yoder
April 2009
What do you think of when I say the phrase “contemporary peacemaker?” Well, if you’re like me than you probably instantly think of people who are trained in conflict mediation, who make careers of peacemaking (like members Christian Peacemaker Teams). Although these things are true, I confess, whenever I think of what being a peacemaker means I often view it as something distant or not a part of everyday life. Although I declare and believe the peaceful teachings of Jesus, I often forget something very important: the restoring peace of Christ applies to more than just human conflict and violence. I forget that as the body of the Prince of Peace, the Church is the contemporary peacemaker. Not just one branch or function of it, but rather the whole entire being. In fact, the gospel of reconciliation reaches far beyond any type of box we try to place it in. It is a gospel that should be incorporated in all aspects of our lives as it teaches us about the theology of having enough. Thus how we think about the environment and our economic recourses should be utterly changed by the call to be peacemakers. As a result of thinking about peace in this all inclusive way, challenges the Church to be the Eucharist - the contemporary peacemaker- that is vital to the communities that it surrounds.
Today the globalized world we live is more complicated as ever before, full of depleting resources and unjust systems. Yet, we as Americans live in the wealthiest nation in the world, experiencing abundance the world has never seen before. We have what we need, and more, so it seems silly to care for the environment especially when it is providing us with so much. Nevertheless, our accumulation of wealth has created in us a sense of entitlement that often makes us blind to the suffering of those around us. We don’t see the one billion people in the world do not have access to clean water, nor do we realize that the average American uses four to six hundred liters of water each day. We do not understand that every seven seconds, somewhere in the world a child under age five dies of hunger when there is food in our refrigerators and even more in our trash as Americans throw away 14 percent of the food we purchase. But as minister of reconciliation, we can’t keep trying to see the world through blind eyes, believing how we are living is peaceful when it is causing the land and people to suffer and die. If I am truly dedicated to a peacemaking lifestyle, than my actions should not be the type that harm God’s creation or keep resources from those who need it the most. In fact, the Bible is full of guidelines that point us in the direction of environmental stewardship, such as sustaining and restoring the land and its people. If I am truly a peacemaker, than I need to be doing my best to follow these guidelines from lessening my carbon footprint to being aware of where my food comes from.
Even though this idea of “Going Green” has been around since the Old Testament, I still want to share one small story. Here at Bluffton University, we have finally jumped on the “no trays in the commons” bandwagon by starting tray-less Tuesdays. The logic is simple; If you don’t have a tray then you can’t carry as much, and if you can’t carry as much you consume less and throw less food away. However, this idea isn’t going over very well. After all, inconvenience makes us rather uncomfortable. But I am for a world with no trays, not only for the positive impact it has on saved water and food resources, but also because it have been teaching me about what it means to have enough. It keeps me in check from getting to greedy, when my eyes are too big for my stomach. It liberates me from the lie of environmental entitlement. Carrying one small plate of food reminds me that being a peacemaker is living simply because, as Calvin DeWitt writes in his essay “Creation’s Care and Keeping,”
All the things we use…derives from the creation itself. If we learn to seek godly contentment as our great gain, we will take and shape less of God’s earth. We will demand less from the land… We will thus allow creation to heal itself and to perpetuate its fruitfulness, to the praise of its Creator.
Thinking about this quote as we become aware of our environmental impact challenges us to make better choices, all of the sake of lessening injustices even if it’s only in small ways, like not using a tray. But, at least it’s a start.
Stemming from my awareness of God’s love for God’s creation is also the obligation I have as a peacemaker to use my economic resources to sustain, not hurt, others around me, even in my very consumer-oriented culture. I am not admitting that I know exactly how to reject the culture’s lust for material things, but I do know that blinding consuming and trying to fill my life up with “stuff,” not only makes my life really dull but also effects the lives of people working in unjust systems just so I can have a discounted price on something I do not even need. To me, being a peacemaker means shaking off the desire to pursue the typical American dream of a “good life” but rather striving to live a simpler life, one in which abundance is not connect to wealth, materialism or status. In Michael Schut’s essay, The Good Life and the Abundant Life, Schut writes of how an abundant lifestyle moves us away from the injustices of having too much, the constant struggle for status, and frees us to see our own values, the value of God’s children and God’s creation.
Once we shake off these desires and learn to live abundantly, we are freed to claim Jesus’ gospel of radical generosity. Yet our willingness to go against economic norms is quite a difficult challenge. As In her book, Free People: A Christian response to global economics, author Tricia Gates Brown describes how Christians who are committed to following Jesus in opposing injustices in our economic system must be made vulnerable to experiencing economic losses as we learn to value justice and generosity above profit and growth.
I don’t think that Brown means that radical generosity means you have to give up “this, this and this” in order to be a good Christian. Rather, radical generosity takes our attention off our love of money and status and refocuses it towards loving our neighbors. Radical generosity causes our priorities to change, and when our priorities change our actions will quickly follow. Radical generosity is important to the life of a peacemaker because it is a way to usher in God’s kingdom. It teaches us about love. It does not go along with injustice systems, but rather challenges them and demonstrates love for the hands who make “our stuff.”
Additionally, when we give up our economic desires we learn to have enough and are thus freed from a sort of “economic fear” of being destroyed financially, socially, etc. When we are freed of these bonds of being oppressors in our economic systems, we have more time to focus on the harder task of hand of redeeming who were oppressing. This element of peacemaking is vital because as Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw wrote in their book, Jesus for President, “You cannot follow Jesus socially (in relation to your enemy) if you are not following Jesus economically.”
Finally, thinking about peace as an embodiment of the church reminds us of something very important. We, as the church, are the Eucharist, the essence of Christ, the continuation of the incarnation on earth. In Rob Bell’s book Jesus wants to save Christians, Bell points out that in the Greek, Eucharist literally means “good gift.” Christ is the church’s good gift to those around us. The Eucharist reminds us that Jesus’ body and blood were broken and poured out for us. In the same way, if we are the Christ’s body on earth then we also need to be broken and poured out for others, not contently living in the Pax Americana. We need to be the good gift. The Eucharist helps the church realize the need to identify with the suffering of others in order to fully participate in Christ’s new humanity. When the church has enough of the kingdom lifestyle in it, then it will know how to more effectively provide the theology of enough to the communities it is a part of.
If the church truly is the Eucharist –the good gift– then it is important to care about peacemaking as it applies to areas like the environment and economics – because our ignorance and abuse of land and economic systems ultimately impacts the poor – the people we are here to be broken and poured out for. If I claim Christianity, but my actions are not the good gift of justice and peace to those people who are abused most by the empire I live in, than it is not the radical gospel of Jesus Christ. That is something the American Church today needs to actively deal with.
Overall, I know that it is easy to say all these things then it is to actually live out a lifestyle that says “enough.” But there is so much beauty in the peace of Christ that I cannot help but get excited about the type of abundant life that comes with it because, as Michael Schut writes, “The abundant life invites us to be fully participatory in, not isolated from, the community of all creation, ‘where loving relationships are supremely valued and the recourses of the world are shared equitable and justly’.”
We as a church need to remember our active calling to peacemaking, not only in the area of human conflict transformation but also in how we treat our environmental and economic resources. I admit that thinking about standing up to these injustices is overwhelming and seemingly impossible, but the more we seek to be the good gift, to follow Jesus in all ways, the better we know how to respond to these challenges. And our responses can be beautiful, despite our brokenness and lack of imagination. Despite these things, the restoring peace of Christ can do more than we ever hoped or imaged when we incorporate it into our daily lives.
So, as we conclude, let us together, as Christ’s body, learn to say “enough is enough” as we go, being the “good gift” to the communities and world that we live in.
1. Bell, Rob. Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A manifesto for the church in exile (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008). 122-3
