2023 11 05 Sermon
Blessed are the Peacemakers
All Saints Sunday
Matthew 5:1-12
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Think of a saint. Do you have one in mind. Turn to your neighbor and tell them the name of the saint you thought of. Maybe you thought of someone we know about from the Bible. Or maybe a person from the 2,000 years of Church history. Or perhaps a dear departed family member of friend. These are the saints in heaven. We love them; we honor them; we learn from them.
Did anyone name a faithful person that you currently know personally? Someone who is alive and well? This person may also be a saint. When the New Testament describes saints, it is always plural—no one can be a saint all by themselves. And it is always someone very much alive. For example, St. Paul often writes in his letters, “Greet the saints in such and such a place.”
It is God who makes saints. Are you a saint? You might be thinking “No way! I know my sins and shortcomings. I could never live up to the heroes of our faith.” And you’re probably right. But you are a saint nonetheless because God has claimed you as his own beloved child in the waters of Baptism. The Holy Spirit has given you the gift of faith. You follow Jesus. You are a saint. This doesn’t mean you are perfect, but with God’s grace and help you can grow in your “sainthood”.
Of course, we usually think of saints who seem almost otherworldly in their goodness. Without a doubt, the saints we look up to were good. They were also sinners, forgiven by Christ. Above all they were human. You might even say they were at the forefront of becoming more truly human. When you look at the creation stories in Genesis, God did not create people to be bad or sinful. God created us good. It didn’t take long, though, for us to rebel against God and fall into sinfulness. But it goes to show that goodness is God’s original intention. And Jesus is the most fully human person who has ever lived, because he was totally connected to the goodness of God. Through faith, Jesus can carry us closer to God’s goodness.
Even today, with so suffering going on in the world, we see evidence of how Jesus works in the saints of God to give us a glimpse into heaven. I was struck by an article I read from Reuters, the international news agency [https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/jerusalem-catholic-patriarch-offers-be-exchanged-gaza-hostages-2023-10-16/] . They reported on Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who is the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem and spiritual leader of 300,000 Roman Catholics in Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Two week ago he said he was “willing to exchange himself for Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas and held in Gaza.” “I am ready for an exchange,” he said, “anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home. No problem. There is total willingness on my part… to try to win the release of the hostages, otherwise there will be no way of stopping (an escalation)” in violence.
As I read today’s gospel and reflected on Jesus’ teaching and promises in the Beatitudes from his Sermon on the Mount, I thought, Cardinal Pizzaballa is a saint who is a peacemaker. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” You might ask, how is he a peacemaker? It didn’t work. Hamas did not accept or even respond to his offer. The war has escalated. And that’s all true. Yet what he did accomplish was to demonstrate compassion and solidarity with both Israelis and Palestinians. He’s basically saying through his gesture: I see the suffering of Palestinians. I see the suffering of Israelis. I see in all of your hearts and bodies the fear of oppression and displacement, and how your sense of safety is being shattered. And I love you. Both of you. All of you. I want you to live and have a home where you can thrive and live in peace as God desires for all his children. … This was a gesture of peacemaking.
By the Cardinal’s example we see both the simplicity and the difficulty of Jesus’ words of blessing from the Sermon on the Mount. And he reminds us that a different kind of future can one day be possible for both Israelis and Palestinians. It may be a long way off on a distant horizon, but it is never too soon to seek a pathway for a just and lasting peace, or even to take small, baby steps towards the new kind of future God desires.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus shows compassion by affirming the full humanity of those who suffer, people who may feel that they are looked upon as “less than fully human”. Jesus names them the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Jesus is standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with those who take risks to make the world better for all God’s children. He names them the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
What about us? The gesture made by Cardinal Pizzaballa is something we can’t do. But remember that sainthood is about the process of becoming more truly human in the way of Jesus by showing compassion; showing solidarity with the suffering. And that we can do in our own ways. I found some helpful suggestions for this in a recent letter on “Loving Our Neighbors in a Time of War” from the Wisconsin Council of Churches [https://www.wichurches.org/2023/10/lovingourneighborsinatimeofwar/ ]. They start off by saying “we have not previously written because we have been without words for the magnitude of suffering. What shall we cry, when nations weep over their young ones slain while dancing? What shall we cry when parents divide their children among family members for survival sake, and elders wait for release? When the word genocide is spoken once again? When peace is broken and new parties are drawn in daily? … There are never enough ways to say, ‘We love you. We respect you. We want you alive.’ … ‘I see you,’ we say. And ‘I’m sorry.’ And it is never enough … [but] the greater truth is this: we sit together in grief. … We want all of God’s children to live.”
And then, being Christians, “we know some things about loving our neighbors,” the letter reminds us, and that our love of God and our neighbor means that we can work with “all people for the common good…”. The letter invites fellow Christians to consider three things. 1) is the do things that “reduce the risk of violence” because “Antisemitism and Islamophobia are real and terribly dangerous realities in the lives of our friends and neighbors.” We’ve seen it in the news and in communities around the country, incidents of violence and harassment against Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and others. We need to condemn intolerance against religious differences, and uphold religious freedom for all people.
2) is to “focus, as much as you can, on the relationships before you.” It’s easy to get caught up in the news and social media. What we are called to ask of ourselves is “How do we love our neighbors well? How do we care for those closest to us?...” You may have friends, neighbors, coworkers, or classmates who are Jewish or Palestinian. Be aware that they may be afraid for their friends or relatives living in the Middle East, and they may have generational trauma or old wounds being reopened.
And 3) is to “double down in love” because “when we are fearful, we often shut down” and it’s more easy to be drawn into conflict. As the letter of 1 John 4:18 teaches, the opposite of love is not hate but fear—however “perfect love casts out fear”. And with that in mind, we can turn again to the words of Jesus: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Meekness does not mean weakness. Meekness means using whatever power you may have in order to benefit someone else. In the Old Testament, Moses was referred to as "the meekest man who ever lived" because he used his power to help the suffering and oppressed. Each of us has power to hurt or heal; to spread fear or love; we have power to be curious or to jump to conclusions. As the water of life once flowed over you in Baptism, and as God’s Spirit of Life now flows through you through faith, you can use the power God has given to you to join Jesus in having compassion for those who suffer. After all, this is the power that Jesus used to benefit us for our salvation, when he went to the cross and was raised again. Amen.