In the Wake of Violence - Pt. 1

Living as Disciples of Jesus During Political Upheaval

Jul 24, 2024

I was reading a new commentary on the New Testament last Saturday afternoon. I am trying to get through it quickly because I want to write a review on it while it’s still relevant. I jumped on Twitter because I am a feed fiend, and I can’t help myself, and tweet after tweet was talking about one thing. An assassination attempt had just been made on Donald Trump while giving a speech in Butler, Pennsylvania. It had only been about half an hour or so since the incident when I started seeing the reactions. It only took one or two swipes for me to find a report from the AP and videos showing Trump speaking about an influx of immigrants over the southern border, a conspicuous pop, followed by Trump grabbing his ear then dropping to the ground. There were more pops while people were screaming. As I was first watching, it was difficult for me to tell if he dropped because he was taking cover or because he was hit. His security detail began picking him up and he said, “Let me get my shoes.” As he was being escorted away, he struggled to prop himself up over his Secret Service to pump his fist in the air, mouthing the words, “Fight! Fight!” Finally, as he was about to get into his armored vehicle, he turned around again to put his fist in the air as shouts of praise and “USA! USA!” rang from the crowd.

A few thoughts instantly ran through my mind as I watched the video again, then again. The first was, “Did that actually just happen?” But I couldn’t deny the blood on his ear and face. Then, “Was this staged?” Which came more from my inability to believe this could happen than a proneness to conspiracy theories. Perhaps to my own shame, I then thought, “Oh he’s freaking going to win this election.” I scrolled and refreshed, scrolled and refreeshed, reading Tweet after Tweet. Everything from awe and inspiration to fear and loathing was being expressed by people. As I watched the timeline grow, I kept asking myself a question:

How do we live as Christians tomorrow?

In my mind, that “tomorrow” was literally the next Sunday, but it stretched out symbolically to the election season and the years following. In a country going mad with political and ideological polarization, how can followers of Jesus be peacemakers as our Lord has called us to be (Matt. 5:9)?

To anyone who knows me even remotely well, it’s no secret I’m not a fan of Donald Trump. I won’t go into the reasons here because the goal of this post is not to critique him, his policies, or his actions. My goal here is to ask the above question, to look at Scripture for guidance, to looks at Jesus as our example, and to exhort myself as well as my readers ask the same.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is Jesus’ covenant vision for those who would be his disciples. It is a kind of covenant agreement that Jesus invites us into when we believe in him and join his community through faith and baptism. The Sermon exemplifies Jesus’ ideal for how a community under his guidance would live and flourish, so while it contains many exhortations and commands, it also acts a bit like a prophecy, proclaiming what a community of Jesus’ disciples will—or at least can—look like. He opens the Sermon with a list of people whom he calls “blessed.” Blessed are the poor, the mourning, the meek, those in need of justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted either for seeking justice or for his name (Matt. 5:3-11).

I’ve written about this elsewhere, but what Jesus is doing is identifying the kind of people whom God places at the center of his kingdom. While the kingdoms of the world place the wealthy, proud, strong, and violent at their center, the Father of Jesus does the opposite. Among those people Jesus calls blessed, those upon whom God puts his special favor, are those who work for harmony.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
(Matt. 5:9)

As I pondered that question—How do we live as Christians tomorrow?—I was drawn to those words of Jesus. Blessed are the peacemakers. Which leads to another question: What does it mean to be a peacemaker? On an very practical and immediate level, being a peacemaker means quite simply not fighting when physical altercations could be had, but there’s more. If you’ll forgive me, I’m going to a little exegetical work to talk about the peacemaker.

The Greek of this passage reads, “μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί (makarioi hoi eirenopoioi),” which, when translated literally means, you guessed it, “blessed are the peacemakers.” On the first read there’s nothing that interesting or surprising about this, but I am interested in this term, peacemaker. Just as in English, it is a compound word made of “peace” and “maker.” I want to emphasize the “maker” part of this word. In the Septuagint,1 this word shares the same root as the verbal form used in Genesis 1:1—In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. I point this out not because I think there is some deep, esoteric meaning hidden in here, but to show that a peacemaker is someone who is actively making peace. Pick up almost any commentary and you’ll find that each has someway of saying that the blessed peacemakers are not simply people who are peaceful or peaceable, but those who are purposeful and active in making peace. David Turner says, “This beatitude is not about being a passively peaceful person but about an active reconciler of people.”2

The people whom Jesus says are blessed, who are put in the center of God’s kingdom, are those who make peace, who create it, they are those who, instead of fostering or exploiting the quarrels and enmities among us, work for reconciliation. It’s these people who “will be called children of God (GK huioi theou),” in identification with Jesus, the Son of God (GK huios theou).

Making Peace

Something about the image of making peace stands out to me. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and earth, he brought forth something that didn’t exist. I think making peace can be that way, or at least it can feel that way. I don’t want to make this into a black and white situation where I claim there is no peace between Republicans and Democrats or conservatives and liberals, but it seems we are more polarized than ever, or at least more than we’ve been in a long time, and social media isn’t helping that situation. I think we often forget the people we’re addressing online are human beings with blood pumping through their bodies, with faces, with emotions, and with reasons for thinking the way they do about political issues. Even if we’re not in an all out civil war, it can feel like there is no peace.

Without trying to call the doctrine of creation out of nothing3 into question, in Hebrews 11:3, God brought the things that can be seen forth from that which is invisible. In other words, God took the “stuff” of the invisible and formed it into the visible world by his word. In this time of political and cultural turmoil, God is calling his people to have faith in something invisible, namely a time of peace, and to actively work at creating it from the world where peace is invisible.

Again, how exactly does one go about making peace?

The thing about the Beatitudes is that they’re not commands. Jesus isn’t commanding us, generally, to be poor or in need of justice or persecuted or peacemakers, at least not straightforwardly. What he is calling us to do is live the Sermon on the Mount, or to put it another way, to live as disciples of Jesus who are formed by his own life and teaching. The kind of people who do that may very well end up as the kind of people described in the Beatitudes for a number of reasons. Jesus isn’t calling Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives to live the Sermon on the Mount, he is calling his disciples, he is calling Christians to willingly embrace the life described therein. I know this is a strong statement, but I don’t think a person who is not willing to follow the teachings of Jesus can call themselves his disciple or a Christian.

When Jesus’ disciples refrain from insulting others and speaking in hatred when angry, but instead seek reconciliation, they are acting as a peacemaker. When a Christian prays for and blesses their enemy in tangible ways instead of cursing them, they are acting as a peacemaker. Later, when Jesus calls us not to judge others, this is an act of peace making. All these together open up for us what exactly it means to be a peacemaker. If we look at the positive side of Jesus’ teaching, it helps us begin to imagine what living in peace with the political other might look like. When I think of those who vote differently than I do, who support different policies than I do, can I imagine myself blessing them? This isn’t necessarily a blessing on their votes or policies, but on them as people.

In his statement on judging, Jesus says, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt. 7:1-2). When I think of those with whom I disagree the most politically, it is difficult for me not to judge them. If I’m honest, I have judged their intellect, their sincerity, even their Christianity. I’m not quite sure what the mechanics of this are, but I have other questions. Is my salvation in question if I’m judging my political opponents too harshly? Is it one-one-for one, i.e. I wouldn’t wish hell on any of my political opponents, so does that mean Jesus won’t send me to hell? How does faith matter in all this? I don’t know exactly what Jesus means, but to approach this mechanistically is to miss the point.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer includes a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount in his book Discipleship4 because it is crucial to his understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. By the time he gets to his commentary on Matthew 7, the last part of the Sermon, he has talked about how Jesus has called us out of our old communities and placed us into communion with other disciples. This might naturally lead to a sense of superiority, but this ought not be the case. He says, “Thus Jesus must make clear that such misunderstandings seriously endanger discipleship.” They should not judge because disciples “live completely out of the bond connecting them with Jesus Christ. Their righteousness depends only on that bond and never apart from it. Therefore, it can never become the standard which the disciples would own and might use in any way they please.”5 In other words, that thing that might make Christians feel like they have a right to judge others, their righteousness, is not under their control. It is a gift from God through Jesus, and therefore it is not a thing to be yielded as a weapon, and they must hold it with the utmost humility.

He follows later with a striking statement:

“If the disciples judge, then they are erecting standards to measure good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard by which I can measure others. It is he who judges me…6”

Earlier in the book, Bonhoeffer talks about how Jesus is not just the mediator between God and people, but also between one person and another or at the center of a community. Any relationship the Christian has with another person or anything in the world is mediated through Christ. This means, among other things, that all things Christians do should be done as if done before the eyes of Jesus himself, because they are. Jesus, then, is the mediator between me and my political opponent as much as he is between me and the Father.

To put this all together, since I am a disciples of Jesus I am not permitted to imagine my relationship or interactions with other people—whether friends, enemies, or political others—without Jesus as the mediator between us and as my judge. This is why, after commanding his disciples to not judge, Jesus says, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the long that is in your own eye?” Jesus, as Lord and mediator, can tell me there is a log in my eye, and my job is to remove it without worrying about the speck in the other’s eye.

Beginnings

This is all I will say for now. Hopefully, this post will give you something to ponder for a week or two until I can publish my final thoughts on this topic. To recapitulate what has been said, we live in a time of political upheaval and high polarization, we’re living in the wake of an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the DNC is lackluster, and in light of all this I’m asking, “How do we live as Christians tomorrow?” I think the answer is by being peacemakers, people who create peace where it may be hidden or non-existent. Jesus teaches us what being a peacemaker looks like in the Sermon on the Mount, enlightening our imagination by telling us to love and bless our enemies, to seek reconciliation with those who’ve wronged us, by being non-judgmental, and by self-examination and repentance.

Some of this is a peek into the next post, but it should be said here. I purposefully have not given concrete answers to peacemaking at this point in hopes that you, the reader, will ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten your imagination and speak to you about how you can live as a peacemaker in your world. I will get into a few examples in my next post, but for now, I leave you with this and with a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer:

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace; to whom belong dominion and glory, now and forever. Amen.

Thoughts and Prayers

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