Idaho faith: Don’t just wish for peace. With your heart, turn back what stands in its way

“Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth!”

So begins an ancient hymn, called the “Gloria in Excelsis,” which is a traditional part of Sunday Communion services in many Christian traditions during most of the year. Sunday after Sunday, this ancient hymn brings home that angelic song from the Gospel of Luke when the angels sing praise to herald the birth of Jesus.

In this chaotic world, we look for moments of peace. We desire moments of calm and respite. We are envious of those peaceful scenes in others’ lives where things seem to go so well. We hide away from the news because it seems too much. And so we pray for peace.

But do we really want peace?

Or is the peace we pray for a shallower kind of peace, a personal slice of peace, something that shuts out the world?

Too often, that’s the form of peace that we end up praying for. Peace becomes an escape from the world, something I can keep for myself, a private possession that needs to be defended from any encroachments. And so we slink into selfishness and ignorance, and perceived threats to this personal sense of peace even give rise to some darker fantasies.

Peace is not a private thing we can keep selfishly. Peace must be sought for all people. We cannot keep peace to ourselves. We must work for peace so that all people have that blessing. It must be a real peace — where the hungry are fed; the unsheltered find shelter; the sick have genuine health care regardless of their ability to pay; the strength of the community lifts up everyone because people genuinely care about others.

As the Epistle of James says, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (2:15-16).

Peace is not a state of ignorance, either. If we refuse to listen to what others have gone through because that would upset our vision of ourselves or our community, we’re choosing ignorance in order to preserve an illusion of peace.

There is real suffering in this world. How can we have peace if this peace requires ignorance of the wounds of others? As the Prophet Jeremiah says, “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace.” (6:13-14).

And there are many wounded people in this world. Many of those wounds are centuries long because of centuries of injustice. Any of us who do pastoral care know that individuals are products of a complicated family history — and how much more complicated is a whole nation! Clearly, we have not had true peace.

Yet, instead of seeking to heal those wounds and offer real peace, we’ve seen some use this unrest to fuel some terrible tendencies. Words become violent — fellow human beings are made into enemies — and justifications are sought for violence. Peace becomes something seized by force. It is not heroic or noble to desire an occasion to harm another human being, whether it’s “stand your ground” or political unrest.

Violent fantasies and violent rhetoric warp the heart. Evil intentions come from the heart, and that defiles a person (Mark 7:21-23). That is a heart that will never know peace.

If we desire to see the day when swords are beaten into plows and spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3), then we must start in our own hearts, our own communities. We must desire, and act toward, real peace for all people, and root out the selfishness, ignorance and violent desires that stand in the way of peace.

This isn’t naïve optimism or idealistic thinking. Do we really want the way things are to continue? Either we start building that more peaceful future for everyone, or we are saying we are powerless in the face of the status quo. We are not powerless. I believe in the power of the Prince of Peace.

“May mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance.” (Jude 1:2).