I think it would have been
understandable for the people listening to Jesus to have said yes. “Yes, I did
think you were here to bring peace.” I thought that, because, isn’t that what
the angels sang when you were born? Well, the angels wished peace on earth, but
they didn’t say it would be the first thing Jesus would bring. And Simeon, who
prophesied in the Temple when Jesus was just a few days old, prophesied that he
would be a “sign of contradiction,” and told Mary “a sword will pierce your
heart too.”
Peace, deep
Shalom peace, peace with justice, is coming, in the end, when the lion will lie
down with the lamb. But, it’s not the end yet. In Jesus’ day, the Romans would have
said that they had brought peace to the known world (well, except those pesky
frontier lands where the barbarians were). That peace, the pax Romana,
meant the absence of rebellion, not because there was nothing unjust to rebel
against, but because any rebellion would be swiftly, decisively, and brutally
ended. The Romans had the sword already, and they lied and called it peace.
And this isn’t
just an issue for two thousand years ago. When we’re in a place of privilege,
it’s very easy to look down on those who disturb our peace and remind us of the
injustice that has put us on our pedestals. If you’ll allow me a brief Hamilton
quote: after being shushed… “Burr, I’d rather be divisive than indecisive, drop
the niceties.” When peace is only peaceful because of the voices that decry
injustice are silenced, that peace is not worth keeping. In fact, it’s
oppressive.
Jesus did
not come for an easy life, and he did not bequeath us one either. When we baptize,
we baptize into Christ, priest, prophet and king. The post-baptismal anointing
is, among things, the anointing of a prophet, a prophet who will dare to be
divisive when peace for some masks injustice for others.
But Jesus’
ultimate aim was not that we end up in sword-like division either. Jesus leads
us through that to the ultimate peace with justice that can only come when evil
is conquered. In Luke, he describes going through the fire of conflict as like
a baptism, which is ultimately cleansing, out of which new life comes. Hebrews
imagines Jesus as a pioneer, leading us on a race, a race that is arduous, but
in which there is finally no competition; all who run win an imperishable
crown. And those who have run before us are not just beyond the finish line,
panting in exhaustion, or glorying in their own crowns. No, they line the sides
of the stadium, not passive, but cheering us on.
I invite us
to get to know a few. And I’m not going to mention famous, canonized saints
here. I went this week looking on a website called Under Caesar’s Sword.
It’s put together by a research group at Notre Dame, involving collaborators
all over the world, documenting religious persecution, and Christian responses
to it. It’s a reminder of how so many of our sisters and brothers in Christ are
prophetic even when they know the sword is at the door. And much of it is
statistics and large-scale analyses, but there are some stories there too, some
individuals, who form part of that great cloud of witnesses, whom it’s worth us
getting to know.
There’s Fr.
Yang Jangwei, a Chinese priest who recently went ‘missing.’ In the month he
went missing, he was the third priest in his province to go ‘missing.’ He knew
where the sword was, and he stayed. There’s Ding Cuimei, a Chinese lay woman
who was buried alive while protesting the Chinese government’s demolition of
her church. There’s Pastor Han Chung-Reol, a Protestant pastor who’s ethnically
Korean, but a Chinese citizen, and has devoted his life to ministering to North
Korean refugees in China, stabbed to death by North Koreans covertly operating in
China. And, lest we think this only happens in China, in Sudan, Christian
orphanages are prohibited from accepting male orphans. This often means death
for those boys, and for the girls, it’s a misogyny of low expectations, the
idea that they won’t really be a threat. My hope for Sudan is that those
Sudanese Christian women show just how much of a threat to injustice they can
be.
These
witnesses cheer us on. They cheer us on as Jesus leads us, through virtuous
rebelliousness to injustice, to true lasting heavenly peace.
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