General Conference, Blessed Are the Peacemakers

He climbed to the top of a mountain and sat down. His disciples took their usual places around him. If they had wanted to be alone, no one would ever know because right after they arrived, the crowds of people who had been following them around Galilee made their way up the mountain to listen, too. Then Jesus began to teach.

Surely the significance of this scene wasn’t lost on those gathered there. Burned into their collective memory is the story of Israel assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. God’s voice thundered the commandments. And now, Israel was gathered once more to hear the Word of God speaking in a new age.

Jesus began to teach with blessing. Who are blessed? The blessed ones Jesus lifts up are the people who are most often cursed. They’re forgotten, pushed aside, and stomped on. Blessed are the poor in spirit and those who mourn. Blessed are the meek and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful and pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness and because of Christ.

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

Until I attempted it, I never knew how painfully difficult peacemaking can be. While people applaud the efforts of peacemakers, it’s a lonely business. It’s almost always a misunderstood business.

In 2005, I began my journey of being a peacemaker in the midst of the LGBTQI debate in the United Methodist Church. Instead of taking and advocating for a firm stance- either affirming the Discipline‘s language or advocating to reverse it- I chose to be in the process of bringing people together from very disparate points of view to build and rebuild new community. Hopefully… prayerfully… efforts like this would keep our church from splitting apart. I have always had my own views and still do, but I’ve chosen to keep them in the background, working instead to be a reconciler.

It sounds like glamorous work, but it’s not. It’s not sexy. I have a lot of cheerleaders but very few helpers.

Meanwhile, I am often unfairly labeled by the very same people I’m trying to rally. I’ve been called a fundamentalist. (I’m not). I’ve been labeled a liberal. (Heck no.) People have accused me of abandoning the Bible. (I strive to live my life harmoniously with the inspired Word of God, thank you very much.)

And the worst label of all- a moderate. (These days that’s code for wishy-washy, weak, and ideologically confused. A sell out.)

Aside from being misunderstood, there are two major challenges to peacemaking: getting people to the table, and helping people to see how similar they really are. Especially in today’s debate over LGBTQI, people are well beyond talking. For conservatives, it’s a settled issue; sin is sin and has no place in the church. Period. For progressives, the time is now to once and for all put exclusion and bigotry behind us and to fully include, marry, and ordain people who are gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, queer, and intrasex.

Both sides know what they want, are bent on it, and will tolerate an exodus or a split in the church if that’s what it comes down to.

Then there are people like me in the midst of the storm trying to advocate for different options to keep us all together as one Body of Christ. I do recognize that our different viewpoints are simply incompatible. However I also recognize that if we split or exit, we’ll all be weaker for it. United Methodism is a connectional church, relying on all of us together to fulfill the Great Commission and advance the kingdom of God. Apart from one another, we will each walk away with much less than we have now, greatly truncating our collective effort to fulfill the Great Commission and build the kingdom of God. Still not convinced of that? See 1 Corinthians 12.

Reading all this, you might conclude that I’m playing the martyr:

O woe is me, that my all-too-righteous efforts go unappreciated by the stiff-necked masses bent on their own destruction!

Well… I confess to complaining a little. (But Hey, Jeremiah complained a lot more than I am! He even accused God of being a deceptive brook run dry.)

More importantly, I’m inviting you into the blessedness of peacemaking. It’s hard work, but it is blessed work. Jesus says it is. There’s a price to pay for it, but the gift from God is a powerful vision of the peaceable kingdom to come, which all of God’s children will inherit. We all know that at present we live in a bitterly polarized time which unfortunately our church reflects. However, we peacemakers have the audacity to believe that it doesn’t have to be that way- that it won’t be that way for too much longer.

General Conferences will come and go. Sometimes even denominations come and go. Still, if the peacemakers rise up and dare to fill the gap, we can bring more people together into a community which is a foretaste of much better things to come. Thanks be to God for that blessing!