Blessed are the Peacemakers

            I got a couple of cases of old things down out of the attic this week.  The weather was cold enough to want to stay inside, so we began the process of sorting out many years of pictures, letters and much else.  We are hoping to get things into some sort of shape so that the kids don’t have a monster on their hands someday.  Rosie found a lot of letters that she wrote to me when I was in the army; many others that were written to us and by us over the years.  It is quite a history.

            Rosie and I have been married for fifty-eight years, have three wonderful daughters who have grown into remarkable adults.  They have provided us with their own families; grandchildren and great grandchildren whom we love with all of our hearts.  They have created their own lives.  One is a nurse-practitioner, another is a professor in one of our local universities, and one is an able leader in a parish in a poverty stricken section of Cleveland where she has been an inspiration and a help to many people.  We are very fortunate to have what we have, and the record of it is in all of those things that we found upstairs.  I thank God daily for what we have been given, and I want to give back as much as I possibly can. What is amazing to me about all of these things that we have found in the attic is how many people we have touched and who have touched us.  It is an incredible  story.

            I love the lesson in the fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus goes up on a small hill to tell his disciples and the crowd what he has in mind for all of us.  These are the beatitudes, those small things that we all can do to take care of each other, but more especially how we are all viewed by our loving God.  Blessed are the poor in spirit, he begins, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. What a startling statement!  I would think that the preachers that we have among us might think that the “poor in spirit” are destined for another place rather than the Kingdom of Heaven.   Jesus goes on to say blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Good Lord, the meek!  How are they going to inherit the earth when they can’t really speak because they are so shy?  Obviously these are observations that only God can make with any authority.  Both of these statements make a joke out of the loud and obnoxious among us who are so quick to judge others; but this is a common trait among the religious in our society. 

            One of the worst things that we do as human beings is to judge each other.  It keeps us apart and creates political divisions that make chaos of our common life.  After the President’s State of the Union address, three of his opponents took to the airways with pre-recorded “rebuttals” that didn’t particularly help us.  They only reinforced their own political points of view in their attempt to undermine what the president had said.  We do this all the time.  I do it, you do it, and we ought to stop it.

            What Jesus did for us in his ministry was to listen and to teach us to listen.  That is the foundation of community.  The reason that we have become so divided is because we have lost the ability to listen to each other and to hear another view.  We listen until we don’t agree, then we shut down the listening and begin the judging. That is when our community disintegrates into chaos.  If we want community, we need to learn to accept each other the way that we come.  When we do that, we can find common ground and get to a place of agreement.  Probably the most important of the beatitudes is the one that says blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.  Let’s make peace and be God’s children, for God’s blessing is what we all seek and what we need.