THE BEATITUDES IX
I
originally wrote this on August 8 2008. This is supposed to be a most
auspicious day for the Chinese: 8 8 8. For those readers who aren't Chinese
it's because the words for the number eight, ba in Mandarin and paat in
Cantonese, sound similar to the words for prosperity, fa in Mandarin and faat in
Cantonese. This date, like last year's, 7/7/07, is an extremely popular wedding
date, and planners say they are expecting people to choose 9/9/09 as well, as
the word for the number nine in Mandarin sounds like the word for longevity.
Eight is considered the luckiest number though (I've also heard some funny statements
when an English-speaking person put the wrong tone on the word, spelled 'zhyou'
in English, and it came out sounding like 'alcohol' rather than 'nine' or
'longevity', 'long-life'.
So,
maybe for me as an Anabaptist (person who believes in adult baptism) it's
timely (lucky?) that the beatitude I get to write about today is this one:
5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called the children of God.
You see, if you haven't already learned
this about us Anabaptists or Mennonites, we consider peacemaking to be one of
the highest virtues. However, we are far from perfect in carrying peacemaking
out. In fact, sometimes it looks as though we are so bent, so stuck, on keeping
peace that when a dispute arises, rather than go through the possibly
conflicted struggling un-peaceful route of solving the problem, we just walk
away. Maybe that is part of the reason there are something like 40 branches of
Mennonites, all thinking they know best! I guess we are not unique in that area
– how many kinds of Baptists and Lutherans and Pentecostals are there, to name
just a few other denominations or types of Christianity?
Yes, our ancestors, our faith forefathers
and mothers, when they started to study the Bible in Switzerland in the 16th
century, realized that Jesus had come to make peace. Even before he was born,
his mother, inspired by the same Holy Spirit that made her miraculously
pregnant as a virgin, said that her child would, "guide our feet into the
way of peace" (Luke 1:79). When he was born, the angels sang from the
skies to the shepherds on the hillside outside of Bethlehem, "On earth,
peace, goodwill toward men" (Luke 2:14). Before Jesus went to the cross to
give his life for us he told his disciples, "Peace I leave with you, my peace
I give to you" (John 14:27). When he rose from the dead, his greeting to
his disciples became, "Peace be unto you" (John 20:19, 26).
If Jesus came to bring jus peace, the
first Anabaptist church reformers reasoned, they figured, his followers must
also be peacemakers. Indeed, if you study church history, the history of
Christianity, you will see that for the first three hundred years, Christians
did not join the army or partake in violence. It was only when the Roman
Emperor Constantine apparently became a Christian that things changed. Indeed,
when the state and faith start to mix, things always go wrong, at least that's
how we see it from our perspective, our viewpoint, as Anabaptists. That is why
we also were among the first to believe in separation of church and state. You
see, Jesus never promoted any state; he did not preach nationalism, in spite of
what people like former American president George Bush and many Americans
think.
Jesus is not really interested in
Christian nations. He might even say that is an oxymoron, two words that don’t
really go together. The scriptures indicated that God only allows or gave man
the ability to form nations and governments because we humans are so miserable
at keeping peace we need such orders and systems to help us do so. Jesus taught us only about The Kingdom of
Heaven, the Kingdom of God; that is the only important kingdom for us as
Christians, as Anabaptists. Let us be peacemakers as our Lord is, and we will
be the children of God. What better family to belong to than that!
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