…continued.

James

One of the things I note about this moment in time  is how attempts to exercise hostility in order to try and make peace doesn’t work. The one against whom a warring party is hostile, broods, ruminates, and this festers for generations. And I think we’ve seen that in our politics. The other thing I note about peacemaking is that something new has to emanate from the process for both sides. Peacemaking is needed because two sides are at odds with each other, and peace doesn’t come about when either side says, ‘you have to become like me’. A peacemaking journey is focused on what we become together. I’m thinking about the passage in Ephesians where Paul reflects on Jesus’s peacemaking by indicating how Christ brings two tribes together and makes one new humanity out of the two, Jew and Gentile into one new humanity. Jesus is the sort of peacemaker who brings the two together and makes one.

Roy

Yeah, James, you’ve also got that narrative in Northern Ireland, because the Peace Process was a recognition that there needs to be a new story that respects the traditions of the two contra-communities. Some of my grandchildren go to an integrated school, which doesn’t disrespect the loyalist Protestants and it doesn’t disrespect the Republicans. It is an attempt at integration creating a new narrative that emerges over time.

Julie

Which links us back to our conversation with Jo Williams again. I took the mediation skills training at the Blackley Centre and, having gained some skills as a mediator, I see how this is definitely the way to help people find a solution together. Even more fundamental is the importance of seeing our opponent as being made in the image of God just as we are, and therefore wanting peace, wanting shalom and wellbeing for them. 

There can’t be peace where there is a power imbalance. If you can see your opponent as someone made in the image of God, then that changes how you imagine what peace means for you and them, doesn’t it? And it comes back to that story of Francis of Assisi that you just mentioned earlier, Roy.

Helen

I think your idea of seeing the humanity of our opponents leads beautifully into that lovely expression ‘Ubuntu’ in African philosophy: ‘I am because we are’. According to this idea, if the other side isn’t flourishing, whoever the other side may be, we can’t flourish. For us to flourish, we all have to flourish. This means that we may have to compromise something in order for them to flourish so that we can flourish. 

And a great example of that at this moment would be the fact that, with a war going on in another country far away, we are all suffering. The war wasn’t started by us, and we’re not taking part in it and we don’t want it to be happening. But every one of us is affected economically and in other ways. We cannot flourish while every person and community involved in the war are not flourishing.

Julie

We might see this is as a massive critique of nationalism. So Christian nationalists in our country, or in America or… anywhere say that we should put our country first. But that’s never going to truly bring peace, when our nation prospering means other countries suffer. Instead, we should consider everyone’s needs as we seek solutions to global issues.

Roy

Yeah. It is interesting that you mentioned this on St. George’s Day – which is today, isn’t it?

Craig

If we truly understood what it meant to put our nation first, purely thinking economically, we would not do the things Trump is doing now. So, take the Marshall Plan as an example. The help the Americans gave to the European continent to rebuild itself after the last war was of massive long-term benefit to America itself. They were rebuilding nations that would then trade with them. The Marshall Plan was a long term investment that created a trading bloc to The benefit of everyone. So even if I am self-interestedly concerned about the long-term interests of my own country, cooperation with other nations will always be the way to achieve what I want.

I remember a number of years ago being inthe European Parliament, and was debating with a German politician, pointing out that the squeeze the Germans were then putting on the Greeks made absolutely no sense in the long-term. I understood why they wanted to pressure the Greeks to deal with their internal corruption, but it was in the long-term interest of the German economy to help Greek people to become more wealthy so they could then sell them more high-quality German industrial goods. Europe means nothing if the stronger nations don’t help the weaker nations to flourish.

Simon

I’m thinking of Jesus when he said ‘this is how people will know that you’re my disciples – if you love one another’. So, if you just take the 12 disciples, within that group you have a collaborator with the Romans: Matthew and you have a violent revolutionary in Simon the Zealot. So just within these twelve core followers you have representatives of the two extremes within the Jewish community of the time. People who were enemies of one another, people who may kill each other in another context. And Jesus is saying, ‘this is what it means, not just to be my disciple, but so that other people will realise that you’re my disciples. If you love that person that everyone around you is telling you to hate’.

James

When you were talking about the cost of it, I can well remember standing on my doorstep in Swindon and watching a Hercules aircraft fly over my home. And on the plane was Terry Waite. And I think, within my lifetime, this was a man who exemplified peacemaking and attempted to bring people together in a courageous and very sacrificial way. And I think that he also won people over by showing another way of peacemaking in a hostile environment.

Craig

Which, once again is an explicit response to those who say that this talk of peace is so weak.

Roy

It’s the very opposite.

Craig

We can laugh in their faces because we’re describing costly actions. We’re talking about speaking a truth that will be uncomfortable. We’re talking about refusing to demonise opponents who seem to be different to us, because they aren’t different at all. And we’re certainly not talking about keeping things calm on the surface and pretending there’s nothing wrong.

Helen

And maybe it’s worth rounding off the conversation by remembering that the whole story of Jesus started with angels singing ‘peace on earth’ right at the beginning of Jesus’ life. And then we note how his whole life and story is shot through with references to peace. And his very last words to his disciples before his arrest were “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.”