Peace Through Victory or Peace Through Justice and Loving Kindness
In his book In Search of Paul Dominic Crossan dramatically describes the sea battle where Octavian, who was later to be named Augustus, united the Roman Empire. Augustus created peace through victory and therefore received the titles of Lord Saviour, Redeemer and Liberator. Divine Son of God.[1]
Crossan says those titles were Roman Imperial Theology and the glue that held the empire together. The book then goes on to describe how Paul claimed all those titles for Jesus and spread a new vision of peace through justice and lovingkindness throughout the Roman Mediterranean.
That vision of peace seems most appropriate to explore when citizens of the land where Jesus was born walked and died are firing missiles at each other and children are starving to death. Furthermore, Russia and Ukraine are also firing drones and missiles at each other and moving closer to dragging Europe into a bigger conflict and the United States is looking to profit from selling weapons.
In such a world of tension peace is not simply an absence of war. Peace comes about through a creative process. We have to make peace.
Both our readings today point towards the suggestion that we begin making peace in our families.
The book of Hosea uses a dysfunctional and abusive household as a metaphor for a dysfunctional and disempowering nation. Our Gospel reading begins with a dispute between brothers and then moves on to the parable that demonstrates the foolishness of hording possessions which is so often what causes disharmony in the family.
Disputes over inheritances are often bitter and protracted and capable of destroying lifetime relationships. Furthermore, when people start regarding other members of a household as possessions, family disputes can become lethal.
I have been doing a lot more reading since I retired and, as my mother taught me to read Agatha Christie, I have read all Ann Cleeves’ ?Vera Stanhope novels, all her Shetland series and impatiently await the next Vera book due this month. None of those books feature shootouts, car chases or battles with sharks. They reflect real life where most of the murders occur because of dysfunctional families. I also moved on to Robert Galbraith who I quickly discovered is actually J. K. Rowling. Through her superb wizardry she introduced her damaged, but astute, ex-military detective and his assistant who worked her way into and out of a dysfunctional marriage. Certainly, her opening book began with a presumed suicide of a fashion model surrounded with wealth and glitz. But when everything was unravelled, we discover the woman was part of a dysfunctional family and murdered over disputed inheritance.
A summary of statistics about victims of murder, manslaughter, and infanticide in a New Zealand police report published in September 2018 stated that around 1 in 5 homicides were committed by a current or ex-partner and 75% of victims were female.
Furthermore, children under the age of five made up twelve percent of homicide victims.[2]
Peace-making must begin in our homes, in families where individuals, regardless of age, gender or relationship are regarded as fully human persons. Violent and abusive families create violent and abusive communities. Children, who have been bullied, and their behaviour modified by violence, bully other children and grow into adults who seek to define their own space in the world by being violent to others.
We know very little about what induced a young man to walk into two Christchurch mosques and murder unarmed people. But from what we read about far-right ideology we can assume he felt threatened by people different to himself and reacted violently.
What we can be totally proud of is the inclusive response of the wider community and the recognition that we truly are a diverse community.
I have also read David Close’s small book about his father’s memories of being a prisoner in the First World War which reminded me of the absolute misery of that war. That misery was also reflected in the film about J. R. R. Tolkien and, during the film, I wondered if writing fantasy was the way he dealt with his post-traumatic stress.
Nations often form an image of a god that not only supports them in wars but is expected to inflict violent punishment on anyone who does not honour that god. Karin Armstrong suggests that Yahweh was originally such a god of war and so Maurice Andrew’s comment on our reading from Hosea demonstrates an evolution in the understanding of God.
In today’s reading we can see that Yahweh begins to be understood, not just as the Hebrew war god but the God of all humanity. The God who behaves in an unexpected way. Israel is not preserved because of the nature of the people or their violent reaction to others, but because God’s nature is to stop doing what god’s or ideologies are usually understood to do. Rather than a god of destruction and revenge God loves all people and seeks to restore all people.
In accepting such a God, we can learn that a family who loves each other with God’s unconditional love allows children to grow into members of a community that is equally loving. A community that looks to restore the lost rather than seeking revenge for the consequences of their dysfunction.,
However, we appear to be returning to a time when our nation seeks peace through victory as a way of controlling crime.
Once again, our government is promising tougher policing, crushing kid’s cars, longer prison sentences, and more jails. Meanwhile we are pulling back on social housing, restricting benefits and experiencing a growth in homelessness.
Many sports and other activities are becoming too expensive for most young people, who are genetically and hormonally charged, to seek adventure. Meeting that need and providing hope of a fulfilling life could well be a more constructive path to community peace. However, as someone who had boxing lessons at primary school, the growth of martial arts worries me.
But violence always seems more direct and one of the characteristics of the historic development of the nation state was that the state claims the monopoly on violence and uses that monopoly to control its citizens. It then uses violence to create a sense of national pride by inflicting violence on other states.
In George Orwell book 1984 he had the world divided into three. At any one time two of those super states were at war with each other while the third was neutral. They swapped places regularly, so all three states had the advantage of blaming inadequate government and failed economic policy on ‘the war.’
1984 has past but the world still manages to shift its enemies and allies around to keep the focus off domestic justice issues like poverty, housing and health care.
Up till now that shuffling of friend and foe has been cautious because, the bombing of Hiroshima was extra frightening. That bomb was considerably more destructive than the bronze weapons of Hosea’s day.
On the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima I heard the Reverend Professor Ian Dixon speaking of being stationed with a unit in Europe when the bomb was dropped. The officer in charge of his unit was a young physicist who was devastated by the news. He said that he would rather be shipped to the Pacific and face another four years of war than have that terrible weapon used on human beings.
Through that dreadful act the world was given peace through victory at a huge cost in terms of human suffering.
But now someone wants to make America Great again and that is a worry as it looks to join all the great empires, from the Babylonians that threatened Hosea’s people through the Romans of Jesus’ time. All the empires of the past and the would-be empires of today, have discovered that the violence needed to maintain a forced peace finally succumbs to the rebellion of an ever-increasing number of repressed marginalised people.
Just like abused children, who may grow to inflict abuse on others, violently repressed people cannot conceive any hope of liberation without violent revolution.
The seeds of terrorism and the embryos of suicide bombers are nurtured in exploitation, hopelessness and injustice that is always the dark side of peace through victory.
The farmer in the parable was simply foolish and all his wealth was derived by favourable agricultural conditions. But in our world farm income can come from trade with wealthy nations that makes New Zealand butter too expensive for kiwis.
The message of Hosea was that no matter what idols we build, or create in our minds, to support what desperate, or threatened people may see as a just war, the true God’s nature is to seek peace.
Our God does not punish the unjust with the force of a Hiroshima bomb. The God we Christians image in Jesus Christ forgives, restores, and transforms.
As followers of that Christ we are called to live our lives as Christ to others, forgiving, restoring and transforming both our lives and the lives of those around us.
We are called to be rich in the way God understands wealth by seeking peace through justice and lovingkindness, not just for us, but for all humanity.
Such a peace is true, eternal wealth where Christ and all humanity are one with God.
[1] Dominic Crossan In Search of Paul (New York: HarperCollins 2004) p.4.
[2]https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publication/homicide-victims-report-2017-and-historic-nz-murder-rate-report-1926-2017