By Pastor Kelly Bates Oglesby
The art of peacemaking is developing skills of Christ-like nonviolence in order to live in a violent and turbulent world. Yet, peacemaking is different for those living in poverty and suffering social injustice. It takes time to learn and develop the resistance and temperance required for peacemaking. Poor people are short on time and heavy on burdens.
Being able to respond peacefully is difficult when your stomach is to your back and the roar of hunger bangs in your head like an unrelenting alarm. Walking through systemic injustice, the least of our society are not dressed for the climate; rather, they cover themselves in sheets and blankets, ill-fitting and filthy clothes that are tattering into rags. Cloistering in any public space they can, because: “private property.” Even churches are weary of caring for the multitude, and wary that someone or another may just be hustling instead of working.
The art of peacemaking becomes abstract and sometimes absent when faced with the vicious reality that too many in our society suffer. Perhaps that is why it is easier for “missions” to occur in foreign lands– so that we are not compelled to focus on the destitution and deprivation amongst us. It is far easier to focus on drones than to consider our neighbors without homes.
Our local schools are flooded with undereducated children whose parents cannot support them due to the demands and shifts of their two or three part-time jobs. Some extended family or neighbor might come, but even then, cannot really help due to the incessant street violence and the miserable public transportation. The art of peacemaking is needed in our cities and towns.
We need caring and skilled people to mediate the imbalance of economy and gentrification of our neighborhoods. People willing to reconcile the healthy needs and food deserts in America- that’s what is needed. We need leaders to help us reconcile the ways we traumatize the earth, to come and help us rehabilitate our streams and green spaces. …Peacemakers- willing to live with us and learn with us as grow in grace and stewardship of neighbor and land.
Peacemaking is indeed an art, for one must visualize or conceive what can be, especially in the midst of what isn’t. Peacemakers do not assimilate others into themselves – they integrate ways of harmony with cultural compassion. The recently adopted confession of faith from my denomination states briefly:
“We believe that peace is the will of God. God created the world in peace, and God’s peace is most fully revealed in Jesus Christ, who is our peace and the peace of the whole world. Led by the Holy Spirit, we follow Christ in the way of peace, doing justice, bringing reconciliation, and practicing nonresistance, even in the face of violence and warfare.” (Thirdway Simply Following Jesus, 2019)
Now is the time for those committed to the life of peace to come with reconciliation and resolution to those fighting against poverty and injustice. There is no time to fight hymnal wars or rage against order of service when there is no order and no service coming from the church to the community. Is peacemaking a lost or living art?
Kelly Bates Oglesby served God by serving the least and the lost while happily married to Herman Oglesby. Thank you, Pastor Kelly, for the love of Christ that you uniquely brought to this world.