Blessed are those who seek peace...

[AI translation] By way of introduction, let me now read a letter that is being read in churches around the world this Sunday. In this letter, the Presidency of the World Council of Churches addresses the member churches and, at this crucial time in our history, calls the Christian peoples and congregations of the world to prayer in connection with the Geneva Conference which begins tomorrow. The letter reads:"At its Second World Council of Churches General Assembly in Evanston last year, the World Council of Churches called on governments and peoples to keep talking to each other, to avoid anger and malice, and to seek ways to eliminate fear and uncertainty. We thank God that today the Heads of Government of the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain and the United States are meeting together for the first time in ten years to discuss these matters. We call on all Christians to pray that they will find a way to eliminate fear and mistrust. We are convinced that the worldwide supplication of the whole Christian community of believers is needed now, and that the unifying power of prayer must be more strongly visible than ever in this moment of great significance and hope. Let us pray for the four men on whom so heavy a responsibility now rests, for the peoples they represent, for all the other peoples who look to them with anxious anxiety and yet with hope: for the peace of the world.
Thus ends the dramatic appeal. The whole earthly world now looks with bated breath on Calvin's ancient city of Geneva. The world has never been so near to war, and never so near to the elimination of war, as now! It is understandable and natural, therefore, that Christ's followers should now be holding days of prayer and supplication all over the world. It is above all this Scripture that has prompted us to join in this great world prayer-ring: "Blessed are those who seek peace!" It is now that we really need to believe very seriously in the possibility of prayer and in the promises concerning the power and the effect of prayer. Now is the time for the believer who has already known divine grace to go before God for the world and to pray for grace on behalf of the peoples of the world! Now is the time to take upon ourselves the burden of responsibility for the life and well-being of all humanity and to pray for it, to pray for it with suffering! For God has included in the government of the world the prayer of His children. There are some things that God will not do until He is asked. There are gifts of God that He can only give into and through praying hands and hearts to the world. Through our true prayer, something may be made possible that would not be possible without it. So, indeed, much depends on the prayers of believers in the world! For the believer in Christ is lifted up to the right hand of the Father, to the highest place where the supreme decisions of history are made.
Once believing brethren complained to their pastor. They said that he was not preaching the pure Word, the church was not being built up, the flock was slowly being scattered, they wanted to leave their pastor, they wanted to join another pastor. I told them: they are doing the worst possible thing. What that congregation and that pastor need most of all right now is the supplication of the faithful! Let them unite in prayer for him, let them embrace him, let them surround him and his pastor with their prayers, let them create an atmosphere around him with their prayers, an atmosphere in which he cannot do anything else, in which he is forced to preach the purest gospel. These people then experienced, in their small circle, in a slow church revival, that their prayers had not been in vain. Something similar is happening now, only on a much larger scale. The World Council of Churches' call for a closed community of prayer from all over the world, from Southeast, East, South and West, to surround that Geneva meeting. Let this close ring of prayer create an atmosphere there in which the negotiating parties are compelled to find a peaceful way out of tension and can do no more than continue along this path to full unfolding!
But in this Word, "Blessed are those who seek peace", it is not only a question of prompting the representatives of the negotiating powers to find the secret of world peace through prayer. It would be very easy to pass the buck to the four men on whose wisdom, discernment and goodwill, humanly speaking, the fate, life or death of millions depend. The Word of God makes the question of peace a personal matter for each one of us. After all, it will be decided by forces outside of me, without my consultation. Well, it matters a great deal! Not only because of what we have heard so often in this regard, that is, that we strengthen or weaken people's will for peace or their psychosis of war by our own individual stance - there is some truth in that - but, more importantly, because I also actively contribute, by my whole attitude, my thinking, my talking to people, to the avoidance or occurrence of war.
If the world is turned upside down, I will be one of the people, and you will be one of the people, who will be guilty of it. Because look: to pray for peace between those people in Geneva and at the same time to remain angry with my co-tenant: that is a mockery of prayer and of the whole cause of peace. To hope for an easing of world tension and at the same time do nothing to ease the tension of people's situation with their mother-in-law, for example: arrogance, even impertinence. Can a man whose own inner life is full of tension and who is outraged when someone asks him to make a sacrifice complain about the lack of peace and sacrifice between peoples? Do we not realise that we ourselves are a part of this world, a small cell in the body of the big world?! Can the body heal if the disease remains in the cells? So if we want to pray for the life of this world in a way that is not in vain, let us do it as someone once said, "Cleanse this filthy world, Lord, and start with me!"
"Blessed are those who seek peace, for they shall say to the sons of God." The sons of God, who have become children of God through Jesus Christ, can be nothing but peacemakers. For we have a God who has reconciled the world to Himself in Christ, not imputing to Him the sins of the world. At the cross of Christ a great peace was made between heaven and earth, between man and God. In this reconciliation God was the initiator, He offered peace from heaven to the earth, as if to say: Let all iniquity, rebellion, insult be forgotten, buried, forgiven! And all the cost of this peace, all the price that it cost, He Himself bore. So precious, so important is this peace to Him, that He sacrificed a piece of Himself, Jesus Christ, for it. This is what the prophet expresses: 'The penalty of our peace is upon him' (Is 53:5). When God looks at the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, He takes it as if in Him all those in whose place Christ died had suffered condemnation. So, in your place and in my place - by God's grace - our Lord suffered, died, made satisfaction, made reparation, paid the price. Therefore God does not accuse you, although you were his enemy. He does not blame you for what you have done against him, he does not complain that you have denied him, that you have not loved him, that you have not obeyed him, that you have not trusted him, but he points to the cross and says. Such is our God! We are the sons of this God!
The peace that God has earned and given us is not just a negative state of rest, but an active attitude. We use the word peace negatively in the sense of non-war, non-conflict, non-struggle. We believe that as long as there are no loud words, there is peace in the house. We believe that a man is ready for peace if he has a rubber backbone, gives in everywhere and makes agreements so that no discord breaks out. This kind of peace is pure selfishness, because in it one seeks one's own personal peace. It's like someone shouting angrily at someone else, "Come on, leave me alone!" Well, in reality, peacefulness means something quite different. It's not about leaving others alone. Peacefulness is not just an inner spirituality, but a productive force, an emanation, an attitude of wanting and working for peace. It is not a peace that comes from God, hidden in the depths of the believer's soul as a secret delight, a spiritual pleasure - because true peace wants to penetrate into our earthly relations and actions, into the relations and thoughts of our personal, family, economic and political life. The one who strives for peace, whom Jesus here calls happy, is in fact a peacemaker, a peacemaker. A person who selflessly and humbly works for peace between two opposing parties as an act of love.
It is interesting that the word "peace" in the New Testament has its origin in the verb eiro, which means to talk again to one another. The essence of the peace that Christ has brought about is that the possibility of a new conversation between God and man has been created by his death. Blessed are the peacemakers, the peacemakers who do their utmost to bring about a new conversation in a spirit of love and forgiveness wherever there has been a lack of understanding. Let us start talking again with those with whom we have lost contact for some reason. Let us begin this new conversation on the basis that this is how God has made peace with us. The soothing and reconciling radiance of Christ's peace radiates from a person who is reconciled to God. It grows out of individual hearts and at the same time binds people together. In this way, the family is the very birthplace of peace. From here it grows between friends, between neighbours, between members of the congregation and from here it radiates from congregation to congregation, from country to country, from part of the world to part of the world!
Let us begin this ministry of peacemaking in our own small circle, and in doing so we will both contribute concretely to the much desired good outcome of the political negotiations and our prayer will be a truer and more authentic prayer in the great community of prayer of Christian peoples today! With this hope we sing:
Glory to God in the highest,
Peace on earth to men,
And good will to all nations
And to all kindreds!
(Canto 315, verse 2)
Amen
Date: 17 July 1955.