Pastor's Corner: Treasonous peace

In church last Sunday, we read from Ephesians 2, and one particular verse caught my eye and tugged my soul: "Christ is our peace." A little bit of research later, and facts from seventh grade social studies came flooding into my brain. Ephesians was written during the time of Pax Romana, when Rome and Emperor Augustus ruled the day. Perhaps the words Pax Romana dredge up some of your own memories of middle or high school history classes, learning about this Roman peace that lasted from 27 BC to 180 A.D. But this peace came through military dominance and political oppression. In the history books about the Roman Peace, we don't find a lot of actual peace. Instead, we find revolts and the violent crushing of revolts. We find the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And for those who were foolhardy enough to challenge the Empire's so-called peace, they found the terror of the crucifixion.

The peace of Augustus is like the peace that settles on a village under military occupation, with a curfew in place and rewards for turning in your neighbor. It's the peace of hushed conversations, wary eyes, and curtains pulled tight against the world. It's peaceful in that there's no open rebellion, but it's not full of peace. It's full of distrust. Pax Romana is the peace born from fear.

This is the context for the letter to the Ephesians. Imagine we are sitting in a house church, and we have just received this letter from a trusted apostle, and as we read it, we are simultaneously thrilled and terrified. Christ is our peace. Not the empire, not the state, not Augustus. Christ is our peace. And Christ's peace, borne from sacrifice and love rather than control and fear, makes friends out of those who were once enemies. Christ's peace tears down the walls that divide and creates relationships of respect and mutuality. The peace of Christ is like the peace that settles on a village with a kind and wise mayor and council, the peace of a summer night when children ride bikes and the elderly ride porch swings and everyone has good food in their stomachs and bright hopes for tomorrow.

And how do we get that peace? Ephesians says it comes to us through the church. This treason-ish letter claims that it is in the church where God has shown God's plan to reconcile the whole world, so that we are at peace with God and at peace with each other. To show this unity from the very beginning, the church was meant to be a place where Jews and Gentiles, these ancient antagonists, meet in peace. Where the wall of hostility between them was broken down.

For the early church, this unity between these opposing groups was a sign of God's work in the world. This unity was just the start of the Pax Christi, the peace of Christ, the peace which no empire can ever provide. The church is meant to be the sign of the peace God intends for creation, made real in the relationships between Christians -t he relationships between members of the same congregation, the relationship between congregations of the same denomination, and the relationships between denominations. For the capital-c Church is made up of Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians, the followers of Paul and the followers of Peter, the followers of Luther and the followers of Francis, the followers of Billy Graham and the followers of Joel Osteen, the frozen chosen and the holy rollers and everyone in between.

The church, in all its forms, is meant to witness to this peace to the world. To witness to a way of life where people whose ancestors ate pemmican and people whose ancestors ate lutefisk play and work in harmony and respect. To witness to a way of being in which the people who live on one side of the tracks care about the well-being of the children and adults who live on the other side of the track, and vice-versa. To witness to a way of peace where people in the coal industry and people in the green industry can agree that each 'side' just wants to see their families and communities thrive far into the future. The church is to be a beacon of hope for this kind of peace.

Saying that Christ is our peace might not border on treason today, but it should shake the foundations of the empires still among us. For with Christ as our peace, we, the church, are ruled by love and not by fear. As the Church moves into the future, may the peace of Christ heal our divisions, right our wrongs, and lead us into a life of love.

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The Rev. Megan Hoewisch is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Havre.