Living in the "Real World" of Peace-making

 

                                                        Prime Minister Trudeau in Ukraine 

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. 

“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.  Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Matthew 24: 6-13 NRSVue 

I was at a loss for blogging words yesterday -- go figure! Over the weekend we re-watched Oppenheimer, the film we'd seen on the big screen a few months ago. It's about the theoretical physicist who became a key figure in the development of the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands, mostly civilians. The Americans had already fire-bombed Tokyo killing more people than in either of those detonations, a grim moment in history mentioned in passing during the film. 

There is a sense that Robert Oppenheimer, played brilliantly by Cillian Murphy,  had a conscience. The premise was that using these weapons of mass destruction would end not only WWII byt would be the deterrent to end wars as we know them. He intuited that the opposite would happen and other nations would race to develop nukes. 

It was a coincidence that we watched Oppenheimer on the second anniversary of the Ukraine-Russia war, the senseless conflict of aggression initiated by the monstrous Vladimir Putin. There were vigils and memorials in many places in Canada, including here in Belleville. The Ukrainians confirmed that more than 30,000 of their soldiers have died and it's almost certain that several times that number of Russians have perished. Of course, the destruction of Gaza with a rising death toll of civilians grinds on.  It's all so senseless.

                                                                       Destruction in Gaza

So often those who call for peace and an end to wars and the proliferation of armaments are mocked as naive and not living in the "real world." Even in nations which claim to be religious or Christian there are many "believers" who align themselves with the hawks rather than the doves of our troubled world. Certainly it is real that "rumours of wars" and conflicts persist, but is this what we want for our planet. Is this the "original sin" of humanity, that we choose war over peace in every age?

How can we be the disciples of Jesus today, ready to listen for his voice in the midst of the cacophany and stridence of the voices for violence? He still stands on the hillside saying "blessed are the peacemakers", the seemingly foolhardy message which is the truth which will set us free.