'Blessed are the peacemakers...'

This week a simple handshake has dominated the headlines as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II extended her hand to Martin McGuiness of Sinn Fein. In this act we not only saw a monarch extending a hand of peace to one of her subjects who had been engaged in violent rebellion but also a very personal gesture of forgiveness, since the IRA had murdered her own cousin and closest advisor, Lord Mountbatten.

It made me think about how we have offended and rebelled against heaven’s High King. As our creator we owed him joyful obedience but each one of us has personally grieved him by rebelling against his gentle rule. And yet, through the wounds of Jesus Christ, he is able to hold out a hand of peace to us.

Martin McGuiness’s act did not occur out of the blue. It took many years of painstaking labour by many individuals at all levels of society to reach this point. They ranged from ordinary Northern Irish people who courageously reached out across the barricades in different ways to those involved in high-level negotiations. Whilst we all know the names of the politicians involved – McGuiness, Adams, Paisley, Trimble, Blair and so on - the names of many of those peacemakers will never be known and yet it was really their acts, great and small, that achieved the process of reconciliation.

Jesus said ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. This is a much-quoted but much-misunderstood phrase. Jesus was not referring to those who bring an end to human conflict, commendable though that is. He was referring to the ending of that cosmic conflict between rebellious man and an angry God. Jesus offered up himself as a sacrifice of atonement to make peace between man and God – to turn away God’s righteous wrath. But who will make known this great Gospel of Peace, and bring people to lay hold of that great sacrifice offered on their behalf? For two thousand years, men and women have committed their lives to bringing their fellow creatures back into peaceful communion with their God. These individuals were derided and despised by the world, and perhaps are unknown and unremembered even by the Christian church today. Yet God has not forgotten. He knows their names. The Bible tells us that he is coming soon on the clouds of heaven and that his reward is with him. Then we will truly know how blessed are the peacemakers!