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| "Fresh olives undergo washing at an olive mill in the Arraba village, Jenin governorate, before being processed for oil extraction, 22 October 2026. Photo by OCHA." |
These days, we're in the middle of the olive harvest season in Palestine—and of the violence that, with sad predictability, attends this season. And here in the USA, we're about to harvest the midterm election results in just a few days, with all the tension that has been building up over months of ferocious and sometimes vicious campaigning.
As I follow these stories now, memories of my own modest participation in the Palestinian olive harvest, back in October-November 2019, come flooding back. (So do memories of the two kittens that joined our Hebron-based Christian Peacemaker Team that autumn. More about them below.) The following meditation is from that season, seven years ago:
Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Ephesians 6:14-15, NIV; context.
After years of reading Ephesians on the "whole armor of God" (and hearing sermons, reading commentaries, and so on), last Sunday I finally paid attention to one word that has always slipped by me: the readiness, or preparedness, that comes from the gospel of peace.
It's easy for me to see why I skipped that word. The structure of the other metaphors in Ephesians 6:12-16 are crisp two-word associations:
belt — truth
breastplate — righteousness
shield — faith
... but it's not "shoes — peace," even though my eyes tended to make that contraction.
Different translations into English vary on whether we're supposed to emphasize readiness to proclaim the gospel of peace, or the readiness that comes from that gospel, but either way I find this specific quality fascinating. For myself, I interpret this passage as a call to be alert, attentive, available, to make the connections between the evil we witness and—more and more as we gain practice—apply the peaceable gospel to our situation.
After all, the whole context of these "armor" metaphors is our struggle against the spiritual forces of evil—a struggle that is not against a human enemy, according to Ephesians, even though recorded history shows how we habitually ascribe evil to our flesh-and-blood "enemies" and miss the larger struggle entirely.
Looking around at our painfully divided world, torn apart by racism, nationalism, class warfare, involuntary migration, and environmental damage (abetted by corporate indifference and popular complacency), it is amazing how directly the whole New Testament challenges our number one primordial sin: the ways we objectify each other, and over time, the ways those patterns of objectification solidify into evil structures. Early on, the letter to the Ephesians applies the gospel of peace to these old patterns:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. Ephesians 2:13-17, NIV.
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| "Russian War against Ukraine. 2022, Orthodox Churches Destroyed." Source. |
What does "readiness" to apply the gospel of peace in our time and place look like for you, for me? I hope we will be less content to jump to convenient conclusions about the obvious villains our politicians or activists want us to hate. Will we be more ready to do the hard work of diagnosing the structures that provide the controls and incentives for those agents of division?
What does this "readiness" mean for our own division of labor in the church? Are there experiments in nonviolence that we need to support, or start? Are there prophets among us, who have insights into the way our structures and traditions and habits become corrupt, and whom we need to encourage—first of all by listening to them? If you, reading this, are one of those prophets or experimenters, tell us how you are connecting the gospel of peace to the Lamb's War against bondage. How can the church as a whole become more ready to support you?
(Original post, October 31, 2019.)
My blog posts from autumn 2019 documented our Christian Peacemaker orphan kittens, starting with this post and ending here. In my imagination, on one Sunday I became a kitten, too.
On one of my first days in Hebron, our group visited an extended family that was expecting their four homes to be demolished as a result of the alleged participation of one family member in the murder of a young Israeli man. Toward the end of my visit I was part of a photo team documenting that demolition. As I read today's news of what passes for law enforcement in that land, those memories haunt me.
Elderchaplain Greg Morgan on going gentle into that good night....
Things Philip Gulley learned at Fairfield Friends Meeting.
"The best days of our lives." Brian Zahnd looks back on his Camino de Santiago experience.
Daniel Silliman: "This is the fight I think about all the time: Mark Noll vs. Francis Schaeffer, 1982."
A prayer for All Hallows Eve.
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram and Chris Cain, "My Dog and Me."
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