Jeremy Ive on Peacebuilding and the Ending of Apartheid

The latest Cambridge Paper from the Jubilee Centre is available online, this one by Jeremy Ive:

Jeremy Ive, ‘Peacebuilding and the Ending of Apartheid’, Cambridge Papers 23, 2 (June 2014).

Here is the summary:

‘The Newick Park Initiative (NPI) in South Africa was a Christian initiative which helped to build the trust and a shared national vision across the political spectrum in the years around the release of Nelson Mandela in early 1990. It also prepared the ground for the mediation of Professor Washington Okumu in 1994 which made possible the peaceful conduct of the first fully non-racial elections of that year. The relational principles governing NPI are a guide for Christian peacebuilding at a national level, applicable in other contexts as well.

Tyler Wigg-Stevenson on (Not) Saving the World

An edited version of this review appeared in the November edition of EG, published by LICC.

Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, The World is Not Ours to Save: Finding the Freedom to Do Good (Downers Grove: IVP, 2013), 222pp., ISBN 9780830836574.

‘We don’t have to be the hero of the story, just the steward of our calling’, writes Tyler Wigg-Stevenson in this timely call for a ‘calibration check’ on what it means to have ‘a faithful commitment to doing good’. Although he has a certain kind of activism in sight, there is persuasive wisdom here for all who want to live out their faith in everyday life.

What makes the discussion particularly powerful is that Wigg-Stevenson writes not as a bystander on the Jericho Road, but as someone who gets his hands dirty. As founder of the Two Futures Project, a movement of Christians for the abolition of nuclear weapons, he can’t be easily accused of not caring about the world. Still, he has some straight challenges to the mindset that engages complex issues like poverty and ecology as if the world is ours to save.

So, part one of the book diagnoses the limits of the activist sensibility in which we paint ourselves as saviours (and there are some insightful pages here on our tendency to read ourselves into the heroes of biblical stories, where we are David defeating Goliath rather than one of the nameless bystanders). In addition is the danger of misdiagnosing the problem of our world, underestimating the brokenness of sin and overestimating our ability to fix things. Then there is the risk of depicting a God who is domesticated to serve our causes, along with being blinded to our own complicity in the pain of the human condition.

Part two – ‘a deeper calling’ – provides an alternative. Wigg-Stevenson offers a rich extended meditation on Micah 4:1-5 with its vision of peace with God, seen in worship, discipleship and evangelism, peace among the nations, involving justice, industry and nonaggression, and peace in community, marked by dignity, prosperity and security. God’s kingdom is a world order which God will bring about rather than which we will build. And it is precisely here that our confidence lies: since it is God’s to bring about, we needn’t worry that the welfare of history ultimately rests on our shoulders, and we can rejoice in the foretastes of the kingdom we see ahead of time. We live in its light, orientated towards the promised new world, where it is not our task to win the victory but to show through our lives that the victory has been won.

So, this is not an exhortation to passivity, still less a retreat from culture. The book concludes by proposing that a faithful and sustainable activism can be seen through the lens of calling. Wigg-Stevenson, who served as a study assistant to John Stott and to whom he dedicates the book, provides a moving tribute here to the man whose ‘apprehension of Christ’s supremacy and singularity led him to model a comprehensive embrace of vocation’. As such, Christian activism is most faithful when it is channeled through our primary calling to follow Jesus in whatever we do.

A Bigger Peace

[An edited version of the piece below appeared recently in EG, a publication from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.]

‘I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers”’, says someone to a group of people at the back of the crowd struggling to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. ‘What’s so special about the cheesemakers?’, intones a woman with a slight sneer, to which her husband replies: ‘Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.’ Behind the satire of this scene from the admittedly irreverent Monty Python’s Life of Brian lies the uncomfortable truth that it is all too easy not to take Jesus at his word. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ can sound like an ethereal platitude rather than the accolade of a distinctive characteristic of those blessed ones for whom God’s reign has dawned.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is the English word ‘peace’. Either it’s understood as the avoidance of something – conflict, violence, war – or it’s a limp, passive word, used to describe something as relatively trivial as the opportunity to put up one’s feet, as when the children have gone to bed and we say, ‘at last, some peace and quiet’.

By contrast, the overtones of the Old Testament word shalom and its New Testament counterpart are expansive – positive and strong. Absence of conflict and violence is certainly a factor, but only because there is harmony, health, wholeness, flourishing, prosperity, a well-ordered society with the establishment of social justice – all flowing from the salvation God himself brings. The big picture that emerges from the Bible’s references to shalom is a wellbeing that is holistic and fundamentally relational – harmonious relationships with God, with fellow human beings, with oneself, and with the environment.

As it turns out, Jesus’ beatitude puts us in touch with a rich theme that extends across Scripture, which carries significant implications for how we live as God’s people.

The God of Shalom

We’ll be in a better position to reflect on those implications if we first stake out the ground on which the biblical house of shalom is built, and we can do so by outlining four undergirding principles.

The first stake is that shalom comes from God, as a gift, and not as something we manufacture for ourselves. In the Old Testament, it’s bound up with God’s covenantal relationship with, and commitment to, his people. In Leviticus 26:6, when God says that he will keep his covenant, that he will be their God and they will be his people, he promises that he will ‘grant shalom in the land’ – where neither the danger of wild animals or warfare will threaten the people. The link with the covenant is also evident when Ezekiel promises the exiles a shepherd from the line of David, when God will make a ‘covenant of shalom’ with his restored people (34:25-31; 37:24-28).

How this longed-for gift of peace will come about is made clear in the second stake in the ground – that shalom comes through Christ. The Old Testament anticipates that God’s shalom will be mediated through a royal, messianic figure. Along with the promised shepherd of Ezekiel 34, Micah foresees that one will come from the tribe of Judah, who will shepherd God’s people, whose greatness will reach to the ends of the earth, who ‘will be our peace’ (5:2-5). And Isaiah speaks of a child to be born, a son who, among other things, will be called ‘prince of peace’, who will establish David’s throne (9:6-7). In the larger tapestry of the biblical story, these and other such promises find their fulfilment in Jesus, great David’s greater son, the son of God, the Prince of Peace. What the Old Testament prophets began to hope for from the Davidic king is finally realised through King Jesus.

Above all, the New Testament is clear that this promised shalom comes about through the cross. ‘Peace’ in Paul’s letters is intimately bound up with the death and resurrection of Christ. Ephesians alone makes this evident, as does Colossians, 2 Corinthians and Romans. In fact, so dominant is the theme of reconciliation in Paul’s letters that some scholars have wondered whether it is the centre-piece of his understanding of the cross – as that through which God brings about peace with sinful humanity. For Paul, Christ’s death and resurrection results in an objective reality of shalom between God and human beings – the peace that comes with reconciliation – which allows us to experience a subjective sense of shalom as God’s peace guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

The ones to whom he gives this gift is the third stake in the ground – that shalom is experienced in relationship with others. Believers in Christ, recipients of God’s shalom, are incorporated into the body of Christ with fellow recipients of God’s shalom. And Paul is clear that the promised shalom from God comes to Jew and Gentile alike – and men and women, and slave and free. All are caught up in his reign of peace.

Already, then, some implications emerge. How will we learn peace? By accepting shalom as a gift flowing from God’s covenantal love, by being formed by the death of Jesus which brings shalom, and by being immersed in a Christian community which is constituted by shalom, which lives it out in relationship with each other and in the face of the surrounding world.

And we do so, from the perspective of the fourth stake, in the confident hope that shalom will last for ever, that it is God’s end-time goal for the universe. The Old Testament prophets paint a picture of shalom to come in the future – when crookedness will be straightened out, when deserts will flower and mountains will stream with wine, when weeping will be no more and people will sleep freely, when instruments of war will be turned into implements of peace, when a lion will lie down with a lamb, when all nature will be fruitful and all humans knit together. And, above all, when all will look to God, walk with God, delight in God, and worship God with shouts of joy. We’re not there yet, of course (just in case you were wondering). We still hope and yearn for these things.

In Ephesians too, Paul outlines an amazing vision of how God is bringing harmony and peace to the cosmos. He’s brought men and women back to himself, even when we were dead in sins. And he’s reconciled Jews and Gentiles to each other, restoring fractured relationships, making one new person in Christ – the church – and filling the church with his Spirit. But all of this is a first installment of the final day when all things in heaven and earth will be brought together under one head, Christ – with everything in final harmony.

Seeing shalom as woven through the biblical narrative – of harmony lost and harmony restored – prevents it from becoming a mere slogan, wrenched out of its place in salvation history. Shalom is thus bound up with the gospel – not as an optional extra, but at its centre and as the final destination of the story.

The Way of Shalom

But because shalom is the final destination of the biblical story, it is also the direction in which the story is moving. As such, it undergirds our evangelistic activity, our working life, our physical and emotional wellbeing, our relationships with others and the environment, and our personal integrity. How might the dimensions of shalom be worked out in the everyday contexts in which we find ourselves?

Once again, we take our cue from Scripture. Apart from its place in the overarching biblical story, shalom also permeates different genres in the biblical library, all of which contribute to its multifaceted perspective. There are stories in which God uses his people – think of Joseph, Ruth, Daniel, Nehemiah, and Esther – to bring about wellbeing for others, sometimes cooperating with authorities, occasionally challenging them. There are laws which order relationships and address lack of fairness in the redistribution of land and restitution from slavery, which are concerned with the welfare and protection of the disadvantaged, which call for love of one another and aid of one’s enemy (e.g. Leviticus 19:33-34; 25; Deuteronomy 15:1-11). There is proverbial wisdom which commends a way of life conducive to human and societal flourishing – in the mundane matters of using honest scales, thinking before speaking, doing a good day’s work, being faithful to one’s spouse, and in bringing up children. There are expressions of faith in Psalms, where peace runs through both praise (29, 147) and lament (85, 120); where a prayer for the shalom of Jerusalem is not as a political end in itself, but ‘for the sake of my family and friends’ and ‘for the sake of the house of the Lord our God’ (Psalm 122:6-9). And there are prophetic calls to exercise the ethical dimension of shalom, where the desire for peace entails standing against oppression and striving for justice (e.g. Isaiah 26:1-6; 32:16-18; 59:1-9).

Most well-known, perhaps, is Jeremiah’s exhortation to ‘seek the shalom and prosperity of the city’ (29:7). This would not be so remarkable except that the city in view is not Jerusalem, but Babylon. How should God’s people live when their postcode puts them in exile? Jeremiah urges them to establish their presence there, to plan for the long haul – to get married, have children and grandchildren, build houses, plant gardens, grow produce, establish businesses – and to do so for the sake of the place and the people where they find themselves. The comprehensive nature of Jeremiah’s list shows that their ‘full-time ministry’ is to seek the shalom of the city in concrete ways. They still take their ultimate identity from the city of Zion, of course – which remains their true home – but something of that identity is lived out in ‘enemy’ territory.

That the New Testament uses the language of exile in describing Christian existence in the world means we too might learn what it means to ‘seek peace’ in specific locations – not just in cities, but in all the arenas where, as James and Peter say, we are ‘scattered’ (James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1). Neither taking over the institutions of society nor abdicating responsibility altogether, we exercise what sociologist James Davison Hunter has called a ‘faithful presence’ in the different places we find ourselves. Lest that phrase be misunderstood, the active seeking of shalom means that our ‘faithful presence’ is not to be reduced to a passive compliance with the status quo, especially where faithful presence is combined with faithful practice and faithful proclamation. And faithful prayer too – as Jeremiah’s exhortation reaches down through the centuries, calling God’s people to ‘pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper’ (29:7).

Of course, we recognise that full and final peace will be brought about only by God himself, yet we can be confident that something of that final harmony reaches into the present. And we are called to be its agents, to embody it in the realms of arts, business, education, family, law, media, and politics. We live as those who know of God’s yearning for things to be put right, his heart for the restoration of human beings, of his creation, and of our role in that – in seeking peace, making peace, proclaiming peace, living peace – as God equips us to be agents of shalom, models of shalom, witnesses to shalom, seeking the way of peace in line with the Prince of Peace.

Further Reading

Graham A. Cole, God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom (Nottingham: Apollos, 2009).

Amy L. Sherman, Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good (Downers Grove: IVP, 2011).

Ann Spangler, The Peace God Promises: Closing the Gap Between What You Experience and What You Long For (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).

Elmer Martens on Numbers 6:24-26

Elmer Martens, ‘Intertext Messaging: Echoes of the Aaronic Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26)’, Direction 38, 2 (2009), 163-78.

Understanding intertextuality as ‘the process of invoking a text, either through direct quotation or through allusion, as a way of adding color and depth to the topic under discussion’, Elmer Martens here explores how the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24-26 is echoed by other biblical writers.

The Priestly Benediction (Numbers 6:24-27)

He begins with some reflections on the blessing itself, a three-line prayer followed by a concluding explanation:

‘The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.

The benediction, he notes, is to be spoken by ‘Aaron and his sons’ (Num. 6:22; cf. Deut. 10:8; 21:5). The Lord is the subject of each line, and it is best to think of it as three petitions rather than six – with each line containing a call on God to act, followed by an outcome of his action. The first petition is for blessing, the second is about guarding and protecting, while the third – make his face shine – ‘expresses contentment and joy and points to favorable acceptance’.

‘In sum, the Aaronic benediction is a petition to God for beneficence to be shown to a people, a beneficence couched in six verbs: bless, keep, make a face to shine, be gracious, lift up countenance, and give peace.

Old Testament Echoes

Martens goes on to explore some Old Testament echoes of the priestly benediction, notably in Psalms 67 and 121.

Psalm 67 begins: ‘May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us’ (67:1). Here, however, the intended blessing ‘is desired, not in the interests of individuals or even of Israel, but in the interests of God’s salvation becoming known to peoples everywhere’, as seen in the next line of the Psalm: ‘so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations’ (67:2). The prayer for blessing functions ‘as a channel for God’s revelation and salvation to nations’. And Psalm 67 goes on to describe what is entailed in this ‘blessing’. As Martens summarises:

‘God’s favor on a people is sought for the ultimate benefit of the peoples of the world. The ancient benediction, Israel-focused, has become globally-focused. Its dimensions are distant both in geography and in chronology In short, the Psalm in its reuse of the priestly blessing tweaks it in three ways. “Blessing” is about physical productivity. Blessing also has a decidedly spiritual dimension, one having to do with knowing God’s salvation. And thirdly, the benediction is given a missional thrust.’

While Psalm 67 reflects on the ‘blessing’ part of the priestly benediction, Psalm 121 echoes the ‘keeping’ part, with forms of that word appearing six times in this Psalm of Ascent. The Lord watches over his people not just on their occasional journeys but ‘now and forevermore’ (121:8). As Martens notes, ‘the ancient ritual is “tweaked” to encompass the image of a journey, be that the physical ascent to Jerusalem, or symbolically, the journey of life’.

New Testament Echoes

Martens suggests that an echo of the priestly benediction might be seen not at the end of Paul’s letters so much as at their start, in the regular greeting – with the ‘grace and peace to you’ reminiscent of the final sentence of the priestly prayer, ‘And be gracious to you... and give you peace’.

This isn’t as straightforward as it might appear, as Martens himself notes, since the Greek translation of Numbers 6 uses eleeo (normally rendered with ‘show mercy’, ‘be merciful’, etc.), whereas Paul uses a form of charis in his greetings. Of course, charis and eleos are closely related (cf. Ps. 86:15; Exod. 34:6), and Paul’s frequently-added words ‘from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ in his greetings are odd if they are ‘little more than a conventional form of “hello”’. Martens summarises:

‘Granted, it may still be something of a reach to regard Paul’s salutation in his letters as a re-use of the priestly blessing. But, while speculative, it is not an unreasoned reach. If the echo of Paul’s salutation of “grace and peace” is less than sharp, but distant... there is an echo nevertheless. The exercise of intertextuality is more than matching some words; it is realizing the power of ancient texts now hinted at, now expounded. More than repetition or echo is involved.’

Martens concludes his article by noting, among other things, the benefit to preachers of attending to intertexts – by paying attention to how Scripture itself elaborates on ‘blessing’ and ‘keeping’, by seeing how other passages show ‘what it means to live under divine benediction’.

Andy Crouch on a New Kind of Urban Ministry

Andy Crouch, ‘A New Kind of Urban Ministry’, Christianity Today (28 October 2011).

‘This is Our City’ is a multiyear Christianity Today project spotlighting the ways Christians are ‘seeking comprehensive flourishing’ in six cities in the U.S. It looks very interesting, and I’ll be curious to see how it might play out in the UK context.

Andy Crouch has an excellent article here, which introduces the project by reflecting on what he calls ‘a new kind of urban ministry’.

He begins with what we know – that cities are thriving, that they are ‘the destination of choice for many young adults... and the hub of revivals in food, architecture, and entrepreneurship’, that even ‘many suburbs are now taking cues from the ‘social fabric of cities’, where the ‘markers of the good life are increasingly urban’.

There is, he says, a shadow side to these trends, that ‘not every city is thriving’, and that ‘thriving is in the eye of the beholder’. And yet ‘renewed cities, and our culture’s renewed interest in what makes for thriving places, are an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the biblical mission that is meant to prepare us for the city whose builder and maker is God’.

He notes the wide use of the biblical model of the exile for urban ministry, that ‘while the exilic prophets never gave up promising a return to the Promised Land, they also exhorted the exiles that exile was an opportunity for faithfulness and mission’ In this respect, ‘Jeremiah’s injunction to seek the peace of the city where God had sent his people (Jer. 29) has become a touchstone for a generation of urban Christians’.

And yet, as he points out, ‘there is one overwhelmingly obvious difference between the Hebrew exiles and Christ-followers in 21st-century cities: the Hebrew exiles were captives. Churches in every American city, on the other hand, are full of proud citizens and hardworking visitors, not captives. Most of us are not hapless exiles; we are purposeful arrivals.’

This, I think, is a crucial point to note in the current surge of enthusiasm for all things ‘urban’ on the part of many Christians.

As something of a personal aside, Christian have rightly been warned about applying the wonderful promises in Jeremiah 29 to themselves without taking account of the original exilic context; but I have been wondering recently whether a whole raft of readers are now in danger of unthinkingly applying to themselves and their particular ‘group’ the commission to seek the shalom of the city without also taking account of the original exilic context. Of course, this doesn’t mean Jeremiah 29 has nothing to say to urban situations today; only that we exercise due caution in how we appropriate it and the implications we draw from it– not least given the fact that salvation history has moved forward.

Crouch goes on:

‘Is there a biblical model, then, that describes better the situations of churches and Christians in cities today – that retains the valuable features of Exodus and Exile while accounting for our responsibility for our communities? Yes, and it is rooted in the 50 days that make us Christians – from Resurrection, through Ascension, to Pentecost. This story redefines our relationship not just to God but to our world. It is a story summed up in one word, Expectation, that keeps us rooted in and responsible for the flourishing of the world precisely because we have a hope outside of history in the usual sense.’

Resurrection, he says, ‘anchors this story’. ‘The exiles had Isaiah’s words of hope for future restoration. But in Jesus’ resurrection, the restoration of all things has already begun – it is not just future, but here in its earliest stages. It is not only possible, but achieved. Resurrection empowers us to live infinitely more boldly than exiles who wait to see whether God will come through.’

Furthermore, ‘rather than an imperial takeover, Jesus commissions his people for what has turned out to be a lengthy and thorough process of bearing witness to his lordship’. Hence, ‘when we say “this is our city,” then, we are staking a claim to a certain kind of Christian responsibility... Not the chastened diligence of exiles captive to an earthly power, but the eager investment of those sent to a place by the Spirit’s power, graced with more resources than they deserve and a longer view of the world’s story than anyone else could imagine’.

‘Peace, Peace’, Where There is No Peace?

[I contributed today’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.]

A generation of people know where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I missed that by (ahem) a few years, but I belong to those who will forever remember where they were when they heard the news of the hijacked planes being flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., eight years ago today.

How do you remember it?

Maybe your recollections will be coloured by the convictions earlier this week of Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Ali Sarwar, and Tanvir Hussain, who were found guilty of a plot to use liquid bombs to blow up transatlantic airliners.

Maybe you’re still wondering about the whys and wherefores of the recent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

In all this, Christians are not immune from questions about balancing justice with compassion, or from the shock and sense of outrage that comes with attacks on a nation’s territorial integrity, or from the feelings of fear that might arise as a result.

As always, though, our engagement with these issues is rooted in a life of discipleship nurtured by relationship with Christ and reflection on Scripture. Our faith is defined by gospel interests before it is defined by geopolitical interests.

What we know of God assures us that nothing falls outside his providential rule. What we know of sin reminds us that ‘wars and rumours of wars’ will be a mark of the present age, one of the many consequences of our rebellion against God and our alienation from each other, and that we are on shaky ground when we divide the world into ‘evil’ people and ‘good’ people without recognising that the axis of evil runs through each of our hearts. What we know of redemption tells us that far from abandoning the world, God has loved it so much and given his Son for it.

Christians of all people, then, are ideally placed to understand the reality and seriousness of evil, telling the story of the God who will one day still the forces of chaos and make all things new. The gospel of God – as revealed in Scripture and testified to by the Church – shapes our engagement and gives the resources to respond, offering peace and hope to a confused and hurting world.

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For further reflection on this topic, see Nick Solly Megoran, The War on Terror: How Should Christians Respond? (Nottingham: IVP, 2007). Check out the publisher’s page here and the author’s homepage here.