For Christians, peace is more than an ideal. Peacemaking is essential to what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus calls us to love our neighbours and our enemies, seek justice, welcome the stranger and reach across the things that divide us.
For more than 75 years, churches in Australia have acted together through Act for Peace in response to conflict and displacement. Today, as our world faces deepening division, violence and displacement, that calling remains as urgent as ever.
Peace is not simply something we hope for. Peace is something we practise. In Runyararo, Zimbabwe, something as simple as playing sport together is helping people build relationships, strengthen belonging and navigate conflict differently.
On International Day of Peace, we invited churches to worship and pray together, reflect on Christ’s call to peacemaking, and consider what practising peace might look like in their own communities. And that invitation extends far beyond a single day. It defines us, inspires us and motivates us to take action for a more peaceful world.
Theological Reflection: There is more to love than mercy, but never less
By Jarrod McKenna, Mobilisation Strategist
More than 75 years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Australian churches came together in compassionate action towards people seeking safety and life-saving assistance.
Spearheaded by Rev Frank Byatt, Christians were called to recognise Christ in the refugee, remembering in practice something at the heart of our faith: that people will know we are followers of Jesus not simply by what we say or believe, but by our love.
That calling remains.
Jesus calls us to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner and care for those who suffer. Love is never less than compassion in action. When people are displaced by conflict or disaster, love responds.
Yet there is more to love than the works of mercy, but never less.
As Desmond Tutu reminded us, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
Following Jesus also asks us to look upstream. Peacemaking in the way of Jesus confronts the injustice that causes suffering in the first place.
If mercy is what love looks like in private, Dr Cornel West reminds us that justice is what love looks like in public.
Jesus calls us to join him not only in responding to suffering, but in taking up our cross and seeking peace with justice so people and communities can flourish, on “earth as it is in heaven.”
The Church cannot be faithful to Jesus without taking up our cross and seeking first God’s kingdom, and God’s healing justice.
(Matt.6:33)
In Jesus, God reveals the nonviolent way of the Cross and Resurrection: a way that refuses domination and reaches across the boundaries we create between neighbour and stranger, deserving and undeserving, friend and enemy. It welcomes outsiders, restores relationships, confronts injustice and insists on the God-given dignity of every person.
This is why peace for the Christian can never simply mean the absence of conflict.
Peace means healing-justice and demands the recognition of the dignity of everyone.
It asks us to reimagine everything in light of Jesus. How we relate to every creature, all creation, and all communities. To notice who is excluded. Not to avoid conflict, but to seek its transformation through the healing justice of God’s reconciliation. To reach across difference. To welcome the stranger. To pray for our enemies. And to challenge the systems and structures that deny people the dignity of being made in the image of God.
Just as no one can baptise themselves, none of us can do this alone. Discipleship always calls us into community: not simply to attend church, but to be the Church. It is here, together in the power of the Holy Spirit, that we learn to live God’s love.
So, begin within yourself and with each other. We cannot ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’ if we have not learnt to love ourselves. From there we need to allow ‘passing the peace’ to be more than a Sunday ritual and deepen into the call to heal relationships before we gather each Sunday.
Don’t simply say your prayers, allow your life to become prayer. Invite someone unexpected around your table. Raise eyebrows by making a friend across a divide. Allow hospitality to be in your vocabulary not merely as an industry, but as a spiritual gift and regular practice. Speak up for the dignity of all, in every situation, when silence is so easy. In settings where some are not welcome, like Jesus make it awkward, in loving ways.
Small acts rarely make injustice any smaller. Yet those who are faithful in the small things are formed for integrity in larger and larger settings. We must keep what Jesus called the weightier matters of the Scriptures, justice, compassion and faithfulness. (Matt.23:23)
I am reminded of one of my mentors, Dr Vincent Harding, a key leader in the Civil Rights movement with Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who always used to say, “We in movement knew, Jesus means justice.” On this International Day of Peace, may we know that “Jesus means justice” and hear again,
Blessed are the peacemakers.
So others would see our lives and call us children of God.
Explore our free worship resources to help your congregation reflect on Christ’s call to peacemaking and what it means to practise peace together.
