Engaging with the reading of Matthew 5:38-48, Tim Reardon tackled the topic of peace. The Christian peace tradition was Tim’s draw to the Mennonite denomination during the build-up to the second Iraq war.

This is peace not relegated to our hearts while taking up arms against enemies, nor as an ideal or demand or a work or a law, nor peace a feeling — but peace as a way of being. This peace cannot be grasped or owned, but something sought after and which by God’s grace seeks after us. It is inhabited with and for others. For Tim, this became a non-negotiable in his faith walk.

Quoting Isaac Villegas, a Mennonite pastor of Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship in North Carolina, describes something similar. “… Living in a country committed to endless wars, living in a nation-state where Christianity functions as the dominant religious logic for the people in power, I had to become part of a historic peace church if I wanted to somehow still identify myself as a Christian. I need to be part of a community of non-violence extending beyond my historical moment, and extending beyond my city and state, beyond this country, that teaches me how to pray against violence, that shows me how to live against violence.”

Though historically not all anabaptists were non-violent when the movement started, the movement that lasted came to conclude that the sword must be rejected. This stance was threatening. This tradition is as old as the church itself. The dominant position of the church before Constantine was that Christians should not serve in the military. Despite what a fringe idea this may seem in the American church today, Christian non-violence was central to the early church, including refusal to participate in the military.

Yet there is no black and white here. These are just some reflections on peace. It is not a law or a doctrine. We live in a world of incredible complexity. But it is the form of Jesus who bears the cross. In the face of increasingly globalized militarism today, what does it mean for us to be people of peace?

But today’s focus is around the word nonresistance. The spirit guides us to resist evil without violence.

Hear this and more as Tim addresses the idea of what it does mean for us to be people of peace:

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