It was just a couple months before I began serving here at Christ & St. Luke’s that Russia launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And so, from the time I arrived here as your priest we have been witness to war. A little more than 18 months after that, on October 7 2023, Hamas carried out their massacre in Israel, further escalating the ongoing conflict in that region. In response, Israel officially entered into a war in Gaza which persists to this day and which has spilled over into Lebanon, Yemen, and now Iran. And though they are many miles from our shores these conflicts have sent fissures through our society here in America as well, creating social and cultural conflicts that every arena in our society is finding it difficult to navigate.

Through all that time, we, here at Christ & St. Luke’s, have prayed for peace and an end to these conflicts. And we have, at times, shared statements The Episcopal Church and its partners have made about these wars in Ukraine and Gaza so you could understand how our tradition was publicly articulating its position. 

But with the recent escalations of these wars, I have felt it is perhaps necessary to speak with a little more specificity about what we pray for when we pray for peace. 

And to do that, what I would like to do is articulate what are some of the current impediments to peace as I understand them: 

• Invading another sovereign nation, without provocation and refusing to stop, as Russia has done to Ukraine, is an impediment to peace. 
• The atrocious attacks by Hamas on October 7 and their taking of hostages, keeping them in inhumane conditions, and allowing them to die rather than release them is an impediment to peace. 
• The killing of over 50,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are non-combatants, many of whom are children, is an impediment to peace. 
• The use of starvation and mass displacement of a civilian population as leverage to achieve military objectives, is an impediment to peace. 
• The funding and arming of terrorist organizations to threaten and attack Israel as Iran has done with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis is an impediment to peace. 
• Iran’s development of a nuclear bomb when one of its core tenets is the elimination of the state of Israel, is an impediment to peace. 
• Bombs and missiles rather than diplomacy are, in general, an impediment to peace. They may achieve submission, but that’s not the same as peace. 

Many share in the impediments to peace right now. But as I have been reflecting on the events of the last week, what I see as the biggest impediment to peace is what I will call “enemy ideology.”

Across the Middle East and in Ukraine, we have entire nations and organizations and peoples who say, “If given the chance, we will kill you.” Which has recalled for me something that Pádraig Ó Tuama said when he came last fall. Reflecting on the peace work he did in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, he said that the first step in any peace work is for the two sides to agree not to kill each other. It may have sounded a little simplistic at the time but I’ve come to see the profundity of it. Because so long as even one of the sides says, “If given the chance, we will kill you,” that causes the other side to say, “Not if I kill you first,” and so under the auspices of defense or preemptive protection they are justified in attacking. And that attack brings upon retaliatory attacks which in turn justify further attacks and round and round it goes. 

What would lead to lasting peace is if countries did not have as their sworn intent the desire to eliminate other countries or people. The quickest way to end all these wars would be for people to decide not just to cease fire but to give up their enemy ideology. Until then, not only will there be no peace, but there will be no trust. And trust is essential to any sort of lasting peace. Without it everyone is left on edge, ready to fight at the slightest provocation and always afraid for their safety. That is not peace. 

Now, I am informed enough to know that there are decades, centuries, (millennia even) of grievances tied up in the enemy ideology in these conflicts. To wish it away is impractical, impossible even. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pray for it: for a full conversion of mind and heart, which might lead eventually to a change in policy. Because unless that enemy ideology changes, I don’t see any change coming in the Middle East or in Ukraine. Wars and rumors of wars will continue to pop up, generating new grievances and new generations of angry individuals, intent on retribution and revenge and on and on we will go. 

But while hoping for a conversion from this “enemy ideology” may seem like the most impossible thing to wish for given the current conflicts and the participants involved, in a way, it’s also actually the one thing I feel like I can take some action on and make a difference with. Because while we may be seeing an example of what comes from an “enemy ideology” being displayed on global scale at the moment, last week also brought such an ideology closer to home when a man made a list of dozens of people he understood to be his mortal enemies because they were his political enemies, and then went about trying to kill them. He was successful enough in his plan to make my soul shudder. For this was the same way of thinking which is at the root of the conflagrations in the Middle East and increasingly in Eastern Europe and it was terrifying to see it playing out here. 

But one thing I can do, one thing we can do to make our prayers for peace into actions and not just words, is to refuse to fall victim to that same kind of enemy thinking, refuse to see even those people we find odious and awful and wrong as our enemy, especially our mortal enemy. Because one thing our Christian faith is clear about is refuting any sort of enemy ideology. “But I say to you who are listening,” Jesus says, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who abuse you.” Which is nice in theory; almost impossible in practice. Of all of Jesus’ challenging teachings, this one may be the most difficult. Which means it’s probably really important for us to be working on. Because I think Jesus knew that the only actual way to stop the cycle of violence, to jam the gears of aggression that continue to churn and drive us to destruction, is to change the way we treat our enemies. This same point is echoed by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.’Instead, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” 

When applied to the world today, such an approach may seem more idealistic than realistic. It certainly does not constitute a strategy or a policy. But it does constitute a worthwhile prayer, a prayer we can enact in our lives as a way of helping ourselves and maybe even others to believe that peace is possible. “Blessed are the peacemakers” Jesus said. “Seek peace and pursue it” the Psalmist exhorts. Our prayers for peace must be supported by our working for peace, and one of the ways to work for peace is to reject “enemy ideology,” because we see it for the endless cycle of wars, big and small, that it will lead to.

And so, for our part here at the parish, that is what we will continue to do. We will continue to pray for peace: for people to stop killing each other, for the allowance of food and aide to those in desperate need, and for diplomatic rather than violent solutions to these conflicts. And most fervently of all, we will pray for and practice an end to the ideologies that teach people to see others as their mortal enemies in the hopes that such a conversion can lead to what we long for: a world we see articulated in the visions of Isaiah, that prophet of the peaceable kingdom, in which all people “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; and nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.” 

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.  

Fr. Noah