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Good morning.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers’, says Jesus addressing the crowd, ‘For they will be called children of God’. Like most of the other groups on whom he invokes a blessing during his Sermon on the Mount, the catch is in the tense. As with the meek, the mournful and the merciful, their reward awaits them in the future, its coming will be part of the breaking in of God’s Kingdom. In the meantime, their lot may not be so fortunate.

For the last few years I have served as Bishop Visitor to the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. Formed in 1937, it was one of the groups that inspired the founding of the Week of Prayer for World Peace which ends on Sunday. Pacifists are often caricatured as cowardly or lacking in patriotism. Yet in their commitment to peacemaking, a commitment undimmed in even the least promising seasons, they rank among the bravest and most determined people I know. Christians among them seek out in practice something that the theologian Tertullian first wrote around the year 200AD, that when Jesus disarmed St Peter, he disarmed every soldier. Whilst I don’t count myself as a pacifist, I believe that the voice of pacifism has a proper part to play in all conversations about peace and conflict, and yet it remains a voice that often goes unheard.

So today, I want to pray for all peacemakers, pacifists and others, that their voice may not be silenced amid the rattling of sabres. That, especially when conflict seems close, we will listen to their protestations, and be prepared, even if we ultimately fall short, to strive again for peace. Amen.