Everyday Peacemakers Needed

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Special to United Methodist Insight | Oct. 7, 2025

The late advice columnist, Ann Landers, shared a letter about a peacemaker in one of her newspaper columns.

Esther "Eppie" Pauline Lederer began writing the "Ask Ann Landers" column in 1955 and continued for 47 years. The letters she published and her incisive advice always packed an emotional punch that resonated with her 90 million readers.

In this case, the letter writer who signed herself, “Alive and Well in Ohio,” didn’t need advice:

“Dear Ann, several years ago when I was 22, I attended a party at which I drank several glasses of festive spiked punch. Though I knew good and well that I was intoxicated, I decided to drive home. A platonic friend named Ed stopped me at the door and tried to persuade me not to drive.

“I argued with him, insisted I was perfectly OK, but he refused to give up. It ended in an ugly scene with me hitting and kicking him because he took my car keys away and wouldn’t give them back.

Finally, exhausted and crying, I gave in and Ed drove me home… How I hated him that night! “

Years later, after she was married and had children and had been out of touch with her friend Ed for years, “Alive and Well in Ohio” said, “I think of Ed often. What a special friend he was to take the kicks and blows and all that ugliness because he thought my life was in danger.  If I ever see Ed again, I want to tell him what his persistence and courage have meant to me all these years.”

Ed is the very definition of what it means to be a peacemaker, and what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.”

William Barclay wrote, in his commentary about this passage, “The peace which the Bible calls blessed does not come from evasion of issues; it comes from facing them, dealing with them and conquering them. What this beatitude demands is not the passive acceptance of things because we are afraid of the trouble of doing anything about them, but the active facing of things, and the making of peace, even when the way to peace is through struggle.”

There is usually a price to be paid for being a peacemaker. And this is why we often avoid the responsibility.

Domestic abuse needs peace

Child abuse and spouse abuse frequently go unreported because someone wants to keep peace in the family. The result is that the abuse continues and lives are destroyed that might have been saved. Peace keeping is not the same as peace making.

Years ago, a 13-year-old girl named Deanna Young, from Santa Anna, California, turned her parents in to the police after hearing a lecture about drug abuse at her church. Deanna just walked into the police station with a bag containing marijuana, pills and $2,800 worth of cocaine and said, “Here, these belong to my parents.” Her parents were arrested and bound over for trial.

Deanna was taken to a shelter for abused and abandoned children. The judge agreed to drop felony cocaine charges against her parents if they completed a six-month drug rehabilitation program. They agreed, and their daughter was allowed to return home. Deanna’s actions inspired at least five other young people in California to take similar actions against their parents.

One wonders what Deanna would say about her actions now that she is a middle-aged woman. Were her parents healed and did they forgive her for what she did? Indeed, did they thank her for possibly saving their lives?

We cannot be certain of the outcome when we seek to make peace.  Peacemaking is about truth-telling. Peacemaking requires faith that the truth told and acted on in love will, in the long run, result in healing and wholeness for all involved. The prophet Zechariah said, “…speak the truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace…”

Peacemaking is Risky

Beware of prophets, politicians, and church leaders who seek to avoid conflict by promoting a superficial peace. The prophet Jeremiah condemned the false prophets of his day for having “… healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

Peacemaking is risky business. It takes great courage and faith, and sometimes involves painful sacrifice. Be careful when speaking the truth about those in power. John the Baptist was beheaded for reminding King Herod Antipas that his marriage to his brother Phillip’s wife was a violation of Mosaic Law.

The late Congressman John Lewis showed that peacemaking is sometimes about making what he called “good trouble.” Lewis led a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965 to demand voting rights for Black citizens. As the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were brutally attacked by Alabama state troopers and sheriff's deputies using clubs, whips, and tear gas. Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and the violent images broadcast on national television galvanized public support for the Civil Rights Movement and led to the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Congressman Lewis, who was also an ordained Baptist minister, told a graduating class at Bates College in 2016, “I got in the way; I got in trouble – good trouble, necessary trouble.”  

In 1985, South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu came upon an angry crowd beating a man they believed to be a police informant. Their intention was to burn him alive on top of his car. Tutu, who was coming from a funeral and still in his clerical robe, fell on top of the man and took the blows. He then helped the man to his own car and drove him through the mob to safety.

The bishop, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, told reporters, “Our country is going to destroy itself unless we sit down and talk.”

The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “How to Preach the Miracles.” Email him.