The drift of Jesus’ presentation of the Beatitudes might be paraphrased by Jesus as “Blessed are those following me, for they shall be called Christ-Followers.” I could spend time on each of the beatitudes in depth, for they become a charter of compassionate values proposed by Jesus to his followers.
I want to focus on particular: “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they will be called children of God.” During the Vietnam War, I and many students opposed the war that seemed senseless, with body counts on television every night. It seemed grotesque and senseless killing, contradicting everything I believed as a Christian, a Christ-follower. By first year in divinity school, a group of Jesuit priests and students joined nearly ten thousand protesters at the Boston Federal Building on Tremont Street.

I had been reading and studying a book on non-violence of Jesus by Samuel Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, how he denied the Zealot or Jewish nationalist movement to Roman occupation. Various branches of the movement used assassination, killing, and violence to overthrow the Romans. One branch the Sicarii, translated “dagger-men” or assassins, were Jewish terrorists who would slip a short dagger into a targeted Jewish collaborators or Roman in a crowded market to create an panic and anxiety. Josephus, the Jewish historian writes about them:

… a different type of bandits sprang up in Jerusalem, the so-called sicarii, who murdered men in broad daylight in the heart of the city. Especially during the festivals they would mingle with the crowd, carrying short daggers concealed under their clothing, with which they stabbed their enemies. Then when they fell, the murderers would join in the cries of indignation and, through this plausible behavior, avoided discovery. (Quoted in Richard A. Horsley, “The Sicarii: Ancient Jewish “Terrorists,” The Journal of Religion, October 1979.)
The Sicarii might be today labeled urban terrorists, targeting Temple priests and Jewish leaders who cooperated with the Romans. At that time, biblical scholarship attempted to link Judas Iscariot with the Sicarii and another disciple of Jesus, Simon the Zealot. Though the Sicarii were the descendants from earlier Jewish resistant movements before the birth of Jesus, they did not fully exercise their program of terrorism until a full decade after the death of Jesus.

The question that confronted me as seminarian and committed follower of Christ was what was my obligation to oppose the war. I was studying in Cambridge, several blocks from Harvard Square where the Students for Democratic Society protested. The extremist wing of the SDS were the Weathermen who believed in violence or bombing to achieve their ends.

Naturally, I found myself not drawn to the SDS or the Weatherman wing, but my opposition originated from the verse in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers…” Christ-followers could protest and be non-violent.
Going back to the Federal Building protest in Boston, there were 10,000 protesters and a large contingent of Jesuit seminarians and priests. I sat back of an elderly priest from Boston College. On the other side of the streets, there was the Boston riot police, hundreds of policemen with riot helmets and their batons drawn. They seemed to be ready to tear into crowd. I can still see some of the faces of the policemen; they seemed terrified and angry at the crowd. Thousands of protesters sat down non-violently to close off access to the federal building. They were warned to clear out and given a time period, and then the police charged and hitting protesters indiscriminately with the billy-clubs. The elder Jesuit priest sitting down peacefully and praying his rosary beads was struck by a police officer forcefully across his scull, and he bled profusely. Several of us carried the dazed priest away to an ambulance. There is often a price to pay for non-violent protest.

I found myself anxious and fearful at the charge of the riot police. I am not sure how many young and old folks were injured that day. There was no counter-violence from the protesters. That day I realized how much contrast that there was between Jesus’ spirituality of non-violence and the institutional culture’s spirituality of violence. Jesuit peace activist Father John Dear writes,

“Blessed are the violent,” the culture declares. “Blessed are the proud, the arrogant, the powerful, those who dominate others, those who oppress the poor, those who support the systems of domination.” They supposedly own everything—yet they shall inherit nothing. (Dear, Jesus the Rebel)

The culture of violence only breeds further violence. The heroes and heroines of non-violence express what Jesus exemplified in his ministry of God’s kingdom. He incarnated God’s spirituality of non-violence, peace-making, and compassionate love.

Shortly after the incident at the federal building protest, I made a Buddhist retreat at a Trappist monastery with a Japanese Buddhist teacher. I was drawn to Buddhism as I studied the Buddhist religion formally at Harvard because it was the most non-violent religion in human history. The followers of Christ were non-violent for nearly three centuries, and the followers of Christ were pacifists, challenging the military might of the Roman Empire. It took Constantine to co-opt the early Jesus movement from non-violence into an institutional culture of violence and domination. Subsequently, Christianity with some noteworthy exceptions has been one of the most violent religions in history.
For example, Francis of Assisi preached, “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” That day at the protest I had to learn not to make the police the enemy and to forgive them for their violence as Christ did on the cross: “Abba God, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Christ forgave the Romans who flogged him mercilessly, who nailed his wrists and ankles to the cross, who pierced him with a lance, and the culture of violence that crucified him to silent his voice.

God’s spirituality of peace-making and non-violence crosses history, cultures, and other religions. The folks that I speak about today are children of God. Let me demonstrate to you this morning the lineage of God’s spirituality of non-violence. God’ spirituality of non-violence crosses cultures and history/ Mahatma Gandhi, one of the 20th century major architects of non-violence, went to London University in England. He explored various religious paths while in London. He became acquainted with the writings of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, especially his book What I Believe, where he talks about his conversion based on Jesus’ sermon on Mount, the life of Francis of Assisi, the tale of Barlaam and Josaphat, and the Buddha in India.

Let me tell you the story of Barlaam and Josaphat. It is a story very popular in medieval Latin Christianity, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Christianity, Armenia Christianity, and Arabic and Persian languages as well. Barlaam, an Egyptian monk, went to India to preach the gospel of Christ and renunciation of wealth to live poorly among the poor. An Indian prince, Josaphat, heard is preaching and gave up wealth and family to become a monk to preach the gospel of Christ. This tale in the lives of the saints was partially responsible for the conversion of Leo Tolstoy to Christianity. In fact, Josaphat is a canonized saint in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Tolstoy had a profound influence upon Mahatma Gandhi who rediscovered non-violence from his Indian religious roots of ahimsa, non-violence with Buddhist and Jain traditions. His appropriation of non-violence became the central feature of his spirituality to combat white supremacism and racism in South Africa and then later in his struggle to help free India from English domination and oppression. Gandhi once observed, “Jesus was the most active person of nonviolence in the history of the world and the only people who don’t know Jesus was nonviolent are Christians. ….”

Later young Martin Luther King Jr, with the encouragement of gay activist Bayard Ruskin, studied Gandhi’s writings on nonviolent struggle for freedom. It became the main core of King’s struggle for civil rights of African-Americans until his assassination. King and his non-violent Christianity became the basis of the civil rights movements of the feminist movement, the farmer’s boycott Cesar Chavez, and the gay/lesbian civil rights movement.

I was introduced to the story of Barlaam and Josaphat while studying in class at Harvard with Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, the father of Comparative Religion at Harvard University. As Dr. Smith traced the translation of the fable through Latin, Greek, Armenian, Arabic and Persian translations, he came to the translation of Josaphat in Persian as “Bodisaf.” Bodisaf is related to the Sanskrit Bodhisattva, and it was clear that the Bodhisattva referred to Saiddartha Gautama the Buddha. The Buddha was and is still is a canonized saint in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I always like this as a Christian, as well as some Buddhists claim that Jesus is the future Buddha Maitreya, the Buddha of Love who will return at the end of time.

When the Dalai Lama came to Harvard in 1979, I met with him with three other students who were studying Tibetan language. The Dalai Lama was influenced in his struggles for non-violence and peace-making for nearly most of life when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1949. He has represented the non-violence of Buddhism, but his strategy was shaped by Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. in the US.

Let me add a few more heroes to the list. One is the Buddhist activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was the daughter of the Burmese General Aung San, who was understood as the George Washington of Burmese independence from Japan and the English. I had her husband Professor Michael Aris at Harvard, and we read parts of her manuscript in developing Gandhi’s and the Dalai Lama’s, and the Buddha’s values of non-violence.

I could go one and speak about the intersection of the Jesuit activist non-violence and poet, Father Daniel Berrigan, with Martin Luther King Jr. and their connection with another Buddhist peace-maker Thich Nhat Hanh. There are other Christians that I could mention—Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Oscar Romero, and many others. These are circles of overlapping practices of God’s spirituality of non-violence.

God’s spirituality of non-violence and peacemaking, despite institutional cultures of violence, continue to flourish under the Holy Spirit who does not respect religious institutional boundaries. Let me finish with the Jesuit John Dear,

Then as we share in paschal mystery (of Jesus’ cross and resurrection), we not only promote the coming of justice, but we welcome God’s reign. As we willingly suffer for justice, refuse to retaliate with further violence, and pursue the truth of justice and peace until our dying breath, we rejoice, we share the lot of the saints, the prophets, the martyrs, and Jesus himself. In this joy, the non-violent reign of God is at hand. (John Dear, Jesus the Rebel)

May God’s spirituality of non-violence triumph, for blessed are the peace-makers, they are the children of God. I have been proud to rub shoulders and read the spiritual insights of these children of God.