Making What Peace is Left For Us

In his  short story, Pray Without Ceasing, Wendell Berry (Fidelity, Five Stories, New York: Pantheon Books, 1992) tells about Thad Coulter, who loses his hard-earned farm after mortgaging the property and giving the money to his son, who promptly spends it all. Thad becomes enraged - at his son, at the bank, and at himself for being so gullible and so stupid. He has lost what he worked a lifetime for. The more he thinks about it the angrier he gets, until finally, in a drunken frenzy, he goes to the home of his best friend, Ben Feltner, and begins a tirade that seems to never end. Finally Ben escorts him out of the house, promising to talk with him when he sobers up.

But this dismissal just infuriates Thad further. He feels that his only friend has become his enemy, siding with all those others. He goes home, gets his pistol, returns to town, and seeing Ben on the street, murders him. A short time later he turns himself in to the sheriff, confesses his crime, and is locked up. When news reaches Ben's family of the killing, they're distraught. But they aren't without friends.

A crowd gathers in front of their porch. Several among it express their anger at what has  happened. Ben's wife Nancy and their son Mat listen.

"We know it was a thing done out of meanness. We don't think we can stand for it. ... It's only up to you to say the word, and we'll ride down there tonight and put justice beyond question. We have a rope."

"Mat's voice, when it came, was steady:

"'No, gentlemen. I appreciate it. We all do.. But I ask you not to do it.'  Nancy, under whose feet the earth was not shaking, if it ever had, stepped up beside her son and took his arm. She said to the crowd, "I know you are my husband's friends. I thank you. I, too, must ask you not to do as you propose. I have asked you. Mat has asked you. If Ben could, he would ask you. Let us make what peace is left for us to make.'

"' If  you want to, ' Mat said, "come and be with us. We have food, and you are all welcome.'" (pp. 56-57)

Some stay. A corner is turned. But where does one find the grace and wisdom to "make what peace is left for us to make"?

Maybe its a learning. From observation, from past experience, we have the knowledge that, as Miroslav Volf says, "retaliation born of fury clearly is morally wrong. ... revenge abandons the principle of 'measure for measure' and, acting out of injured pride and untamed fear, gives itself to punitive excess. That's why revenge is morally wrong. In its zeal to punish, it overindulgently takes from the offender more than is due." (Free of Charge. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005, p. 159)

Or maybe it's a teaching taken seriously. "Beloved, never avenge yourselves." Instead, "Bless those who persecute you. If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink." (Romans 12)

Or maybe it is simply grace. A recalling of how God is said to act, is said to reach out and embrace those who don't expect it, but who sense the peace that accompanies it. And acting in a way that Volf says in another place:  "We do here as Jesus did before."

Pastor Mike