Diary of a Theologian

Peace in All the World

    V.    Give peace, O Lord, in all the world;    

    R.    For only in thee can we live in safety.

This is the third of the suffrages. We start by asking God for mercy, which is for him to grant us his salvation. This turns our thoughts to the church, the institution through which we receive the sacraments of salvation; we ask God to make its ministers righteous and to make us joyful. With this third pair we turn outward to the world. And what does one see when one looks at the world?

One sees the absence of peace. There are hostilities in the Middle East (at the moment, a cessation of war, but still hardly peace); there is outright war in Europe, in Africa. These are just the big headlines; there is also violence, war, and strife in many places that does not grab our attention. There are street fights, murders, robberies. There is institutionalized injustice, where powerful forces conspire to harm the weak. And so on: it is endless, the parade of violence on the earth.

Nonetheless, we ask God to give peace in all the world, all of it. What an unbelievable request! That the whole world could be at peace, who can imagine it? What is it we are asking for? And how is it that the Lord might give peace?

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First, of course, there is the unstated recognition that we cannot on our own bring about the peace that the world needs. We don’t ask the U.S. government to give peace in the world, nor the United Nations, nor any other human entity. No human being, no human organization is able to bring peace to the world. If there is to be peace, it will have to come from God. And so we ask the Lord to give “peace . . . in all the world.”

And in the response, the people make it clear that it is only in God that we can dwell in safety. Peace, here, is identified with safety in life. This isn’t the risk to safety that we, who are comfortable in our homes in our city, face from weather or disease or car breakdown. This is the risk to safety that people in Ukraine know well, that at any moment a bomb may fall on a hospital or school or apartment building. Please, Lord, make it that we may dwell in safety!

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The Psalms and the old prayers are saturated with the sense that we have enemies who wish to do us harm. We moderns are more aware, and rightly so, that we ourselves have also harmed others. This suffrage covers both, and I think it is important for us to remember both. Yes, we have sinned and do contribute to the violence of the world. But also, there are those who want to do us harm: they really exist and their intentions are lethal. God only can deliver us from the mess of human violence, and it is not at all wrong to pray God to fix things so that we may dwell in safety. Indeed, it is simply sound thinking.

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