By Ajung Sojwal

Two years ago, coming to terms with the situation of what I imagined house arrest might be like, I proceeded to convert one of the rooms in our house to become my office. I hung my prized print of He Qi’s Crucifixion #1 on the wall directly opposite my desk. As I write this, I see my cheap print of the magnificent painting with the folks crowding around the foot of Jesus’ cross. Every single person at the scene of the crucifixion seems desperate for something from Jesus; there’s even a prison cell floating behind the cross, with, of course, someone looking from behind the bars. Not a moment of peace even in his dying hours for one whose birth was announced with, “peace be with you.” With that frozen scene of violence before me I wonder what peacemaking means for me these days.

Peacemaking, I thought, had to do with negotiations, compromises and agreements between folks who don’t see eye to eye. I look at the Prince of Peace hanging on the cross and I realize he made no compromises, didn’t seem to like negotiating much, and had disagreements with many. I wonder If I have gotten the whole notion of peacemaking wrong. Maybe peacemaking is less about opposing parties seeking to defuse a volatile situation and more about relationships re-imagined in a completely new way. God becoming mortal and living amongst sinners is a re-imagined relationship. Enemies becoming lovers is a re-imagined relationship. Samaritans as saviors is a re-imagined relationship. Traitors as apostles is a re-imagined relationship. From where I sit, it looks like Jesus’ way of Peace-making is not predicated on some enmity to be neutralized rather it is acting on the belief that every sinner is still God’s very own child worth dying for. Dying seemed to have been the necessary act for Jesus to make possible an alternative way of seeing and living with each other, as peace-makers walking through closed doors to the very people who deny our existence.

These days, I find myself yearning for an alternative way of seeing and living with each other in a world where curated conversations hang in the air like portraits of unknowable folks and peacemaking is rendered redundant. Every authentic engagement with another is, I believe, about peacemaking. For every minute I choose to affirm and listen and every minute I feel affirmed and listened to is the moment where all conscious and unconscious enmity begins to die and imaginations of newness in relationships emerge. This is what it means to be children of God — to imagine and re-imagine relationships as peacemaking journeys. I wonder if the folks at the foot of the cross got to listen and hear Jesus’ agonizing cries too even as they clung to him hoping for their cries to be heard by him. What I do know is, Jesus arose from that dying, scars and all, walked through closed doors offering peace to the very folks who denied him.

Ajung Sojwal is Rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Hempstead, NY.