Your Peace Will Rest on That Person

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’”

(Luke 10:1-11)

“Had Christians observed Jesus’s straightforward guidelines for how to be among other peoples and places,” the political theologian Ched Myers writes in his most recent book, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy, “the history of the world would be profoundly different.”

When I reflect on the history of Christian missionaries, I find it hard to disagree.

Friends may wish to assure themselves they’ve done better on this front than other Christian denominations. The Indigenous peoples of North America could tell a different story, one that called attention to the Lenni-Lenape (among others) who once lived on the land that became known as Pennsylvania. That story might also remind us of more than 30 Quaker-run boarding schools across North America whose Native students were forcibly taken from their families and compelled to learn the ways of Western civilization.

Some Friends throughout this period did make an effort to engage with Native people in ways that acknowledged, as we like to say, “that of God in everyone.” They tried to honor the principle that Spirit can reveal itself to anyone, even if some may not recognize what they considered the fundamentally Christian nature of such revelation. They may even have done their best to give Native communities a “fair” price for the land on which they chose to permanently settle. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter whether Quakers treated the people of Turtle Island more fairly or less unfairly than other Europeans.

Jesus gave his first followers—the “primitive Christians,” as early Quakers called them—clear instructions on how to move through the world delivering his message. He told them to live not as conquerors, but as sojourners—to graciously accept hospitality from those who offer it, to quickly walk away from those who do not. When others show us generosity and kindness, we use the gifts God has given us to return the favor. When they close their doors to us, we don’t exact revenge—we simply move on, briefly letting them know about the opportunity they’ve missed.

“The Kingdom of God has come near to you.” And it comes in peace.

When the leader of one nation launches an attack on another nation, then plants himself in front of a television camera and announces, “We love you, God, and we love our great military,” claiming to act in the cause of peace, I can’t help but turn to the words of the original Quaker peace testimony, written by George Fox and others in 1660:

“The kingdom of Christ God will exalt, according to his promise, and cause it to grow and flourish in righteousness; ‘not by might, nor by power (of outward sword), but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.’ (Zechariah 4:6) So those that use any weapon to fight for Christ, or for the establishing of his kingdom or government—their spirit, principle, and practice we deny.”

Whether we want to call it “the kingdom of Christ God” or “the Beloved Community” or something else, the Religious Society of Friends has sought to make this peaceful society manifest here and now. Skeptics have mocked this commitment (“I bet you’ll fight back if someone attacks you”), but Quakers have done their best to hold firm.

Imagine if the leaders of the world’s “superpowers,” instead of bombing the nations they perceived as enemies, or sending troops into neighboring lands they wished to occupy, showed up empty-handed and declared “Peace to this house!” The Beloved Community wouldn’t spring to life overnight, of course, but just think about what nations could accomplish if they collaborated on joint comprehensive plans of action and then stuck to them, working in good faith through any difficulties they might encounter. Let’s not confine ourselves to thinking globally: On an individual level, what would our lives look like if we made time and space for our peace to rest upon the people we encountered?

What can we do to make that happen, for ourselves and others?

Some Quakers do still find themselves called to wander the earth—like Caine in Kung Fu, as Samuel L. Jackson says in Pulp Fiction, but without the martial arts action. Many of us have had the experience of hearing from such a Friend when they come to speak at our meeting. (Or, these days, we might watch them on Zoom.) Even if we feel led to build lives for ourselves in one community, though, we can find ways to rest lightly among our neighbors—giving testimony to “[the] good news of healing and liberation,” as Ched Myers writes, “without taking over.” Or, as the rap superstar Kendrick Lamar might put it, we can live as colleagues, not colonizers.