Epiphany IV: Year A

 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

On the morning of October 2, 2006, a man named Charles Carl Roberts entered the West Nickel Mines School, a one-room Amish schoolhouse in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. By the end of that morning, eight young girls—children—were dead, and the man had taken his own life.

A place marked by simplicity and childhood innocence was suddenly transformed into a place of grief and horror. It was a moment that forced the nation to confront a painful truth we would rather avoid: that this world, beautiful as it is, remains deeply wounded by sin and death.

What happened that day confronts us with the darkest realities of the human heart. And yet—strangely, even uncomfortably—it is also a moment that points us toward the heart of the gospel.

In the days that followed, the media searched for explanations. Motives were examined, background details dissected, theories proposed. But no explanation could finally make sense of such violence. What remained was something more unsettling and more universal: the reality of human sinfulness.

And the frightening thing is that the same brokenness that erupted so violently that day is not entirely foreign to us. While the actions of that man were extreme—thank God, beyond anything most of us could imagine—they arose from the same wounded human condition that inclines all of us, in quieter ways, toward anger, exclusion, fear, or resentment.

Scripture tells us that all have fallen short of the glory of God. None of us stands before God on our own righteousness. All of us, no matter how decent or law-abiding or well-intentioned, are in need of forgiveness.

The Anglican scholar and bishop N. T. Wright once wrote:

“From God’s point of view, the distance between being ordinarily sinful and extremely sinful is like the distance between London and Paris as seen from the sun.”

From where we stand, those distances feel immense. From God’s vantage point, they are not.

The good news—the gospel—is not that we are better than we think, but that God is more merciful than we dare to hope. God has already reached out to us in Jesus Christ. Forgiveness is not something we earn; it is something we receive. It is, as our faith teaches us, an accomplished fact.

And as people who live by grace, we are called to reflect that grace outward.

This is where the witness of the Amish community at West Nickel Mines becomes so striking. In the aftermath of unimaginable loss, the families of the murdered children reached out to the family of the man who had caused them such pain. They did not deny the evil of what had been done. They did not pretend their grief was small. But they refused to let hatred have the final word.

One father, speaking shortly after the tragedy, said:

“We must not think evil of this man. He had a mother and a wife and a soul, and now he’s standing before a just God.”

This was not naïveté. It was faith. A faith that recognized shared humanity even in the face of terrible evil. A faith that understood that vengeance would not heal their wounds—but grace, over time, just might.

In our own day, we continue to see how fear, violence, and hardened hearts wound individuals and communities alike. Whether in isolated acts of brutality or in systems that leave people frightened and dehumanized, the results are the same: grief, anger, and division. Into that reality, Jesus speaks with unsettling clarity.

In the Sermon on the Mount, he says: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Not the peace-keepers. Not the conflict-avoiders. But those who actively resist hatred and violence by choosing mercy.

To be a peacemaker is to refuse the logic of retaliation. It is to believe that forgiveness—costly, slow, and often painful forgiveness—is stronger than sin.

Forgiveness, sisters and brothers, is not a side note to Christianity. It is its very heart. Each time we pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,” we bind ourselves to the way of Christ.

This forgiveness is not optional, and it is not easy. It does not mean excusing harm or abandoning justice. It does not mean trusting those who are unsafe. It means refusing to let anger and resentment rule our hearts. It means entrusting judgment to God, who alone sees fully and judges justly.

For some of us, forgiveness may feel impossible. The wounds may be too deep. The memories too raw. If that is where you find yourself this morning, hear this clearly: God does not shame you for that. Sometimes the most faithful prayer we can offer is simply, “Lord, help me want to forgive.”

God honors honest struggle. And over time, by grace, what feels impossible may become imaginable.

As we pray together today, ask God for the grace to take whatever small step is possible for you. Not to deny your pain, but to open it—slowly, safely—to the healing mercy of Christ. For it is this mercy, poured out on the cross, that makes peacemakers of us all.

And in doing so, we bear witness to the God who loved the world—not because it was innocent, but because it was broken—and who still calls us his children