Last year, before the developments in the Ukraine, Pope Francis made a helpful distinction between architects and artisans of peace. Few of us would be included in the guild of international peace architects as key players on the global stage. All of us, however, can contribute to peace as artisans. Yet even artisans need some kind of inherited family secret recipe or insight to produce the desired bread, cheese or furniture. For Christian artisans of peace, the inherited insight is found in the grand narrative of Scripture and if our pressing desire is to be peacemakers at such a time as this, Scripture must inform our efforts. 

Scripture has been described as an encyclopaedia of utopias and dystopias, where the idea of utopia is constructed in terms of shalom. Utopia and dystopia are juxtaposed throughout the narrative: creation versus fall; the creational vocation of both Adam and Eve in the imago Dei versus fratricide and exploitation; Exodus as liberation to settle in a land flowing with milk and honey versus the humiliating exile away from that same land. Yet even in the darkest dystopia, the light of God’s promise shines on a more hopeful future of a genuine utopia.

At a time when our global community struggles wearily to exit the pandemic, as we watch with horror as Russian forces inflict intense suffering on the Ukrainian people in a motley mixture of twisted nationalism and nefarious religious illusions, the very possibility of utopia seems suspect. We desperately want authentic shalom, not some Pollyanna version of a pipe dream. Do we still dare to hope?

Perhaps the more urgent question is: What should we hope for? Which utopia should we seek? Do we simply pine for a pre-pandemic world? Again, Scripture guides our reflection. Ecclesiastes rejects the dystopia of greed, disordered loves or unbridled economic growth in favour of the utopia of the ordinary: the celebration of all of life coram Deo – either when days are good, or honest reflection when things are less than optimal. Prophetic literature is replete with rich images of a utopia that continues to resonate with the best futures that humans could imagine: swords beaten into ploughs; a fraternal, ecological solidarity between the rest of creation and humans; and a reversal of infertility so that fruitfulness and abundance push against narrow limits of scarcity.

The biblical utopia is really all about Life; a dynamic, communal life shaped by mercy, righteousness and justice that delights God far more than material wealth, military power or technological prowess (Jer 9:23–24). At its deepest level it is life with Yahweh, the God of the covenant; a life that the prophets insist is nothing less than the triumph of good over evil, life over death. It is a triumph which is decisively enfleshed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus who demonstrates and announces the ultimate biblical utopia: the kingdom of God.