A Peacemaker

 

Before arriving in Tofte, my family and I spent two years in the southeastern European nation of Macedonia, now officially “North Macedonia”. Michelle and I taught at a small international school in the capital, Skopje, and I did my ministry internship, or “preaching practice”, with the English-speaking congregation of the Skopje Evangelical Methodist Church. I didn’t realize it until after some time in Skopje that I’d been preaching in the same sanctuary as a man revered by many in Macedonia as a modern day peacemaker and national hero.

Boris Trajkovski was born in 1956 at a time when Macedonia was a part of the communist nation of Yugoslavia. His family were Methodists, a small religious minority of protestant Christians in an officially atheist, but historically Eastern Orthodox nation. His father had spent several years in prison for his public Christian witness. Trajkovski studied Law in Skopje but was denied a license to practice unless he discontinued his religious activity. Instead, he accepted a call to pastor a small congregation of Kocani Christians, an ethnic minority in Macedonia, in a remote region of the country.

In the 1980’s Yugoslavia went through a period in which restrictions on religious belief and practice were eased. Through an exchange program, Trajkovski studied theology in the UK and the US before returning to Skopje where he began serving as the pastor of the Methodist congregation there. He also worked as a lawyer for a large construction company in the capital.

Everything changed in 1991. With the breakup of Yugoslavia, Macedonians suddenly found themselves independent. Because he was a good speaker, an excellent lawyer, and a man people trusted, his friends urged him to run for a seat in parliament in the upcoming democratic elections. He did. Soon his party appointed him deputy minister of foreign affairs. It was about that time that the Kosovo crisis hit. 300,000 Kosovar Muslims began flooding in from the war zone in the north. Some wanted Macedonia to forcefully expel them, but Trajkovski insisted that the Christ-like and humanitarian way forward was to build refugee camps with UN assistance and to try to find ways to help them return home when the conflict eased.

Meanwhile ethnic tensions were brewing in Macedonia. Ethnic Albanian militias and militias loyal to the Orthodox church were poised for battle in a repeat of what had happened elsewhere in the Balkans. In 1999, in the middle of this powder keg, Trajkovski was elected president. He was seen as a fair and neutral candidate, neither Muslim nor Orthodox and he found himself in the unique position of being able to negotiate a peace treaty, the Ohrid accords, which remain an important component of the Macedonian constitution, today. In some sense, this 40-some-year-old Methodist minister who’d known persecution, who’d discovered what it meant to show mercy to the least of these, was, with the help of God, able to almost single handedly save his country from civil war.

Trajkovski didn’t see his work to bring about peace as a lucky break or being in the right place at the right time, he saw it as a natural outgrowth of his Christian faith. In Matthew 5:9, Jesus says, “Happy are those who work for peace; God will call them his children!” (GNT). Trajkovski recognized that true peace was only possible with a recognition of one’s need for a savior, a heart striving for righteousness, a desire to act justly, a love for mercy, and humility before God.

In a message he delivered to his fellow Methodists he said, “The Psalmist writes in Psalm 85:10, “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” The fruits of our genuine faith in Jesus Christ are righteousness and peace… If we are truly interested in achieving peace in this world, and here I mean not only the absence of war but also harmony, tranquility, and freedom from discord among nations, then we must pursue righteousness. My prayer is that our hearts, minds, and motives be pure and focused on Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Then and only then will we be able to genuinely pursue peace. Then and only then will peace kiss righteousness.”

Boris Trajkovski was on his way to an international peace conference in February of 2004 when his plane was downed in inclement weather, and he was killed. He was 47.

I think it’s important for us, as Americans and as Christians, especially during our times of national celebration, to look both to our own history and beyond our shores for examples of men and women who served God and their countries as peacemakers in hopes that when crisis, challenge and division arises at home, we too might reflect the words of Jesus.

Daren Blanck is the Pastor of Zoar Church in Tofte, MN, a Lutheran Congregation in Mission for Christ (LCMC). Pastor Daren holds a BS in Environmental Science from Bemidji State, a MS in Education from UW-Superior, and recently completed his MA in Pastoral Theology from Kingswood University in New Brunswick. In addition he studied theatre in the UK and trained for ministry through the LCMC’s Beyond the River Academy. He’s also a part-time teacher in Silver Bay.