A Passion for Peace: That We Should Be Called Children of God

April 26, 2009
Luke 24: 33-49; 1 John 3:1; Psalm 4:8; Acts 3: 13-16
For more than a year, now, I’ve had sitting in a corner of my study a big bag of ribbons and clothe and pennants and banners and rope. They were part of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq last spring, sent in from across the country with letters such as this:
Dear Clarendon Presbyterian, “Thank you for this action in Washington, DC. We are a united church – Presbyterian and UCC. We have an ecumenical prayer group in Big Rapids, MI. We have met for almost five years to pray for peace and justice every Tuesday morning at 7:00.”
Or, this:
To participants, “Thank you for witnessing in this peace-filled, nonviolent way to stop the war in Iraq. We have formed a [nondenominational] ‘peace cell’ [in International Falls, and] meet weekly, focusing our intention for peace within ourselves and spreading to family, community and the world.”
Or, this:
Hello friends, “Our church together has committed to a process of prayer, study, and action focused on Jesus’ call to love all, even our enemies, and a vision that the church could turn the world toward peace if every church lived and taught as Jesus lived and taught.”
Of course, I also received an email last week entitled simply, “God will judge you harshly.” You can’t win ‘em all.
If I have learned anything in my life in ministry it is this: when you put yourself on the line for peace and justice there will be reactions. Or, as one of my ministry mentors said to me, “if we are doing our jobs, there will be scars.”
Jesus certainly understood this reality, this risk. As the Johanine literature reminds, the world did not recognize him. As the Acts passage underscores, the world killed him.
There’s no convoluted atonement theology in Acts. No Jesus being sent to die for the sins of the world as some kind of blood sacrifice to appease an angry tribal god. No bizarre economic theory that poses Jesus as a repayment for our debts. No, for the author of the Luke/Acts literature it comes down to this simple truth: the world did not understand Jesus. The powers that be – secular, religious and political powers – were threatened by his presence. And they killed him.
I was trading e-mails with Candace Chellew-Hodge, who will be with us next weekend conducting a workshop, and she commented, “grace always causes outrage.”
“Grace always causes outrage.”
If we do not understand that it is because we have trivialized grace. We have domesticated grace to such matters as, “we were graced by good weather,” or to other events over which we have no explanation or control – accidents or disasters.
But when God’s grace erupts in the world it is not all sunshine and cherry blossoms. God’s grace upsets the order of the world.
Last weekend, when we were graced by beautiful weather, I was privileged to officiate at Heather and Lisa’s nuptials – to make them unlawfully wedded wives. You do not have to look far to find the outrage that such an event causes in the world, but it was such a grace-filled afternoon that we began to witness – even in the midst of the service and reception – the power of grace and love to change the world.
Let me say those words again: the power of grace and love to change the world.
I was speaking with someone there – a family member self-described as a conservative Baptist. He spoke of his own coming to terms and mentioned that his 10-year-old daughter had asked, on the way to the service, if we were going to be on the news.
I think I recoiled in horror at that thought, and said something to the effect of “thank heavens, no.”
And he said, “it should be on the news, because people need to see this.”
The world so desperately needs to see this, but the world remains blinded by fear to this basic truth: Grace and love have the power to change the world.
Jesus understood this, and he lived into this reality day by day.
Of course, you don’t have to look too far – not in his time nor in ours – to find those who are threatened by the prospect of change.
Remember: grace always causes outrage.
How is this so?
Consider, for example, the common argument that same-sex marriage will undermine the institution of marriage around the world. While I still do not understand why Heather and Lisa’s union should undermine my marriage to Cheryl, I do understand the logic of scarcity at work in such thinking. If a commodity – in this case, a happy marriage – is scarce then it has greater value. If everyone can have it, it becomes a commonplace. The outrage flows from fear of the perceived loss of distinctive value, status and exclusive access to certain rights and privileges.
Some version of this logic is at work every time rights are extended, every time we add another leaf to expand the circle of those included at the table of grace.
Grace causes outrage.
The same logic of fear is at work on every question of justice, and thus also on the questions of war and peace.
As Thomas Merton wrote almost 50 years ago, “At the root of all war is fear, not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything.” To paraphrase Merton just a bit, “It is not merely that we do not trust one another: we do not even trust ourselves. If we are not sure when someone else may turn around and kill us, we are still less sure when we may turn around and kill ourselves. We cannot trust anything, because we have ceased to believe in God.”
We cannot trust anything, then, because we have ceased to believe in grace, in mercy, and in love. We have ceased to believe in the power of love and mercy to change the world. We fear the loss of scarce security, because we do not trust the only authentic source of security – the grace and mercy and love of God.
This is nothing new under the sun, although it takes it own distinctive forms with every generation.
In Jesus’ time, an empire of fear was itself fearful of every threat. That’s why the highways were lined with crosses hung with the bodies of insurgents and political enemies of the state.
In more recent times, the empire of fear that was the Jim Crow South that I was born into was itself fearful of every threat. That’s why the back country roads were lined with trees used for lynching.
In our own time … well, suffice it to say that we have lately lived under a dark cloud of fearfulness, and I do not believe it is any stretch at all to suggest that the road alongside which Matthew Shepard was hung for the crime of being gay travels directly to the door of Abu Ghraib prison where the guilty and the innocent alike hung from shackles at the hands of our national security apparatus working in our names to ensure that our lives and lifestyles are not interrupted by those whom we fear.
Into such a world as this – riven by fear of the other and the outcast – Jesus came. To such a world as this – huddled in tribes behinds walls and borders – Jesus came teaching love of neighbor and of stranger and even of those on the other sides of walls and borders. And when just such a world sent Jesus to his passion – his suffering and death on a cross – to that world God spoke an ultimate word of love that we know as resurrection.
Resurrection is God’s answer to the passion. Such wondrous love as this is God’s answer to human suffering.
In the garden, Jesus said, “put away your swords” – lay down your sword and shield and study war no more. His passion for peace led directly to his passion. He suffered and died.
And who would have blamed his followers if they had simply said, “well, that’s what happens to those who are naïve enough to believe in nonviolence, that’s what happens to those who are foolish enough to believe that justice is possible, that’s what happens to those who try to love in the face fear.”
Who would have blamed them if they had picked up swords at that point?
But while they were still huddled together in fear and trembling, before they even had a chance to reorganize with weapons, God breathed life into their midst again, and they heard Jesus, once again, say simply, “peace be with you.”
Peace be with you.
My good friend Rick Ufford-Chase says, quite simply and clearly, “War is not the answer for those who call themselves followers of Jesus.”
Put away your swords … or, as Rick’s then 10-year-old son famously put it, “beat your swords into lawnchairs.”
Put away the sword. Tear down the wall. Break down the barriers.
Whether we are talking about the rights of minorities or the violence within families or the wars of nations, the same logic of grasping fear pervades.
The question is: what can we do about it?
Writing in 1962, Thomas Merton said, “the task is to work for the total abolition of war.”
Merton was right then, and he is right now. Indeed, if anything, the task is more urgent now than it was in 1962.
Merton was not naïve. He understood that the task that he named as the abolition of war involved work on multiple levels on multiple issues starting at the level of our own hearts.
He ended his great essay on the roots of war with these words:
“It is absurd to hope for a solid peace based on fictions and illusions! So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men [and women] and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
I have been praying for peace, marching for peace, organizing for peace, working for peace, donating for peace, witnessing for peace, singing for peace, petitioning for peace and every other act for peace I have been able to imagine since I was in high school. I have a passion for peace.
As I read Merton, I am reminded that a passion for peace, like any passion, involves suffering and death. I am further reminded that my work for peace is work for the death of injustice, tyranny and greed in my own heart.
Such heart work is done best in community. That is why I really hope that some of you can join me and hundreds of others this Wednesday evening at 7:00 at National City Christian Church as we worship and witness for peace in our own hearts and in the heart of our nation.
As Martin King said in 1967, some five years into another endless war, “Now let us begin … let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the [children] of God.”
Grace and love can change the world.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Amen.

Resurrection Movement

Easter Sunday, 2009
Good morning. My name is David Ensign, and I’m here to recruit you!
You will have recognized, no doubt, echoes of the late Harvey Milk and his signature greeting as he invited people to join the gay liberation movement of the 1970s.
Why invoke that memory today? Easter Sunday, 2009?
What if, in our call to worship, we heard not only an invitation to join our hearts to an ancient story and to engage our spirits in live-giving ritual, but also a call to join our lives to a movement for human liberation? What if, in the invitation to bow our heads in prayer we heard not only a call to acknowledge our dependence upon God but also a call to join our lives to a movement for radical transformation?
What if, in the call to follow Jesus, we heard not merely an invitation to join a religious institution, but instead a beckoning to join a movement of resurrection?
If the church is, as the apostle Paul suggested, the body of Christ in the world, then it cannot be reduced to mere institution for it is a living body that must, most surely, move … or die.
The time has long since come for the church to move. For a church that moves nothing, that risks nothing, that transforms nothing is worth nothing.
What better season to proclaim this than Easter?
On the other hand, we could be like the first disciples as depicted in the oldest gospel, Mark. The women go to the tomb to anoint the body and find it empty. When the young man in white tells them that Jesus has been raised, they flee in amazement and terror and don’t say a word because they are afraid.
I’ve always been fond of that stark ending to Mark’s gospel, and am convinced that it was the original text onto which some later scribe attached the longer ending that leaves the disciples looking far braver and ready for the work of sharing the good news.
No, I imagine paralyzing fear was the initial reality the disciples faced. In the face of fear, nothing much ever changes.
Fear freezes us, starting with our hearts and minds.
When I try to put myself in the disciples’ shoes at that moment I imagine mostly fear and trembling. Jesus has just been crucified – the empire’s response to voices that threaten to subvert its power and domination. We could very well be next. Hiding out for a good long while seems like a perfectly sensible plan in the face of looming danger.
I wonder how many of us have entertained that thought these days. In the face of an economic crisis that looms like a threatening storm over so much these days, wouldn’t it be great simply to get away from here for a good long while? In the face of senseless yet seemingly endless war, wouldn’t it be great simply to get away from here for a good long while? In the face of hatred and bigotry aimed at those long excluded from the church on account of sexuality, wouldn’t it be great simply to get away from here for a good long while? In the face of our own personal demons, diseases and distresses, wouldn’t it be great simply to get away from here for a good long while?
Can I get an “amen” from all those who would simply like to get away for a while?
I know I would sometimes. And, indeed, there is nothing wrong with getting away for awhile from time to time. Jesus retreated to the wilderness to be alone and to the garden to pray. Getting away can restore and revive us, and that is all to the good.
But when getting away for a bit becomes escape instead of restoration then we become like Monty Python’s “brave” Sir Robin: “run away! Run away!” instead of confronting what demands confrontation.
What is it that demands confrontation?
The Apostle Paul understood perfectly well, and even made a list: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword, death, rulers, things present, things to come, powers, height and depth, among others. We can translate those first-century threats to our own time quite easily and accurately.
Hardship? Surely we understand that, especially in the current economic crisis, as jobs disappear right along with life savings.
Distress? We feel that in relation to the tenor of our times, and we also feel it in our personal lives as we struggle with grief and loss, with sickness and separation.
Persecution? As a straight, white, Protestant man I don’t experience a lot of that in my own life, but I certainly understand the need to live in solidarity with those in my midst who do – my GLBT friends, the migrant laborers who gather down the hill from our house looking for work, women in church and society still after all these years, my Muslim friends to name but a few.
The sword? I am grateful to live mostly unthreatened by violence, but I know that is part of my own privilege not shared by hundreds of millions of sisters and brothers around the world.
We can all too easily do the work of translating Paul’s list.
These things demand confrontation because they threaten to separate us from God.
They give voice to a loud, clanging and persistent “No” as they announce the via negativa – the way of death and destruction, of heartache and despair, of bitterness and cynicism.
Good Friday witnesses to the power of this way in the world.
Easter witnesses to the power of God’s mighty “Yes” in response.
That list of Paul’s? It comes in the context of his own asking what can separate us from God? He wrote to the small group of Christians in Rome – the heart of the empire – and asked, “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword separate us from God?… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Resurrection is God’s resounding “yes” in the face of all of that. It is God’s unfailing promise that none of that will ultimately separate us from God’s creative, boundless love.
Resurrection is not one small breath of life into a dead corpse of one human being, Jesus of Nazareth.
Resurrection is a powerful wind – the breath of life for every human being.
Resurrection is not the over-and-done-with rising up of one man.
Resurrection is the continual rising up of every man and woman who stumbles and falls along the way.
Resurrection is not a one-time event that happened on a lonely hillside in first-century Palestine. Resurrection is a movement that sweeps through people in all times and all places, and is still sweep through us – here and now – lifting us and calling us forward into new life, into new hope, into a future otherwise of God’s imagining.
It’s no wonder the first disciples were afraid, and it’s no wonder that we still feel that same fear.
But perfect love casts out all fear, and resurrection is perfect love in action.
Mary came to the tomb on the first resurrection dawn, and she wept – tears of sorrow, of loss, of fear.
But the voice of God said, “oh, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn.”
“For you see, you are witness to the movement of resurrection, to the rising up of the spirit of God to set things right.”
“Oh Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn.”
“For you see, you are invited now to join your soul to that same movement, and be part of the rising up yourself.”
“Oh Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn.”
“For this is for all people, who are invited to join together in that resurrection movement, and be part of that rising up to set things right.”
“Oh Mary, don’t you weep.”
“Oh Mary, don’t you weep don’t you mourn.
Oh Mary, don’t you weep don’t you mourn.
Caesar’s guards been swept away.
Oh Mary, don’t you weep.
One these days in the middle of the night, people gonna rise up and set things right
Caesar’s guard been swept away.
Oh Mary, don’t you weep.”
Listen! Do you hear this invitation to join your hearts to an ancient story and to engage your spirits in live-giving ritual, and also this call to join your lives to a movement for human liberation? We bow our heads in prayer to acknowledge our dependence upon God and also to join our lives to a movement for radical transformation? We follow Jesus as the church, and also as a movement of resurrection.
Sisters and brothers, there’s a resurrection wind blowing through this place. Open your spirits and be filled with its freshness. Open your hearts and be filled with its love. Open your lives and be moved by its power. Amen.

Confessing Jesus

Isaiah 50:4-9
Philippians 2:1-13
April 5, 2009
I want to pull out a single verse from our several readings this morning and offer a brief meditation upon it. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.
Thomas Merton wrote, “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how to comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person.”
Between these two answers.
Merton was not writing about Holy Week, but he could have been. For between the answers to the questions posed first by the drama of palms and passion and then by the empty tomb you can determine our identities as followers of Jesus.
In a few minutes we will ask again the foundational, ancient, confessional questions that Christians have posed for the better part of two millennia.
Who is your Lord and Savior?
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
What does it mean, today, to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
We could travel down some historical, Christological byways together, and consider the root words from which we draw “lord” and “savior,” and trace their respective meanings to such ideas as the feudal lord who was the keeper of the loaf, and the Latin roots of “savior” meaning healing and wholeness. Or we could look at the original political context of the ancient confession and note that confessing Christos Curios – Christ is Lord – was a direct and political subversion of the Roman pledge of allegiance Caesar Curios – Caesar is lord.
We could explore those links and roots in depth, and it might be interesting and fruitful to do so, but I’m not going there this morning.
I believe that we live our entire lives as if on a high wire stretched out between palms and passion, kept balanced on this wire by our real hope of resurrection, and by the real experience of rising again when we fall.
Confessing Jesus gives the journey meaning and grounds it in a story of rising, falling and rising again. That is to say, confessing Jesus grounds our lives in hope, and you cannot live without hope.
Each of us has countless opportunities to embody such hope. In broad strokes, embodying resurrection hope is what we are living for as followers of Jesus. What do we think is keeping us from living fully into that hope?
I was graced with a couple of such opportunities last week. First, on Monday, when I joined People of Faith for Equality Virginia in witnessing to God’s love in the face of the hate-filled presence of Westboro Baptist demonstrators at George Mason.
While standing with the GMU students I had a brief conversation with one of the kids, Carl -- or Carly, as this transvestite-for-a-day-of-solidarity introduced herself. Carly spoke of growing up in the Roman Catholic church and leaving it behind because the church has so little tolerance for so many friends.
There was sadness in this story because of what has been lost. There was a falling, a hitting ground, suffering, passion.
But there was compassion – suffering with – and a joyous rising as well as people of faith showed up to proclaim love in the face of hate, to say a bright, shining “yes” against an ugly “no,” and to witness to hope and the possibility of living fully into it.
Later in the week, I had the opportunity to sit down with a young man from Sri Lanka who works there with a small gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender rights organization. In Sri Lanka it is against the law to be in a same-sex relationship, and the work that Dilshan is engaged in can be dangerous. His church would not accept him if he were out and open in that context.
He was curious about how we had arrived at this point of, well, grace, and was eager for suggestions that might help his community.
What is keeping him from living fully for the thing he wants to live for? Well, to begin with, the very real threat of death.
How to stay on the high wire and not tumble to a very rocky landing?
How to live into hope in such a hopeless situation?
I don’t pretend to know the answers to such questions, so all I could offer to him is shared stories. Stories of solidarity, of commitments, of lives and risks shared to create a community committed to the radical welcome of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the end, that is all that we really have. Our own commitments. Our own stories. Our own lives stretched between palms and passion, between celebration and suffering, between birth and death … and rising again and again and again in the face of falling down.
For young gay men and lesbian women in places such as Sri Lanka we can offer our stories as a source of hope. For those at George Mason, we can offer our bodies as incarnate testimony to those same stories of hope. For those suffering from injustices and violence, we can offer our lives – our lives.
That is all that Jesus asks when he says, “follow me.”
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.
Let us pray.