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.
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.
posted by David Ensign at
2:05 PM
<< Home