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There we were—hundreds of thousands, too many to count!—a gathering of US citizens joined by citizens of many of the world’s countries, gathered in the front yard of our nation’s white house, a gathering for one purpose: to effect peace in Iraq. It was just two months ago, yet the scenes and signs, the slogans and the single-mindedness are as clear in my mind as if I had just returned yesterday from that
Washington
,
DC
trip. During the pre-march rally, Rev. John Thomas, the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ said to those of us waiting to march: “The
US
government wants the church’s blessing, its silence, and its complicity…” Speaker after speaker challenged us to put feet to our faith, to change our behavior so as to change national policy, to be, as St. Francis of
Assisi
prayed so many centuries ago, to be daily instruments of God’s peace.
But how to do so? That is the question before us today on this third Sunday of Advent. When we are up to our eyeballs with purchases and gifts and wrapping and decorations and expectations and too little time to accomplish everything we think we need to complete, now the lectionary and our good God want to nudge us to consider peacemaking on our list of things to do this week!
Yet, surprisingly, in the three scriptures we have heard today, there is only one lone reference to peace. It comes in the Thessalonian passage, not as a command or even as a pretty good suggestion, but rather as an adjective describing God: “May the God of peace sanctify you entirely…” In other words, may God touch you directly, may God empower you with God’s very own spirit, may God’s breath breathe into you so that you will be ready and equipped for the sacred purpose set before you. And the writer of this letter wants to make sure that his or her readers clearly understand that the God who is doing the touching, the God who is doing the empowering, the God who is offering the sacred purposes to each one of us, is a God of Peace.
Just as St. Francis prayed some eight centuries ago, we are extensions of God’s peaceful reach into the world.
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.”
But again, I ask, how do we do this? How, in the midst of mortgage payments and holiday recitals, how in the middle of all the required stuff of life, how can we also make peace a reality?
All three of today’s scripture passages offer strong and unwavering responses to this question. First, they each define peace—God’s peace—as a world in which justice and equality are gifts to be enjoyed by all creatures. That gives us a hint of where to start. Isaiah speaks eloquently of bringing good news to the oppressed, of healing the brokenhearted, of proclaiming liberty and release to the prisoners, and of comforting all those who mourn. This is no poetic series of romanticized metaphors…this is the scenario, the script of our daily ministry. When we follow Isaiah’s script—which as you recall, was also the text for Jesus’ first sermon—when we follow this script, we bring peace to our families, to our circles of friends, to our community and to our world precisely by working for justice and equality for all. Like the internal and external spiritual journeys, both justice and peace are necessary adjuncts, one to the other.
The author of the letter to the Thessalonians focuses the definition of peace in a more personal manner. Peace is attained through personal and intentional behavior—praying, giving thanks, holding fast to what is good, abstaining from evil. It is a type of internal piety with overtones of justice that is described here. It is a piety not for its own sake, but for the health of the community at large. Peace begins with me, with each one of us, so the popular song reiterates this same notion from the ancient biblical text.
From the Johannine passage, we lift that little phrase attributed to John the Baptist as he is being questioned by the religious authorities. They want to know who he is and who he isn’t. But John wants to move quickly beyond the question of identity to the question of message and purpose. His message and our purpose, so he says, is a message and purpose for the wilderness wanderer, and it is this: “Make straight the way of God.” Just as the prophet Isaiah had preached several hundred years before, now John the Baptist takes up the clarion call to bring justice to the marketplace, justice to the home, justice to the social groupings, justice to the economic and political structures. Make straight God’s paths is another way of saying bring justice and equality, make real the values of God in your everyday living, bring God’s care for all creatures into your politics and economics. Use your purchasing power to do good for the world and for your brothers and sisters who share it with you.
This past week, I watched the documentary, “The High Cost of Low Prices.” Perhaps several of you also saw it when Allen Killpatrick showed it here a couple of weeks ago, and if you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend that you find time. It is a movie about the Wal-Mart of today, and it documents testimony after testimony of individuals who have been the victims of Wal-Mart’s corporate greed. Family-owned businesses pushed out of business…employees who are female or people of color passed over for management positions because, as they were directly told, “we don’t need your kind of people…” Locking immigrant employees in the store for hours on end until their interminably long shift is over…using security cameras to spy on employees who are seeking to unionize to demand fair wages and just working conditions, and then firing any employees who are so involved. These undisputed practices of the world’s largest business provide us with one contemporary example of the kind of corporate greed that breeds injustice…it is the same type of activity condoned by ancient political powers that made the prophet Isaiah and the writers of the New Testament gasp in horror. This is not God’s justice…it is greed for the purpose of capital gain, and its practice is nothing new in our century. On this point, I trust that we agree. Since it is not reflective of God’s justice, if we want to live as people of peace, it seems we are called by God to right this wrong. At the very least, we can refuse to spend our money at such an unjust place. And perhaps this single step will lead to others steps we might want to take to bring justice and peace. You see, justice and peace are intertwined; they are interconnected; one does lead to the other; and each needs the other to thrive.
On this Sunday in which we focus on peace, it would be well for us to acknowledge that peace is not simply the absence of war or the turning aside from conflict. It is true that peace includes quiet, solitude, and meditation. These are for us, as they were for Jesus, very intentional activities which then lead us, and even compel us to do something courageous and transformative about injustice. You recall that Jesus went off into the mountains to pray and then, just as importantly, came back to the valleys to work for justice. His ministry exemplified that peace is sown into the fabric of our human lives when justice is made real for another. Peace is sown into the soil of our living and then God’s justice sprouts forth in its entirety. Don’t you think this is why Jesus chose the Isaiah passage as the foundation for his very first sermon? People wanted peace in the midst of the chaos wrought by the
Roman Empire
. And Jesus gave them the ancient and truthful pathway leading to peace: bring good news to the oppressed, heal the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty and freedom to the prisoners, comfort those who mourn.
Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh speaks also of peace with this level of personal commitment to and involvement in justice. In his book, Peace is Every Step, he urges readers to acknowledge each day the brand new gift of twenty-four hours.
“We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others,” he writes.
“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don’t have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to leave our city or even our neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child. Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy…We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available.”
“We are very good at preparing to live,” writes this Buddhist monk, “but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only be awake, alive in the present moment… Peace is every step…”
If Thich Nhat Hanh is correct that every day offers us limitless invitations to take a step for peace, and if the biblical writers are correct that peace is intimately tied to God’s sense of justice and equality, then we have some work to do. But take heart, it is work that is quite doable…one step at a time…one row of seeds planted at a time…with one kind word or thoughtful glance…through one unexpected gift or unspoken prayer. For I have come to believe that one step in the right direction, one seed planted for peace, leads to another and another and another. We do not need to view the entire scenario nor read the whole script to know what our lines ought to be this day. We need only be faithful and diligent in taking that one step, in planting that one seed. We take it one conversation at a time…one thought following upon another…one nudge from the Divine in the direction of justice that will bring peace to us and to our world.
Yes, I believe it is true what I heard our UCC General Minister and President The Rev. John Thomas say on the front lawn of the white house two months ago: the government does indeed want from us our blessing, our silence, and our complicity. But we know that instead of silence, we have been called by God to plant peace; instead of complicity, we have been shown by Christ how to sow justice one seed at a time; instead of giving our blessing to corporate greed, the Spirit of Life urges us to use our plentiful resources to benefit, not to hurt. Take a step, just one step, and I promise you, it will lead you faithfully to another and another, and thus we become makers of peace, doers of justice.
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