Nancy E. Petty

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

August 6, 2006 – Ninth Sunday after Pentecost - Peace Sunday

Text: Luke 6:27-38

A Measure of Peace

The United States has always imagined itself to be a shining city upon a hill.

We have professed to promote democracy and freedom, to love peace above all. We have brokered peace, sent our emissaries to talk of peace, taken the hands of our enemies in gestures of peace, but even the strongest advocates for these so-called American ideals and values are in a national state of denial. The problems belong to other nations, not ours. The truth belongs to us, not them. The God over all acts in our interests, not theirs. In recent years, we have become the very alter ego of peace, the dispensers of power, violence, and death. We have entered, for no very good reason, countries that may have been places of violence as well, but we have become, in the process, too much like the conquerors we profess to subdue.

Some among us have gone to war, suffered injuries, and believed with sincere hearts in the rightness of these almost holy wars. And those of us who have stayed at home have no doubt acknowledged the sacrifices of human life, of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters killed on the battlefield, permanently damaged— physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—by the horrors of war. On Veterans’ Day, we find ourselves to be of two minds, grieving the lost warriors, and grieving that war seems necessary at all. A kind of righteousness attaches to our passion for going in and saving the world for democracy—or even for Christianity. Our national personality is founded on the idea that we are a God-driven nation, that we possess lofty aims, that we act in the best interests of those who are less powerful than we and who therefore need our missions of rescue and mercy.

Lately, however, some of the fervor of patriotism has diminished, and we avert our eyes from the evening news, knowing that something is very wrong with those pictures of bombs exploding on innocent civilians, of bodies bloody in the streets of Baghdad or Beirut, whole cities reduced to rubble, whole families and even villages annihilated. And the world beyond our borders is less and less willing to see us as the saviors we like to imagine ourselves to be. For some of us cynicism, guilt, fear, anxiety, disgust are the legacies of these shameful invasions into the lives, politics, and spiritual convictions of nations who do not reflect our culture, and whose cultures we do not understand.

The cost of war runs high, in more ways than one. We are currently spending eight billion dollars a month in Iraq. That amount equates to two billion dollars a week or 267 million a day or 11 million an hour. According to the Information Clearing House, in Washington, D.C., in the year 2006, these funds could have been used to rebuild Afghanistan, to make unnecessary the proposed cuts in Medicaid for President Bush’s 2007 budget, to provide support for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides nutritional food for more than 400,000 elderly people, to increase spending for education, including programs that promote drug-free schools, and that support the arts, technology, and parent-resource centers. And alarmingly, the funding of war has drastically and negatively affected our care for the environment. But the environment, education, the arts, the elderly, and health care all seem almost foolish against the grandeur and glory that accompany the rhetoric and staging of war.

And yet we limit the notion of peace when we see it only as the antithesis of war. While concerns of the wars we wage as a nation need to be at the forefront of our thinking and acting as a people of faith, to speak only of the politics of war on this peace Sunday would be shallow and even somewhat deceptive. Today, we sit in this sanctuary with the responsibility to once again redefine what it means to be peacemakers and what actions our faith calls us to as peacemakers. We’ve asked these questions many times at Pullen, but can we find a fresh slant, can we recapture the urgency of this time, of our time, on this peace Sunday? Sometimes even peace, or especially peace, can dwindle to nothing more than a platitude, a sentiment, or a well-crafted sermon—and worst, a one-Sunday worship service, quickly forgotten. Do we speak of peace, and then go home and create conflict in our families? Do we profess to have peace in our hearts but deny the street beggar his quarter or dollar to buy the only meal (or drink) he may have that week? Do we perpetuate rivalries, competition, and even slander against those we perceive to be our enemies? If we are honest, we must admit that the struggle to be peacemakers is far harder than merely observing the superficially good behavior on which we pride ourselves.

For this Sunday, I chose the text from Luke because peace is at the center of it though the word “peace” never once appears. Strange that peace would be at the heart of simple actions that we neglect, that we turn away from, that we cross the street to avoid. And all of these instructions that Luke intended for the disciples as ways of handling their many adversaries, their unspeakable conflicts, are delivered to us as well. The advice runs counter to our culture’s values. We do not give our shirt to the ones who ask because we’d have to buy a new shirt. We do not lend money with no expectation of its return or of interest on its return because we might have to deprive ourselves or our children of something we want. We do not give alms to street people because we imagine that we are responsible for how those people might spend that gift, when, in fact, Jesus is saying that what someone does with our gifts is no business of ours. Think for a minute about the outrageousness of Christ’s demands upon us, all of which sound almost un-American. What Americans tend to value is often success, patriotism, competition (which we call healthy), being right, and having power over others. In contrast, peace demands faithfulness, generosity, sharing, inclusiveness, forgiveness, and sacrificial love. Nobody is left out of the kingdom of God. Nothing we have is truly ours. These notions run counter to our sense of entitlement, rightness, and achievement.

Maybe, like me, you’re thinking, “But I am generous, I do share my resources, and I am faithful.” Maybe, like me, you’re thinking, “No church is more inclusive than ours. No church is more suspicious of patriotism, of warmongering, more disgusted by violence, and the rhetoric of conservative politicians.” But in our secret hearts, we still harbor very human prejudices and convictions that only God can bring to light. Our own willingness to struggle for a deeper understanding of peace can be unsettling at best and devastating at worst. This sort of self-examination, this prayerful search for the truth of Jesus’ powerful appeal to the opposite of everything the secular world celebrates and reveres is at the heart of the gospel message, and at the heart of our identity as people of faith and as peacemakers. If we dare to live out those instructions in Luke’s gospel, that recipe for disaster in the world’s terms, we will discover peace beyond our understanding—a peace that flows like a river through even the darkest recesses of our souls. Luke’s words are so simple that they almost seem untrue. Yet we sense the struggle implicit in these words for all the instructions are about letting go, not acquiring, remaining humble, and not grabbing power. Poet Wendell Berry says it this way:

It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can’t do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies’ children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of [hatred] that they did not cause.

We can no longer afford to confuse [peace] with passivity. Authentic peace is no more passive than war. Like war, it calls for discipline and intelligence and strength of character, though it calls also for higher principles and aims. If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we now prepare for war.

Wendell Berry, like Luke, calls us to our higher being—that of discipline, intelligence and strength of character. Margaret Atwood, in a letter to America, recalls how the British had a myth about King Arthur, the myth that he was not dead but sleeping in a cave, and in the “country’s hour of greatest peril, he would return.” Atwood reminds Americans that they too have great spirits of the past that they may call upon: women and men of courage, conscience, and [vision]. She writes, “Summon them now, to stand with you, to inspire you, to defend the best in you. You need them.” Atwood is calling us to live in peace by resisting what our nation values in a radical departure from the prevailing winds of war and power and self-centeredness. As people of faith, the greatest spirit we can call upon in this time of need is the spirit of Jesus, who came as our peace. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Do not judge. Forgive. Perhaps when this becomes our true way of being in the world, we will understand what it means to be peacemakers and what actions we must take as people of faith and we will hear the pronouncement of God’s blessing upon us: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for you will be called the children of God.”

We Talk about Peace

by Suzanne Britt

We talk about peace:

I say that it comes

after long struggle,

if at all. You ask, “If

we found it, what would

it look like?” I say

peace is holding

reality by the hand,

but anyone who

has ever slipped

from the cruel fist

of a tyrant knows better.

So what would it feel like:

drugged sleep? platitudes

well-placed in empty

conversations? sentimental

sermons? pink clouds?

gentle sunsets? birdsong?

And what of those

who have peace in their

hearts, Christians who

wear salvation like badges

of honor? They are puffed up,

proud that God is within

and around them—

not your god but theirs—

the one, the only, the true

God, as if the very air

we all breathe were made

for only certain hearts—

none of this ceaseless

clamoring for justice

from the raucous crowd

of misfits, outsiders,

rabblerousers, doubters,

skeptics, the unwashed.

And what of peace itself:

a feeling? an attitude?

an escape from the darkness

that has no name, the night

terrors that wake

us at three or four?

And what of those

who never find peace,

feel it? What of those

who go deep and true,

below contentment,

deeper than hearts

and souls can reach,

into the depths of hell?

We half live—most

of us—and rejoice

in the absence of pain,

the promise of posterity,

the continuity of days

when nothing bad happens,

the harmony of families

where suffering is shoved

aside and secrets trump

truth at the bridge table.

We say on our death beds

that we are at peace,

and what would that be

but a river of forgetfulness,

our boat empty save for us,

closing our minds and hearts

to the cries of strangers,

the broken-winged bird,

the cat circling its prey,

the soldier dying for peace

by the sword of righteousness,

under the cloak of freedom,

democracy, the American way?

If I could drift down

that river alone, in my

tight boat, watching

the world receding,

my heart resting in

the child’s cradle

of not knowing,

I would not go,

for I could not leave

the world’s sorrows

like abandoned pebbles

on the shore, the least

grain of sand a treasure

in and of itself,

the cries of tormented

souls haunting my

smooth passage to

the other side.

The peace that passes

understanding comes

at great price, and it

wears its heart on its

ragged sleeve and bleeds

from the cross, and the one

who finds it prays that

the cup may be taken

from her, that she be spared

the agony of that bitter

brew, but she dies, fully human,

on a bed of pain, remembering

all, knowing all, grieving for all,

and rises at last on angel wings.