Picture of Peace, Story of Strife

 HEBREW BIBLE READING                   Isaiah 11: 6-9                         

⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. ⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall

eat straw like the ox. ⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. ⁹They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

GOSPEL READING                           Matthew 3: 1-12                               

¹In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ²“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” ⁴Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, ⁶and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁷But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance. ⁹Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ¹⁰Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ¹¹“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹²His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

I’d been wondering how I was going to pull together the lectionary texts for today. Could Isaiah’s idyllic vision of peace coexist with the story of the fire-breathing John the Baptist and his scorched earth Gospel?  Then Nelson Mandela died. And we have been remembering the extraordinary self-sacrifice, courage, and forbearance of the insurrectionist prisoner who became the reconciling president. Advent’s gift of peace now seems as if it has been wrapped this year by Mandela. His dream for South Africa reminds me of Isaiah’s utopian vision of a place where wolves and lambs live in side-by-side equality.   

Yet today’s lectionary examples of Christ’s peace include not only the idealized image of the peaceable kingdom but also the edgy portrait of the irritating freedom fighter, John the Baptist, forerunner of Jesus and, as it turns out, a figure not unlike a South African prophet who lived 2000 years later.  Like the New Testament prophet, Mandela also challenged imperialists who’d invaded his ancestor’s land and who imprisoned him.  Like the John the Baptizer, Mandela came from the backwoods to speak truth to power and paid a heavy price for doing so. John would pay with his life; Mandela with 27 years of deprivation and hard labor in prison. 

 

I won’t stretch the analogy too far.  I can’t imagine roughneck John ever displaying the grace and statesmanship of South Africa’s first black president.  But one of the many eulogizers warned this week that “in the desire to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s life — an iconic figure who triumphed over South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime — it’s tempting to homogenize his views into something everyone can support. This is not, however, an accurate representation of the man. Mandela was a political activist and agitator. He did not shy away from controversy and he did not seek — or obtain — universal approval. Before and after his release from prison, he embraced an unabashedly progressive and provocative platform. As one commentator shared shortly after the announcement of the freedom fighter’s death, 'Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.’” (http://thinkprogress.org/home/2013/12/06/3030781/nelson-mandela-believed-people-wont-talk/). 

I think the range of Advent scriptures today is a safeguard against erasing the hard lines in Mandela’s portrait and in the Gospel message.  Although you and I live in a culture that equates Christ’s call to peace with being inoffensive, we forget that John the Baptist rudely paved the way for Jesus by calling his audience “a brood of vipers.” We forget that change never happens without conflict.  We were raised, most of us, by good ol’ Southern mamas who taught us to be polite, but there’s not a single word about good manners in the Bible.  We were cautioned to “be sweet”—especially in church.  But church might be the last place where we need to be “sweet” and may be the very place we need to be stirred to anger.  Following Jesus is always a nonviolent way, but that way is often confrontational and seldom popular. That’s because true peace can never be achieved without justice.

What’s true in societies is also true for individuals: peaceful personal relationships are rooted in equality and compassion. A relationship may seem peaceful in the absence of overt strife, but peace bought at the expense of another’s dignity or rights is the pretense of peace. True peace in a society is not the mere absence of revolt. True peace in a faith community is not a veneer of niceness.  True peace in a home is not made by suppressing some voices.

The following poem reminds us of a patriarchal family from a previous generation which only appeared to be harmonious because no one dared challenge the patriarch.  But “peace” at the cost of fairness is just coercion.  It’s the familial equivalent of the phony Pax Romana of Jesus’s day that used military might to tamp down unrest simmering among the Galilean peasants. 

“Ducks at Peace” by Hal Sirowitz

(http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013%2F11%2F23)

I'd like to take my family to the lake,
Father said, so they can see how well
the animal & fish kingdoms get along.
You hardly ever see ducks fighting.
If they do, it's done in private.
We should follow their example,
& not air out our dirty laundry in public.
That was what I told your mother
at the restaurant, that she should
save her complaints for when we
get home. She said she had already
complained there. She was hoping
she'd get better results if she changed locations. 

It may not feel polite to complain or call the powerful “a brood of vipers” a la John the Baptist. But sometimes complaint is the only option for those who are not at the seat of power.  

  

Today’s discordant combination of scriptures complicates our understanding of Christ’s peace.  Some folks pretend that the Bible speaks with one consistent voice throughout and have to do some pretty complicated mental tricks to harmonize conflicting scriptures and force all those passages into a unified interpretation.  Others recognize contradictions in scripture and eventually toss out the Bible.  I’m suggesting we appreciate the Bible’s disparate voices and honor the diversity of thought but ignore or speak against parts of scripture that seem exclusionary or violent.  Sometimes the simplest way to use scripture for peaceful means is to acknowledge that we may be misreading some part of the Bible—or conclude some voices in the Bible may be wrong about something.

Nelson Mandela’s life is one that deserves our admiration. After 27 years of unjust imprisonment and cruel treatment, he refused to remain bitter and instead cultivated a spirit of peace in his own life.  He invited his former jailers to his inauguration as president of a country where he previously had been unable to vote. But peace came not because he remained politely quiet or stifled his people’s cries or accepted his lot in life but because he instead exposed inequity and dreamed of justice. And peace came not because he lived a perfect life but because peace is often born out of messiness. 

We can benefit from his example without having to approve every choice he made.  We can listen to the voice of John the Baptist without having to adopt his violent imagery for God. We can aspire to be imperfect peacemakers, too.  If we wait for perfect solutions or bide our time until we’re perfect people, the violence of the wolves and lions and vipers will escalate and we may never be able to show them how to follow the lead of a little child . . . or an ex-prisoner convicted of treason . . . or a crazy dude in camel-hair clothes insulting the folks who request baptism. 

We start our peacemaking with three simple steps:

1.   Listen especially well to those who are NOT in power.

2.   Speak and act only after you have found in your heart genuine compassion for those with whom you may disagree.

3.   Trust that change is possible. We had to light the candle of HOPE before we were able to let in the light of PEACE.  I hold out hope that if we don’t blow ourselves up first, our descendants’ descendants’ descendants may one day live Isaiah’s dream of peace. With one kind word and one courageous act at a time, we are changing.

PRAYER: Spirit of Peace, we yearn for a world pulsing with justice and truth, a world in which we all sit down together at the Open Table and share equally and speak only words of love. AMEN

Two Voices, One Kiss

 Texts:  Psalm 85: 8-11; Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

At least two voices are crying out from holy scripture this evening.  From the Gospel of Mark booms the voice of John the baptizer, that roughneck prophet shouting “repent” across the wilderness.  John’s righteous voice is so irritating it will cost him his head, which will be severed just about at his voice box, at King Herod’s command.  Yet John’s voice still resounds today.

 

In contrast, the Old Testament today transmits the voice of Isaiah, that Hebrew prophet whose heart is breaking for his deported people, exiled during the Babylonian conquest of 587 BCE. Isaiah’s tender voice is so affecting that all four Gospels will quote his poetry half a millennium later. 

I’m glad the lectionary offers a harmonious duet today. This Advent song, after all, is one part peace and one part justice—or as the Bible’s songbook, the Psalms, puts it:  “Righteous and peace kiss each other.” Righteousness (justice) and peace belong together.  In our personal and communal relationships we must speak for justice while speaking with kindness.  We work for the right—while being in right relationship.  We need to hear both Prophet Isaiah’s consolation and Prophet John’s challenge—if we are to experience personal peace and political peace.

This is the Sunday in Advent in which we annually pray for peace.  Though it may be wishful thinking, faint signs of peace brighten the horizon.  After all, this is the year and this is the month in which the remaining 39,000 US troops in Iraq will withdraw from that conflict and return home—so it has been promised.  Ironically, it was ancient Iraq—then known as Babylon—that had attacked Isaiah’s people and forced many into captivity.  Our reading today from Isaiah 40 was composed after the exiled Jews were at last permitted to return to their homeland.  To a defeated and demoralized people, Isaiah’s God urges the prophet to speak comfort.  “Comfort, comfort my people. . . Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,” says the God of Compassion.  This is not the wrathful God some expect to find in the Old Testament. Isaiah’s God is a shepherd who gathers lambs in his arm and carries them against his bosom. 

John the Baptist, in contrast, spoke for a God who asked people to take a hard look at their individual and collective lives and turn away from all that would harm themselves and others.  Sometimes we need the God who comforts with his arms; sometimes we need a God who confronts us with the truth about our world and ourselves.  The Bible can comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable, as someone once said.  So take your own spiritual temperature right now before deciding which piece of this sermon you need to take home with you.

For those needing consolation, drink in Isaiah’s poetry and dwell in that loving image.  Feel how deeply you are loved, nestled safely against the shepherd’s breast.  Believe how precious you are.  God’s tone of voice is, for you who are hurting today, so very tender. 

That tender tone is one you and I may not only need to hear but to adopt.  After all, we can remain gentle with one another without sacrificing our convictions and rights.

A friend emailed me this past week after she felt “verbally assaulted” by a co-worker.  This friend described the hurtful exchange—and then asked me if she had responded rightly.  I sidestepped the role of judge.  She didn’t really want an objective evaluation.  Besides, even if I’d wanted to, I could not have judged her words because her email could not capture the tone she’d used with her colleague.  How we speak to one another is surely as important as any principle we’re upholding or any point we are making. That’s why our mothers used to tell us, “Watch your tone.”  

Tone is how you reveal your heart without intending to. Compassion is the tone we want to hear from God—but sometimes find it hard to extend to others.  If my friend has pressed me, I’d have said she responded rightly to her colleague if she found a place of compassion for him in her heart before she spoke.

For those who can handle a challenging tone today, ask the shepherd to put you back down on the grassy ground for some truth telling.  And get ready for a kick in the lamb shank.  Challenge is not devoid of compassion, but Advent reflection is not easy if you and I honestly examine our own inner lives and our outer world.  Isaiah and John call out in stereo across the centuries to us:  “Make way for your God.  Clear a path for God’s justice and peace.”  In response to this challenging tone, we ask ourselves:  “How do I prepare for God’s just and peaceful activity in my life?  What do I need to remove from the path I’m taking in order for God’s ways to emerge in and through my life?  What am I doing to obstruct God’s appearance?” 

John the Baptist uses that uncomfortable old word “repent.”  Now don’t be alarmed: it simply means to turn around.  To stop doing what is defeating you and try a new way.  We do the same thing over and over until it seems our habits of thought and action are the only possibilities and the rut is so deep in our lives we think we can’t climb out. But to prepare for the emergence of God in our lives, we have to clear the path and make way for something new.

What’s true for our individual lives is true for our common life together.  The very topography of our society can be altered!  Listen to the metaphors of the poet/prophet Isaiah.  We are called to level the uneven places in our world.  The powerful mountains can be made low and the valleys exalted.  Cut those mountains down to size.  Lift up the little valley.  God’s peace can reign in our world, the Spirit of Comfort can blow through our land, when there is genuine equality and justice.  We don’t need to turn the mountains into valleys.  The mighty do not need to lose all power—but the powerless need to be empowered.  Then “the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain” (Isaiah 40:4b).  That is a picture of a just world.

Ironically, during this season when we pray for peace on earth, we can bring out our most belligerent tones.  You may have already received some forwarded emails and Facebook postings renewing the annual debate over whether or not we should greet strangers with the phrase “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” People are sniping at each other in cyberspace:

         “Merry Christmas, all you heathens!” 

         “Happy Holidays, you crazy religious freaks!”

It’s not that the topic isn’t a fair one for discussion: in fact, it’s the topic of our next Open Table Discussion at Satori Coffee house.  It’s just that the emails I’m receiving are not discussing the topic; they are raging about it. 

Of course, we will not, on the night of our next Open Table Discussion, use tones that are disrespectful or dismissive.  We’ll not take on tones that are smug, sarcastic, or self-righteous.  We will consider HOW to express our opinions—not apologetically but respectfully. And even if we think no one else in that friendly circle disagrees with a particular position, let’s not assume that. Let’s imagine in our midst a dear friend who holds the opposite point of view.  Let’s be clear and forthright and confident but humble.  I say this not because we’ve ever used inappropriate tones in our Open Table Discussion series, but because I think it’s possible this seemingly minor issue will generate heat—and we want our words to produce light.  I say this because sometimes in our own discussions here among our church family, we make assumptions that we all share the same political views and social values.  That’s not true.  Thank God.  And we can’t welcome everyone to Open Table unless we make emotional space for all.  I don’t intend to hold back my passion, but I will try to consider how my tone might be heard by someone else.  That's hard to do.

One of the chief beauties of being in a community of faith is that we come to realize that the tone of comfort and the tone of challenge are not mutually exclusive.  We can speak our truth in love.  We can have healthy conflicts.  We can disagree without being disagreeable.  Those clichés really can be true for us.

And when we fail one another we can, to use John the Baptist’s word, “repent.”  We can repent of using an unloving tone, or being too sensitive, or retreating from conflict instead of engaging it in healthy ways. 

Repentance, as one author defines it, is owning responsibility for our part in unsatisfactory behavior and choosing, for instance, to relate to a person in a gentler way in the future.  “Repentance is . . . not a matter of punishing ourselves for past mistakes, hating ourselves for past failures, and depressing ourselves with feelings of worthlessness.  Repentance is becoming aware of where my responsibility begins and ends . . . and choosing to live in new ways that will not repeat old unsatisfactory situations. . . . The capacity to repent determines our capability to love and forgive and our ability to receive love and accept forgiveness.  It is the growing person who can honestly say, ‘I have done wrong. I own it.  I am choosing to end that way of behaving.  I am choosing to live in a new way.  I choose to live in open, honest vulnerability before both God and community and in responsibility to God and community’” (101-104).[i]  In Christian community we can speak with both compassion and challenge.

The two voices of Isaiah and John introduced this sermon.  The two voices of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks will close it.  Maybe you remember this scene in the movie You’ve Got Mail. Meg Ryan plays a usually gentle soul who envies the Tom Hanks character for his sharp comebacks that he later regrets saying.  This is part of an email conversation between them before they know one another’s true identity:

Tom Hanks: “Do you ever feel you've become the worst version of yourself? That a Pandora's box of all the secret, hateful parts - your arrogance, your spite, your condescension - has sprung open? Someone upsets you and instead of smiling and moving on, you zing them? "Hello, it's Mr Nasty." I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Meg Ryan: “ No, I know what you mean, and I'm completely jealous. What happens to me when I'm provoked is that I get tongue-tied and my mind goes blank. Then, then I spend all night tossing and turning trying to figure out what I should have said. What should I have said, for example, to a bottom dweller who recently belittled my existence? [She pauses.] Nothing. Even now, days later, I can't figure it out.

Tom Hanks: Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could pass all my zingers to you? And then I would never behave badly and you could behave badly all the time, and we'd both be happy. But then, on the other hand, I must warn you that when you finally have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say at the moment you mean to say it, remorse inevitably follows.”

In true Hollywood fashion, the movie ends as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan kiss in a garden.  Confrontation and Compassion kiss each other?  The kiss of peace? A peace based on the ability to confront with compassion?

What if the Jesus way of responding to minor personal slights and monumental injustice requires neither our timid silence nor our angry outbursts?  What if we can bring our concern for goals and concern for relationships together?  What if we can learn to speak truthfully and lovingly?   What if Isaiah’s vision of peace comes to pass as we turn our clever email quips into honest, extended, healing conversation? As we exchange our rehearsals of debate points for open, gentle listening? 

I do not mean we should forsake courageous convictions for compromises, or our prophetic outrage at injustice for acquiescence.  We should not naively assume no one means us harm.  Nor should we put our emotional health at risk by absorbing belligerence.  I mean that I cannot wage peace if I have enmity in my heart.  I mean that I cannot expect someone to hear me unless I am willing to listen to him or her.  I do get angry and afraid for the world when some people talk might-makes-right politics with chests puffed out and arms flexed—but I am even more afraid of the person I will become if I respond in kind.  We live in a world, a nation, families—in which political, cultural, and theological fissures are deepening.  We struggle to find ways to see that across that widening gulf there are people who are our brothers and sisters.    I must give up my fantasy of victory over another and seek instead a vision of peace with my brother or sister.  Maybe when we repent and resolve to do that together, we collectively, dear church, become the next voice crying in the wilderness—and we clear the path for the Spirit of Peace.

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[i][i] Augsburger, David.  Caring Enough to Confront.  Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1973.