Monday, December 21, 2015

The Advent of Peace: A Whole World

Belfast Peace Art
Sunday December 20, 2015 - Fourth Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 9:1-7
But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest,
    as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden,
    and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor,
    you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
    and all the garments rolled in blood
    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us,
    a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
    and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
    and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
    He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Sermon: “The Advent of Peace: A Whole World”

It was a chilly July, colder for the tension in the room at the time.  On that winter afternoon, in that confusing way of the Southern Hemisphere, we gathered in a large meeting space, sitting in a circle on the floor.  “We” were what is called a “cross-community project,” a gathering of Protestant and Catholic teenagers from Belfast (and a couple of random Americans thrown in for good measure).  And that “floor” we found ourselves on…well that was built on South African soil, in a little Christian camp in the bush outside of Pietermaritzburg. 

I was one of the leaders of this little peace project, and we’d met for 10 months to build community because, though these kids were all from Belfast, they hadn’t met someone from the other side – Protestant (that is, British) or Catholic (Irish).  They were divided by ironically named “peace walls,” divided by different schools and neighborhoods, divided even by football team allegiance.  But mostly, they were divided by history.  We’re not born fearing or hating, we must be taught it.  These kids were taught well, mostly through that harshest of teachers: violence. 

But we’d worked hard.  These kids had been so courageous, even touring each other’s neighborhoods, learning the sites of sectarian violence, hearing the stories.  They’d even begun to trust each other a little.  So that winter July day, on that South African soil, we gave each kid a little lump of clay: “Tell us something about your identity with this clay,” we asked.

The first couple thoughts shared were benign and relaxed.  Then the third kid went.  He clasped his clay into a rough lump.  “This is a stone,” he said.  “A stone like what was lobbed at peaceful Catholic protestors by the Prod police -- no offense yousuns -- on Bloody Sunday.”  It might as well have been a real stone, because that little lump of clay caused chaos. 

Kids began drawing their battle lines once more, asserting their versions of what happened in Derry (or Londonderry, depending on who you ask) on January 30, 1972.  Of course, none of these teenagers were born then.  But they’d been raised on their own version of that history.  Some said the Catholics protesters were violent first; others said the British police were.  Bloody Sunday was undeniably one of the most terrible and influential events in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.

The Saville Inquiry was established in 1998 to reinvestigate the incident.  Following a 12-year inquiry, Saville's report was made public in 2010 and concluded that the killings of those Catholic protesters were both "unjustified" and "unjustifiable.”  It found that all of those shot were unarmed, that none were posing a serious threat, that no bombs were thrown, and that soldiers "knowingly put forward false accounts" to justify their firing.

But on that summer day in 2005, there was still fresh anger because of how the history of that event had been twisted.  I’d like to say that we leaders were calm and collected and in control.  Well, we weren’t.  We asked the kids to all leave the room, sitting apart from each other, and we met as leaders. “Will this destroy all we’ve worked to create?” we asked.  “Should we stop the angry conversation now before it gets worse?”  A consensus grew among us, something I can only attribute to the Spirit of God: “We have to trust this process.”

So we brought them back in, and let it happen.  We let kids get angry.  We let them shout.  We let them tell their stories (even if they weren’t actually their stories).  And then something beautiful happened, on the other side of all that anger and aggression.

Those Catholic and Protestant teens became united by a shared anger at being told half-histories.  They became angry that they had been taught to hate and fear.  And that righteous anger brought them together.  These kids discovered peace together.  Young people are much better at this than we set-in-our-ways adults. 
Perhaps that’s why it’s so important that God didn’t come to the world as an adult.  God came to be one of us – came as prophesied by Isaiah to break the yokes that burden the world, to break the rod of oppression and to use the clothing of war as fuel for the everlasting fires of peace. 

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
    and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.

A child born for us – the Prince of Peace – because that is the only way this world will know wholeness.  Young people show us the way, if we’ll trust them.  Perhaps so much of our conflicted ways, so much of our cyclical violence in the world is because of how we force our children to adopt our biased histories, instead of letting them guide us through conflict to peace on the other side. 

What would the world look like if children were trusted that much?  What would the world look like if we trusted the Christ Child that much?  It might look very different than the world we were raised in, and it might look very different than our world today.  And, if we’re honest with ourselves, that scares us, because as terrible as conflict is, we have grown as comfortable with it as those peace walls have grown comfortable as Northern Irish tourist destinations. 

As we finish this Advent journey towards peace and wholeness we began together 4 weeks ago, I think it’s time we ask an important question, especially regarding our relationships with other nations and peoples of this world.  What would a child do?  More specifically, what would the Christ Child do? 

Would that child guide us to continue the cycles that never seem to end of you-attacked-first-and-so-now-it’s-our-turn?  Or would that child guide us to ask why are picking up stones in the first place, and if there isn’t something better we could do with our hands?  Would that child guide us to see if perhaps we have something in common after all? 

“But there will be no gloom for those who are in anguish,” Isaiah promises.
Isn’t that what every child wants?  Shouldn’t that be our goal, not just for us and ours, but for each child on this planet? 


God is coming, friends.  Not as a mighty warrior, not as a persuasive politician, and certainly not as a wordy preacher.  God is coming – as a child.  And this is the best news of all!  Amen.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

The Advent of Peace: A Whole Community

Image Source
Sunday, December 13, 2015 - Third Sunday in Advent
“The Advent of Peace: A Whole Community”

Romans 12:9-21   (The Message paraphrase)
Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Lord, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy saints; be inventive in hospitality.
Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”
Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

Sermon: “The Advent of Peace: A Whole Community”

A woman once bought a parrot for a pet.  All the parrot did was treat her bad.  It insulted her and every time she tried to pick it up, it would peck at her arm.

One day she got fed up with the parrot and, as it was insulting her, she picked it up.  It continued with the insults..."you're ugly! I can't stand you!" and it pecked at her arm as she carried it.  Deciding this pet was now her enemy, she opened the freezer door and threw him in and closed the door.  From inside, the parrot was still going on for about 5 seconds and then it was suddenly quiet.

She thought, "Oh no, I killed it!" But when opened the door, the parrot just looked at her.  She picked it up.
The parrot said:  "I'm very sorry. I apologize for my bad behavior and promise you there will be no more of that. From now on, I will be a good parrot."

"Well okay," she said. "Apology accepted.”  The parrot said "Thank you” and then he continued, "Can I just ask you one thing?" She said, "Yes, what?"
The parrot looked back at the freezer and asked, 

"What did the chicken do?"

Our impulse, when we feel threatened or antagonized, is to freeze that person or group of people out. 

Paul’s letter to the Romans calls us to a different impulse: not retaliation, not angry overreaction, but love.  As the Message paraphrase puts it, to “love from the center of who we are.”  We fight fear and hatred not with fear and hatred, but with love.  We pray for our enemies (and know who do and do not deserve that name).  We recognize that compassion is the greatest weapon against evil we have.  We eat together.  Psalm 23, that favorite of many of us, says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  My cup overflows.”  This, in my read of scripture, is not a gloating table, to sit at and enjoy food while our enemies starve.  This is a Table like what we come to today, where we realize that people who sit down and eat together have an awfully hard time staying enemies.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus fed Judas, knowing he would betray him anyway, but trying to save him from his own greed and violent ways, not by fighting him, but by feeding him.

The Message paraphrase of Romans 12 also says, “Don’t let evil get the best of you, get the best of evil by doing good.”  This begs the question: what is evil?  You might think of people who for you fit that description.  You might think of structures and systems.  But evil in the original text isn’t a noun.  It’s an adjective.  It means inner malice and wickedness, and is used to describe people and things.  Describe, not define. 

This means that evil is not some disembodied force in the world, twisting and tempting us against our will.  This means that evil is not an entire group of people because of what religion they hold to or what country they’re from.  This means that evil is that impulse within all of us towards malice and wickedness. 

And so, as we seek to overcome evil in our communities and in the world, we do not seek to destroy people – we seek to destroy the hatred within all of us that makes us see each other as enemies.  And we overcome that with good, with loving from the center of who we are because, though we are sinful and all have the potential for evil within us, we are all also made in the image of God, God who is the greatest good.

If we remember that we also all have this goodness within us, we see each other in our communities much differently.  Beautiful things can happen when we do this. 

Sabiha Kapetanovic, a 23-year-old international relations student from Bosnia, tells one such story of a small community being transformed by love.  She writes,

"In Bavaria, southern Germany, there is one small place called Dachau.  The medieval town of Dachau is important for history as it was the location of the first of the Nazi concentration camps.  Today, if you go to Dachau you will find a church standing in the place where the concentration camp once was.  For me, this church is situated there to tell a beautiful story – the story of two best friends.  These two best friends are not just any kind of best friends; they are the kind that makes the sun rise and shine again, the kind that makes nights seem neither dark nor cold, they are the type of friends that teach us that love and forgiveness are possible.  One of the friends is a priest who works in the Dachau church, yet his father was a Nazi and one of the main builders of the concentration camp of Dachau.  The other friend is a Dutch Jew, whose father was imprisoned there in times of war.  After the war ended he built the church on the place where the concentration camp once was.

It confuses me how everything is so contradictory – how we are so good, but at the same time how we are so evil, so hurtful, and so full of jealousy.  When I heard the story of the two best friends, it inspired me and showed me that I am not the only crazy fool in this world that believes in the goodness of people.  Because if they were able to build a friendship and leave their pasts behind, and that of their ancestors, then everyone is capable of spreading positive energy and love, while forgetting the negativity of stories that are actually not ours; we did not live them, we did not write them.  It sends out a clear call important for all to remember – the past is something finished, unchangeable.  We have to enjoy this beautiful, but indeed short life.  Do not destroy it by constantly [worrying about] things that cannot be changed.  What is important is what remains, not what is lost."

How can we build this sort of good and friendship in our community of Cameron?  I have one area I’d like us to focus on for this coming week, our next Advent challenge together.  That aspect of our community is racial division.  You see, this wonderful little town has a not-so-wonderful part of our history.  There were white landowners, and there were African American slaves who worked on their farms and in their homes.  Some white masters were kind and as fair as they could be given the system; some were not.  But everyone, white and black, wealthy and poor, suffered because of the systemic evil of slavery that used this very holy text to say God made some people more human, more in the image of God, than others.  Whether we like it or not (and I surely hope we don’t), that is our history.
But as Sabiha said, “the past is something finished, unchangeable….what’s important is what remains, not what is lost.”  What we do with our time now and the future is what matters.  But still, in our charming community, we have many people of color who live on the literal other side of the tracks.  We know these people.  We see them at the gas station and post office.  But knowing and seeing isn’t enough.  Romans 12 calls us to something more.  It calls us to friendship.

So our challenge this week (and hopefully longer than that) is this: looking at our community, and your friends within it, who among them are not of your same ethnic background?  Reach out to people who look differently from you, not just because you want to be polite, but because you want to follow God’s word, to break the cycles of our history so that the evil that separated us from one another will not win.  So that’s the first challenge: look at your friends, and see if you have any who don’t look like you. 

The second part is this: look at how you describe people of color – African American, Latino and others.  Do you use language similar to what your ancestors might have used?  Or do you use language of love? 

If the son of a Nazi concentration camp builder and the son of an imprisoned Dutch Jew can be friends, anything is possible by the grace of God.  This is what it looks like to overcome the evils of our past with good.  This is what it looks like when the peace of Christ advents into our lives and communities.  That peace is drawing ever closer, sinking into all of our best hiding places for hatred, and leaving wholeness in its wake.  Nothing is safe when God takes on flesh and blood and moves into our community – thanks be to God!

Amen.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

The Advent of Peace: A Whole Church

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December 6, 2015 - Second Sunday in Advent
Colossians 3:12-17
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.


Sermon:  The Advent of Peace: A Whole Church

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Hmm, no.

Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other….  Nope, no way.

Above all, clothe yourselves with love…mmm, not realistic.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.  Nope, that doesn’t work, either.

Y’all, as beautiful as Colossians 3 is, it just doesn’t fit how we live.  It’s far too idyllic, too demanding.  We in the Church throughout the world never seem to live up to this.

So, I’ve decided to make some improvements (I hope you don’t mind).

I’m going to call this the NRSV (New Right Self Version).  I think it will make us all much more comfortable.  You ready?  Here goes…

Colossians 3:12-17 (New Right Self Version)
As God’s perfect select few, dress yourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience (unless someone makes a political or theological argument you disagree with, then put on your best defensive gear). Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, post it publicly on Facebook, being just vague enough to offend as many people as possible. Forgiveness is God’s job, not yours. Above all, clothe yourselves with a watered-down, Hollywood version of love, which means everyone exists to make you happy, and you owe no one anything. And let the false peace of emotional detachment and inaction rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one homogenous body (of people who worship and vote and look and think just like you). And be thankful you’re better than everyone else. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, but only those parts that justify your particular beliefs and can be used as a weapon against others, ignore the rest; teach and admonish one another in all superiority; and with pride in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to yourself for being so very right. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of self-worship, giving thanks to God that you are better than so many poor, misguided souls.

This is not the Word of the Lord…(thanks be to God!).

My version sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it?  Surely we don’t live like that?  Surely the Church – the body of Christ – has higher standards than the rest of society?  I wish that was true.

The truth is, Colossians 3, as it comes to us in scripture, turns everything upside down about how we operate in the Church universal and even in our own congregation. Let’s see what it’s really saying…
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves…
The word “clothe” in the Greek is literally, “sink into” – so this isn’t piling extra clothing on in this busy Advent season, this is sinking into the good things of God; this is letting go.

…sink into compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Again, we learn much more from the original text.  Our English version leaves out an essential word:  the original text says, “sink into an inward part or heart of compassion, kindness, humility etc.”  That is what we worked on all this past week, asking God what within us was not at peace.  Our compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience only comes from an inward heart at peace. 

Next in our passage comes, Bear with one another…”  To us, this sounds an awful lot like “tolerate” or “put up with” one another.  But the original text instead says, “Hold one another up.”  The opposite of this is, of course, tearing one another down.  We Christians have never done that, have we?

Our text continues, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”  This word forgive is, in the original text, a word we Presbyterians hold tightly to: it is grace.  This literally says, not “forgive one another,” but “grace” one another.  Is this ignoring past damage, allowing victimization to continue?  Of course not.  But even in the worst of hurt we cause to one another, there is always room for grace somewhere.  Grace is never only God’s work – it’s ours, too.

Then, we’re told to clothe ourselves in love, which binds us together in perfect harmony, and to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, to which indeed we were called to one body.  Again, the original language is much more fun.  Anyone watching basketball lately?  Who makes sure the game is played fairly and the rules are followed?  (Or at least is supposed to do that.)  The ref! 

This text says in the Greek, “let the peace of Christ referee, umpire, in your hearts…”  It has a meaning much like a ref in our time, and is the used only once in all of scripture: here, in Paul’s letter to the Colossians.

Let Christ’s peace decide whether our hearts are matching our actions as the body of Christ.  This means that we practice listening to what Christ’s peace demands of us, perhaps even benching ourselves when we need to refocus. 

We let so many other things referee our interaction with one another in the Church: political pressure, doctrinal differences, theological arguments, money, power, generational and racial divides and influence, never mind just simple stress and exhaustion.  These lesser referees do not serve the body of Christ, at least not the whole body.  When we allow these lesser refs to call the shots, we will never find wholeness in the Church universal or our church.  We will find ourselves pulled apart because of the lie that we have to agree to follow Christ together, and the world will find a fractured, bitter church they have no desire to be a part of. 

But if we let the peace of Christ be our referee, if we grace one another when we mess up, if our hearts are full of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, if we hold each other up instead of tearing each other down, if we sink into God’s goodness instead of fighting against the ways of peace, the Church will know no bounds, and will be a beacon of hope and light in a world grown shadowed with fear and violence. 

Last week, my challenge for us was to pray each morning, asking ourselves, “What within me is not at peace?”  I hope you connected more deeply with your own places of division, and welcomed God’s peace into your heart. 

This week, our Advent challenge to practice peace is this: in every interaction you have with other Christians, especially those of a different denomination or practice than you, whether that interaction be in a meeting, rehearsal, meal, random conversation or online, ask yourself this: “Am I holding them up, or tearing them down?” 

It is nearly always one way or the other: we’re either working to build one another up, or we’re tearing others down, even with the smallest of words.  If we are tearing each other down, we can be sure we are allowing lesser things to referee the Church.  But if we are holding one another up, we can confidently show the world that the peace of Christ is our referee.

Are we holding fellow Christians up, or tearing them down?  If we’re ever going to be the body of Christ we’re called to be, it all comes down to that simple question. 

Living up to the actual words of Colossians 3 demands more of us than we have to give, but that’s why we need God’s help.  And that’s why God has placed us on this path to wholeness together. 

Thanks be to the God who created us for community, to the Son who gathered around him different and diverse people and called them disciples, and to the Spirit who binds us together as the Church, for all time, amen.