A Path to Peace
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[00:00:00] May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable to you, the Holy One, our God. Please be seated.
Spoiler alert! I'm feeling very serious this morning, and you may come away from this sermon with more questions than answers.
And we may find that Jesus' directive on the cover of our bulletin is nuanced and complex, not simple.
I [00:01:00] notice that we live in a town that is deeply affected by current events between Pendleton and Coronado. And so, when we come to the scriptures this morning, I think we are called to engage those events and to find out where we stand as people of faith.
I suspect we've all been on journeys today and in the previous week. I know that I have, and I share my current thinking with you and my journey and response to scripture in the hope that we can be in dialogue as time goes on about your journey in the [00:02:00] coming days in these times. As events unfolded last week, I had the gift of living in this community of faith.
Fortunately for me, it was my turn to preach, and so I could take a lot of time engaging the scriptures. And I had opportunities to be with you, to be with others, to be with the seniors, as we went about our daily life and ministries. At the same time, we, all of us, live in a global community. And with that global community now, for us, comes a global communications network.
We really can't avoid it. And so [00:03:00] I witness daily violence, destruction, death, revenge, families torn apart, leadership around the world struggling to cope, struggling to cope. And we watch people's lives destroyed. And we watch people living out rage and hate. How? With more and more weapons. Each of us copes with that real time information in our own individual human reality, and I think with our own lens.
Every one of us has a lens. Reading Psalm 42, verse 6 in our Wednesday service, when we honored St. Teresa, I must admit [00:04:00] that this is the way I felt. "Why are you so full of heaviness, oh my soul? Why are you so disquieted within me?" That's where I was. Maybe some of you were too.
Why am I disquieted? I'm not Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim. I do not have a direct connection, or do I? I am distressed about the holy land because this is my holy land. This is the place I believe that Jesus walked. The place the Anglican Church has invested much time in hospitals and care. And together we see our Holy Land, yes.
A place of reference [00:05:00] to our God. We see it in conflict. Big conflict. Now remember, it is also the birthplace of all Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those faiths are centered there too, and mentioned in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles as well as the Holy Quran. I confess, the lens I used on Wednesday to witness world events came from my mind.
I was assessing events in the mind. I have been trained in graduate study of political science and public policy and comparative government to look at issues of governance and sovereignty and national and cultural issues and boundaries and [00:06:00] ancient feuds that date back 2, 000 years. Yes? You, that is, everyone in church and online this morning, witness through your own lens, don't you?
You're unique and you have a unique perspective. It may come from medicine or public service, the law, social service, public sector, military service, but it is yours. And we all struggle with the question: where is God? Where is God in all of this? Where are the rock solid precepts we can stand on? As we say, how are we called to serve God in these times?
What can we do? Where do we stand in this conflict? [00:07:00] Well, I think the scriptures this morning help us find a voice. And if they don't, you will have your own scriptures to look at, and your own places to go, and your own people to talk to. We can take comfort that we're not the first faith community to struggle with conflicting understandings of God.
And this morning, we can look to Moses in the book of Exodus, struggling over and over again, to lead and find direction for his people. He wants them to know God better, and to see God's glory, and be open to God's mercy. He's been, I think this morning, by the time we read (and you can check me, ) four times, I think, he's been back to God, [00:08:00] asking for direction.
Asking for God to speak. And the great thing about the Old Testament, or the First Testament, if you call it that, is that God does speak. God answers. God responds. And he says, I will make my goodness known to you, and I will proclaim to you my name. But know I will be gracious, to whom I will be gracious, to whom I will be gracious and I will show mercy, but you will never see my face, for no one can see me and live.
In the midst of all of this, in the gospel we see Jesus responding to parables in the verses that come before [00:09:00] today. But today, he gets into a very direct confrontation with people who want to trap him up. They want to trap him up. So you can almost hear the irony and, I don't know, condescension in those questions asked of Jesus by the Herodians and the Pharisees and the local leaders.
The whole Q& A reveals the divisions of that time because the Herodians, that is, followers of Herod, come from a family in Idumea. That in today's, that's in today's southwestern Jordan. And many Jews did not recognize the Herods as legitimate rulers of Israel.
So, to approve a [00:10:00] tax to Caesar would be offensive to Jewish individuals and nationalists, but to disapprove the tax would be treasonous. Happily in the midst of all these divisions, Jesus is going about trying to find a community of faith that's based on love, and by extension, peace and healing, articulated in the two greatest commandments; that is, to love God with all your heart and mind and soul, and then to love your neighbor as yourself.
And the Apostle Paul, speaking to early Christians was giving them a word of hope. He was congratulating them. He was saying to them, "Look, you've done a good job, you emerging community [00:11:00] in Thessalonica. You've been imitators of the work we do. And you've been imitators of the work Jesus did. And we're here to give you hope. More hope. As you go on to do that work, you have received the word and you've followed it."
That's what I believe these scriptures hope for us. How will we model, how will we model our faithful response? Because it matters more than ever. How do we proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ as people of faith?
Well, I'm going to tell you how I see it, and I hope that you will come back to me with how you see it. Number one, [00:12:00] trust in the long, slow work of God.
Be grateful for the triune God we have: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; the God who was and who created all; the God who was incarnate and went about healing and teaching that we can see in the scriptures and the Holy Spirit who prompts the soul day by day. We say in spiritual direction that we, in times like these, go about listening for the promptings of the Spirit.
God, our Creator, calls out in love to all humanity. I think [00:13:00] when we see pain and suffering, starvation, displacement, lack of medical assistance, and humanitarian crisis, we are called to act. We may support the American Red Cross. We may support the Bridge of Jerusalem. We may support Episcopal Relief and Development, or other humanitarian organizations that we believe in.
We're called to live in hope, always, as Paul's letter wants us to do. And to look beyond, where God already is; to look beyond, because God has gone before us to a place where the hearts and minds will be turned by God's power, no matter how long the parties have [00:14:00] been feuding, no matter how long, where justice is done.
That the parties in the conflict will find a better way to proceed, leaving weapons, terrorism, and hostage taking behind. For a ceasefire for peace in the short term and move toward respectful negotiation and receive a new vision of life in coexistence. And finally, I believe we are called to pray without ceasing.
Pray without ceasing.
One of our members here said to me at the senior lunch, "I think, Mother Susan, we should all go away on retreat, every one of us, and pray until this is resolved." And I said, you know what? That's a good idea. [00:15:00] Pray for people who are suffering, and in pain, whoever they are, and wherever they are.
Pray for all leaders, especially, and diplomats, that the Spirit of God may prompt them, may work in them, to find a way forward, through the lens of healing for all. Pray, finally, in the words of one of my clergy contacts in another diocese. He is a Palestinian American Christian. And he suggests, "Pray not for Arab or Jew, Palestinian or Israeli, But pray rather for ourselves, That we might not divide them in our prayers, [00:16:00] But keep them both together in our hearts."Amen.
