“Awed and Odd: 

Peace in the Midst of Conflict”

First Congregational UCC – November 28, 2010

The Rev. Sharyl B. Peterson

Scriptures:  Isaiah 2: 2-4; Luke 1: 68-69, 78-79; Romans 13: 11-12

Day before yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving, hundreds (and probably thousands) of Grand Valley residents set their alarms for an insanely-early wake-up time, and descended on the local stores en masse, in search of “Black Friday” bargains.   If we can judge by the newsclips, by the time the stores had been open for about 15 minutes, there were shoppers with shopping-carts full of flat-screen televisions, the newest home expresso makers, designer jeans, all the latest dolls and games and other toys, and gift-cards for everyone else on their list who didn’t share their personal “Christmas wish list.”

            On the other hand, many of us sitting here this morning, as well as in other churches, and other places, may or may not have gotten up at three AM on Black Friday.  We may have chosen to sleep in, or to enjoy a couple more cups of coffee with a loved one, or even have gone for a drive to enjoy this gorgeous weather we’re having.  And if we did decide to take advantage of the bargains in all the stores, our shopping-cart contents – and their ultimate destinations – may have been a little different from those of many other shoppers. 

            For example, instead of looking for designer jeans, we may have been trying to fill our baskets with not-so-designer warm socks for the clients at the Day Shelter.  Instead of spending $99.99 on an electronic game that buzzes and beeps, and that will keep one average child happy for about two hours on Christmas morning, we may have chosen to buy dolls or board-games games or other toys that cost a little less, but that we can contribute to dozens of children through the Toys for Tots program, or to the kids served by Latimer House.  And instead of buying gift-cards for future purchases at department-stores, some of us may have happily been addressing and sending gift-cards from the Alternative Gift Fair.  Gifts like bicycles and bicycle ambulances to Africa, or dental visits to the Marillac Clinic, or a micro-loan for a family or community in Nigeria, or a gift of schoolbooks for children in Rwanda, or a gift of food for a hungry family here in the Valley from the Community Food Bank. 

We, too, may have “shopped ‘til we dropped,” but my guess is that a lot of our shopping-focus wasn’t on us, and what we want for Christmas, but on others.  My guess is that instead of us planning to celebrate Christmas as if it was our birthday, we’re remembering that what we’re about to celebrate at Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.  Given our very attitudes about this season … given our very weird spending-habits … and our very weird giving-habits … gifts for people who are total strangers, gifts for people we will never meet … instead of just gifts for ourselves, and for all those we love best …  it’s no wonder that folks in our society around us don’t really understand us very well, and may think of us Christians as rather “odd” folks.    

My current favorite discussion of this notion comes from author, worship designer and leader, professor, preacher and artist Marcia McFee.  I owe considerable thanks to our Martha Jones, who, with the help of our congregation, was able to take a workshop with Marcia McFee last summer, and was so excited about what McFee had to say about worship, Martha brought back an immense pile of handouts and ideas. 

            As I read McFee’s suggestions for celebrating this season of Advent, into which we enter today, I was intrigued to find her focusing on the theme of “awed” and “odd.”  She suggests, as Christians (and she may well not restrict this just to people of the Christian faith), we are “odd” – o … d … d – in part because the way that we live, if we live faithfully, so often goes against the current of mainstream mores and mainstream trends.  And we are “odd” – o … d … d – in part because we are also “awed” – a … w… e… d.

            Just like the very earliest Christians were “awed” by the power and presence of God known through Jesus’ life and teachings and resurrection.  And just like they were “odd” because they tried to live out Jesus’ teachings of peace-making … of justice-bringing … of loving others, no matter what in the middle of a world that had very different ideas about what mattered most.  And, she says,  they “cultivated spiritual vitality, and reached new people with the good news of Jesus Christ,

just as we can today,” if we have the courage, and if we can hold on to the true meaning of “awe” in the middle of a world that often doesn’t know the difference between “awesome” as it applies to a new chicken sandwich at a fast-food restaurant, and “awesome” as it applies to God sending Jesus Christ into the world, to show us what God’s love in the flesh looks like! 

            When she talks about the meaning of “awe” for us as contemporary people of faith, she quotes UMC Bishop Sally Dyck, who defines “awe” like this:  “What is awe?  Awe is the response to God’s palpable presence in our lives.  Awe is when we see God in the world around us.  You know awe; it’s what takes your breath away because it’s a holy moment.  Awe is… a precious child/  a person who has lived long and well/  a sunset/  the joy of new life each year/ a love that lasts a lifetime/  hope in the midst of disaster.  We experience awe when we are momentarily transported out of our own personal concerns and self-awareness.  It’s literally the absence of self-centeredness, because we are centered on God in the world and people around us[1].”

            Yes, we are, I hope, “awed” folk.  And also “odd” folk.  And each Sunday of this Advent season, we are going to focus on one of the ways we are “odd” – and “awed” – as we are often seen by the world around us.  And we begin today by considering what it might mean for us to bring peace in the midst of conflict. 

            It is no secret to anyone that our world … our nation … our community … even our church … struggles mightily with conflict.  With conflicts as small as differences of opinion, and as large as wars that daily take the lives of thousands. 

            In the time that we sit here – quite peacefully worshipping together this morning – people’s babies … toddlers … teen-agers … adult women and men … are being beaten … tortured … raped … shot … their bodies tossed by roadways to rot.  In the time that we sit here – quite peacefully worshipping together this morning – children in this country are being brutally assaulted by their own fathers … mothers … siblings; other children are dying in torment from starvation that is preventable; young teens, both girls and boys, are being sold into sexual slavery, purchased by the very kinds of “nice people” we know; mothers are dying of AIDS, and fathers are dying in torture-chambers, because governments choose to spend money not on medicine and cures and peace, but on weapons and warfare. 

            If you take the time over the next few weeks to read the newspaper headlines that will be adorning our Communion Table covering, and hanging on the wire-hangers in our aisles, it doesn’t take but a minute to find places of conflict, violence and warfare, both literal and metaphorical, nearly everywhere you look.  And we may wonder, rather desperately and despairingly, how on earth – no matter how faithful we think we are, or want to be – can we bring peace in the midst of conflicts like these? 

            How on earth can we believe the prophets of our faith like Isaiah, when they make promises like the one we heard earlier in one of our Scripture readings:  “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”  What on earth do “God’s paths” look like in today’s world, and how do we walk in them?

            To begin our reflections, let’s consider the meaning of the main word that is used to express the idea of “peace” in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament).  That word, which we’ve considered a time or two before now, is shalom.  It is a deeply rich word, which means wholeness … completeness … health … well-being. 

            In contrast to being simply an absence of war or conflict, peace is a positive notion.  It isn’t just about ending conflicts or hostilities between opposing parties, but about bringing something else to replace that conflict and hostility … bringing friendship … bringing healthy, mutual, respectful relationships … recreating the covenant of love between God and humankind, which we do by recreating the covenant of love between human beings … whether those are the human beings

we are personally really aggravated at because they didn’t bring the “right” kind of food to Coffee Hour, or because they disagreed with us about some kind of committee decision we were trying to make; or because they are groups of people we are hostile toward because their politics are different from ours; or because their families look different from our families; or because they are citizens of a nation that we dislike, or distrust, or of which we are afraid. 

            And yet, what do the Scriptures of our faith tell us, over and over?  That despite our aggravations … our deep dislike for … our outright hostility toward … others, still we are called – as people of faith – to do everything within our power to bring shalom to our families, to our communities, and to our world.

And what do the Gospel-writers tell us, over and over, about the One we call “the head of the church,” about the One whom Isaiah called the Prince of Peace, about the One named Jesus, the One we call our Christ?  First, they tell us, he didn’t happen to just show up on earth randomly.  He was sent by a God “who loved the world so much, (God) send (God’s) very own child to show us how to live peacefully together – and so, to save ourselves and our world.  Luke’s Gospel puts it this way:  God has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of David, as was spoken through the mouth of the holy prophets from of old ... By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And what does Jesus – this One sent to guide our feet into the way of peace – tell us?  In the Sermon on the Mount, he tells the crowd gathered there,  “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”  Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus telling all of us who would be His disciples, “Have salt among yourselves (i.e., eat together and share the salt of friendship), and keep peace with each other” (Mk. 9:50c).  After healing broken, hurting, conflicted people, Jesus blesses them as they leave, telling them to “Go in peace,” and trust in God’s love. 

And perhaps most important of all is the term of self-designation that Jesus suggests for his disciples:  “child of peace” (Luke 10:6).   If we, as Jesus’ followers, are to do nothing else, we are each one of us called to be a “child of peace.”  Make a note of that one:  it’s a good bet it’s going to be on the final exam.

            And while the English translation of these phrases doesn’t really capture it, in the language Jesus spoke, what these phrases meant were not passive forms of “be calm … be happy…”  Instead, they were assertive commands, in which Jesus told His followers then – and calls us now – to “be peacemakers – to “pursue peace” – to actively make peace.” 

            Now, one of the things that makes us “odd” as Christians is that we interpret Jesus’ commands in different ways.  We go about pursuing peace … making peace … being children of peace … through many different paths. 

            For example, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about our military veterans who have sought (or now seek) to bring peace to troubled and broken places in the world.  We honored them, and their service, for following Paul’s admonition to “let the boots you wear be the gospel of Peace” (Eph. 6:15, KJV). 

            But there are other kinds of peacemakers, too, whom we didn’t honor on Veteran’s Sunday.  For example, we didn’t other some of the other heroes who were as deeply committed to bringing freedom and peace to the world as were those who served in the military, but who chose another path to do it. 

            I didn’t know this until I did a little historical reading, but our Congregational ancestors – those folks who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1620s – were the first body in this United States of America to pass a law respecting the right of persons to refuse to bear arms because of their religious or moral beliefs.  One hundred and twenty-five years later, in the original draft of the Bill of Rights, author James Madison proposed that the Second Amendment both protect the right to bear arms and establish that "no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." Interestingly, perhaps because the wider culture had a pretty dim view of these “conscientious objectors,” that clause was struck from the version of the Bill of Rights later approved by Congress.

            By the time World War I rolled around, C.O. status was still observed as a legal right for persons “whose … creed or principles forbid its members to participate in war in any form."  However, despite their theoretical legal protections, over 5,000 people were imprisoned during World War I for resisting the draft, and many were subjected to torture and other harsh treatment[2].

            The current draft law was written during World War II, and gave conscientious objectors two options.  They could serve as noncombatants, or they could volunteer in Civilian Public Service camps. In such alternative service, thousands of C.O.s helped construct dams for communities that needed water supplies, worked on farms doing contouring to prevent soil erosion, served as dairy-workers in a time of great shortage, worked in state mental hospitals in the most dangerous and difficult positions, worked with the fairly new Smoke Jumpers with the National Forest Service, and more.  They did it for no wages, they frequently lived in truly dreadful conditions in the CPS camps, and they were often treated badly by the very people in whose communities they served.  And yet, they made the choices they did because of their faith beliefs – because of their commitment to Jesus’ call to be “children of peace” – even though it put them very much at odds with what the “world” told them they were supposed to do.

People still make peace in what seem to many to be “odd” ways.  Some of our best and brightest college students finish their degrees, and instead of opting for a large salary with a big company, they offer their skills and knowledge to teach children in Afghanistan, or to build medical clinics in small villages across Africa, or to teach poverty-stricken adults new farming practices … and much, much more.  Some of our middle-aged professionals, earning pretty good salaries in professions with fairly high esteem, give up those positions and opt instead to teach children in one of the badly-underfunded inner-city schools that abound, or risk their safety flying to other countries to offer free medical care, or dream up and start new projects like Habitat, and the Sojourners Community, and the Community for Creative Non-Violence … and many, many more.  Some of our older adults, having already worked all their lives to contribute to society, tutor kids for whom English is a second language, or volunteer to make and serve lunches at soup kitchens, or ring bells for the Salvation Army, or knit blankets for children rescued from domestic violence situations, or deliver meals for Gray Gourmet … and much, much more.

            Yes, we are odd, we people of faith who take seriously our call to be “children of peace.”  In the midst of a world filled with every kind of conflict, we choose to do what we can, however we can, to create tiny spaces not just where war is absent, but where peace – where God’s love – is present.  And we trust that if we’ll create the tiny spaces, God can work with them to do the rest. 

            Marcia McFee, in her Advent worship suggestions, suggests that as Christians, we may have “lost that sense of being odd – being salt and light and yeast – in the world, and being proud (in the right sort of way) of being different, being counter-cultural, being odd!  Because that’s what Jesus calls us to be. 

            But we are called to reclaim it!  To say – and to live as if – “yeah, we’re Christians!  Yeah, we’re odd!”    Yeah, we’re odd … based on the prophets of old, we do justice on behalf of the most vulnerable among us.  Yeah, we’re odd … we believe we can make a difference by feeding the hungry of the world.  Yeah, we’re odd … we worship in the midst of life’s disasters, bringing hope to ourselves and the world.  Yeah, we’re odd … we do good in Christ’s name.  Yeah, we’re odd, (knowing) we don’t have to face life’s difficulties all alone; we have a support Christian community who cares for us when we’re down,         and we care for others when they are.  Yeah, we’re odd … we bring our whole selves to God in prayer and service, love and justice, in the good times and bad[3].”

          May it be so, in this season of Advent, and in every season.  Amen.