Pentecost 23, Year C
Readings: (Joel 2:23–32); Psalm 65; 2 Timothy 4:6–8,
16–18; Luke 18:9–14
Time races by. Yesterday we were
getting started. The day before we were children, with all time stretching out
before us. Change seems to happen faster now, and we know that people have been
saying that in every generation. The psalm reminds us that it’s harvest time
again—so soon!—and we are grateful for everything that rain and sun and soil
give us year after year.
On Reformation Sunday, which we are
combining with Peace Sunday this year, we think back five hundred years to the
eruption against entitlement and privilege that split the church. Many people
were upset that bishops were rich, and set up in those positions by powerful
parents and benefactors. The church had stopped being the church, in other
words. Martin Luther picked up the flickering torch lit by Anabaptists and
other earlier reformers and nailed it to the door of the church in Wittenburg,
in what is now Germany.
This week, a German bishop was
disciplined for his lavish lifestyle. By the pope, no less. Can the Catholic
Church change, and align itself with the poor? What about the other churches?
What about this church? We do that. Can we change to take into account
generations of people coming up who look for very different things in their
spiritual lives, who see church the way it has been done as almost irrelevant?
It’s about focusing in what is truly
important. Paul seems to be reviewing things at the end of his life, the end of
about twenty years of intense missionary activity. He’s under house arrest in
Rome, meeting with people, writing letters, and waiting for his trial by
imperial officials. “As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation,
and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have
finished the race, I have kept the faith.” He is confident that Christ will
have the crown of righteousness to award him, “…and not only to me but also to
all who have longed for Christ’s appearing.” There is the strong sense that he
is letting go. No more big trips around the Mediterranean planned. He’s not
going to make it all the way to Hispania, what we call Spain, after all. His
great goal, to preach Christ to all the world.
Perhaps we are like Paul, in the
stage of life where our big adventures are all behind us. Different things may
weigh on our minds these days, for the most part, than whether or not the crown
of righteousness awaits us, but maybe these old scriptures are not completely
dated. Look at the gospel passage, from Luke. A story about two men at the
temple, total opposites in their image of themselves. The religious guy sounds
obnoxious. “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” No. I’m good,
I’m solid. I make God feel good. The tax collector comes to the temple with a
very different agenda.
This story has the effect of making us wonder about ourselves. As it was intended. Every week, the World Council of Churches puts up prayer concerns on its website to help churches know what to pray for when they are praying their way around the world. This week, our prayer focus is on island nations in the Indian Ocean. Wouldn’t I love to know who wrote that other Christians around the globe should pray for“The leading of the Spirit for churches to renounce self-justification and rather work for the establishment of justice and human rights for all.”Self-justification. I’m OK. No flies on me.
This story has the effect of making us wonder about ourselves. As it was intended. Every week, the World Council of Churches puts up prayer concerns on its website to help churches know what to pray for when they are praying their way around the world. This week, our prayer focus is on island nations in the Indian Ocean. Wouldn’t I love to know who wrote that other Christians around the globe should pray for“The leading of the Spirit for churches to renounce self-justification and rather work for the establishment of justice and human rights for all.”Self-justification. I’m OK. No flies on me.
It’s this kind of spiritual and
intellectual laziness that gets a person into trouble, often. And not just
individuals. Our nation is allowed to launch missile strikes from drone
aircraft and kill people in your country. Our industry is allowed to use the
air we all breathe or the water we all drink for our waste disposal. Our sect
is entitled to blow up innocent people in markets or buses or places of
worships. We are justified.
Reformers want change, but not
through violence. Martin Luther started off as a reformer, then turned more
vengeful and bitter as the church opposed his ideas. He ended up supporting
violence against poor people, people who had been inspired by his early writing
to believe they were loved by God and had a claim to full humanity and all that
entails.
Peace is not just the absence of
open conflict. Syria is not at peace, but neither is Bangladesh, where people
sew our shirts for a dollar a day. And we don’t enjoy peace either, if people
have to visit a food bank to make it to the end of the month. Peace and reform
are closely connected.
Let’s hear from others about what it
takes to get peace, one American, one South African to start.
“It isn't enough to talk about
peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must
work at it.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“If you want to make peace with your
enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” Nelson
Mandela
Believe in it, work at it, she said.
Work with your enemy, says Mandela. He is celebrated around the world because
he could somehow do that. He could see beyond his own suffering, his own
mistreatment to the well being of his whole country. How badly do I want peace?
Here are a two more Americans with a
very similar view of peace.
“Peace cannot be achieved through
violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I do not want the peace that
passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace. Helen
Keller
What about Canadians? Here are a
couple from the only Canadian every to win a Nobel prize for peace.
“The grim fact is that we prepare
for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.”
“But while we all pray for peace, we
do not always, as free citizens, support the policies that make for peace or
reject those which do not. We want our own kind of peace, brought about in our
own way.” Lester B. Pearson
Our hero, Jesus, didn’t live into
old age. A few brief years to share the vision that burned within him. His
share of the world’s work and the world’s struggles lasted something like three
years, we believe. What if he had escaped the casual brutality of the empire
somehow? What would his ministry have looked like after ten years, thirty,
fifty? That was never going to happen, of course. He had as much chance of
staying free as a Russian billionaire who speaks against the current regime, or
a feminist in Saudi Arabia.
The only Member of Parliament to
vote against war in 1939 was James Shaver Woodsworth, a Methodist and then
United Church minister who founded the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.
This is his grace before a meal.
"We are thankful for these and
all the good things of life. We recognize that they are a part of our common
heritage and come to us through the efforts of our brothers and sisters the
world over. What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all. To this end, may we
take our share in the world's work and the world's struggles."
What we desire for ourselves, we
wish for all. …we take our share in the world's work and the world's struggles.
Or do we? Roosevelt, Mandela, Woodsworth—they’re all talking about the work
required, the struggle. Can’t I just be peaceful? Isn’t that enough? Can’t I
just treat others with respect, keep the weeds down around the yard, recycle
like I’m supposed to and be thought of as a peacemaker? I’m not Eleanor, I’m
not Nelson, I’m not J.S. I’m just, you know, an ordinary person.
This is our struggle as Christians,
isn’t it? If, together, we are the body of Christ, what would we not do for
Christ’s vision, God’s dream of a different kind of world? Peace, reform: our
commitment, my commitment. Peace, a world re-formed: the promise of Holy Love.
They don’t require a wholesale change in the way a person is in the world, but
rather a different awareness, a different appreciation. What did Pearson say,
again? “…while we all pray for peace, we do not always, as free citizens, support
the policies that make for peace or reject those which do not.”
How do I know which policies make
for peace? They will be the ones that make for more justice. They will be the
ones that allow people with less to organize, say, to protect their rights, that
curb the power of the powerful. They will be the ones that see the harvest as
something that flows to everyone, not just the person with the biggest stick.
The policies that protect the fish, the corals, the wild things and wild
places. You know all this.
If we need to set up a peace school
here, to figure how to make peace, let’s do it. If we need to practice our
lines or our skills, our discernment of the policies that make for peace, we
can. We have this inheritance—stories and traditions of the faith. We will add
to the legacy in our time and leave something Christ-like behind us. We will
not give in to smugness, that we are somehow justified by our own actions. Our
race is not over. Our fight—for peace—is not yet done.
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