Interfaith Thanksgiving Service 2006

Sermon: Building Peace

            I’d like for you to picture a field somewhere on BainbridgeIsland or North Kitsap.  A specific field you’ve seen often enough to be able to see it in your mind’s eye.  If nothing comes to mind, you might picture the field just north of this church, which you may have gone by hundreds of times en route to the schools or the library.  Got it?

            Now listen to this poem by William Stafford:

This is the field where the battle did not happen,

where the unknown soldier did not die.

This is the field where grass joined hands,

where no monument stands,

and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,

unfolding their wings across the open.

No people killed—or were killed—on this ground

hallowed by neglect and an air so tame

that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.[1]

I happened upon Stafford’s poem while I was reflecting on the theme of this service: “Gratitude for Creating Peace in Our Community.”  My sense of gratitude for living near the field where the battle did not happen goes very, very deep.  I am so grateful that can go to bed at night with the reasonable expectation that no violent force will end my life before morning comes.  I imagine you share my gratitude for living in such a beautiful, peaceful and secure place, a place where the air is so tame that our fights waged in public are about taxes and parking and building permits and the like, and lives are seldom lost in City Council meetings.

            Let me ask you, did we create the peace we enjoy in our little corner of the world?   Do we get to take credit for living near the field where the battle did not happen?   Yes and no.  Yes, to the extent that we all try to behave as civilized people, that we do not take a shotgun out of the closet to communicate with the neighbor exactly how we feel about his dog doing its duty on our lawn, we are creating peace.  When we decide not to picket the worship services of our neighbors or leaflet their lawns with proof of just how wrong-headed their doctrines are, we create peace.  When we do something as simple as counting to ten before letting an angry response rip at the sales counter or the meeting or the supper table, we create peace.

            But the answer is also no.  We did not create the peace we enjoy here so much as we have inherited it.   We have stumbled upon it.  We have received a gift we did not necessarily earn.  We must not feel too smug about the privilege of living near the field where the battle did not happen.

            I’m raising the question about whether we created the peace we enjoy because I think the response to enjoying peace is different depending on how you answer the question.  If I created it, it’s mine; I earned it, I deserve it, and my main interest is doing everything in my power to preserve it for me and my kin.    If, on the other hand, I received it as a fabulous, unexpected legacy through no particular virtue of my own, I might be more inclined to want to share this amazing gift.  I might feel more humbled by the gift than exalted.  I might be led to ask why I received this gift that others did not, and open my eyes to the fact that everyone deserves the gift of a peaceful place to live, not just me and my kin.  My deep gratitude for the gift might lead me to ask how the gift could be passed on to others, even to those who live where the battle did happen, is happening, where people are killing and being killed, in the places where the blood is too fresh yet for the monuments for the fallen to have been designed.    

            Perhaps even such a brief mention of the fields of battle refreshes your sense of gratitude for being far from them, and sparks your compassion as well.  We do live in a place as rich with peace as Texas is rich with oil, and it’s a great gift.   I remember those maps I used to be required to draw in grade school of the United States with little symbols of the chief exports of each region; I remember drawing tiny corncobs and crossed pickaxes and oil wells and miniature trees.  That was before the days we would have had to try to draw itty-bitty microprocessors.  I wonder what the grade school children draw on maps of KitsapCounty?  What if—if you’ll go with me on a little flight of fancy—what if the next generation of children ended up drawing little peace symbols?  Could peace be something we not only enjoy, we not only feel grateful for, but seek to export?  Could we see peace as a natural (we’d say in my tradition “God-given”) and human-nurtured resource that we share with the world?

            One of Jesus’ stories in the Christian scriptures comes to mind.  A man going on a journey summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them.  To one he gave five talents (a talent being currency equivalent to 15 years labor); to another two talents, and to another one.  Then he went away.  The one who got five talents traded with them and earned another five; the one who got two also doubled them; and the one who got one, being fearful, dug a hole in the ground and hid his one talent.  You may know the outcome; the slaves who doubled their investments were rewarded and praised for being good and trustworthy when the master returned, while the nervous one-talent slave intent on preservation only got in big trouble and lost the one talent he had been given.  I don’t know if this parable would apply to people who are gifted with something like peace; but it seems to me that if our only response to enjoying a peaceful place is to try to preserve it in this little enclave like the steward who buried the resource entrusted to him, we will miss a great opportunity to be faithful. 

            I think that in terms of being gifted with peace, we are like the slave who got the big purse—the five talents.  Almost all of us know where the next meal is coming from, almost all of us have adequate or more than adequate shelter, we can go out after dark without fearing for our lives, the law enforcement system is working, no foreign power has ever dropped a bomb here, our environment is benign, people are inclined to be civil, we have freedoms other people can only dream about: the jackpot.  Right?  Now, one thing the five-talent slave had that we will also need in order to try to share the gift of peace with the wider world is courage.  Fearlessness.  In fact, fearlessness could be a foundational element in the peace we want to export.  What if we became known as the most fearless county in the state, the more fearless state in the nation?  Wouldn’t that be a fine thing to export, wouldn’t that lay the groundwork for peace more effectively than almost anything else?

            You might say that the goal of being fearless people is not only impossible but stoopid.  We need some fear in order to be realistic and to be vigilant about the dangers that threaten us.  We wouldn’t want fearless people to be in charge of Homeland Security, for example.  A certain amount of fear is necessary.

            That may be true.  A certain amount of fat is necessary in our diets as well—you can’t cut fat completely out of your diet and stay healthy.  But here in North America, we are not just taking in adequate amounts of dietary fat, we are gorging on it.  We are eating so much fat that life-expectancy is actually starting to decline because of the hazards of obesity.  I think the American taste for fear is like that; we are gorging on fear, becoming heavy and slow with fear, shortening planetary life expectancy because of an excess of fear.  A certain amount of aggression grows directly out of a root of fear.  Immobility grows out of fear of change.

            We need to be like a kid who stands up to a threat and says out loud, “You can’t scare me!”  We all know that when a kid says that, it’s probably a lie; she says it precisely because she is afraid, heart pounding a mile a minute.   But she’s beating back the fear, refusing to give in to it.  I think we should be talking back to our TV sets when the news anchors are trying to push our buttons so we’ll watch ‘til the next commercial: “You can’t scare me!”  Say it to the politician who paints a picture of catastrophe if the other guy gets his way: “You can’t scare me.”  Say it (in a nice way) to the critic in your circle who wants you to shut up about your convictions because you disagree: “You can’t scare me.”  Say it to the red-eyed terrorist who lurks in your imagination: “You can’t scare me.” 

            The Christian scriptures have a verse that means a great deal to me: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” [1 John 4:18]  If we want to share the gift of peace, love needs to take the place of fear.   This includes love not just for our near neighbors but love for the neighbor far away; love not just for the friend but also for the enemy.  In the Christian tradition, this is one of Jesus’ fiercest challenges: to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.   It’s a revolutionary thing to do, to pray for your enemies.  As Jim Wallis has written, prayer makes enemies into friends.  “When we have brought our enemies into our hearts in prayer, it becomes difficult to maintain the hostility necessary for violence.  In bringing them close to us, prayer serves to protect our enemies.  Thus prayer undermines the propaganda and policies of governments designed to make us hate and fear our enemies.  By softening our hearts toward our adversaries, prayer can become treasonous.  Fervent prayer for our enemies is a great obstacle to war and the feelings that lead to it.”  What if every person of faith and good will connected with the Interfaith Council devoted themselves to praying for our enemies?  Wouldn’t that be a way to share and spread the gift of peace? 

            There is something even more foundational than fearlessness and loving and praying for our enemies.  That’s the essential attitude of believing that peace is possible.  It’s so important, friends, that we believe peace is possible.  People of faith will be key to keeping the light of hope for peace alive, because it takes faith to believe peace is possible when a great deal of evidence in the wide world implies it is not.  People of faith, we have to be the ones taking the long view.  We don’t have to see all the evidence to maintain hope.  Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us, “Hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what is seen?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” [Romans 8:24-25]

I was inspired by a writer recently who used the metaphor of cathedral building to write about what it means to build peace.  The builders of the many cathedrals around the world in years gone by often labored for something they knew they would not see completed.  Many of the great Christian cathedrals in Europe, for example, were built over a period of more than a hundred years.  We could see the process of building peace in the world as a process we labor for without presuming we will see its completion. 

The fact that we may not live to see the whole world enjoy the peace we enjoy here does not mean that we should not labor for it, should not commit our unique talents and the artistry of our lives for it.   This is a work we enter into over the long haul, together.  It took whole communities to build cathedrals in the Middle Ages.  Christian historian Roland Bainton tells about how the heavier stones of the cathedrals took a thousand people hitched to the same load to move.  “In silence they pulled and in unity, for if any refused to forgive another the hard-hearted one was cast out of the traces.”  Everyone helped.  The people pulled the stones.  The merchants gave their money.  The guilds, the companies of workers such as bakers, brewers, smiths and carpenters presented this window or that.  The architects, artists and craftspeople vied with one another adorning the house of worship.[2]  Just so, we will have different skills to apply as we seek to build peace.  Some of us will work for justice in many ways; some will keep vigils; some will create beautiful works of art; some will advise politicians; some will pray and meditate; some will seek reconciliation in divided communities; some will strive to preserve the earth so that humans can continue to know the peace of wild things and continue to enjoy the fields where the battle never happened.  With patience and skill we will build peace, never giving up hope.           

We know peace is possible in part because we enjoy it here, now.  Our fragment of the building is visible.  Other rooms are yet to be built.  I had the privilege of visiting the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona a couple of years ago—a cathedral that is still in the process of being built, with no prospect of being finished for at least 75 more years.  Looking up through soaring gothic arches toward a roof that isn’t there is strangely thrilling.  It makes you want to contribute to its completion, and sets you dreaming of the beautiful place it will be for the children of my children, should they be lucky enough to go there. 

            May we have a similar vision of the beautiful world we may help build.  Even if we don’t see peace in all its beautiful perfection in our lifetime, we can add our skills and our labor with love to the peaceful human society we long for.  We can join hands to share the peace we enjoy, leaning into a future when the whole creation will share our gratitude for peace.

[1] Stafford, William  Peace Prayers: Meditations, Affirmations, Invocations, Poems and Prayers for Peace  San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992, p. 123

[2] Bainton, Roland  The Church of Our Fathers  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941, p. 122-23