SERMONS
Sean Gilbert – 26/4/09
Christ
Church Luke
24:26-48
Dynamics of Peace
Peace, peace.
Shalom, Eirene, Santi, Mir, Ping, Pax – peace.
Different
words, different religious and philosophic understandings or premises on which
the one word rests. For even though Jesus spoke Aramaic, Shalom was both the
word and the vision: one of wholeness and well-being – an original state,
to which we are always in the process of returning, re-discovering, reclaiming,
seeking, yearning, living.
Contrast that with the Latin and Greek understanding of peace which is more akin
to a truce, a lull between hostilities if you like, the natural state
of things being competitive warfare; peace thus being a space even to plan another
conquest.
“You shall have peace,” wrote Nietzsche, “as a means to new
wars – and short peace rather than long! Let your peace be victory!” Nietzsche’s
Super Man philosophy, of course, being fundamental to the rise of Nazi Germany.
Peace, ironically as a means to an oppressive and destructive end.
Well, thankfully
we don’t buy that negative, cynical premise or that ‘kill or be killed’ world
view. Christianity like its founder, seeks another less pessimistic or fatalistic
way. One born in the Spirit, surely, yet a way still needing to be experienced
(the disciples’ experience) through the complexities, vagaries and the
many injustices of life. In other words, peace can’t simply be left as
a warm, fuzzy feeling, important as that liberating spiritual experience is.
Indeed it is the liberation from fear that then becomes the very impetus for
a peaceable, just and reconciling life.
English theologian
John Macquarie says it well:
“Peace
is a dynamic in the sense that although its foundation is that wholeness
which is proper to human nature, this very (inner) wholeness must take up conflict
and difference. Peace is therefore a striving.” It has intent and energy.
He goes on
to argue that Peace is a much needed inclusive virtue and ethic to be practised,
not merely received. It is that tangible definitive, practical and pressing within
our modern world – local and global. And at the heart of a peaceable life,
in contrast to the ‘Seachange’, escapist model, sometimes mistaken
as but spirituality and church, lies the willingness to enter life’s cauldrons,
crucibles, hard places, places where the diplomatic missions or ambassadors have
retreated to home territory, so to speak; this to maintain the needed
dialogue, not playing victim, not wearing the perpetrator tag, but seeking to
find a common ground within a shared experience of human worth and dignity. To
continually remind one’s imaginary or real enemy of their humanity in and
through the vulnerable and expression
of our own.
Martin Buber
called this “genuine dialogue” and it takes place when “each
of the partners, even when they stand in opposition to the other, heeds, affirms
and confirms their opponent as an existing ‘other’; only so, can
conflict not be eliminated from the world, but be humanly arbitrated and led
towards its overcoming.”
Now in the writing of all this, I’m aware of how bookish it
might sound – for more important is the call to consciously practise
peace on a daily, hourly basis with friends, family, the neighbourhood,
estranged relations or acquaintances, or people we’ve just fallen
out with. Such a call to care remains a Christian imperative.
It may not be globally significant, but then again it might be. J Edward
Parrett nails it: “The universal realization of peace is certainly
not an immediate possibility. But, the relative and proximate increase
of peace is in every moment a very realistic possibility.” The
opportunity always lies before us by virtue of choices we make.
So as a
Christian community, we need not, we dare not be passive about peace-making.
It doesn’t happen magically, even if we want it badly enough. For like
Jesus, it is about vision, choice and intentional living. Staying in the hard
place until the work is done. The good news being, as I said earlier, there
is a spiritual or mystical aspect - an experience of love and grace and presence – that
strangely yet unmistakably, equips and empowers – “the quiet of
a steadfast faith, calm of a call obeyed”, says the hymn writer.
The sobering
part of it all though being, that in the gift of grace – the presence
of the risen Christ to us – remains his essential woundedness – the
battle scars of a life laid down for peace, notably, his accompanying words,
particularly from John’s gospel: “As I have been sent, so I send
you.” And from Luke: “You are my witnesses (my martures) from which
comes what word, but martyr; the Christian life being that embodied, that in
tune, that integrated or infused by the life and mind and heart of Christ.
It’s
both breathtaking and almost debilitating. But, (there is always a but) it
is the consequence of a life given over to the vision and virtue and beauty of
Shalom (peace) in our world, in our time. There need not be a naiveté,
there need not be reluctance, there simply needs to be a love of God and a
love for a common, yearning humanity. In the challenging words of the poet: “Be
ignited or be gone.”
Let us take
a few moments for reflection.
