DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE.
Reflections for World Communion/Peacemaking Sunday
How in the world do you “wage peace,” is the question that one of the discussion groups wants to ask Paul Chappell when we talk to him in about an hour. In his book he gives some examples and he might well suggest some more to us today. When we think of how we go about waging peace our mind quickly goes to the action verbs: write (the newspapers, your elected officials), join (the protest movement, the peace marches), speak out (against bad policy), donate (money to peace organizations)….
It’s natural, isn’t it, to want to do something. Action begs action and war is an action word. It is the word that sends troops off to distance lands they may not have even been able to place on a map. It devours billions of dollars and countless lives. Its music, flags and patriotic symbolism get our hearts pumping and our collective resolve focused, especially in the face of a perceived enemy and war is the word that teaches us to glorify killing. And out of all of that we create our heroes. Those who have seen war close up and personal talk about the sheer horror of the death and destruction, not at all cleaned up and noble as the movies sometimes make it. But many also admit its addictive dimension. It’s creates an adrenalin rush, holding you in its grip until it sucks all the life out of you. There have been wars that rise to the standard of just and there have been wars that were mistakes from the beginning. But it is always hell.
So we must do something, right? But maybe that isn’t the first step. If we move immediately to action it is so easy to hop on the closest band wagon that seems to be going in the general direction we hope to go in. And it also becomes very easy to jump off as soon as things get complicated. It feels good and can perhaps be partially effective in raising attention about the issues. But unless the action comes from that place deep within…that core identity that we have allowed God’s vision to shape, our action can become shallow and easily dismissed as simple naiveté.
The value of books and papers by Paul Chappel and others is the cogent arguments they make for ending war on pragmatic grounds. I agree with almost everything he says. But I would also argue that for Christians that is not enough. For Christians we must first become the people who have opened ourselves to God’s Spirit in the most basic and fundamental ways. Our beliefs and theologies make no sense unless they are embodied in our lives in a way that allows us to take a stand for peace that transcends pragmatism. Peacemaking must become who we are as much as what we do because action alone is too fickle…too easily swayed by the pragmatic counter arguments of lesser gods.
When Eugene Petersen was speaking at St. Mary’s seminary he was asked about peacemaking and I was struck by his answer: “I am a pacifist. Pacifism doesn’t offer a way to change the world; instead it offers a witness.” I like that. It resonates with what I know about this Jesus I struggle to follow who resisted every pragmatic reason offered to counter force with force in order to stand solidly on the rock that love, God’s kind of love….the love that loves even enemies…that love, that rock solid truth and not our strategic warfare is what can and will save us.
Freud recognized what we all somehow know, that the history of humanity is always a cosmic struggle between Eros and thanatos….between the forces that move us toward life and those that propel us toward death. The moral framework of the Biblical narrative rests on tightrope created by these competing forces within us. Moses in his farewell address stands before the people and says “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” Jesus gathers disciples around a table when the smell of death is just outside the door and he offers bread of life….wine of salvation. When thanatos is ascendant, as some feel it is today, choosing the way of peace, the way of love, the way of life, can seem ludicrous. It can seem stupid and pointless and even dangerous.
As Macbeth’s murderers approach to kill Lady McDuff and her small children she is warned to leave. And she replies: “Whither should I fly? I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world—where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly.”
Nevertheless, the Jesus way is to stand in such a world, live in such a world, and love anyway…even enemies….to stand as a witness to love and life and peace before thanatos….to stand before the death forces that seem to rise up around us and to love anyway….to choose life.
Viktor Frankl writes of the grim battle between love and death in Auschwitz where he was imprisoned. In the blast of the polish winter he thought of his wife who was already dead although he didn’t know it. He wrote: “A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers….that the salvation of man is through love and in love.”
To stand before the powers of death and love anyway is dangerous work. If the Jesus way gives us any clue it will can be self-sacrificing. More often than not ruthlessness will win in the short term, force will snuff out what is gentle and decent and compassionate. Love will break your heart. But we love anyway because love is God’s way and it keeps us human and it shapes our destiny and it has a power, greater than the power of thanatos, a power all its own to save us. We love anyway because sometimes the only choice we have is which God we will die for. And as followers of Jesus we know the answer.
But this is not the response of the pragmatist. It is the response of those who stand with Jesus as witnesses in a world of war. There are plenty of actions that flow from this witness. But first we have to be confident about where we stand.
Some of you have been on battlefields. You know what it does to you. Sept. 11 was the closest many of us have ever gotten to feeling surrounded by death and war. It was horrifying and scary. We watched the skies that day and wondered what the next minute would bring while those in power began to plot the wars. But what really got us through that day and will always get us through was not the war machines but God’s love as it is embodied…incarnate in our imperfect, halting attempts at being witnesses to another way. We were at our best, not when we started dropping the bombs on others but when we embraced the person closest to us and held on for dear life.
