Peace Be Upon You
Micah 4:1-5, Luke 10:1-9
September 11, 2022
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/1c2zWMxyquo
“They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;”
Imagine a time when these words are true. Imagine a place where there are no standing armies, no stockpiles of weapons. Imagine a world when no one even knows how to wage war.
On this twenty-first anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, on this 199th day of war between Russia and Ukraine, on this day when an average of 316 people are likely to be shot in our country, we yearn for Micah’s vision of peace to be realized.
On the screen is a painting by the American artist Winslow Homer. He was in his twenties when the Civil War broke out. He worked on this painting for several months after the war was over. In it he placed a veteran in a wheat field. A Union Army jacket is discarded in the lower right corner along with a canteen. The jacket has been abandoned presumably because the heat of the day makes it unnecessary. But it is also a reminder that this man has quit soldiering and returned to his farm. He has traded the battlefield for the wheatfield.
The 1865 wheat crop is documented to have been a bumper crop. Homer shows grain heads almost at the height of the farmer’s head. It might seem that the artist is painting a positive outlook for the farmer and the nation.
But there is more to see. The farmer is harvesting wheat with a single-bladed scythe, a tool that was already out of date in 1865. Homer chose the older tool because of its association with the Grim Reaper. While this veteran has moved on, both he and the viewers would have been reminded of the cost of war. Many of the bloodiest battles of the war were fought in fields, so fields had become associated with soldiers who were cut down in the same way that this farmer now cuts the wheat.[1]
I cannot help but think of the reports a few months ago of wheat fields on fire in Ukraine, reportedly set ablaze intentionally by Russian missiles. I think of those who were killed on September 11, 2001 and those who still mourn them. I think of the actions taken in retaliation – leading to some hundreds of thousands of casualties and some 38 million people who were displaced from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and other countries. I think of the evacuees from Afghanistan who have only recently found a sort of uneasy sanctuary here because they provided help to the U.S. military. And I think of those who were not able to escape. If we feel sad today, if we lament, if we remember with pain, that is an appropriate and holy response. War exacts a terrible cost and the trauma continues for generations.
Micah speaks of days to come, days of peace and safety. Scholar Walter Brueggemann points to two conditions that are necessary for the transformation of weapons to tools for peace.
The first one is of reasonable expectations. “They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees and no one shall make them afraid” Micah says. In the days to come, people will have one vine, one fig tree, not acres of orchards and vineyards, but what each needs. Agreeing to live within modest means and not seeking to accumulate more and more is a step towards bringing peace to the planet.
The second condition in verse 5 where it says “all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.” While Yahweh’s people are to be clear in their devotion to Yahweh, they are also to give others the freedom to walk in the name of other gods. “War comes among nations, in church, and in families,” Brueggemann writes, “when we think there is only one way and all must conform or be coerced to conform.”[2] Peace means making room for differences. Two keys to serious disarmament, then, are 1) modest expectations where all have enough but none have too much, and 2) an acceptance of each other with all of our differences.
In days to come, Micah says, people will stream to Jerusalem to learn the ways of peace. Jerusalem, the city that stones the prophets and kills God’s messengers, even today. Jerusalem will be the place of profound peace. It takes a strong imagination to envision that, a persistent hope.
Not that our nation is any better. What if the prophet described nations streaming to the United States to disarm instead of seeking to obtain better, faster, more destructive weapons? They come for courses offered at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in Ft. Benning, Georgia. Formerly called the School of the Americas, it is known for training dictators, death squad operatives and assassins.[3] What if they came in the same kind of numbers with the same kind of enthusiasm to learn peace-making. Could we begin to imagine that?
On our trip last month, we had the privilege of visiting the Cathedral in Cologne Germany. This incredible structure survived the bombings of World War II while 90 % of the city of Cologne was destroyed, reduced to rubble. Our guide explained that it happened because the cathedral was a landmark that the pilots could identify from the air. The church was spared, not because of its peacefulness or its holiness, but because it could facilitate future bombings. The cathedral is not to blame for that, but it is a troubling thought.
What if, in days to come, people could turn to churches to learn the ways of peace. Not to determine who is in or out, right or wrong, not to learn how to win control of your denomination, not to stoke fear and gain political power, but to learn how to turn swords into plow-shares and study war no more, how to sit under your own fig tree and not be afraid. What if churches were the teachers and practicers of peace?
That seems to be something that Jesus might have had in mind. On his way to Jerusalem where he will be executed, Jesus sends out 70 disciples on a peacemaking mission. He gives them very specific instructions. They might be counter-intuitive. He says to travel light. No purse, no bag, no sandals. No snacks, no smartphone, no supplies. Do you know how hard this is? You should have seen the unnecessary stuff that was in my backpack on my last trip. And I’m actually getting better at it.
Jesus tells them not to make reservations, but just to show up and offer peace. If things go well, someone in that house will respond in kind. If things go well, then Jesus says to accept the hospitality that is offered. Sleep on the sofa bed or the floor. Eat what is put before you. In Jesus’ day, it might have been Jewish food, it might have been Gentile food. Today your host might be vegetarian or really into smoothies. Whatever it is, eat it without complaint. And don’t shop around for better accommodations. Stay in the first place that receives you. Imitate Jesus who was content to be born into a peasant family and who, as an adult, was dependent on the gifts of others.
This is counter-intuitive. If we are the ones taking the good news out into the world, we often think we need to arrive with all the things. We need to come with the food to feed the hungry and the medicine to heal the sick and the therapeutic tools for the traumatized. But Jesus says “Go. Show up and be vulnerable.”
Presbyterian pastor Carol Howard Merritt describes peace as “a community-creating gift of God that requires a reciprocal response.” [4]
Peace creates community. Like the living sculpture demonstrated by our children, it involves an openness to giving and receiving. It is “a community-creating gift of God that requires a reciprocal response.”
But we aren’t always open to what others offer and others don’t always accept what we want to give. Jesus knew that when the disciples announced the reign of God, they would encounter rejection. Baptist pastor Laura Mayo claims that “Jesus didn’t risk it all to keep the status quo. When he spoke against the religious authorities so entangled with the Empire that they forgot about the poor and the widows it was not to preserve the peace. Jesus was a peacemaker, not a peacekeeper and he clearly expects the same from us. Peacemaking, with its demands for change, can lead to disconnection, to rejection.”[5]
“When the peace you offer is refused, and it will be,” Jesus says, “just shake off the dust and move on.” It’s a ritual way of saying “I did my best. What happens now is between you and God.”
Jesus expects his disciples to face hostility and rejection. When that happens, our job is not to change the message, not to water down the demands the gospel’s demands for change. The message is the same to those who accept or reject it – “the reign of God is here.”
Sometimes we idealize peace-making. Some of us are old enough to remember that old Coca-Cola commercial where everyone ends up singing together in perfect harmony. We sometimes delude ourselves into thinking peace-making will be like that. But this living into the reign of God is hard work, like beating weapons of war into agricultural tools.
We may feel overwhelmed by the depth of the divisions in our country, by the hostility we find among our neighbors and even members of our own families. We may be distressed by the lack of unity on the major problems faced by the global community. It may seem like Micah’s vision is further away than ever.
What can we do to make peace in the face of all that? I mean really.
We are a small congregation. The typical church in America averages about 65 worshippers on a Sunday. That’s about where we are. I notice that is close to the number of 70 disciples which Jesus sent out. Look what they accomplished. With faith and courage, they changed their world. God has this habit of doing things with the most unlikely folks, even us.
I also notice that Jesus didn’t send them out alone, but in pairs. The peace of Christ is something we share, something we lean into with each other. We are not called to go it alone.
So I wonder, instead of accenting the message that the church is in decline, instead of dwelling on what we think we have lost during the pandemic, what if we embraced the size we are and our sense of not having enough as evidence of the power of God. What if we recognized our real reliance on God, our genuine need for each other, and our dependence on strangers with whom we might share the good news?
What if . . .
. . . In days to come and even now, people will be so hungry for the ways of peace that change will be possible.
. . . In days to come and even now, we will take on the responsibility and the vulnerability to be agents of Christ’s peace.
. . . In days to come and even now, we will risk rejection, but also welcome as we share the uncompromising love of God.
In days to come, the prophet says,
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
May it be so for you and for me and for the world.
[1] Lynn Miller at Art and Faith Matters http://artandfaithmatters.blogspot.com/2016/11/art-lectionary-swords-plowshares.html
[2] Walter Brueggemann, “A Resurrection Option” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011), p. 262.
[3] Gill, Lesley. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 137–138.
[4] Carol Howard Merritt in Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2014), p. 286.
[5] Laura Mayo https://allianceofbaptists.org/peace-be-with-you/