We’re not alone, you know
Everyone wishes for Peace
Even beauty queens, with their tiara’s and sparkling dresses
wish for …
[sigh] world peace
– someday
Everyone wishes for Peace
Even the Lennon’s who imagine no countries
[sung] and no
religions too (Oh, oh – o-o-oh)
Everyone wishes for Peace
Even the folks who earnestly engage in war,
They believe that their show of mighty force will bring conflict to a speedy end:
“We’ll just go in,
strike with precision
and then we’re out.
Balance will be restored.
We’re helping
people — oh, and democracy.”
But, as the general said on the radio: conflict is never
that predictable
Everyone wishes for Peace
However, many live by a story that is scripted to require violence as a means to that end.
Let me tell you about the misshapen stories shaping us
Once upon a time there was…
The tale of
entitlement that goes like this:
We have power
At the switch of a button, the swiping of a card, the
checkmark on a vote
We can opt, consume, have
“Sometimes we possess things so long that do not really
belong to us
that we come to think they are ours.” [1]
It is easy to forget that the dear Shalom to which we aspire
means restoring things to their rightful owners
That God is the ultimate rightful owner
There’s the myth of
redemptive violence[2]:
Coming to a theatre near you
It says (in a very
deep voice) that “good things come through violence,
the only way to have
victory over evil is through violence,
the prize goes to
the strong;
peace through war,
security through strength.” [3]
The bad guy must die
a horrible death in the end
and that is the end
There’s the either or
story that simplifies reality and mystery:
A Billboard in Toronto
Should the military kill the bad people or help the good
ones?
Who, may I ask,
presumes to know the difference?
Glass half empty or glass half full
a thirsty person sees only water.
Good people or bad people
God sees people killing each other
God does not see us and them,
them and us,
them, in our view always worse, stupider, more evil than us
Then there’s the killing
is required by God narrative that lives even in our theology
This is how it goes:
He says killing
is wrong
she says, yes but
God required it in the Old Testament.
He says people
have always claimed that God is on their side as a way to justify their
violence
Check the history books and newspapers under
crusaders, jihads, zionists, and other isms and ologies
She says, I will
He says killing
is wrong
she says what
about Jesus’ death?
Didn’t God require Jesus’ sacrifice to satisfy his need for justice?
Someone had to
pay for humanity’s sins, right?
Right?
Someone from another conversation says:
Jesus’ life so threatened the powers that be
that they resorted to their only strategy:
extermination
Having God’s character of love,
Jesus absorbed the violence,
stopping the cycle by not seeking retribution
by not seeking revenge
There will be no battles to watch here
“Forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing”
God is mercy,
Life, not death, wins in the end
Everyone wishes for Peace
Do you follow me?
How do we alter the story?
A Jewish peacemaker wonders this about the Israel Palestine
issues:
“We’ve tried violence for so long and it hasn’t worked,
isn’t it time we try something else?”
Christian and Muslim Peacemaker Teams wonder what would
happen if non-violent people were as willing to put their lives on the line for
peace without war.
Such imaginations place their hope in a different strategy,
a different history.
Everyone wishes for Peace
Christians don’t have a corner on that wish
We’ve simply decided to place it in a different story
A peace story that
is grounded in our hope in God who owns life and death,
A peace story
that sprouts deep inside of us,
by the work of the Spirit
rather than through activism and human potentialities
A peace story that shows up in all our relationships
A peace story that lives right now
by different values, different assumptions,
and by an audaciously different plot
The Peace story pokes holes in the plotline of violence,
it re-reads reality
There is no
simple connection between soldiers killing and dying
and the privileges we benefit from
The peace story wonders
about those privileges
and cares about
the soldiers and the other dead
The peace story unmasks
the roots of injustice and domination
that lie beneath the surface of the industrial military
complex
The peace story listens
to the people at the bottom
and challenges
those at the top
The plot of hate is fast, enticing, with the illusion of no
strings attached
Peacemaking is a long-term commitment
with each other and with the God of history
The Peace story is not either-or,
it is a both-and,
yes-but, see-it-from-a-different-angle, question-your-assumptions,
surprise-ending, new-beginnings kind of story.
Everyone wishes for peace
We wish it from within a different story
Michele Rizoli
Peace Sunday Sermon
November 7, 2010
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