Sermon

Again And Again

August 10, 2014
Ephesians 4:1-3, 22-32; Luke 11:33-36
Speaker:

As you may have become aware already, the service this morning is being brought to you by members of the Safe Congregation committee.  The Safe Congregation committee is the committee that serves as a resource group for upholding Hyattsville’s Safe Congregation Policy.  For those who are newer to our community, or for those who may need a refresher, our congregation has put into place a policy that provides “a safe, secure and healthy environment for all individuals who enter our doors.”  While our policy is particularly mindful of creating an environment that is free from abuse, bullying, sexual harassment and intimidation for our youth and children, it is a policy that exists to support the well-being and safety of people of all ages in our church community.

The policy is rooted, in part, in the Vision Statement of Mennonite Church USA which states:

God calls us to be followers of Jesus Christ and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to grow as communities of grace, joy and peace, so that God’s healing and hope flow through us to the world.

Our Safe Congregation policy is one way we, as a community of Mennonite Church USA, are seeking to actively grow as a community of peace so that God’s healing and hope can flow through us to the world.

The cause of peace and the search for how to actively engage living out peace is one that is deeply rooted in the Mennonite tradition.  In the 1995 Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, the subject is deemed worthy of its own article. Article 22 is entitled Peace, Justice and Nonresistance.

Let me sidetrack for just a moment here about the confession of faith within a Mennonite framework: the confession of faith is not intended to be a set of rules and regulations. It is instead a series of articles that are guidelines to aid in the interpretation of scripture, to provide guidance in the areas of belief and practice, it attempts to create a foundation of unity for the church, and offers a resource for discussing Mennonite belief and practice with those new to the Mennonite church and with those of other faith practices.  This particular version was created at the time that the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church were beginning to figure out how to merge together to become what is now known as Mennonite Church USA (MCUSA).

Within this collection of guidelines we find an article on Peace, Justice and Nonresistance and these are some of the details of that article:

We believe that peace is the will of God. God created the world in peace, and God’s peace is most fully revealed in Jesus Christ, who is our peace and the peace of the whole world. Led by the Holy Spirit, we follow Christ in the way of peace, doing justice, bringing reconciliation, and practicing nonresistance even in the face of violence and warfare.

The peace God intends for humanity and creation was revealed most fully in Jesus Christ.

As followers of Jesus, we participate in his ministry of peace and justice. He has called us to find our blessing in making peace and seeking justice. We do so in a spirit of gentleness, willing to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake…The same Spirit that empowered Jesus also empowers us to love enemies, to forgive rather than to seek revenge, to practice right relationships, to rely on the community of faith to settle disputes, and to resist evil without violence.

As we can see through this article, the work of peace, justice and nonresistance, is core to Mennonite system of beliefs and calls us to action to follow Jesus’ lead in making peace and seeking justice.

The practice of supporting peace in the Mennonite Church has often focused on large scale issues of violence, with emphasis on resisting war, ceasing hostility among races and classes of people, and capital punishment.  All of these are necessary and important areas of focus.  We particularly see the need for this focus in our current political and cultural environments with the issues we have been naming during worship and holding in prayer for the past several weeks: there are wars raging around the world, particularly we are painfully aware of the conflict in Gaza at this time, children south of the US border are fleeing violence in their homelands to cross into the US, racial injustice continues to thrive in our society and our country’s idea and system of justice is challenged to say the very least.  To care about and seek peace in these arenas is part of how we as Mennonites are called to live out our faith.  It is part of the MCUSA vision referred to earlier that calls us to help facilitate God’s healing and hope in the world.

The call to be communities of grace, joy and peace that allow God’s healing and hope to flow to the world, is a call that is reminiscent of the pleas to the early church in Ephesus to be a community of compassion, charity, gentleness and patience bound together in unity through the peace of the Spirit.

Ephesians 4 (vs. 1-3) starts this call:

I plead with you, then, in the name of our Redeemer, to lead a life worthy of your calling. Treat one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness and patience. Do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the peace that binds you together.

This is a call that requires choice and action on the part of those willing to engage with it (vs. 22-24):

You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which is being corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution, so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s likeness, in the justice and holiness of the truth.

This is a call of challenge and sacrifice (vs. 31):

Get rid of all bitterness, all rage and anger, all harsh words, slander and malice of every kind.

This is a call that offers alternative actions (vs. 32):

In place of these, be kind to one another, compassionate and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven you in Christ.

This is a call that seeks the well-being of the whole community and it is a call that speaks to our current day community’s search for peace and justice as an act of faith.

Our confession of faith suggests that we believe that peace is God’s intention for the world, but there is also commentary in the Confession of Faith that clarifies that our understanding of God’s peace is about more than the absence of war, it also includes the restoration of right relationship.

To understand peace as the restoration of right relationship challenges us to not only care about and seek peace and justice in institutional settings and in issues around the world, but also in every level of relationship which means in our communities, our families, and even our relationships with ourselves.  And for each of us, it is with ourselves that the process of peace must begin. We choose for ourselves if and when we desire to seek peace with our lives.

The Center for Teaching Peace in Washington at one point offered a class entitled The Class of Nonviolence and a student of that class named Robert McGlasson wrote an essay entitled “Nonviolence as a Way of Life.”  His essay explores the idea of nonviolence, not only as a tool to bring about political and social change, but as the title implies, as a way of living.  To live nonviolence as a way of life, McGlasson suggests, “shifts [the] focus from the political arena, where we are most accustomed to thinking in terms of nonviolence, to our daily lives and relationships with family, our closest friends, our coworkers, as well as those we perceive to be our opponents.”   The essay goes on to suggest that living out nonviolence in relationship must start within ourselves: “The process of disarmament and noncooperation must begin with a laying down of the psychological weapons that we stockpile in our own hearts; otherwise, to act out of anger, jealousy, defensiveness, ill-will, hatred or violence is to cooperate from the very start with those forces which we would seek to overcome.”

Sound familiar?

To me his suggestions sound a lot like the Ephesians call to action:

Get rid of all bitterness, all rage and anger, all harsh words, slander and malice of every kind.

As individuals, we have opportunities every day to act with bitterness, rage and anger and to make use of harsh words.

In those same moments, we also have the option to choose alternative, nonviolent, responses like the options also offered in the Ephesians text:

In place of these, be kind to one another, compassionate and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven you in Christ.

Our response is a choice and with all the opportunities of encounter and relationship we face each day, we have to (or sometimes get to) make the choice again and again. When we choose peace, we are choosing to value the well-being of ourselves and those around us. When we choose peace, we are choosing to walk in the light of Jesus’ example, a light that can, as described in Luke, bring light to our whole beings.  When we live in that light, we begin to see with that light and we are empowered to continue to choose actions of peace, even if carrying out the actions proves to be complicated.

It is not always easy or desirable to us to lay down our bitterness, rage and anger, but the choice isn’t about ease, it is about peace. Choosing peace is not a simple path.  Acts of peacemaking, particularly at an interpersonal level, rarely take a direct path to peace and right relationship. Yet, even though the path to peace may not be simple, a simple act can be a powerful step on the road to right relationship.

Let me offer you this story as an example.  In the midst of this week, which has been full of the complex emotions of grief for Becky and me as we journey with the death of her father, we also celebrated the 13th anniversary of our commitment ceremony.  That was another time that was also full of complex emotions. It was a time of celebration for us and a core group of our friends and family and yet it was also a time of confusion and challenge for many of our family members who were not quite on board with the idea of our partnership.

One of the parties that wasn’t quite sure how to respond to our relationship was my grandfather, a man who has spent his entire life seeking after the heart of God, in both his formal ministry and his personal walk of faith. Expressing unconditional support for an LGBTQ couple’s commitment to each other was not something he was fully equipped to do.  But what he was fully equipped to do was to choose peace through a simple act of love.

Grandpa purchased us a set of Corel dishes as a wedding present. These are the plates and bowls that we still use at most of our meals. The gift wasn’t a resolution to the complexities surrounding our different understandings of LGBTQ issues, it wasn’t a sign that he had come to some new understanding and level of acceptance of the relationship between Becky and me, but it was a small and ordinary act of peace, it was an outstretched hand that said, I may not know what to do with all of this right now, but in this moment I am choosing love.

My Grandfather and I continue to have differences in our opinions and understandings about LGBTQ rights, but we also continue to have a relationship built on a foundation of each of us choosing to approach the other with kindness, compassion and mutual forgiveness which allows for those differences to fade into the background and for the spirit of unity and peace between us to rise to the surface.

As a community seeking to respect and preserve the safety and well-being of all who enter its fold, may we remember that peace, institutionally and personally and always in relationship, begins with and is an ongoing choice.