Peace Sunday – Michele Rizoli – Nov. 7, 2010

I remember, Je me souviens
I remember,
but mostly I’d rather forget
Mostly
I’d rather sit in my corner and cry, wail, lament

I remember the things we do and don’t do to each other:
war, injustice,
poverty, torture,
broken relationships, bullying, meanness, gossip, betrayal, …
I remember,
but sometimes I’d rather forget

Yeah, I’d rather forget
Denial tempts me
Because I don’t care?
or because I care too much?
or because I want to do something about it,
or because I don’t know what to do

I don’t know what to do.
Maybe I’ll try a different verb
Maybe I’ll  feel for a time
Can I let my spirit take in the weight of the pain
without bouncing into a flurry of fixing?
 
[Deep breath]

I’ll remember

I remember the landmines, the tanks, the IED’s, the cruise missiles, smart bombs, the automatics, the lasers, the precision shooting, the anti-personnel weapons, the atomic warheads, the beatings, the abuse
the tools people design to kill
other people, other souls
guns with cool sounding names and serial numbers full of x’s and o’s
I remember a fact: The money it takes to send ONE North American soldier to fight overseas could build 20 schools in the same locations, twenty schools. 1

I remember the refugees of war,
their hunger for safety and hunger for food
Thirst for water, thirst for an absent mother’s milk
Wanting things to be as they were, as they might be, as they never will
Craving for order, craving for comfort,
craving for meaning, craving for change.

I remember people seeking a refuge
A place that can hold unending despair
suspended indefinitely in time
eternally temporary.
I remember another fact:
There are over 45 million refugees on our planet today
More people than in all of my home country Canada
I’d rather forget
But I remember

I remember the women
Who,
through the use of sexual violence as a strategy of war
or as a strategy of dominance with any excuse
suffer brutally,
humiliatingly,
unspeakably 
I try to forget, my sisters
But I remember

I remember those emotionally traumatized by war
Who wake up day after day,
to relive a nightmare
Who can’t erase the macabre visions that they witnessed
or that they perpetrated
Traumatic, post traumatic, re-traumatic, dramatic
broken people, breaking others,
broken trust, breaking bones
breaking homes
I remember the veterans who come back with intact bodies but shattered souls
Stuck in a loop
they remember and remember and remember
but are forgotten by those they thought they were fighting for
I try to forget, broken ones
But I remember

I remember God incarnate, Jesus,
suffering at the hands of violent men and violent systems
I remember the God of Peace, the Prince of Peace,
our Peace
Breaking down walls of hostility

I feel this pain
I will remember even if I don’t know what to do
I will remember so that I won’t forget

I turn to God with this remembrance lament.

[sung response: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God]

 
Part 2 – Remembering who we are

Sisters, brothers, friends, we’ve called this Peace Sunday
It’s the proverbial string we tie around our finger every year so we won’t forget
On Peace Sunday we remember who we are,
who we propose to be

We are children of God’s Peace
“We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be…a church…of peace.  True Christians do not know vengeance.  They are the children of peace.  Their hearts overflow with peace.  Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace.” (to quote Menno Simons)

We are followers of this Jesus who in his sermon
described the blessed vision for the kindom of God
We have decided not to adopt a procrastinating “eschatology that justifies apathy” 3
Let me rephrase that
We’ve decided not to just put it off until “some heaven light years away”  4
We believe peace is to be dared “here in this place”,
We believe peace is to be imagined in our times
In God’s name, by Jesus’ example, in hope of his truth

We are the ones who value the poor in spirit, the humble, the meek
We are the ones who will comfort the mourning,
and find comfort with each other and with God
We are the ones who seek nourishment and fulfillment by seeking justice,
who break this bread and drink this cup with others and on behalf of others
We crave and serve up mercy, because God is love and has loved us first
We do not see the world with malice but with purity
We choose to be peacemakers, in the big things and in the little,
we choose not to be bullies – not to put others down so that we can look good,
we choose to be friends – even to the ones who are … different,
we choose not to use nor defend violence against others in any way
– even if we think they deserve it ,
even in our cars and on our facebook comments
even if we have to choose to
do this everyday
over and over again
we choose to see in the face of the other
the face of another human being like us

We are game for the hard work of disagreement
of not walking away on first instinct
of looking for reconciliation,
of regarding others through the eyes of God’s love
When facing indignation,
we have imagination for transformation 5

We know this is misunderstood and terribly misinterpreted
by those who believe that we are naïve,
that war is necessary, ordinary
that questioning is unpatriotic, idiotic
Yet
we persist in living out the kindom of God

Sisters, brothers, friends
We are people of God’s Peace.

[sung response: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God]

Part 3 – Remembering we live by a different story

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.”  6
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 7:
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.”  8
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 currently reads:
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?

Jewish peacemaker Marcel 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
Lot’s of strings attached

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

Part 4 – Conclusion

Some final things to remember

Peace happens in relationship
Jesus, sometimes called Truth said:
Folks are lucky, blessed, fortunate, on the right track
by living out compassion
“dethrone [yourselves] from the centre of our world and put another there” 9
This is the kindom of God

Driving under the influence
of the good ol’ Protestant work, work, work ethi
c
We quickly rush to what we might do
To remember is to work for peace! 10
I say,
To remember is to work for peace.
In the wise words of another:
“The hope of a disciple is never based on one’s own agency
but on one’s following the acting God
who acted then in Jesus Christ
and is now in and among us all in the world.” 11

I have listed, enumerated, deliberated, cogitated,
Here is my piece about peace
Weave these threads into your faithfulness,
knit them into your remembering and forgetting
lace them around the warp and woof of your life,
that horizontal and vertical scaffolding
that keeps you grounded to God and to others
– as if there is any difference