Jesus said, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Yesterday, nine of us, including folks from three other parishes, gathered in the chapel for a day-long workshop on conflict management and resolution. The focus of the workshop is a model for conflict resolution—for peace-making—that has its roots in shalom, the ancient Hebrew concept of God’s peace brought to earth.
When we think of peace, all kinds of pictures come to our minds. Many of us think of peace as an absence of strife—and absence of disruption—perhaps as a quiet, empty sort of space that lets us have room to think or dream or imagine. We think of peaceful places as those serene spots—particularly in nature—where we can rest our souls and catch our breaths.
Scripture gives us some beautiful pictures of peaceful places. Listen to these
words:
From the Book of Leviticus we hear: “If you walk in my statutes and observe
my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season,
and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield
their fruit. And your threshing shall last to the time of vintage, and the vintage
shall last to the time for sowing; and you shall eat your bread to the full,
and dwell in your land securely. And I will give peace in the land, and you
shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts
from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land.”
The prophet Isaiah tells us: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the LORD."
The prophet Micah promises: “He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.”
When we read these scriptures, when we think of these peaceful places and spaces, we need to pay attention to the words. These words describe a different peace than the world knew in Jesus’ time. This is not the Roman peace—the Pax Romana—enforced by soldiers in the street, soldiers ready to put down any disturbance that threatened to mar the quiet surface of the well-regulated life. Shalom is a different kind of peace, not a fragile, superficial peace bought with the threat of the sword but a sturdy, viable peace built from roots of justice.
Jesus brought us the gift of peace, but it’s a gift with a catch: we have to build it ourselves. Unlike the other build-it-yourself gifts we may have experienced in our lives, this gift comes with instructions. We begin to build shalom—God’s peace—by working to keep Jesus’ word—to keep his commandment to love—to show that love by our actions in every day of our lives.
Today is Mother’s Day. I was going to wear my tiara, just for the occasion, but decided at the last minute to think about it for another year. Today is Mother’s Day, a day filled with tributes to our mothers and those who have been like mothers to us.
Some of us may remember that we owe this day to Anna Jarvis, who swore at her mother's gravesite in 1905 to dedicate her life to establishing a Mother's Day to honor mothers, living and dead. At her behest, the first Mother’s Day service was held on May 10, 1908 at St. Andrew's in Grafton, West Virginia. The stories about Anna Jarvis have found their way into common knowledge. You may have heard the persistent rumor that her grief at her mother’s death was intensified because she and her mother had quarreled and her mother died before they could reconcile. You may have heard about her more firmly documented concern over the commercialization of Mother's Day.
What is less well-known is that Anna Jarvis was not the first person who tried
to establish Mother’s Day in the United States. We know Julia Ward Howe
as the author of the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," written
at the time of the American Civil War. Despite the war-like tone of the hymn
she wrote, she was horrified by the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian
War. In 1872, Howe began promoting the idea of a Mother’s Day for Peace,
to be celebrated on June 2. This was to be a day honoring peace, motherhood
and womanhood.
Two years before the first celebration, she wrote and published her Mother's
Day Proclamation:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Howe worked for about 10 years to establish Mother’s Day as a vehicle for peace-making, then abandoned the effort to focus on other way to work for peace and for women’s rights.
I have heard it said that if mothers ruled the world, there would be no more war. I like to think that would be true. I know that the first duty of motherhood is to nurture and protect. As I reflect on my own mother and on my own experience of motherhood, I know that we didn’t do a perfect job of that. Maybe you had a similar experience, or maybe it’s just my family that didn’t quite hit the mark every time.
So, as always, we have some choices to make on this Sunday, even this Sunday, as we celebrate Mother’s Day. Mothers are called to nurture and protect; sometimes we miss the mark. We Christians are called to bring the gift of God’s peace to the world. Sometimes we miss the mark. So we come here, gathered in community, to be in the Body of Christ. We come here to be fed and strengthened at this table. We come here to be inspired and enlivened by the Holy Spirit. Then we go out into the world again, sent by God to be part of making God’s peace in the world.
Thanks be to God.