Proclaim Peace
Sermon
THE SEVENFOLD PATH TO PEACE
SEVEN LENTEN SERMONS
The run-of-the-mill soldier belonged to a surly lot in the Tenth Roman Legion which occupied Israel in the days of Jesus. The soldier probably had been pressed into duty involuntarily. His assignment to this back-water outpost of the empire was nearly an insult. With the exception of the occasional threat of a riot, the duty was terribly boring.
Amusement was hard to come by. Life had little value; so this scurrilous lot took some perverted joy in appropriating, for their entertainment, an ancient Persian game called "basilica." The evidence of the game is still visible in Jerusalem. About twelve to fifteen feet below the present level of the Via Dolorosa, and in the subbasement of one of the Christian shrines commemorating the Stations of the Cross, archeologists have laid bare paving stones, roughly four feet square, which may be the actual street on which Jesus walked.
On some of those stones along the roadway are chiseled game boards with the markings of a basilica. The name referred not to a form of church building known as the basilica, but rather to its root word from the Greek which means "king." The idea of the game was that, at the end of a full week of playing with dice-like devices, the loser would be declared King for a day - the day always happened to be Friday. They would dress the loser like a king, tease him, and then crucify him!
The game continued after the crucifixion to see who would get his possessions. One week, nearly two thousand years ago, the loser happened to get very lucky, because coincidently, another gruesome drama was being played out between Jewish authorities and the Roman governor. The question of who was basileus (king) swirled around one Jesus of Nazareth. When the game was over and it seemed expeditious to Pontius Pilate to quell the unrest of the Jerusalemites, by crucifying Jesus, the loser of the army's game suddenly found that there was a substitute victim who was treated as every loser had been treated week after week, with mock kingship, royal robe, crown, and scoffing salutations, and, with his crucifixion, gambling for his clothes.
Of course, that motley and contemptible lot, which esteemed life so lowly, could not have begun to comprehend that they were playing a game of much higher stakes, wagering on the fate of the Roman Empire and participating, unwittingly, in the salvation, not only of the lottery loser, but of all humanity.
Remember playing King of the Mountain on piles of snow or heaps of sand, when you were a kid? In many ways the nations of the world continue to play a modern version of king for the week. One week the game is played on the Falkland Islands, another in Israel, continuously in Lebanon, El Salvador, Ireland, or in southeast Asia.
During the Sundays of Lent we have been reflecting on the means by which we can stop playing those silly games of basilica, with their inevitable violent life-wasting endings. We have called the series The Sevenfold Path to Peace.
1. The first step was to acknowledge that, just as wars feed on the wars within us, so does peace find its beginning within us.
2. The second step was one of seeing that justice is fundamental to the desirability of peace. Peace without justice is no peace at all.
3. The third step, that of peace-making, demands that we plan for peace. It does not just happen anymore than war "just" happens ... peace is intentional.
4. The fourth step of peace is God's Shalom, God's reliant, disciplining, giving, fulfilling love.
5. The fifth step, that of receiving Shalom's peace, requires that we confess our fear, anger, grief; that we stop worshiping the false god named "Security," and that we see the world and its peoples as a unitary whole, as God sees us.
6. The sixth step was the realization that peace already exists. It has been established through the sacrifice of Jesus. To accept Christ, is to have peace.
That brings us to the seventh step.
How can we get other people and the rest of the world to know the fact of peace so there will be peace?
The answer is at the heart of the resurrection experience. Your experience of the resurrection of Jesus establishes peace in terms we have been describing. The first encounter of the disciples with the resurrected Lord pointed them toward proclaiming peace to the world. It is the Easter imperative ... the Easter urgency ... the Easter realization that the kingdom of God is established. That is such remarkably good news anyone who has realized it cannot help but share it. It is in the sharing that peace will come.
Jesus' words to the disciples, that evening, essentially were in four commands.
First he said: "Peace be with you."
He did not say, "The fear of your enemies be with you."
He did not say, "The doubt about the economy be with you."
He did not say, "The stockpile of weapons be with you."
He did not say, "The bounty of the wealthy be with you."
He did not say, "The law be with you."
He said, "Peace be with you."
In light of what we concluded last week, that is the same as saying, "Christ be with you, ... in you ... through you." Perhaps you, like I, are tempted to look at the worst possible scenario with regard to earth's future: environmental decay, possibility of war, or something more personal like the plight of a sick relative.
Easter says, stop giving energy to the negatives. Use the energies of Christ for the positively creative. The resurrection encounter of the disciples was no theological doctrine, no philosophical teaching, subject to doubt and debate; it was the vivid experience of realizing that God is the victor in the perverse game of basilica. Easter calls us to start living on God's terms, positively.
"Peace be with you."
The second command of the resurrection experience is this:
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.
With peace in them, the followers of Jesus are sent out to be Peace. It does not take a terribly perceptive person to know that the world is largely ignorant of the means of making peace. The Church has borne a major responsiblity for that ignorance. The Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire, helped to clarify that fact for me. The Church, as it was institutionalized in the academic system of England at Cambridge, looked with contempt on the abilities of the young runner Jacobson, because he was a Jew. Even the homecoming from his 1924 Olympic victory in Paris left him out of the victory parade.
As long as the Church has operated with the official sanction of governments and institutions, and, at times, has actually controlled the body politic, it has become confused in its own mind and in the mind of the public, with the prevailing sociological, economic, and political attitudes of the culture, while aligning itself on one side or the other in the clashes of worldly forces.
Thank God, we are increasingly disentangling ourselves from that morass of modern crusade making. We are increasingly free to fulfill the mission on which Christ has sent us, that of proclaiming peace, doing justice, healing the people of the earth.
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.
The third imperative of the Easter commission is found in these words of Jesus:
Receive the Holy Spirit.
To do that is to let the power of God be in you, transform you, work through you.
• There are some things you and I do because, "If I don't, who will?" - take out the garbage, do the dishes ...
• There are some things you and I do because we "should" - vote on election day, stop at red lights ...
• There are some things you and I do because it is expected of us: make your bed, make coffee for the after-church fellowship hour ...
• There are some things you and I do because we want to: go four-wheeling, go to work ...
But when we receive the Holy Spirit, there are some things you and I do, not because of obligations, expectations, or even personal wants. To have the Holy Spirit is to do God's thing because you can't help doing it. It is rather like falling in love ... feeling all the excitement, and stimulation, and energy, and joy which makes life really alive, and unbounded by the limitations which usually seem to apply.
To receive the Holy Spirit is to be filled with the creative power of peace which nothing can sidetrack.
Receive the Holy Spirit.
The fourth aspect of the commission to Proclaim Peace, is that of forgiveness.
I was really struck by the King James Version of Jesus' words:
Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
I've tended to think of forgiveness in terms of the effect it has on the person who committed the offense. But the word "remit," or give back, or cancel out, as it is used here, suddenly made me aware that the problem is really not for the doer of evil, but for the one to whom it is done!
If you hurt me and I keep that hurt, then there is trouble in it for me. I, then, carry a grudge. I, then, cannot possibly see you as a person worthy of love. I will not make peace with you ... cannot make peace with you, because I have let your un-peace occupy my being.
Peace must start with the offended, the aggrieved, offering forgiveness.
So it is that the apparent loser in the cosmic game of basilica, first offered peace ... peace be with you, to save the world.
This, then, is where the Sevenfold Path to Peace has brought us, not to the end of a path, but to a beginning. The Spirit in me prays that you will join me on the highway of our God ...
"Bank up a causeway, clear a path, remove the stones from my people's way," says the Lord.
(Moffit translation)
" 'Peace, peace to the far and to the near,' says the Lord; 'and I will heal them.' "
Prayers of the Church
Almighty Lord Jesus, live now in us, in the confidence of faith; help us to embrace the reality of your Peace, as it is already established. Indeed, let the Peace of God which passes all understanding, the resurrection life, find a home in us ... in the person next to me ... in me.
Now help us to hear your clarion call to service, sending us, as you sent your disciples to the world, that the whole world might know, without prejudice of your Shalom, your peace, through us.
Grant each person sitting in this room, your Holy Spirit, that as your healing love transforms us to eminently hopeful people, undeterred by the problems of the world, we might faithfully fulfill your intentions.
Then stay us from retaining the sins of any, that we might see beyond our prejudices and assumptions, and instead, love each person according to need, until at last there is Peace on earth, as in heaven. Amen
Amusement was hard to come by. Life had little value; so this scurrilous lot took some perverted joy in appropriating, for their entertainment, an ancient Persian game called "basilica." The evidence of the game is still visible in Jerusalem. About twelve to fifteen feet below the present level of the Via Dolorosa, and in the subbasement of one of the Christian shrines commemorating the Stations of the Cross, archeologists have laid bare paving stones, roughly four feet square, which may be the actual street on which Jesus walked.
On some of those stones along the roadway are chiseled game boards with the markings of a basilica. The name referred not to a form of church building known as the basilica, but rather to its root word from the Greek which means "king." The idea of the game was that, at the end of a full week of playing with dice-like devices, the loser would be declared King for a day - the day always happened to be Friday. They would dress the loser like a king, tease him, and then crucify him!
The game continued after the crucifixion to see who would get his possessions. One week, nearly two thousand years ago, the loser happened to get very lucky, because coincidently, another gruesome drama was being played out between Jewish authorities and the Roman governor. The question of who was basileus (king) swirled around one Jesus of Nazareth. When the game was over and it seemed expeditious to Pontius Pilate to quell the unrest of the Jerusalemites, by crucifying Jesus, the loser of the army's game suddenly found that there was a substitute victim who was treated as every loser had been treated week after week, with mock kingship, royal robe, crown, and scoffing salutations, and, with his crucifixion, gambling for his clothes.
Of course, that motley and contemptible lot, which esteemed life so lowly, could not have begun to comprehend that they were playing a game of much higher stakes, wagering on the fate of the Roman Empire and participating, unwittingly, in the salvation, not only of the lottery loser, but of all humanity.
Remember playing King of the Mountain on piles of snow or heaps of sand, when you were a kid? In many ways the nations of the world continue to play a modern version of king for the week. One week the game is played on the Falkland Islands, another in Israel, continuously in Lebanon, El Salvador, Ireland, or in southeast Asia.
During the Sundays of Lent we have been reflecting on the means by which we can stop playing those silly games of basilica, with their inevitable violent life-wasting endings. We have called the series The Sevenfold Path to Peace.
1. The first step was to acknowledge that, just as wars feed on the wars within us, so does peace find its beginning within us.
2. The second step was one of seeing that justice is fundamental to the desirability of peace. Peace without justice is no peace at all.
3. The third step, that of peace-making, demands that we plan for peace. It does not just happen anymore than war "just" happens ... peace is intentional.
4. The fourth step of peace is God's Shalom, God's reliant, disciplining, giving, fulfilling love.
5. The fifth step, that of receiving Shalom's peace, requires that we confess our fear, anger, grief; that we stop worshiping the false god named "Security," and that we see the world and its peoples as a unitary whole, as God sees us.
6. The sixth step was the realization that peace already exists. It has been established through the sacrifice of Jesus. To accept Christ, is to have peace.
That brings us to the seventh step.
How can we get other people and the rest of the world to know the fact of peace so there will be peace?
The answer is at the heart of the resurrection experience. Your experience of the resurrection of Jesus establishes peace in terms we have been describing. The first encounter of the disciples with the resurrected Lord pointed them toward proclaiming peace to the world. It is the Easter imperative ... the Easter urgency ... the Easter realization that the kingdom of God is established. That is such remarkably good news anyone who has realized it cannot help but share it. It is in the sharing that peace will come.
Jesus' words to the disciples, that evening, essentially were in four commands.
First he said: "Peace be with you."
He did not say, "The fear of your enemies be with you."
He did not say, "The doubt about the economy be with you."
He did not say, "The stockpile of weapons be with you."
He did not say, "The bounty of the wealthy be with you."
He did not say, "The law be with you."
He said, "Peace be with you."
In light of what we concluded last week, that is the same as saying, "Christ be with you, ... in you ... through you." Perhaps you, like I, are tempted to look at the worst possible scenario with regard to earth's future: environmental decay, possibility of war, or something more personal like the plight of a sick relative.
Easter says, stop giving energy to the negatives. Use the energies of Christ for the positively creative. The resurrection encounter of the disciples was no theological doctrine, no philosophical teaching, subject to doubt and debate; it was the vivid experience of realizing that God is the victor in the perverse game of basilica. Easter calls us to start living on God's terms, positively.
"Peace be with you."
The second command of the resurrection experience is this:
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.
With peace in them, the followers of Jesus are sent out to be Peace. It does not take a terribly perceptive person to know that the world is largely ignorant of the means of making peace. The Church has borne a major responsiblity for that ignorance. The Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire, helped to clarify that fact for me. The Church, as it was institutionalized in the academic system of England at Cambridge, looked with contempt on the abilities of the young runner Jacobson, because he was a Jew. Even the homecoming from his 1924 Olympic victory in Paris left him out of the victory parade.
As long as the Church has operated with the official sanction of governments and institutions, and, at times, has actually controlled the body politic, it has become confused in its own mind and in the mind of the public, with the prevailing sociological, economic, and political attitudes of the culture, while aligning itself on one side or the other in the clashes of worldly forces.
Thank God, we are increasingly disentangling ourselves from that morass of modern crusade making. We are increasingly free to fulfill the mission on which Christ has sent us, that of proclaiming peace, doing justice, healing the people of the earth.
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.
The third imperative of the Easter commission is found in these words of Jesus:
Receive the Holy Spirit.
To do that is to let the power of God be in you, transform you, work through you.
• There are some things you and I do because, "If I don't, who will?" - take out the garbage, do the dishes ...
• There are some things you and I do because we "should" - vote on election day, stop at red lights ...
• There are some things you and I do because it is expected of us: make your bed, make coffee for the after-church fellowship hour ...
• There are some things you and I do because we want to: go four-wheeling, go to work ...
But when we receive the Holy Spirit, there are some things you and I do, not because of obligations, expectations, or even personal wants. To have the Holy Spirit is to do God's thing because you can't help doing it. It is rather like falling in love ... feeling all the excitement, and stimulation, and energy, and joy which makes life really alive, and unbounded by the limitations which usually seem to apply.
To receive the Holy Spirit is to be filled with the creative power of peace which nothing can sidetrack.
Receive the Holy Spirit.
The fourth aspect of the commission to Proclaim Peace, is that of forgiveness.
I was really struck by the King James Version of Jesus' words:
Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
I've tended to think of forgiveness in terms of the effect it has on the person who committed the offense. But the word "remit," or give back, or cancel out, as it is used here, suddenly made me aware that the problem is really not for the doer of evil, but for the one to whom it is done!
If you hurt me and I keep that hurt, then there is trouble in it for me. I, then, carry a grudge. I, then, cannot possibly see you as a person worthy of love. I will not make peace with you ... cannot make peace with you, because I have let your un-peace occupy my being.
Peace must start with the offended, the aggrieved, offering forgiveness.
So it is that the apparent loser in the cosmic game of basilica, first offered peace ... peace be with you, to save the world.
This, then, is where the Sevenfold Path to Peace has brought us, not to the end of a path, but to a beginning. The Spirit in me prays that you will join me on the highway of our God ...
"Bank up a causeway, clear a path, remove the stones from my people's way," says the Lord.
(Moffit translation)
" 'Peace, peace to the far and to the near,' says the Lord; 'and I will heal them.' "
Prayers of the Church
Almighty Lord Jesus, live now in us, in the confidence of faith; help us to embrace the reality of your Peace, as it is already established. Indeed, let the Peace of God which passes all understanding, the resurrection life, find a home in us ... in the person next to me ... in me.
Now help us to hear your clarion call to service, sending us, as you sent your disciples to the world, that the whole world might know, without prejudice of your Shalom, your peace, through us.
Grant each person sitting in this room, your Holy Spirit, that as your healing love transforms us to eminently hopeful people, undeterred by the problems of the world, we might faithfully fulfill your intentions.
Then stay us from retaining the sins of any, that we might see beyond our prejudices and assumptions, and instead, love each person according to need, until at last there is Peace on earth, as in heaven. Amen
