Living By The Spirit

9 - PEACE

A busy mother found this item in her church newsletter and posted it to the Internet so that others might benefit from its wisdom:

SYMPTOMS OF PEACE

Watch for the signs of peace:
1. Tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fear based on past experiences.
2. An unmistakable ability to enjoy every moment.
3. Freedom from judging other people.
4. Freedom from judging self.
5. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
6. Contented feelings of connectedness with others and with nature.
7. Frequent attacks of smiling.
8. The uncontrollable urge to extend love to others.

If you have all, or even most of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition may be irreversible. If you are exposed to above exhibiting these symptoms, remain exposed at your own risk.

This mother liked this notice so much that she placed it on her refrigerator with other important information, like cat food coupons and dentist appointment cards. She also noted that all eight symptoms are thoroughly positive.

The major difficulty many find in this search for peace is that it tends to focus on the individual.

A section in a older hymn book bore the title of "Peace and Joy." In most of the well-loved

hymns in that section, the pronoun "I" predominated. This spiritual individualism was a particular emphasis of the evangelical movement in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

At the mid-point of the 20th century, the late Dr. James Sutherland Thomson, then Dean of the Faculty of Divinity (now Religious Studies) at McGill University, Montreal, told a class in theology, "We have gone about as far as we can go in the individual understanding of the person and work of Christ. We need now turn our attention to the implications of Jesus Christ for society as a whole."

Individual or social, peace is something for which everyone hopes and dreams. Sadly, not everyone is committed to working for it. The tragic 20th century began with such high hopes for a world of peace and prosperity through technological advances made by human enterprise and ingenuity. Yet the century was marked by the most brutal and destructive wars in human history. At least three racially motivated holocausts occurred - the Armenian, the Jewish and the Rwandan - in which as many as ten million people were slaughtered. In Russia alone during World War II, twenty-five million people died in battle, from starvation and the scorched earth policies of Nazi aggressors and the brutality of Josef Stalin against some of his own people.

Yet there were people everywhere in the world who then and still hope for and are seriously committed to finding better ways to settle such conflicts. However weak, ineffective or failing, the League of Nations and the United Nations were formed to bring those hopes and commitments to bear on the real issues of making peace.

Searching for Peace.

In October 2000, the World Community for Christian Meditation held a three-day seminar in Belfast , Northern Ireland. The presence of the Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, added significantly to the harmonious atmosphere of this event. He met with political leaders from opposing sides of the centuries-old strife in that country.

Young people, clergy, victims of the more than 30 years of the violent "Troubles," and 500 other participants in the seminar all witnessed some extraordinary things happening. Well-known former Anglican priest and journalist, Tom Harpur, attended as a participant and reported in the Toronto Sunday Star some of the miracles of peace-making he witnessed there.

Children as young as five years old and hardened politicians alike acknowledged that the Dalai Lama had made a deep impression on them. One experienced city councillor of Belfast discovered to his surprise that the Dalai Lama had made him reconsider some of the simple teachings of his professed faith which he had neglected for many years.

Asked to respond to an address by Mary McAleese, president of the Republic of Ireland, the Dalai Lama said, "Our religious differences amount to nothing. The religious sectarian disagreements in Ireland are really nonsense when you stop to reflect. We can leap-frog over these splits by moving to a more inner, more central issue in all religion - the journey to a wider perspective by going within through daily meditation."

Protestants and Roman Catholics alike had their prejudices challenged and found peace in forgiving those against whom they had harbored much hatred for the harm done to them. One of them, a Protestant whose best friend had been murdered at 14, later served a prison term for being part of a group of brutal gangsters. No longer feeling a pawn in a political struggle, he realized that he could now make a contribution to reconciling differences by accepting his responsibility for some of the violence and working with other prisoners to atone for his crimes.

Another man had been left blind in both eyes when struck by a British rubber bullet. He testified that he no longer held resentment toward the soldier who shot him, and now could get on with his life. After hearing this man’s testimony, the Dalai Lama told him, "You may be blind, but you have been given new vision."

Not just in Ireland, but in India too, the Dalai Lama brought his message of peace in action to trouble spots of the world. On January 24, 2001, the holiest day of the Hindu festival, the Kumbh Mela, at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhists, came to join the sacred Hindu ceremony of prayer and offerings to the river.

Peace begins where people live, not on the bloody battlefields of the world. A generation or two ago, interfaith or interracial marriages created some very nasty family conflicts. A Toronto journalist from a Jewish background and his Protestant wife struggled to find a way to meet their own and their children’s needs for a faith that united them. He liked to attend an orthodox synagogue in the neighborhood where they lived. She felt very uncomfortable there because husbands and wives were seated separately. They did find a more congenial and satisfying atmosphere in a local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. This church welcomes anyone who feels like an outsider, especially those of homosexual orientation rejected by other churches. When they worship in this church, the Jewish journalist wears his yarmulka and is listed on the church records as a Friend of the Congregation. His wife has taken the formal step of becoming a member.

Writing about his experience in the Toronto Star, the journalist said that he shares the religious philosophy of Franz Rosensweig which requires people to do only as much as feels right for them. If we imagine God at the centre of a circle, he said, our spiritual task is to keep working our way toward the centre. That is why he and his wife rejoiced with that congregation when they heard the minister read the banns of marriage for two homosexual couples who were to be married in the near future, thereby challenging the legal restrictions against the registration of such unions.

Peaceful Words.

In both the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, the word peace has a very prominent place, occurring more than 400 times. In recent years, the common Hebrew word has become an English term too - shalom. For generations the Greek word, eiréné, has been transliterated as a woman’s name, usually with the first e omitted and other two unaccented, Irene. A Greek scholar of my acquaintance used the original Greek spelling and pronunciation when he named his daughter. As an adult, she dropped the accents but kept the spelling.

Obviously, the word peace has many implications for human relationships. In ancient times, the Greeks gave the word a corporate, social sense. They used it to describe the stability and security a country enjoyed under a just and beneficial government. Villages had a public official who served as the community’s peace officer, much as do modern police forces.

For Christians, peace depends on one’s relationship with God. As the angel chorus sang over the pastures of Bethlehem, God’s desire for all humanity is peace and good will. Only in peace can we be what God wants us to be, individually or corporately. Peace is that state of personal and communal harmony with God and neighbor that makes for the highest common good.

In the New Testament, peace is always the gracious gift of God. The gospels frequently described Jesus giving peace to friends and disciples, and so exercising his divine authority. Paul typically began his letters to the churches he had founded, "Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ."

Peace at Home.

Every parent knows that when children are sick their demands disrupt the normal routines of the home. Every writer knows how difficult it is to concentrate when other members of the family interrupt the creative process. Consequently, many writers find a secluded place to do their work. Or if that is impossible, they do their writing at hours when there will be few distractions. For some parents, peace comes only momentarily amid the hustle and bustle of a busy family life. Here is what one mother wrote about such an experience.

We are having our first cool spell in Central Texas after an unusually hot, dry summer. It is now the time of butterfly migration. The butterflies - of many varieties - have arrived swirling in the bright fall sunshine, clinging to the under branches of our trees, languidly fanning the air with their wings. The leaves are finding a touch of gold and brown as well, and beginning to drop. So to see something bright and colorful fluttering from the branches, one doesn't know at first look whether it's the cast-off leaf, harbinger of winter dormancy, or if it's a living butterfly.

She had found peace in what to many may appear as a very ordinary situation. She had watched her four year old daughter coax a migrating butterfly to settle on her finger so she could examine it with a child’s fascination.

Another mother of four, admitted that the only place she could find for her daily periods of meditation and prayer was literally in the closet in her bedroom. Her children knew that when they couldn’t find her, that’s where she would be. They also quickly learned to honor those times when she was following the actual words of Matthew 6:6 about the appropriate place for prayer.

If peace is the gift of God, then surely prayer is the way to peace. The World Community for Christian Meditation recommends thirty minutes of quiet, contemplative prayer using no words except the ancient petition, "Maranatha." This is an Aramaic word, the language Jesus spoke, used by the earliest Christians. It means, "Come, Lord." It occurs only once in scripture, at the very end in The Revelation of St. John 22:20. This single word asks Jesus to be present with us and in us, to the exclusion of all else. Whenever our minds do fill with other concerns, we simply set them aside without anxiety or guilt and return to our one word prayer.

Praying for Peace.

The single most devastating act of war in the 20th century was the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. The city was founded in 1594 on six islands in the Ota River delta. It grew rapidly as a commercial city, and after 1868 was developed as a military center. In 1940 the population of Hiroshima had reached nearly 350,000. The blast from the first atomic bomb destroyed more than 10 sq km (4 sq mi) or about 60% of the city. Casualties numbered 129,558 killed, injured, or missing. Another 176,987 were left homeless. In 1949 the Japanese dedicated Hiroshima as an international shrine of peace. Every August 6 since 1947, thousands participate in interfaith services in the Peace Memorial Park built on the site where the bomb exploded.
Sadako, a young Hiroshima survivor, suffered severe radiation poisoning. While in hospital she began folding paper cranes as every Japanese child is taught to do. There is a legend that if you made 1,000 paper cranes your wish would come true. As she folded, she wrote on the wings "This is my wish, this is my prayer, for peace in the world"

Unfortunately she died before getting to 1,000. So her friends decided that they would make a thousand. Their friends heard about it as did others. Soon there were hundreds of thousands of paper cranes, each with "This is my wish, this is my prayer, for peace in the world." Every year people always place folded paper cranes at the monument in Hiroshima. It is their way of praying for peace.

August 6, 2000 fell on a Sunday. A Canadian minister posted on the Internet some of his thoughts for his sermon that day:

I recently had the tremendous privilege of attending a performance of a new oratorio, written by Victor Davies, entitled "Revelation". As the music proceeded to a modern working of "Worthy is the Lamb" and other versions of the words so familiar to one raised on the beauty of Handel's Messiah, I had a feeling something like the one Dorothy had in the Wizard of Oz, when she said to Toto, ‘I don't think we're in Kansas any more.’ The contrast was so great it was upsetting at first, but soon one begins to realize that here is the timeless message in a modern setting, and it is powerful and beautiful in its own way. More important is the fact that the essential message of this prophecy is coming through loud and clear.

We Christians too often lose sight of the global and eternal dimensions of the work in which we are involved for Jesus. We quarrel over petty things, creating divisions amongst ourselves, and we cause the gospel to lose power, truth and relevance. We need to recast the ancient truths in modern, shocking expressions so that we will not lose sight of the glory and eternal majesty of our goal: nothing less than bringing all dominion, power and authority under the feet of Christ. It may not be Kansas, but it will be a far, far better place than we can now imagine!

Creating Peace.

As the peace-keeping forces in various trouble spots of the world have learned by hard experience, it isn’t easy to keep the peace where centuries of hatred and hostility have corrupted the relations between close neighbors.

There’s an old story about two brothers with adjoining farms who had a falling out after 40 years of working together, sharing machinery and all the seasonal tasks. One day, in a fit of anger, the younger brother brought in a bulldozer to create a ditch between their farms. Then he punched a hole through a levee protecting the farms from a nearby river and filled the ditch with water.

Early one morning soon after, a man carrying a box of carpenter’s tools came to the door of the older brother’s farm house asking for work.

"You can build me an eight foot fence along that creek so I won’t be able to see that other place," the farmer told him. "You can do that while I go to town for the day."

As the farmer disappeared down the road, the carpenter set to work. When the farmer came back near sundown, instead of a fence there was a bridge across the creek. As the farmer stared in astonishment, his younger brother came across the bridge with his hand outstretched.

"You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done," he said.

The two brothers met at the middle of the bridge, taking each other's hand. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder.

"No, wait! Stay a few days," said the older brother. "I've a lot of other projects for you,"

"I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but I have so many more bridges to build."

So saying, he trudged slowly off into the distance along a dusty road.

Is Peace Always Possible?

Sometimes it isn’t possible to make peace with someone with whom we may have been in conflict. Death comes before reconciliation is possible. One minister dealt with just such a situation during a funeral service for a man who had been one the outs with his siblings for most of his life. As she led the congregation in prayer, she offered the following:

Cleanse our hearts and redeem our memories. For those things we left unsaid, give us confidence in your healing wholeness. For those things we wish we had not said, grant us the knowledge that you forgive us even before we forgive ourselves, and give us the peace that only you can give.

Peace comes to a community when someone decides there is a better way to live together and sets out to find it. The Nobel Peace Prize has been donated since 1901 to the person or institution making an outstanding contribution to international peace. Only two institutions have won it more than once: the International Red Cross in 1917, 1944 and 1963; and the United Nations Office for Refugees in 1954 and 1981. It has not been awarded to anyone on nineteen occasions, particularly during World Wars I and II. Swedish chemist, Alfred Nobel, donated the funds initiating this and other prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine and literature from wealth gained from his development of dynamite. The gift was inspired by an explosion that killed his brother three years before Nobel mastered the chemistry of a safe way to manufacture nitroglycerin.

The way to make peace, Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans, is to live in harmony with one another. "Do not repay evil for evil, but take thought of what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, given them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:17-21)

Paul was able to say this with such confidence because earlier in his letter he had also said, "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Rom. 5:1) Not, we shall have peace, perhaps someday in the sweet bye and bye. We have it. Now! This peace comes through a new relationship with God. It is the gift Jesus gave us by his birth, life, death and resurrection. He lived it himself and makes it possible for us to follow in all our other relationships.