Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 26, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
WALKING IN THE WAY OF JESUS:
THE WAY OF PEACE AND JUSTICE
Amos 5:21-24, Isaiah 2:2-4, Matthew 5:38-48
For those of you who are socially and culturally unaware, and just plain un-cool, I need to inform you that we as a nation are in the midst of March Madness, the NCAA Basketball Championship Tournament. In a wonderful attempt to be relevant to relationships during this time, The Courier-Journal ran a story on Friday with the headline, “How to watch lots and lots of basketball without getting your girl mad at you.” I needed that wisdom about twenty years ago. Writer Mark Coomes reports that Neil Clark Warren, founder of the dating Web site eHarmony.com, is also a big fan of the tournament and he offers some tips on how to get your fill of the tournament without your relationship going down the tube. I want to share a few of them:
Tip #1: Tell her why March Madness is so important to you. If she understands, she’s sometimes a lot more forgiving of the time you spend.
Tip #2: Get her involved. Take her to the game. (If anyone here has tickets to the Final Four - NCAA or NIT - please see me after worship. I just want to be a good husband.)
Tip #3: Watch your behavior. Get a handle on behaviors that give your wife nightmares.
Tip #4: If you have kids, get your kids involved. If you get your children involved in the Madness, you’re no longer pursuing a selfish, man activity. You are supervising a family bonding experience. (The Louisville Cardinals actually helped me last year as we watched together our new home team in the Final Four. They’re in the Final Four again this year, just a different tournament. LSU from my wife’s home state helped me yesterday create a family bonding experience. Ryan was making all kinds of exciting noise. And Cindy actually said she could not take Jennifer to the store until after the game. My heart was strangely warmed.)
Tip #5: Give her a big thank you. Warren says, “I knelt down in front of my wife the other night and said, ‘I just want you to know how much I appreciate your letting me get so involved with March Madness. I absolutely love these 19 days. Thank you for not nagging me. Thank you for even caring a bit about it yourself.’ She really appreciated that.” (March 24, 2006, E1)
I almost didn’t share that last tip with you. I was going to say that to my wife and hope she thought it was original with me. (looks at Cindy) “Dear, like Jimmy Buffett, I’m down on the knees of my heart. And I do appreciate your letting me get so involved with March Madness. And thank you for even caring a bit about it yourself. Peace?”
When we hope for peace, we are hoping for peace at least in our homes. Perhaps those tips will help you through the remainder of the tournament. You may also receive help tonight at 5:00 in the Fellowship Hall with a seminar on nurturing committed relationships. Our seminar leader, Loren Townsend, is superb.
Peace as the absence of conflict at home, is the dream and desire of us all. But biblical peace runs much deeper than that. True biblical peace is always married to justice. The Bible speaks of justice and peace kissing each other. Justice and peace walk together as friends.
This Lenten season we are seeking to discern what it means to walk in the way of Jesus. On this banner to your right, signposts along the way of Jesus are streaming down above us. Today we consider perhaps the two most demanding: Peace and Justice.
These two words are so often distorted. They would, I think, be clarified if joined together as one word: “peaceandjustice.”
Peace is not just the generic wish of every smiling Miss America contestant. It is, or must be, the deep hope and fervent prayer of every person among the people of God.
The Hebrew word for peace, most of you know, is shalom. You are also aware that it means more than just the absence of war and conflict. It has to do with wholeness and wellness, the reconciliation of that which has been torn apart. Real peace is born of justice. Perhaps you’ve seen the bumper stickers: “No justice, no peace,” or “Want peace? Work for justice.” Justice is a prerequisite for peace.
Sometimes our search for peace is so shallow we think it can be obtained by a good night’s rest, a few strong drinks, sex, drugs, or a vacation at the beach. Or perhaps we will retreat from the world and seek to protect ourselves and our children in safe and secure environments. Sometimes we hope to find peace in worship. And I hope at times that you do find peace in worship. But if we come to worship listening for God and offering our lives to God, we may find that the path to true peace calls for more from us than we are willing to give. The sense of peace some of us live with may in reality be a false peace. Biblical peace is married to justice.
Justice is a major concern of the Bible, especially the prophets. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that biblical justice is about “securing and guaranteeing the livelihood, well-being, freedom, and dignity of every person in the community, not only those strong enough to insist on it.” Justice is not about punishment or retribution. Justice is about the well-being of all creation. (Walter Brueggemann, Peace, Chalice Press, 2001, 109)
There is much justice work to be done, for our world is deeply fragmented.
The fragmentation and brokenness of our world was recently displayed on the big screen in the movie Crash. It won an Oscar for Motion Picture of the Year a few weeks ago. I don’t recall ever seeing a film that left me so often unable to breathe. The plot was powerfully intense. The dialogue and drama were at times overwhelming. It will never be my favorite film, but it will be one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Crash is a film about racial division brought about by hatred, prejudice, fear and misunderstanding. I will warn you: it is not your everyday documentary on race, and is not suitable for children. It promises to offend everyone. It serves as a mirror of reality and truth for our nation and our hearts, and reveals the capacity of each of us for good and evil.
Because of the courageous life of Martin Luther King Jr. and others, black and white, who bravely fought against the demonic evil of racism, we now have laws that seek to prohibit racial discrimination. But racism is still alive in the human heart. We are a nation still divided by race. And the division adds to our violence toward each other and our estrangement from each other.
Crash is set in Los Angeles. The opening words narrated by one of the characters offer this judgment: “In L.A. we never touch. We’re always behind mortar and glass. We miss the touch so much all we do is crash into each other.”
How true that is. We don’t take the time to get to know each other, so we crash into each other
The question before us is: “What are we doing as the church, a church that is still mostly divided by race?” Look around you. In this progressive congregation we are still very white. Perhaps we should look into forming partnerships with African-American, Jewish and Muslim congregations so that we won’t be strangers to each other.
The way to peace and justice involves getting to know people who are different than we are. The “war on terror” will not be won with violence. Peace from terror requires that we seek to understand each other so that we can all get along. Peace requires that we work for justice, removing oppression from the necks of the weak and the poor. Peace and justice seek to welcome the excluded into community.
We are often confused about the meaning of peace and how we experience peace because it is often divorced from justice.
In the movie Crash, Sandra Bullock’s character is not the Miss Congeniality she has played in other films. Here she is a white woman very vocal about her racism, rooted in fear and deepened by the fact that her Lincoln Navigator was stolen from her at gunpoint by two black men. The next day she is on the phone and she says to her friend, “I thought I’d wake up today and feel better, but I don’t. I’m angry all the time and I don’t know why.”
What is your experience, your struggle with peace? Do you find yourself angry all the time and you don’t know why? Or is it that you find yourself hopeless, apathetic, lost, and you don’t know why? Or if you do know why, you’re not sure what to do about it.
We often feel helpless in the face of injustice. We feel that the powers that be are just too powerful. We can’t make a difference. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel offers this word. He says, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” For protest is a witness to a world gone wrong.
God aches with us at the disunity of the world. All kinds of things keep us at odds: pride, greed for stuff and for power, fear, misunderstanding. Brueggemann suggests that churches make a list of the agents of separation in their community and [congregation] and then address those agents - through spending and through programming - to see how the church might serve God’s will for unity in a world of fragmentation.” (Brueggemann, 48)
That’s an example of the church living out what the Bible calls the ministry of reconciliation, the uniting of all that is fragmented.
It doesn’t take long to understand that the peace of Christ is more than a peaceful easy feeling. It is hard work and can be a dangerous road. Because it is a peace conceived through justice.
The peace that is conceived through justice is more than a personal peace. It is a social justice that gives birth to a personal, social, and communal peace.
“The Bible never settles for a morality that deals simply with individuals,” says Brueggemann. “It always asks about social structures, about government and law and social policy. . . Pharaoh’s problem was not personal impurity but a state system of institutional tyranny.” (Brueggemann, 71). And prophets speak up in the face of such tyranny.
Bono is the lead singer of the rock group U2. He is also a professing Christian. He recently spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington hosted by President Bush. He spoke on behalf of the poor and those dying of AIDS in Africa.
When asked about having butterflies when meeting with world leaders like Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin and George Bush, he said, “I don’t get nervous when I meet politicians. I think they should be nervous because I’m representing the poor and wretched in this world. And whatever thoughts you have about God, who God is or if God exists, most will agree that if there is a God, God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. So these politicians should be nervous, not me.” (Mark Yaconelli, “Christian Megastar: Bono on Record,” in The Christian Century, March 21, 2006, 20)
In his National Prayer Breakfast address, Bono offered the sobering reminder that “God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. And God is with us, if we are with them.”
Bono praised the Bush Administration for doubling aid to Africa, tripling funding for global health, and saving 700,000 lives with anti-AIDS drugs. Then he outlined how much more there is to do, how there still exists a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response. “This is not about charity,” he said, “this is about justice and equality. Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of a free market - that’s a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents - that’s a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicine out of deference to the Office of Patents - that’s a justice issue.” (David Helm, “Breakfast With Bono,” in The Christian Century, March 21, 2006, 21)
Wendell Berry says, “The Christian gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness. It would require a most agile interpreter to justify hatred and war by means of the Gospels, in which we are bidden to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who despise and persecute us.” (Wendell Berry, “A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” in Berry and Duncan, Citizens Dissent: Security, Morality, and Leadership in an Age of Terror, The Orion Society, 2003, 22)
If creation is any indication, God has an inexhaustible appreciation for beauty. And I believe God loves worship that is beautiful. But the prophets are clear. Worship that is beautiful to God is worship that leads to holy lives. If our worship does not shape us into people of justice and peace, then our songs and offerings and sermons make God sick.
The most beautiful sight in God’s eyes is justice that rolls down like Niagara Falls, and battlefields full of deadly weapons turned into farming country that produces food for the hungriest of our world.
The most beautiful sight in God’s eyes is when human beings, nations and races who for whatever reason find themselves enemies, refuse to seek revenge upon each other. But instead begin to pray for one another and talk to one another and do good for one another. They follow in the way of peace and pray “Lord, teach us your ways that we may walk in your paths.”
Peace is hard, hard work. Only the most courageous walk in the ways of peace and fight nonviolently for justice. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is an international group that risks themselves in areas of heavy conflict through nonviolent means in the hopes of bringing justice and peace to those who suffer. They are actually naive enough to take Jesus seriously when he calls us to love our enemies and refuse retaliation.
Four members of a Christian Peacemaker Team recently made the news working for peace in Iraq, seeking justice for those illegally detained by Coalition forces. They were taken hostage back in November. Three were rescued just this week. The other, Tom Fox, was found dead in the streets of Iraq two weeks ago.
Jim Loney, one of the released hostages, wrote: “With God’s abiding kindness, we will love even our enemies. With the love of Christ, we will resist all evil. With God’s unending faithfulness, we will work to build the beloved community.”
The work of peace and justice requires grace and forgiveness, love and compassion, regular repentance, ongoing conversion, and the humility of disciples who are always be willing to learn.
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, our teacher said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Buechner interprets: “What he presumably meant was that it was not peacefulness and passivity that he came to bring but that high and life-breathing peace that burns at the hearts only of those who are willing to do battle, as he did battle, to bring to pass God’s loving, healing, forgiving will for the world and all its people.” (Buechner, A Room Called Remember, Harper Collins, 1984, 122)
Love your enemy. Work for peace. Stand for justice. And you will find yourself walking in the way of Jesus.
One day, says the prophet, all weapons will be beaten into plowshares, national self-interest will come to an end, and no one will learn war anymore. Justice will roll down like waters, righteousness and peace like an ever-flowing stream. And worship will be beautiful again in God’s sight.
So, let justice roll. Let justice roll. And let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me and you.
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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