Divine Peace
By Charles Rush
December 9, 2012
Isaiah 9 and Luke 1: 76
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(mp3, 5.4Mb) ]
ose elevated hopes and alas so little to show for them some 2000 years later. Perhaps you've seen the poster suggesting that the problem actually has to do with male leadership in the church going all the way back to the three wise men. The poster says, with blustering confidence, “If there had been three wise women instead of three wise men, they would have asked for directions, arrived on time, help deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts… and there would be peace on earth.”
Perhaps, I
suspect that the Wise men who lead the nations right now would secretly love to
turn over the intractable violence of the Middle East for the Wise Women to
solve. When I first visited Israel, Egypt, and Lebanon in the 70's people
complained that the situation had degraded to its lowest state, only to descend
lower in the 80's, lower still in the 90's and when I was there a couple years
ago, leaders on both sides used the word ‘despair' for the first time.
And the papers
this week give us a clear picture why. The feed out of Gaza reports that the
leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal
spoke to the young people in the movement saying that he hoped that he would
become a martyr for Palestine, to the cheers of thousands of kids and young
men. When ordinary Israeli's hear that rhetoric, they despair that the honor of
martyrdom has trumped the normal aspirations of a people to live free. Combined
with the threats to use wanton rockets on civilian populations to create an
atmosphere of terror and the pledge in the charter of Hamas not to stop until
Israel is eradicated, the emotion of despair has good warrant.
On the other
side of the equation, the papers in Israel have been having an open discussion
on the contradictory antinomies of security. Israel's total blockade of Gaza
and the barrier wall they use to stop suicide bombs from blowing up in
Jerusalem has become so stifling to the Palestinians that they are encouraging
the blind rage to strike back. People have been quoting the Sages in the Talmud
that say that you can defend yourself but not to the extent that you humiliate
your enemy so that they cannot do otherwise than to act wantonly in vengeful
rage.
Meanwhile in
Syria, the Army is positioning chemical weapons for use on their own people and
one reporter for CNN documented an under-reported story that the Army is using
rape as means of war on a far more extensive than we knew. When you remember
that almost all of the Army are Alloites,
the type of humiliation they have inflicted almost ensures that a widespread
civil war of anarchic revenge will follow for months on end after the regime of
Bashar al-Assad falls. Just looking at the wreckage of those ancient cities,
reflecting on the trauma that the whole population has been through, you have
to believe that the social dysfunction that will follow must last two or three
generations.
It will affect
not just Syria, but also Lebanon and Jordan, both of whom are filled with the
very same sectarian conflicts and armed militias.
Egypt, which was
a bastion of stability during the Cold War, has people in the streets in
revolutionary protest, for the second year, with no real prospects of people
recognizing the legitimacy of the state in the near future. Tahrir Square is
starting to look permanently like a riot zone from a blighted ghetto.
And Thursday,
the Wall Street Journal had an op-ed that claimed that the Iranians have
quietly but persistently developed enough weapons grade plutonium to make 6
bombs. As I read that, I had that dread that came over me from writing my
dissertation on World War 2. One of my professors had me read “Mein Kampf” before I started the research. When I finished I
asked him what I was supposed to learn from reading the lunatic ravings of a
fanatic. He peered at me over the glasses on the end of his nose and said,
“People who broadcast their intentions in advance will always do exactly as
they say once they have the power, no matter how crazy those intentions might
seem to everyone else”.
Friday's New
York Times had another article on Mali and the wider region of Northwest Africa
that is apparently the new outlier for Al Qaeda. The Administration is
apparently going to Capitol Hill to ask Congress for permission to start special forces operations in the area to combat known
threats to the United States that are coming from the region.
There are a lot
of extremist forces, bent on violence, that make it look like we are in the
midst of a protracted period of wars and rumors of wars for quite some time to
come.
In the midst of
this maelstrom, we read the elevated hopes of Isaiah,
For unto us a child is born,
Unto us a son is given;
Authority shall rest upon his shoulders
And he shall be named, Wonderful counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no
end…
And he shall establish it with justice and righteousness
And from the benedictus of Zechariah, we read these elevated hopes.
By the tender mercy of our God,
The dawn from on High shall break upon us
To give light to those that sit in darkness, in the shadow of
death,
To guide our way in the paths of peace.
And in order to remember
them and lift up their importance, we created a holiday celebration called
Christmas, where we give gifts to each other to remember the gifts that were
given for the birth of the baby Jesus in just such a war torn world. We read
those texts about the birth of this child to simple peasants in a barn and how
the Angels in heaven sang in chorus in the stillness of the night.
And that
celebration kept growing in popularity, probably because there is something
deep in the human psyche that needs to have a season when we can give each
other gifts, where we can express our love for those around us and where we can
feel accepted and included. We need a season where it just feels right to reach
out to those in need in our midst and give them a gift too, remembering Mary
and Joseph who were in need, remembering that we are blessed enough that we can
give out of our abundance and tap into our gratitude and grace.
And that
celebration kept growing over the centuries so that almost every culture that
has ever heard of it has adopted it in some form or fashion. Today, I've read
that even the Japanese, have adopted it as a very
popular holiday, even without much of any Christian tradition because it is so
wonderful.
Despite all the
materialism of the holiday, despite all of the excess, today there is something
of a serious miracle that takes place on Christmas morning. Almost the whole
world comes to a stop. About 10 years ago, I got to witness it firsthand. I had
to get one of my kids in Manhattan on Christmas morning early and I woke up
early. It was snowing that year on Christmas Day. I got to New York at 7:30 or
8:00 in the morning and I walked up Broadway for a block or two in the middle
of the road. There was not a single car in either direction. I was walking,
feeling the energy of so many millions of people around me, all of them at
rest.
And we wake up
on Christmas morning in a good mood, patient for a change, expectant, filled
with hope, wanting to be tender and kind to our families and our friends. We live,
for a moment, in a morning of grace, blessing, and love. We give to each other,
feed each other, maybe fall back in bed with each
other. But for one morning, collectively, we are in peace.
We need that for
our souls. We need it for our families. We need it for our world. It is like
the eye of a hurricane. Suddenly everything comes to a seemingly supernatural
still and we try to stay in that space as long as we can. Eventually, of
course, the cousins start fighting or Uncle Bob comes over dead drunk or
something happens that returns us to the back side of the storm that sends us
rapidly back into the defensive shelters that make up our normal lives, but
what a great witness Christmas morning really is. The Divine peace settles over
us for one morning and in the words of Louis Armstrong we “see what a wonderful
world it would be, if we just let it.”
We hope and pray
that our world will be infused with that love and peace, that
it will grow and multiply.
We can't live in
Christmas morning all the time, but what we can do is let the vision of peace
guide us so that we corral destructive aggression and channel it into
constructive competition. We can creatively channel competition in ways that
bring us into social congruence and normalcy. And healthy democracies do it all
the time which is why they thrive.
Just yesterday,
we had one of the best examples of the way this works in the Army/Navy football
game. If you've ever been to the game, and I've been a dozen times, it is
rivalry at its best. It isn't just Cadets versus Midshipman but Soldiers versus
Sailors across our entire military, each trying to outdo each other by pulling
together as a team to produce their very best.
From forming
teams that run the ball from West Point to Philadelphia from the north and from
Annapolis to Philadelphia from the south, to the march on the field, to the
coordinated air jumps into the stadium just before the game, to the incredibly
impressive fly over before the game by the Army helicopters and then the Navy
jets. And what you don't see on TV are the series of videos that the Midshipmen
and the Cadets have made all year that are very clever spoofs on commercials,
each designed to poke fun at their opponents.
And then, the
formal exchange of students just before the game, so that Cadets that have been
studying for the year at the Naval Academy and the Midshipmen that have been
studying for the year at West Point, can sit with their classmates for this
game, and hopefully to celebrate afterwards, because only the winners get leave
for the weekend.
The President of
the United States sits the first half on one side of the stadium and very
formally moves to the other side after half-time. And then there is the
incredible competition of the game itself, the cannons that they shoot after
every score, the Cadets and Middies that do push ups
while being held aloft, one for every point on the board. Pride,
competition, team.
But at the end
of the game, the entire student body of the losing side takes the field while
the winning team celebrates in the stands and they sing their anthem to the
winners. And then the winners take the field and sing their anthem to the
losers. And we remember together, that whatever rivalry that exists between the
two branches of the service, we are part of one military that is ultimately
only effective if we work together for the common good.
What we can do
is build on that. There is a saying in the Middle
East that illustrates the way that we've thought for millennia on end,
promoting an endless cycle of destructive aggression. It is a Bedouin proverb
that says, “"I against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousins,
then my cousins and I against strangers".
We need to and
we can invert that saying, “my brothers together before me alone, my cousins
together before me and my brothers alone, and the wider world of strangers
together before my people alone. Brian Piccolo said it more eloquently, “My God
is first, my nation and family are second, I am third.”
We need our
competitions to serve wider social goals that are inclusive, so that our
rivalries ultimately bring us together, making competition serve a more
inclusive cooperation. Every day, our world gets more integrated, pulling us
together ultimately into one people of the planet Earth. Ultimately, we are all
in this together.
This season, let
us pray for peace in the intractable regions of the world and in our families
too. And may you be blessed with a time of genuine respite and refuge, a moment
of peace for your family and for your soul as well. Amen.
