Home Sermons Sermon on Mark 12:38-44, Peace Sunday

Sermon on Mark 12:38-44, Peace Sunday

Sermon for Nov 8/09 Today is Peace Sunday. It is a day that reminds us not to forget the cost of peace and the terrible nature of wars. The question that is being asked this year is “How will you remember?” It’s a wonderful question because when we address it directly and honestly we are doing the work of peacemaking. We are being peacemakers by thinking about how we would answer that question. And so I’ve thought about it to some degree. How will you remember? One of the ways I will remember, is to think about the place I call home. And a big part of my home includes the Manitoba prairie sky. It is a sky of skies! It seems to go on forever and so often it is the deepest blue color. And it seems to be uncluttered and there’s a lot I don’t know about it—it’s kind of mysterious. Sometimes when life moves in on me at a quicker pace than I’d prefer and clutters up my thinking and my living and I find myself getting busier and busier with deadlines and meetings and what not, all I have to do is to remember to look up at that sky and my wide open prairie sky tells me to breathe in and breathe out and I start feeling human again, grounded and re-centred in the love of God. Some people say that the sky begins in your lungs. So when you exhale, if you really think about it, you’re exhaling the sky. I love the prairie sky and it is often how I imagine God to be: far and wide, going on forever, nurturing and life giving, and taking my breath away. The place I call home, the place my heart beats for, contains this sky. And people in all the world have places they call home too. Their hearts beat for their homes all over the world, whether it’s in Iran, Turkey, Baghdad, North Korea, the United States, Pakistan, Zimbabwe…. That’s one way I will remember, by remembering how my heart beats for my home with the sky in it and knowing that so many people’s hearts beat for their own homes, and their skies are just as blue as mine—perhaps more. Where is home for you? There’s a good chance that it’s right here in Emerson/Dominion City. What might be less obvious is why this is home for you. What makes your heart beat for Emerson/Dominion City that you would call it home? Is it because it is familiar? Then I invite you to imagine people all over the world loving their homes for that exact reason. Is it because neighbours take care of neighbours? Then I invite you to imagine people all over the world loving their homes for that exact reason. It is an act of peacemaking to think about why you call home, ‘home’. Another way I will remember is to remember that the sky I look at today might have been the sky that hovered over China or Iran or Baghdad last month (I don’t know how fast the sky moves around the world but I do know that it doesn’t stay in one place). The sky is wrapped around the whole wide world. And it’s the same sky that’s been here for thousands of years. It’s the same sky that Naomi and Ruth looked up at when they moved from Bethlehem to Moab when tragedy struck their family and they lost their livelihood and returned to Bethlehem to be blessed by God. It’s the same sky that Jesus probably looked up to just before he entered the Temple to watch the widow put her two little coins into the offering plate which was all she had to her name. And it’s the same sky that will be here for years and years to come. When our great, great grandchildren look up this is the sky they will see. Isn’t it? The sky is not ours. It is there for the whole world, past, present and future. But that’s not how people think in times of war. On October 9, 2001 there was a headline in the Free Press that read, “Who Owns the Skies?” The United States had declared war on Afghanistan and had dropped an air strike on them that lasted only three days. And the article implied “Who Owns the Skies Now?” It was a horrible, horrible headline and I was so offended by it. But I did nothing, except feel offended by it. I could have written a letter to the editor and said that the people or the person who wrote that headline is going the wrong way and glorifying war and wiping out any hopes of negotiating peace with other nations. It’s not right to put those kind of headlines up. It makes us all into winners and losers and there are no winners in a war. There is only fighting. I could have said something like that. But I did nothing. A pastor who was a victim of the Nazis wrote: First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. I will remember today by trying harder to be more intentional about speaking out against violence. And the third way I will remember is by asking another question: Is our home a home to die for? My answer would be a resounding “Yes!” But I add the following: • As long as our dying means dying from ways that glorify war and living for ways that tell the truth about the reality of war….truths that state clearly that we not only send our troops out with a prayer and a blessing but that we also ask our troops to do the most atrocious things anyone could ever be asked to do. • As long as our dying means dying from ways that dehumanize the enemy and make them into vicious animals and living in ways that speak the good news of God’s kingdom where all people are created in God’s image, and all are mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, sisters and brothers, and lovers to someone. • As long as our dying means dying to ways that remember only those people we want to remember i.e. remembering only our own farmers who never had the chance to return to their fields and living in ways that remember all farmers in the whole world whether Canadian, German, Iraqi, or Russian who never had the chance to return to their fields, and put in next year’s crop. • As long as our dying means that we die to ways that place the badge of honor to a valiant few of our soldiers, and we live to ways that honour all who fight in wars even those 19 or 20 year old boy-men from all over the world whose mangled bodies didn’t even make it to popular places of remembrance like the beach at Normandy. • As long as our dying means that we die to believing that a war will end all wars and we begin believing that war is really not the end of anything, but the beginning of another war filled with shell shocked, good people carrying anxiety disorders of all sorts. Our home here is worth dying for. This is the kind of home that Jesus Christ died for. And the kind of home he lived for too. Christ died for the whole world, not just mine and ours. Christ died so that all people everywhere would have freedom, and love, and life, and to have it in abundance. Let us live for that. And let us die for that. And the first step is for us to be peacemakers by remembering. I leave the question with you: How will you remember