“LET THERE BE PEACE … AGAIN” (a Sermon by the Rev. John Maynard)

Sunday Lection (Lent 3B.):

Exodus 20: 1-7, John 2: 13-22

You will hear many older people say that they can remember, very clearly and easily, where they were on the day that American President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated.

Or the day Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin. I remember, I was in Thailand listening to “Radio Australia” on my short-wave radio when suddenly the radio went dead. The Darwin aerials were put out of action. (I only found out when I switched over to the BBC).

We remember the news coming into our ears as we left our worship here in Bunyip: “Princess Diana has been killed in a car crash!”

We remember the news of something terrible and tragic unfolding in America on Sept. 11th 2002. I was in my lounge chair watching a late night episode of “The West Wing” (a US program about life in the White House), when the news broke in to tell us of a tragedy at the World Trade Centre. It was all surreal … Helen (my wife) and I had to pinch each other and we were glued to the TV set watching the rest of the events unfold live before us on the screen. (We stayed up until 2 or 3 am.)

Perhaps you remember where you were when the first Gulf War broke out on Jan. 20th 1991. Some twelve years ago. I remember: I was an accredited visitor to the World Council of Churches as they were meeting in Canberra (Australia’s Capital). A pallor fell upon the delegates, representatives, heads of churches and visitors. There was an outcry of voices shouting “Peace, Peace!”

But then I heard the angry words of a Christian Palestinian woman who came to represent her church from the west bank. Why do you shout peace? She asked, when people in my country are being oppressed? Why do you shout peace when bombs sometimes have to fall on others? You people in the West, you don’t understand. You and your placards and prayers!”

For everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season …. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time to scatter stones and a time to pick them up again … a time for love a time for hate … a time for war and a time for peace …

The prophet Jeremiah wrote in his time: “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.” (Jer. 6:13-14)

It is no easy task ever at any time to be a Christian minister, preaching the Gospel in the midst of war. It is no easy task today.

This morning we read two of the more memorable parts of our Holy Scriptures. They have been traditionally titled: the Ten Commandments and the Cleansing of the Temple. It is interesting how these two readings from our Lectionary have been laid along-side each other.

Our two passages from the Bible describe ways of being in community, rules for living together. One reading is basically a list of things that God loving communities do and don’t do. The other reading is a dramatic and powerful expression of outrage at a community who have been corrupted by the rules and have placed barriers between the people and God.

Let’s look at the Ten Commandments first.

The Ten Commandments were not just ten good rules for good living for the people of Israel, they presented a vision for a future when lion and lamb will lay down together.

Or as Melissa Meers from the Christian Church of Illiopolis (in North America) writes:

“From my meagre understanding of Hebrew, and from study so far this week, I believe it is credible to translate the Commandments in a future tense. God not only gave the Israelites a way to be in relationship with God and with each other, but also a future vision …

Someday … (she writes) …

There will be only one God. Whatever path may lead us to that understanding, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. We will not need idols nor graven images, because we will know and love the LORD our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We will know fully God’s desire, and will not misuse God’s name. We will rest. We will set aside time to honour the holy in our lives. We will all have both fathers and mothers who model God’s love for us. We will honour them, because we will see God in them. We will live in shalom with one another. All will have the bread they need. All will dwell in the house of the Lord. There will be no need to murder, to commit adultery, to steal, to bear false witness, or to covet.

These are the rules for God community – rules to live and thrive by.

But, as we see in our Gospel Lesson for today, rules can also lead us into temptation. Rules can be used dishonestly by those who let their desire for power and control corrupt their thinking.

Poet Harry Guest wrote “The Cleansing” for a BBC television broadcast on Palm Sunday, 1995. This poem imagines the startled reaction of a bystander when Jesus overturns the tables of the money-changers.

The Cleansing

A pallid spring sun shone on the forecourt. Inside the building it was dim and stuffy and people came and went about their business.

Suddenly we saw light gather to itself. A human shape, fused from another April, entered our temple like a shaft of fire.

The shadows burned away. Stark radiance pushing from floor to rafters dazzled the traders.

The man made all of light hurled trestles down so the money rolled glittering, smashed wicker cages so the captive doves flew whirring through blue clouds of incense.

He swept like a meteor with scourge and flame condemning us who’d turned the place for prayer into a space for robbery and bargaining.

He left, and it was as though the day had been withdrawn. We stared at the wreckage in the new noon dusk the shattered furniture, the litter of tarnished coins.

Someone said, ‘Who was that?’ There was a frightened pause. Another answered. ‘He’s called the Prince of Peace.’

Jesus angry – the Prince of Peace turning tables and wielding a whip. It isn’t picture we want to see. It isn’t the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that I grew up with as a child in Sunday School.

But Jesus did get angry. (He still does!) He was angry because the rules of the temple were keeping the people from God. Jesus got angry because the money changers and temple staff were making money off the ones who could not afford to pay. These merchants and traders had brought their tables right into the temple, the house of prayer. Jesus got angry in the temple, just like he got angry with the disciples when they tried to push the children away. Jesus got angry in the temple, just as he got angry at Peter, saying, “Get behind me Satan”. Jesus got angry at injustice.

Jesus got angry. And we can be angry too. Angry, that once again our world has chosen war over peace. Angry at Sadaam Hussein (for some of us?) Angry at George Bush (for others?).

My thoughts and prayers are for all people caught up in the conflict. For the Iraqi people, especially the children, who have suffered so much for so many years. For the soldiers on both sides, especially those troops on the ground who take their orders from above, namely the politicians.

But my concern goes beyond just Iraq. I’m still sad, angry and outraged that the Holy City of Jerusalem and the cradle of religion that we call the Holy Land is still at war … the conflict goes back so far … some say back to the Crusades when Christians in the name of God sacked and pillaged cities like Constantinople (a Christian city!) and then proceed to kill, rape and plunder towns villages and cities all the way to Jerusalem, to SAVE that holy city from the “Infidels” (who happened to be Muslim, Jewish and Christian!).

Others say the conflict in the Middle East was sparked by the drawing of political lines across arid desert regions at the end of the Great War in 1918 … when allied victors dismantled the Ottoman Empire into League of Nations protectorates. The lines were carefully and cruelly drawn to divide different tribes. The Kurds lost their identity when their homeland was parcelled off to Turkey, Iran and Iraq. The same thing happened to the Armenians between Turkey, Russia and Iran.

And in 1948 the same thing happened in the Holy Land. But this time by UN Sanction in 1948 with the establishment of two states in what had been known for years and years as Palestine: We now carved it up into a Jewish and Arab State. (“When will they ever learn?” …)

How can politicians be so cruel and callous? Wherever a border is drawn and a wall goes up, a people … a world is divided. Think of Korea, Think of Vietnam, Think of India & Pakistan, Think of Ireland … Think of Berlin … Think of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem … the name of the City means God is Peace.

But what is peace? We shout the term out flippantly and flagrantly. What do you or I mean by Peace? The absence of violence? The absence of war or conflict? Some people call that peace. Or perhaps law & order and security. Others call that peace. Some say peace is when you and I as neighbours leave each other well alone! (“Don’t get involved!” – we say.)

But it doesn’t work, does it? We’ve got our fences up high these days between our backyards and the other fellow’s.

In the “good old days”, our parents (or grandparents) used to talk and chat across the neighbour’s fence. It was a different world then … we said.

But the world isn’t different. Nor is God different. His message is the same today as it has been always:

“Here, O Israel, the Lord is God and you shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength … and you shall love your neighbour as you love yourself.”

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I enjoy talking to people … some people say I gas-bag too much! But if you don’t take time to chat, you won’t take time to listen.

Take for instance our Sikh Doctor here in Bunyip. I asked doctor Dillon what peace meant in Punjabi (the language of the Sikh Religion), he said the word for them was “ALAM”. I said to him, “Isn’t that the same word that the Muslims use, only they say the word “SALAAM”. Yes, yes! – He said. “And doesn’t it mean prosperity and blessing and well-being?” Yes, yes! – He said. Westerners don’t understand.

We don’t, do we? The Hebrew word “SHALOM” is the same word for Peace as the Muslims, Sikhs, Baha’i, and other religious groups that have evolved. But we have substituted for another word (PAX-Latin), which speaks more about Law, Order, Safety and Security.

(A colleague of mine quipped the other day: “A PAX on your house!” … Now was that a blessing or a curse?)

“SHALOM” (or Alam) means health, wholeness and well-being. It is when we wish for the children of Iraq, the same as we wish for our own children, the very best, does true Peace come about.

When we are not jealous of our neighbour (“Thou Shalt Not Covet”) … when we want the very best for each other (no matter what or who they are), does the Peace that passes all understanding become a reality in this life, and no just a pipe-dream after we die in a heaven somewhere over there.

Jesus had a right to be angry when he walked into the Temple in Jerusalem. As a kid, he was amazed and marvelled every time his parents took him on the yearly pilgrimage to the Holy City on the Hill and to the Temple on the Holy Rock.

But now Jesus was visiting the Temple as a grown-up and his was dismayed. He felt like some Muslims feel when they see nightclubs, bars and brothels crop up in their communities throughout the world. The Bali bombing was more than a terrorist bomb-job. It was a protest against the carryings-on of Westerners who have used Bali as an overseas playground.

Muslims feel the same way we feel (or ought to feel) when children are abused and women are raped. And Buddhists feel the same way as we feel (don’t we?), when children are sold out of their villages in northern Thailand to the sex shops in Bangkok, to be consumed by Western appetites. Boys, girls, you name it.

And in Jerusalem? In the Temple precincts itself where in the Court of the Gentiles, buying a selling was going on. Special money for special offerings and sacrifices, but at a price.

Why is my Father’s house now a market square? Jesus asked, When it was intend to be a public and private place for prayer, for gathering, for worship?

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I heard something yesterday that caught my ears when I was visiting one of our parishioners. She and her husband don’t make it to church very often; for most of their years of retirement they’ve enjoyed trips abroad. My friend told me that when they visited Israel she and her husband were driven to tears, visiting the Museum of the Holocaust in Israel. To think of all who lost their place in the world … now without a home. She was saddened by the conflict between Israeli and Palestinian, with all its security and checkpoints. (“Why is it that the oppressed often turn on to others to oppress?”)

But my friend and her husband were also driven to awe and wonder at the Mosque on the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, which is called the Dome of the Rock. What I didn’t know (because I’ve not yet been to Jerusalem) is that Muslims have shared this holy space with Jews and Christians for years and years, long before the troubles in the Middle East. Their holy day, as some of you know, takes place on the Friday. In the old days, Jews were allowed to visit and pray (in the Mosque!) on the Saturday, and Christians (for their worship) on the Sunday!

Oh for the good old days! – When fences across yards were only small hedges. Oh for the good old days when in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, religious communities of all shapes and sizes lived in harmony with each other.

Maybe God is asking for those good old days today? Here, too, in Australia? Where we struggle to understand the people of other languages and cultures, who elbow alongside us at “Fountaingate” [A shopping mall on the outskirts of Melbourne] as they and we go about our shopping. Maybe here in Australia we are becoming so safety/security conscious, so afraid of our neighbour, that we forget what the Biblical word for Peace is all about?

God’s Shalom, God’s Alam – Where swords may indeed be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. Where religious prejudices, and any kind of prejudice need to be set aside. “Come, let us reason together”, said God through the Prophet Isaiah.

My Father’s house is not for just a few, but for the many, says Jesus: My house here in Bunyip. Our house (our world) here in Australia. Our house, around the globe, which we call “The Late Great Planet Earth?”

Come, says Jesus, to my Father’s House in Jerusalem, restore it’s glory as a place for Jews and Gentiles, for Muslims and Christians alike.

And come to Me, says Jesus, for My body is a Holy Temple.

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It doesn’t matter the reasons, the justifications, and rationalizations we try to use to comfort our confused minds about present unfolding events in Iraq or the rest of the Middle East.

We can be angry that human life is being lost because we couldn’t live together in peace. We can be angry that innocent civilian and military lives are being lost; that children are losing their parents and parents their children. We can be angry that our rules of engagement have led us to this place in history once again.

We can be angry, as Gene Thiemann suggests Jesus was, at religion without justice, worship without reverence and rituals without relevance. We can be angry and upset and confused, when we turn on the Tellies again and say … “Oh no, not again, not another bloody war!”

But more than being angry, how can we focus our thoughts and feelings? May I humbly suggest that turn back to God, to listen to the Scriptures again, and in our listening hear the Spirit’s voice.

Your ways are not my ways, says, the Lord. No, they aren’t, Lord! Your love goes farther than my love, your hope is greater than my hope, your faith is even greater still.

And when it comes to the word “PEACE” isn’t that word even greater than the sum total of all our cosy definitions.

PEACE . Peace I leave with you (said Jesus to his disciples) my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

As Christians, as God community, as followers of the Prince of Peace, we are called to be instruments of God’s Peace . cup-bearers of God’s SHALOM.

It is a hard, and at times, unpopular task. In the best of times and in the worst of times! .

But it is our task. God asks of us to love our neighbours, to forgive our enemies, to seek justice, resist evil and walk humbly with God and with each other. That is the hope upon which our very lives depend.

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One final poem, from the pen of Ann Weems, written this past Ash Wednesday, March 5th, and offered for all to share during these troubling times. It is entitled:

“I NO LONGER PRAY FOR PEACE”

On the edge of war, one foot already in, I no longer pray for peace: I pray for miracles.

I pray that stone hearts will turn to tender heartedness, and evil intentions will turn to mercifulness, and all the soldiers already deployed will be snatched out of harm’s way, and the whole world will be astounded onto its knees.

I pray that all the “God talk” will take bones, and stand up and shed its cloak of faithlessness, and walk again in its powerful truth.

I pray that the whole world might sit down together and share its bread and its wine.

Some say there is no hope, but then I’ve always applauded the holy fools who never seem to give up on the scandalousness of our faith: that we are loved by God …… that we can truly love one another.

I no longer pray for peace: I pray for miracles.

(Used by permission. Copyright (c) 2003 by Ann Weems. All rights reserved.)

Let us pray, both for the miracle of peace, and for our role as peace-makers, to work with other Christians, and yes, even to work with other sojourners here on earth with whom we share this Planet, a planet which is still alive in the Universe! … A Planet not yet dead!

Let us pray and work for Jerusalem to be restored on earth again. Where people will come to know their God again. Where the new Kingdom will be heralded by Christ in our Midst.

No, not some gory Armageddon, let us pray! – No, let us pray where hearts of stone will soften up. Where flowers might bloom again, and children might play again, without stepping on a land-mine, or a syringe needle. Where we don’t say “How dare you!” to someone else.

But take time to listen, take time to care, take time to share, take time to love.

Take time to make this Temple within you (point to your heart), this Temple here (point to the building and the congregation), and this Temple of God’s (point outside) out here in our community and God’s wonderful world … a House of Prayer.

Amen. Lord Jesus.

Let there be Peace on Earth! Amen.

Lord Jesus. Let it begin … again!

Rev. John Maynard, Minister Bunyip & District Uniting Church Bunyip, Victoria AUSTRALIA

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[Parts of this message were inspired by a sermon: “He Is Called the Prince of Peace”, by the Reverend Judith M. Evenden, Fairbank United Church of Canada, March 23rd, 2003 Lent 3, Year B.]