Sermon by Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Peace and Remembrance Part One

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2: 1-4; Luke 21: 5-11

Our planet and our universe were born in violence. Listen to this description from the cosmologist Brian Swimme:

Imagine that furnace out of which everything came forth. This was a fire that filled the universe - that was the universe. There was no place in the universe free from it. Every point of the cosmos was a point of this explosion of light. And all the particles of the universe churned in extremes of heat and pressure, all that we see about us, all that now exists was there at the beginning, in that great burning explosion of light.

From the beginning, every step in the evolution of the cosmos, and within it our planet, has been marked by violence. When the universe was one hundredth of a second old its temperature was one hundred billion degrees Celsius. Creation at that point was a dance of unimaginable ferocity made up of the constant creation and annihilation of particles. Eventually the scalding gasses screamed across the horizon of being and formed spheres of fire. The surface of this sphere, our home, is continually scarred by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the gouging affects of erosion. Occasionally, alien objects are hurled into us, like the great meteor whose arrival brought an end to the dinosaurs.

From its earliest stages, life on earth has been characterized by constant predation. One creature lives through the destruction of another. Archaeological evidence shows us that from the beginning human life has been marked first by intertribal violence, then, with the coming of agriculture and stratified societies, by organized warfare. In the previous century we saw the generation of mammoth armies and great, tightly-organized bureaucracies whose sole purpose was genocide. In our time, the technology of warfare - nuclear technology, information technology, and management technology - is the most imposing artefact of human creation, spinning off products that shape every sphere of life.

The sensitive soul cannot help but resonate with the words of Habakkuk:

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous- therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

Life in such a world gives birth to the obscene dilemmas: to fight or not to fight in Afghanistan; to interfere or not to interfere in Darfur; to spend or not to spend billions on protection from missiles when those riches could feed, cure, house, and educate so many. The generation of us whose youth was marked by the optimism of perestroika and glasnost, who passed into adulthood as the cold war ended - we held for a time the hope that our lives would not be shaped by such dilemmas. If the Balkan wars and Rwanda had not killed that hope by the turn of the millennium, it was certainly put out of its misery by nine-eleven. History is teaching us the same truth expressed so succinctly by Jesus: '… these things must take place.… Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.' Violence and war will be part of the human condition for the foreseeable future.

It is indeed a Hobbsian world. Darwinian competition for survival shapes all spheres. This is the story of our lives. The Gospel does not hide from this story or teach that the way to peace lies in its denial. Instead, the Gospel shows us that there is a co-existing story, a more subtle story perhaps, but one even more powerful. Listen to the opening words of the Gospel of John: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.'

In the beginning, from the first nanoseconds of the cosmos, contained within the great burning light of creation's furnace is the light of Christ - the Logos, the Word, the heart of love. Who is the Word? The Word is Christ and his word is Love.

Yes, the very fabric of our universe, and within it our world, is weaved by violence; but underneath that violence, working a deeper and truer creation is Love. Yes, the burning light of the cosmos, the energy that fuels all life is violent; but contained within that light is a deeper truer light that John calls: 'the light of all people.'

The calling of people of faith is to find that light. Listen again to Habakkuk: 'I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. 2Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. 3For there is still a vision for the appointed time.' Our calling is to be a sentry, to stand at the watchpost and look - not for the enemy, he is constantly visible; not for trouble, that is easy to see - but to look for the Light which is Love.

One watchpost is prayer. Sometimes when you pray, stop talking. Sit. Sit a long time and listen. Look deeply inside yourself and you will see many things: you will see fear; you will see longing; you see sorrow; if you watch carefully enough and long enough you will see Love, Love transforming these other things. Love is there. The divine light is there. The Word is there, in the very fabric of your being, dancing along with the sub-atomic particles. The task of the sentry is to see that Light - just see it. In the seeing you will change, and the Light will grow. In a very real way, this the work of peacemaking. The transformation in the one at the watchpost shifts the world ever so slightly away from one kind of light and toward another, away from violence and toward Love.

Another watchpost is community - which can be as small as a family, or even a friendship, or which can be as big as a city or a nation. In any community there will be discord, tension, perhaps even violence. And in any community there will be people who focus on the discord, thereby making it greater. The one at the watchpost looks instead for the bonds of Love, which also mark every community. John tells us that all things are created through the Word, the Logos, the 'light of the world.' The sentry looks for this presence in the fabric of any community. By seeing it, she will be changed and the community will be changed. This is the work of peacemaking. The transformation in the one at the watchpost shifts the community away from one kind of light and toward another, away from discord and toward Love.

There is an important distinction to be made here. One of the great traps of the life of faith (sometimes called 'functional atheism') is the belief that 'I have to generate the Light.' 'I have to create goodness,' through my actions, through willing it into being. Not so! The world is filled with the Light. The world is filled with Love. All things come into being through it. The first task, the primary task, of the faithful (perhaps even before faith!) is simply to look. Go to the watchpost. Look long enough, look deeply enough and you will see. You need not worry about what to do when you see it, for you will be changed by the seeing, and you will know what to do, and you will be gifted with the energy to do it. In that moment, you will be a peacemaker.