Pursuing the path of peace...

NOTE: As is often the case on Tuesdays, I am posting my worship/sermon notes for Sunday, May 9, 2010. The texts for the 6th Sunday after Easter include the story of Lydia in Acts as well as the words of Jesus from St. John: "Peace, peace I give you - but not as the world gives..."Ironically, today is the 40th anniversary of the Kent State massacre where four students were gunned down by National Guardsment during a protest against the war in Vietnam. Almost immediately 450 colleges and university were shut-down by a student strike and countless high schools - mine included - participated in various ways. Those days were formative for me - in positive and negative ways - and my worship reflections this week suggest exploring another path to peace. (I hope we can also work up this tune.) So if you are in town, please join us at 10:30 on Sunday.

Today is Mother’s Day in our country: a secular celebration that many Protestants have embraced with an odd religious devotion that is clearly palpable but equally peculiar given this day’s original emphasis on both the divine feminine and a commitment to peace-making. When Julia Ward Howe, author of the great Civil War anthem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” issued the first call for an American Mother’s Day in 1870, it was NOT an invitation to take Mom out for dinner or buy her some pretty flowers.

• It was a call for American mothers who had experienced the tragedy of losing their beloved sons in the Civil War to offer the land an alternative to bloodshed. It was a way to teach the world about birthing rather than killing.

• She wrote: Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies; our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

The truth about the first Mother’s Day, you see, is that it was not a sentimental marketing scheme to sell more ruffles, lace or greeting cards, but rather a summons for women to come together to plan and plot for peace. Listen to the rest of Ward’s original appeal:

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions and the great and general interests of peace.

Now don’t get me wrong: I love to honor motherhood – I value the festival of remembering how our mothers gave us the gift of life from their very bodies – and bore countless sacrifices to raise each of us as best they could. I believe it is valuable, too, to give pause and recall our mothers who have gone to their graves; their memories continue to give shape and form to much that we experience even today.

• But let’s give up the sentimentality of Mother’s Day – the hokey, maudlin shtick – that diverts our money and attention from the truly sacred feminine.

• In fact, let’s reclaim the soul of Christ’s counter-cultural movement – a movement born of the Lord’s assurance that those open to God’s grace will know peace – “Peace, peace I leave with you,” Jesus said. “I do not give peace to you as the world does – in external ways – for my peace begins within. So do not let your hearts be troubled but trust that God’s Spirit is coming to comfort and lead you into the ways of peace… for I tell you this that you might believe.”

What would it be like to consider the sentimental shtick of Mother’s Day as sin – something that causes estrangement from God – and diverts us away from Christ’s peace? Enter the words of today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles and the story of Europe’s first Christian convert: a Gentile woman by the name of Lydia.

• I don’t think it is coincidental that Lydia was the first European to confess Christ as Lord: she was a person, not unlike Mary Magdalene, from the fringe of society.

• She was a soul open to exploring God’s grace rather than judgment. And she was ready to use her life in a way that nourished peace both within and among us.

Scholars say that when St. Paul had to change his missionary plans from going into what we know as Western Turkey and Asia Minor, an angel of the Lord “in the Spirit of Jesus” came to him in a vision and told him to head towards Macedonia – that is into Eastern Greece. And this is where the story gets interesting for Paul is summoned towards Europe:

But not Europe as we understand it in France, Germany, etc., but the easternmost part of Greece… which means that Paul and Silas "set sail for a challenging mission into the cradle of western culture – the home of Homer…and Socrates and Plato… as well as Aristotle and Alexander the Great" (Acts, Westminster Bible Companion). (In fact) the path of the great evangelist, then, is the (direct) opposite of that of Alexander the Great who left Macedonia to bring the Greek language and culture to much of the known world three centuries earlier: "Paul,” writes Bible scholar Charles Cousar,” is Alexander in reverse! And the 'commodity' that this foreigner brings is not warfare, but the good news about Jesus Christ" and his peace. (Kate Huey, Sermon Seeds, ucc.org/worship)

Literally Paul is challenging the status quo by going against the grain of his generation. Figuratively he is incarnating the upside-down grace of God that offers peace from within. And spiritually he is making the word flesh by celebrating the radical home-coming of Jesus who welcomes the outcast, embraces the forgotten and heals the wounded. Enter, again, the sweet presence of Lydia who has so much to teach us about being people of Christ’s peace.

• Many scholars believe she was a former slave who over time was freed and became wealthy. Only the rich could afford to purchase the purple cloth that we’re told she sold.

• She was likely a mother who had great influence over the lives of her family for the text tells us that when she was ready to be embraced by Christ’s love, “she brought her entire household to be baptized.”

And Paul met her on the outskirts of town – on the very fringe of society – where a small group of Gentiles were meeting in a house church to learn more about the God of Israel. Some have noted that Christ’s presence had to be a part of this story because by training it was unlikely that Paul, a Pharisee, would ever willingly sit down and talk theology with a group of women, right? But Paul was a new man by God’s grace… Someone who taught that in Jesus Christ there was no longer Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free – and in this story we see what it looks like when the words of peace become flesh. Are you still with me? Do you see where I’m going with this? When Paul’s plans are interrupted by the spirit of Jesus – when he has to change direction and act on faith rather than strategic planning – something creative and grace-filled is born.

And the way I see it, Lydia offers us three keys for welcoming the gift of grace into our lives so that we might go deeper into the counter-cultural commitments of Christ and his peace. Her story is an antidote and gentle alternative to all sentimental spirituality – a real Mother’s Day gift. Here’s what I mean:

First, Lydia came to realize that her wealth and social prestige couldn’t fill her hungry heart. She had everything that money could buy, but it wasn’t enough. So, on one level, this story speaks to us about the importance of nourishing the soul.

• Last week, during our Monday evening prayer class, we talked about how hard it is to claim the time to offer even 10 minutes every day for prayer and reflection. For while it is true that we possess all the time that there is, we are also filled with demands and tensions and competing interests that make it so easy for us to avoid soul food.

• There’s work – and that’s important – there’s family – important, too. There’s entertainment and distraction and pain and all the rest. But if all we do is work – if our chief goal in life is possession – if we claim no time for the spiritual – then there will be an emptiness within – the absence of the peace Christ promised.

That’s the first truth Lydia’s story asks us to wrestle with much as Jesus did when he said: what does it profit a man or woman to gain the whole world but lose their soul? Are we making time to nourish God’s love within and among us because every relationship – even one of the spirit – takes time, yes?

Second, both Lydia and Paul remind us that more often than not God’s grace is going to surprise us – sneak up on us – be discovered in the most unlikely places rather than fit into our plans. Paul wanted to go to Turkey and Jesus led him to Europe. If the truth be told, Paul wanted to be a rabbi and Jesus made him an evangelist. Lydia had spent the better part of her life becoming wealthy only to find herself on the outskirts of town. Her hunger for meaning and peace led her “to go beyond the boundaries set for her in a time when women were seen by many as mere property rather than people who owned and controlled property.” (Kate Huey, sermon seeds, ucc.org)

What’s more, as writer Ronald Cole-Turner's observes: This is a lovely but powerful description of a woman who "rises from the text and stands before us even today as a kind of narrative icon, the contemplative Mary and the active Martha in one, her heart set on God even while her work gets done." When Lydia joins the other women down there by the river, this wealthy, powerful woman leaves the circles of influence and goes out to the margins of her society, joining those who undoubtedly had far less power, influence, and wealth than she did. When she encountered the gospel in the preaching of Paul and Silas,”longing and grace meet there on the bank of the river" (Feasting on the Word). Lydia responds to the gospel with actions, with commitment, not only in being baptized but in insisting on exercising the great, foundational Christian virtue of hospitality, the expression of God's own grace and welcome, to the preachers themselves… in her own ironic way, she was preaching to the preachers, through her actions.

God’s grace and peace are rarely where we expect to find them: a stable – a Cross – a simple supper of bread and wine? And we are so stubborn – which is why most of the time we have to the borders of what we know and trust before we can accept what God has always wanted to share. Sometimes that happens on a mission trip – sometimes it means hitting bottom – sometimes it dawns within our darkest fears – and sometimes in truths and events that are so ordinary that we might miss them. The second insight into God’s grace that Lydia offers us is that more often than not we have to get out of our own way before the peace that passes all understanding becomes ours.

And third there is a connection between receiving Christ’s peace and giving it away. Lydia insisted on feeding and hosting her new guests. In a word she embodied God’s grace with hospitality. She fed Paul and Silas – and probably everyone else down by the riverside, too.

Her words were gentle – her heart was kind – she was a person who attracted others to Christ and gave birth to faith by her very presence. So think about how Lydia advanced the cause of peace: carefully, quietly and tenderly.

• Have you ever been a blow hard? A pompous ass? A snarky gossip or maybe just a whiner? I know I have – and fear I still am sometimes.

• Do you ever use sarcasm to mask the violence in your heart? Or say, “I was only joking” when in fact your mean spirit became visible for everyone to see and you’re trying to cover your tracks?

There is nothing attractive or graceful – there is nothing of Christ’s peace – in talking down to others. Or bullying them with your opinions or pontificating about your superior insights. It happens all the time, I know, but as a Vietnam War veteran told me last Sunday: “You can’t make peace in the world if you aren’t at peace within your own heart.”

• And that takes being still more than talking, resting in God’s presence more than agitating and trusting that God really is in control so we don’t have to act like we are.

• Lydia is a model for peace-making in the spirit of Jesus: she recognizes her hungry heart and opens it to God. She gets out of her own way and moves beyond her comfort zone so that she can be awakened to God’s surprises. And she gives back to others better than she has received with hospitality and a quiet embrace.

Like Christ’s own mother, Mary, Lydia gives birth to faith by the gentle ways she lives. And this, beloved, is the good news for today. So let those who have ears to hear: hear.