My mother-in-law made an arresting comment the other day. She had been reminiscing about what it was like to take care of two small children in a British bomb shelter, and then our conversation turned to the present situation with Iraq. "Oh, you men", she said. "You men, always getting us into wars."
Now I had never before thought of the institution of war as gender-specific! Are men the only ones who fight? True, it is men who are in combat. And true, it is mostly men who do the planning and the procuring of military hardware. And true, it is mostly men who sit in the legislatures and presidential mansions. And true, it is mostly the male of the species who while away their time as children playing with toy guns.
And true, the history books tell us that when President Wilson in 1917 asked the United States to enter the First World War, the only woman in Congress voted against it, along with some of the men. And then in 1941 that same woman, Jeanette Rankin of Montana, was the only person in Congress of either gender to vote against entry into the Second World War. But I just had never thought of the institution of war as being peculiar to the male of the species.
I rather suspect that it’s not so much maleness as it is competitiveness that gets us into trouble. I’d like to think it’s not the particular hormones we have or the amount of upper body strength we can muster, but rather that it’s the way we are taught to compete and to win. Somehow we teach little boys more than we teach little girls that you have to compete and you have to win. We teach ourselves that we have to be Number One, that winning isn’t everything, it’s just the only thing. (That’s the Gospel according to Vince Lombardi).
Just listen to ourselves as we enjoy the Olympic games. How many gold medals will American athletes win? We’re Number One! As if we were not already politically and militarily the only superpower left on earth, now we even have to prove the point on the athletic field. Frankly, I am turned off by the Dream Team. All I have heard is how overwhelming this American basketball team is, how they will crush all opponents and, with elbows flying, will humiliate such sports powers as Angola and Croatia!
We love competition. But you know we also say we want peace in the world. We enjoy the thrill of victory. But we insist that we as a nation want peace. Is there a conflict here? What do we really want?
Without question our world today is badly scarred because we do not have peace. As much as we rejoice over the end of the Cold War, still we know that this world is not at peace. Not when Middle Eastern nations continue to threaten Israel. Not when governments build up chemical and biological weapons. Not when cemeteries in Latin America are filled with the corpses of those who got in the way of the drug lords. We do not have peace.
We do not have peace when the streets of our cities are unsafe and when schoolyards are strewn with drug paraphernalia. We do not have peace when family court dockets are full of cases of child abuse and neglect. We do not have anything approaching peace when Asian storekeepers fear that their inner-city customers are violent and the customers fear that the storekeepers are cheating them.
And so on this Day of Prayer for World Peace, we have a lot to pray about. We have a long way to go before authentic peace is ours. Time does not permit my reminding us of how badly peace is needed in our homes, where in so many instances family life is in disarray; or in this our church, where it is still possible for people of differing cultures to put one another down; or in our own individual lives, where sometimes we just pit our minds against our hearts and our self-centeredness against our spiritual knowledge. Peace is a long, long way away. And it is good indeed to have a Day of Prayer for World Peace.
What do we really want? Do we want to compete, or do we want peace?
My thesis this morning is that at rock bottom we do want peace, and that if we are going to get peace it will have to come from persons who are at peace with themselves. And then I will argue that the only way for us to arrive at peace with ourselves is to gain peace with God.
Let me restate that and let me turn it around. We do at bottom want peace. We must begin the quest for peace by receiving peace with God. Peace with God gives us peace with ourselves. And then when we are at peace with ourselves, we can help create a peace-filled world.
The wonderful thing about this quest for peace is that we are acting it all out this morning. We are dramatizing it. My spoken sermon is almost unnecessary, because we are acting out the message.
I
First, I am saving we begin the quest for peace by receiving peace with God, and that peace with God gives us peace within ourselves. We have acted that out in baptism.
That is what baptism is all about. Baptism is a sign and symbol of that peace which the world cannot give. It is a mark of our having discovered that we do not have to compete with God, indeed that we cannot succeed at competing with God. But God in His infinite love has reached toward us, has drawn us to Himself, has embraced us, and has reconciled us.
You see, the whole issue about war and peace, the whole business about conflict and enmity and struggle and competition, is that every human being decides in one way or another to go his own way and to compete with God. That’s the meaning of the Garden of Eden story … that we, every last one of us, set ourselves up in competition with God Himself. We take on ourselves the arrogance of power. We choose to live our lives in conflict.
But baptism is a sign and a symbol that one day we simply woke up to our condition. We simply acknowledged that we could fight no longer. And so in the waters of baptism we testify that we have given up on this old way of life, this unproductive, unhappy, restless, competitive thing, and we have allowed the Spirit of the Living God to bring us home. It is peace with God.
And when you have peace with God, you will have peace with yourself. You will feel secure. You will know that you are healing, you are going to be all right. When you have peace with God, no longer competing with Him … and after all, as the musical says, "Your arm’s too short to box with God" … when you have peace with God, you can feel comfortable with what you are becoming. Not necessarily all that you are right now, but with what you are becoming under His Spirit.
I find it wonderful today, in light of my opening observation about men breaking the peace, that most of those we baptized today are men. That is a sign of hope indeed. I well remember that when one of these men made his profession of faith a number of weeks ago, it was in response to the proclamation of the Gospel of peace and rest.
You have peace with God and then peace with yourselves. Baptism reminds us of that.
II
Now when we have peace with ourselves, we can begin to make a contribution toward a peace-filled world. People who have settled the score with God Himself are the ones who are ready to achieve something in a conflicted world.
And this we dramatize as we come to the Lord’s Table. The Lord’s Supper teaches us as nothing else does the power of a secure person, who will do what he must do, no matter what it costs him, to work the work of reconciliation.
You see, this Table speaks to us of the peace-making work of Christ Jesus and of what it cost Him. This Table reminds us eloquently that it was on the cross of His suffering that Christ broke down the walls that separate us, keeping us from each other. Paul says in the Ephesian letter that those who once were estranged are brought near to each other by the blood of Christ, that He is our peace, that He has created one new humanity.
I am saying that the Lord’s Supper reminds us that it is always going to cost something very precious to make peace. But that price can be paid. It can be paid by those who are secure, those who know what they are about, those who understand that because they are at peace with God their efforts will not be lost and their peacemaking will not be in vain.
The Lord’s Table commissions us all as peacemakers. It commissions us because we know who we are and to whom we belong. It calls us to be active in efforts for understanding, for racial reconciliation, for disarmament, for everything that makes for peace.
What if it does cost us dearly in time and money and energy and thought? “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
If today, as a baptized believer, who has accepted peace with God, now you eat this bread, symbol of His broken body, and you consume this wine, emblem of His spilled blood, you are accepting a commission as an officer, not in the armed forces, but in the Prince of Peace Corps. You are saving that you are ready to make a difference in this war-torn world, even though it will cost you dearly. You are agreeing that as our text in Galatians says, the works of the flesh are obvious: … enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy. But that by contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love and peace. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Brothers and sisters, we who have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ ••• we who have been buried with him by baptism into death ••• now we shall live out this truth, that Christ puts to death all hostility with his body and his blood.
