We live in a world of
despair. You can read and see it in the media. Stories from North Korea tell us
of continuing despair in the face of an unacknowledged pandemic, combined with
hunger for food and hunger for power. Stories from South Sudan tell us of
continuing ethnic strife, so that help provided for marginalized people is
eaten up by warlords. Stories from Palestine tell us of the continued struggle
to hold on to ancestral homes. Israelis and Palestinians tell competing
narratives that leave no room for compromise. Stories from Colombia waver
between the hope of a country searching for peace and wealthy people using
their power to dispossess the marginalized.
Of course, you don’t
have to go so far away to find despair. What do we make of the news in our own
backyard, when we hear of a double homicide and a third person who lies in
critical condition? As the news trickles out, the despair deepens. We find that
the victims are known to some of us – good friends and neighbours.
How can we defend hope
in a world of despair? How can we live with the terrors of our world and sing
the songs of Zion? “We are people of God’s peace” – sure, but how do we get
there?
Romans 12
The passage we read
from Romans 12 reminds us that we are responsible for our part in the various
activities of our world. In verse 18, Paul says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with
everyone.” This verse summarizes a series of statements that Paul makes: Bless
others; care for them; live in harmony; don’t repay evil with evil; always do
what is right. Then he adds this summary: In your relationships with others, so
far as your part is concerned, be a person of peace.
This is incredibly
difficult advice, but Paul meant it, just as Jesus meant it when he preached
the Sermon on the Mount. We want to water it down and make it practical. Don’t
be a doormat, we say. If someone attacks you, you can fight back and defend
yourself. But that’s not what Paul says.
He continues, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is
thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning
coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.”
Wow! This is a radical take on “live at peace with everyone”.
What it means, I think, is
this. We live in a world where despair lurks around the corner all the time.
Hope is a candle that seems on the verge of going out. We are the defenders of
that hope. We are the ones who keep the candle burning. We keep it burning by
being people of peace in every situation.
How? When someone treats
you unfairly, of course you defend yourself, but you refuse to treat them the
same way. When someone acts out their hate in relating with you, you respond
with love and care. The only way to end the despair that comes from the
violence in our world is to end the violence. And the only way to end the
violence is to end it in ourselves. Which brings us to Psalm 23.
Psalm 23
I have often been troubled
by one verse in this well-beloved Psalm: “You prepare a table before me in the
presence of my enemies.” I like how it continues: “You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of
my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” But that one verse sounds as though it is
having my enemies on the outside looking in that makes the meal God serves me
really satisfying. “You feed me, and they have to watch unfed!”
That’s not the only way to
read it. What if David (assuming David wrote the twenty-third Psalm) meant
something else. What if the enemies are present because they are invited to the
feast? What if God wants to restore those who hate me – not just to restore me,
but to restore my enemies to life in God’s presence? What if God wants everyone
to be at the marriage supper of the Lamb (as the book of Revelation calls it)?
If that’s what God wants,
then God is going to have to do the heavy lifting. I can’t make my enemies into
God’s friends. I can’t bleach the hatred and anguish out of their lives. But
God can. That’s what the cross and resurrection are all about. God taking
broken and hurting people and restoring them to life. God taking people trapped
in violence and making them people of peace.
Synthesis
The reason that we keep our candle of hope burning
is that God is at work in us and in our world. God is making peace where we
can’t. I think of an old friend of mine. He used to be the bishop of my church
in Zimbabwe. In the early 1980s, his father owned a store out in the country in
the south of Zimbabwe. Some drunken soldiers came in one day and ordered him to
give them beer. He didn’t sell beer, so they gathered up discarded bottle caps
from the soda bottles and stuffed them in his mouth. Then they beat him around
the mouth with their rifle butts and left him.
He ended up in the hospital in Bulawayo
with gangrene in his mouth, which in the end took his life. Before he died, my
friend visited him one last time. As he stood there, looking at his father,
dying from violence endemic in the poverty of the countryside, he imagined in
his mind taking those soldiers’ children, lining them up against a wall, and
machine-gunning them. His father saw what was in his eyes and said to him
quietly, “Don’t, Dan. Don’t.”
Dan listened to his father and set hatred
and revenge aside. He taught his own children to love and not to hate. His son now
lives in Winnipeg, where he is the director of CHAI, a ministry to immigrants
in Winnipeg. Our world is filled with fear and hatred, but my friend chose
peace and love. He is a defender of hope in a world that tilts towards despair.
God is calling you and me and our families
and our friends to be people of peace, keeping our candle of hope burning in
the winds of hate that blow around us. Join me in following God’s call, so that
we also can eat at God’s table in the presence of our enemies.
Focus Statement: As a
people of peace, we defend Hope in a world that specializes in Despair.
Scriptures: Psalm 23;
Romans 12: 9-21
Thinking Ahead Question: Think of places around the world where violence
is common – such as South Sudan, Colombia, or Palestine. How can we continue to
hope in the face of such violence?
7 November 2021
Steinbach Mennonite
Church
