Second Sunday of Easter,
Sermon: Weldon
D. Nisly
TITLE: Jesus is our peace
THEME: Longing for peace, praying for miracles
TEXTS: Psalm 62: 5-7
“Fr God alone my soul waits in silence”
Jeremiah 8:15, 21-22 “We look for peace…a time of healing…”
John 1: 1-5; 15: 1-14 The light of Christ has come into the world
We are an Easter people
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!
On the edge of war, one foot
already in (or still in),
I no longer pray for peace: I
pray for miracles.
I pray that stone hearts will
turn to tenderheartednessness,
And evil intentions will turn
to mercifulness….
…..From poem by Ann Weems read just before sermon….
I pray for peace and I pray
for miracles. Because it will take a
miracles to bring about that kind of change of heart and bring about peace.
Our Christian confession is
that Jesus is our peace. All other peace
is false.
We are Jesus’ peace
We are Jesus people and
Jesus’ way of peace in the world. At
least we are supposed to be.
Debbie told me on Friday
night in our conversation here, that I have no idea how the witness of the
Christian Peacemaker Team in
But I do know it is God’s
doing and in God’s hands. I
also know that my being there was my hope and desire in some small but direct
way to embody Jesus’ peace with and for suffering people. We were, as the CPT vision expresses, in
The response from every
person I encountered in
The response from people at
home on “our” side of the ocean and war has been very different. Responses were not all understanding or
supportive of our attempt to embody Jesus’ peace in the midst of war. Responses to me come from what I am calling
“Three places of the heart.”
One place of the heart people respond to
our Christian Peacemaker Teams presence in Iraq is with blessing and
encouragement. In doing so you also
embody that witness as faith community at home and around the country and the
world. That has been the overwhelming
response of you as Church and countless others far and wide.
A second response or place
of the heart – at least I want to call it a matter of heart – is an
equally strong but opposite response. It
is a clear opposition to a Christian Peacemaking witness in the war on
Iraq. As near I can tell, every strong
condemnation of my being in Baghdad as a Christian Peacemaker has been a
“Christian” response. I was being a fool
and tool of Saddam in evil defiance of Jesus and George. A few of the responses have been vengeful
and vitriolic. But I think the person
would consider that it comes from their heart so I call it a response of the
heart.
There is a third
response or place of the heart worth noting. It is probably the most surprising to me. I
have several letter and e-mail versions of this one and have not been able to
reply in any way to any of them yet. What
I share with you this morning is my way of beginning to form a response from my
place of the heart to this place of the heart.
It is a response of the heart that says to me, “Everything you have done
defies everything I know about Jesus and George. Help me understand how you can be a Christian
Peacemaker in Baghdad in the midst of a war of good against evil.”
Let me respond to that query
in this way. The sum and substance of my
faith as a Christian and Mennonite is to say that “We believe that Jesus meant
what he said and he meant it for all of us for all time.” Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and parables,
dining with the outcast and touching the unclean, “setting his face toward
Jerusalem” and weeping over the city, and giving his life in total dedication
to God in the way of nonviolent love is Jesus’ Third Way for us today. Jesus is serious about “loving your enemies”
and not resisting violence with more violence.
Jesus is serious about that being The Way to God for us. And the “us” is not an “us” that is a quaint
and irrelevant bunch of Mennonites or pacifists or fools but an “us” that is
the Church and God’s people and all people in and for the world.
A new way to place Jesus in
the true heart of the matter came to me several hours ago in the wee hours of
this Second Sunday of Easter when I awakened and couldn’t sleep. It is this.
Jesus is the promise, the power, and the paradox of an exclusive
inclusive Way to God that is The Way of Peace. It is what Jesus means in saying “I am the
way, the truth, and the light” in John’s Gospel.
That truth claim proceeds
from the Gospel of light and true vine that we heard proclaimed a few minutes
ago in worship. Let me see if I can shed
some light on this exclusive inclusive Way of Jesus as The Way – the way of
peace and healing in violent and broken world.
Living under the bomb
Living under the bomb one is confronted with this Jesus in powerful
ways. Living under the bomb in
While we were in
Gandhi knew Jesus as The Way
of peace for all people and all the world.
Gandhi lived that way more fully than most Christians ever will. If Gandhi was Jesus’ greatest follower, what
does that have to teach Christians? Is
it a threat or a nugget of wisdom? How
do we hear it?
One of the responses I
received a couple of days ago falls into this third place of the heart. This person had read my op-ed piece in the PI
(Check e-mail & op-ed) and asked how is it possible for me as a Christian,
to speak of Gandhi in the same breath with Jesus? Could I please help him understand that as
well how I as a Christian could be in Baghdad opposing our own government in
this necessary war? It is a serious and
worthy question. I have not yet been able to reply to his genuine query.
In the Gospels, Jesus
consistently goes out of his way to make the “misfits” into the heroes of
almost all his stories and encounters.
The “misfits” are those who are not Jews, those who are outcast, those
who are unclean, those who are nobodies, those who are not “us.” These “misfits” Jesus keeps interrupting powers
that be, are the models and messengers of the Good News.
At the same time Jesus
consistently and critically reveals the fallacies and failures of his own
religious faith community. No wonder
Jesus was crucified!
How strange that we would want
to follow Jesus. Who would want to
follow such an iconoclast? It is
foolish. It is dangerous. It may get us
killed. And it is The Way of peace. We can only follow Jesus in a way that is at
once self-critical and completely open to others. This points us to the exclusive inclusive
Jesus.
If we are not to fall into
the sin of relativizing truth on the one hand or of absolutizing our truth on
the other hand, what is the central truth or core of this exclusive inclusive
Jesus as our peace? If I were to offer a
central and universal truth it is that the Biblical tells us that the ONLY
absolute truth we have is the faithful unconditional love of God. God’s love is the still point of a turning
world.
The exclusive reality of
Jesus is that he was totally grounded in that absolute unconditional love of
God. Jesus was so grounded in the
absolute love of God that he was totally free to find God outside the
boundaries of his own religious tradition.
Jesus never rejected Judaism. He
was the perfect Jew. Christians should
never forget that. Jesus never intended
to found a new religion. Jesus embodied
the absolute love of God for all religions.
As Christians – which means
Christ followers -- it is precisely our exclusive relationship to Jesus that
compels us to be inclusive in relationship to all other people and faiths. Yes, it is a powerful paradox.
Trying to find words to
express our exclusive inclusive relationship to God through Jesus is so new
that my words are inadequate yet to grasp the beauty and richness of it for
us. It is as difficult as it is to try
to tell you what it was like to live under the bomb in Baghdad. So let me close by communicating it with two short
stories from my experience there in Iraq.
Seeing Jesus on the road to Baghdad
When I was lying in great
pain in the medical clinic in Rutbah after the accident, a compassionate doctor
and medical staff did their best to clean my wounds and pour healing oil on
them. When our other two CPT cars
returned for us it was decided that I would be laid on the middle seat of the
GMC Suburban and we would head for Amman.
Several Iraqi men got a stretcher and gently carried me from the clinic
out to the street to the waiting vehicle.
They were apologetic because they had no ambulance to transport me. It too had become victim to the bomb. When we
got to the car they were trying to figure out how to lift me into the backseat
without hurting me too badly. They stood
there holding me laying on a stretcher in the bright sunshine. The face that I could see must clearly was
someone I hadn’t seen in the clinic. He
was so striking because he had a very light complexion like a white skin
pigmentation. He was smiling so kindly
at me that my eyes were drawn to him the whole way out to the car. His is the only face I remember clearly. When they were waiting a few moments there to
slide me into the car, the bright sunshine was blinding me. All I could see was his face. Suddenly I realized
that he was standing there holding
his hand up shielding my eye from the bright sunshine and smiling a comforting
smile down at me. When they placed me on
the seat he leaned down and kissed me on both checks and assured me “You be
alright.”
I don’t even know his
name. And I know his name is Jesus. One of my deepest hopes is that I might
return to Rutbah sometime soon along with others of you and that we might help
rebuild and resupply the hospital there.
I want meet and thank Jesus for his care and compassion while I lay
wounded in Rutbah.
The next morning in the ICU
room in the Arab Medical Centre in Amman I was in so much pain I couldn’t
move. I was feeling particularly alone
when suddenly an angel appeared in the room.
She was petite and beautiful dressed in full white Arab dress. All I could see was her kindly smiling
face. Shyly and softly she asked, “How
are you?” I could hardly hear her but
gentle compassion radiated from her like rays of warm sun light. She then asked, “Who are you?” and “What
happened to you?” That led to a very
interesting conversation. I found out
she was a senior nursing student at the University of Jordan working in this
hospital but on another floor. She just
happened to come through ICU ward and was drawn to my room. She softly insisted that it is we as people
of different nations and faiths are friends and together we must make
peace. We cannot rely on our leaders or
nations to do this because power blinds them.
Then she asked if there was anything I needed. I told her that I still had blood stains on
both my hands and I would really like to have my hands cleaned. She said, “Of course. Let me clean them for you.” She got cleansing
pads and very gently washed the blood off my hands.
She told me her name but I
could not write in my journal and couldn’t remember it the next day when my CPT
friends brought it to me. Her name was
Jesus.
Jesus is our peace. And Christ is risen!
Christ is risen
indeed!