|
|
|
Mystic
Congregational Church, UCC Mystic,
Connecticut Sermon
from November 28, 2004 “The Uphill
Journey” Rev.
Patricia L. Liberty
Scriptures: Isaiah
2:1-5 Psalm 122 Romans
13:11-14 Matthew
24:36-44 Sometimes, things have been the way they are for so
long we think that is the way it is supposed to be. El
Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Falkland
Islands, Grenada, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Cyprus,
Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Basque, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Liberia,
Sierra Leone, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, South Africa, Mozambique, Iran, Iraq,
Kuwait, Pakistan, India, Kashmir, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Indonesia,
Timor, Fiji, Tibet, Chechnya, Georgia, Russia, Korea, United States, Northern
Ireland, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka, Nepal … In
the last fifty years, these places have suffered from war, unrest and military
violence. The last century is the
most war-torn and violent in all recorded human history.
The Society of International Law in London states that, during the last
four thousand years, only 268 have been free of war. Sometimes, things have been the way they are for so long we
think that is the way it is supposed to be. War,
unrest, and violence: tens of
millions of lives are sacrificed on the altar of human failure to find a better
way. But our human experience to
the contrary notwithstanding, it is not the way it is supposed to be.
War may be the norm, but it is not God’s design.
Peace is the design, the promise and the goal. But
it is so far in the distance that, for the most part, we have ceased to expect
its arrival. We have misty,
nostalgic images raised up for us at this time of the year when we read Isaiah
but, in a few weeks, the clamor of the world’s wars will obscure the gentle
rhythm of shalom that surges through all of Scripture.
Like
Sisyphus forever pushing the rock uphill only to have it roll downhill again,
peace lurches forward only to roll back into war.
With four thousand years of human history as witness, it is hard to
imagine a world where the tools of war are transformed to tools of cultivation. The
way is hidden in plain sight in the words of the Prophet Isaiah.
We are so familiar with the swords into plowshares verses that what comes
before can slide right by unnoticed. As
we look at the text, it’s important to remember there is a linear order to
things. Peace is the outcome …
the end result. There are some
important things that come before. Peace
is an uphill journey. The subtle
image in verse two suggests a wonderfully subversive image:
God’s people, all nations will stream uphill. Stream
is a verb that usually refers to water…and water flows down hill, because
gravity is the law. But God’s
people will stream uphill, against the flow.
If
peace is ever going to be real, this uphill journey that feels like Sisyphus
pushing the boulder needs to be transformed into a counter cultural commitment
to be people of God when it would be easier to be something, just about anything
else. 2,500 years of history melt
away right here; Isaiah’s words are as powerful to us as to the hearers of
antiquity. In
Isaiah’s time, the mountains of nationalism and economic security were higher
than the mountain of faith. Isaiah
pointed it out. He proclaimed the
truth about God and exposed their commitments and actions for what they
were—idolatry, pure and simple. Now
you know why prophets were not welcome in their own lands.
Truth be told, they weren’t welcome any place else either.
Isaiah pointed to his own kin and people and proclaimed a word from God
that named their errant commitments as well as the violence within them that
kept them from peace. He looked at his friends and family and said, “There is no
peace because you have not streamed up the mountain to learn the things that
make for peace.” The
uphill journey often begins alone. The
prophetic task is often the voice of one—one
person who speaks truth to power; one person who journeys uphill again
and again. Isaiah was not sitting
around waiting for peace to drop out of heaven. He was streaming up the mountain toward it.
Whether or not anyone followed him was not wholly the point.
The journey was his to make, the truth burned within him and he was
faithful to the task. We
are so often caught in powerlessness, thinking that our little actions will not
make a difference, and thinking, or perhaps fearing, either irrelevance or
failure, what is ours to do we do not do. Isaiah’s
witness is to the power of one. Mary
Wynne-Ashford is a medical doctor, long-time peace activist and a faculty member
at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
She has spent the better part of her life working for nuclear
disarmament. She writes, “The
result of speaking truth to power, as the Quakers put it, is often subtle and
unpredictable. Sometimes, we look
to great individuals, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela, in order to see that
one person can effect change. I
find it more inspiring to see the effects of ordinary people who did what they
saw had to be done without becoming great symbols of resistance.” The
executive director of the Manila YWCA was speaking at a peace meeting in
Honolulu. She was asked whether the
YWCA had any part in the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos and the election of
Corazon Aquino. “Well, yes,”
she admitted, “we did”. The
audience asked, “What did you do?” “Well”,
she said, “I lay on the road to keep the tanks from coming into the downtown
and the other women brought food and water.”
It is inspiring to know that she was not an unusual heroic example in
those gripping last days of the Marcos regime.
She was one of more than a million who stood up to defy corruption and
brutality. The
uphill journey does not ask if one person can really make a difference. It stands as a witness that leaving things undone is a
resignation to despair. Wynne-Ashford
goes on to say, “At the very least, the individual can challenge the silence
of assumed consensus. By breaking
the silence, by refusing to collude with evil and insanity, one resists the
darkness. Breaking the silence is
the most significant thing we do as individuals.” Sometimes,
one does not need to speak to change the silence.
I think of the Mothers of the Disappeared in El Salvador in the 1980’s.
Every Sunday, they gathered outside the Cathedral in San Salvador where
slain Archbishop Oscar Romero is entombed.
Their presence alone was a blatant accusation of murder and brutality.
They witnessed to the truth without opening their mouths.
They showed that the power of one is acted out in community, not in
solitude. It
is no coincidence that Isaiah said people and nations shall stream to the
mountain of the Lord. We need each
other in this uphill journey. We
sustain each other in dark times, sometimes simply by being present together. During
the first Gulf war in 1991, a small group of people went to the Persian Gulf
peace camp in Iraq before the bombing began.
As international observers, they wanted to make a symbolic statement that
there were alternative ways to resolve the conflict.
Muriel Sibley described the events as the US began bombing.
Iraqi soldiers were sent to take the peace campers to Baghdad for
evacuation. The campers sat to
protest this move, forcing the soldiers to carry each one onto a bus.
As one soldier placed an elderly woman on the seat of the bus, he said,
“I am sorry, Mother, I am only doing what I must.”
She took his face in her hands and replied, “I too am sorry.
I am only doing what I must.” They
didn’t stop the Gulf War. They
did refuse to be silent in the face of evil. Peace
is an uphill journey that we choose to make, or not make, every day. A deep commitment to peace means we live out individually
what is needed collectively. We
stream uphill, even if we are the only ones. It’s
not about whether or not we change the world.
It’s about whether or not we are transformed.
It’s up to God what happens after that.
Thich Nat Hahn said it best: “There
is not a way to peace. Peace is the
way.” It
begins with what we do or fail to do every day.
It’s that log and speck thing all over again.
As people of faith we look first at our own lives, our own rooms and
clean up what is ours to clean up. Peace
in the world depends on peace in the country, which depends on peace in the
community, which depends on peace in our homes, which depends on peace in our
hearts. That is the uphill journey.
We make it again and again. The
myth of Sisyphus is not simply a statement that life is absurd, but, rather,
that meaning is to be found in the journey up the hill each time, not in the
hope that this time we shed the rock forever. Each
time we venture uphill we shed a bit more of the violence that is as much a part
of our world as air. Each journey
up the hill yields instruction and we learn a little more of the things that
make for peace in our hearts, homes, communities and world. When
all is said and done, what will people say was your purpose in life?
Probably, the usual stuff about being a good person, etc.
But will they say of us that we loved the poor, spoke up for justice and
peace, took risks for the sake of the Gospel? Isaiah
paints a picture of perfect peace and it stirs our deepest longings. It is important to notice that peace is not the result of
human effort, but the result of the judging activity of God.
God will arbitrate the causes for conflict and the people will respond by
destroying their weapons. We
need not look far to find the causes for conflict.
Consider: Today, one out of
every seven barrels of oil produced in the word is consumed on American
highways. In our country, suicide
has become the second leading cause of death among college students, where this
consumeristic culture defines their success in terms of possessions.
CEO’s earn at least 400 times the pay of the average worker, a ratio
that has increased exponentially over the past thirty years.
The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and forty-five
million Americans have no health insurance. Even
as we look to the incredible gifts of this country; democracy, freedom of
religion, freedom of speech, our abundant resources, we still need to ask: Why isn’t the United States a leader in the environmental
movement? Why can’t we sign a
treaty on global warming? Why have
we come to learn to live with a permanent underclass as if they are not there?
Why are thirteen million American children hungry? Our
faith calls us to look at these things, because peace in the world depends on
peace in the country, which depends on peace in the community, which depends on
peace in the home, which depends on peace in the heart.
It’s an uphill journey. Just
because things have been the way they are for so long doesn’t mean it’s the
way they are supposed to be. Peace
is the promise, peace is the journey, peace is the goal, and peace is the work.
Amen. Resources: Live Into Hope
Ruth A Meyers The Power of One
Mary-Wynne Ashford Marching Orders
J.K. Laney |