Make No Peace with Oppression
This week’s sermon wrestles with Jesus’ startling words: “I have come not to bring peace, but division.” What kind of peace does Christ offer if it’s not the Pax Romana, not the silence of fear or compliance? We explore the difference between fa
Jesus asks the disciples today, “Do you think I have come to bring peace on the earth?” We could forgive the disciples for thinking “well, yes….Haven’t you heard the Christmas carols Jesus? Peace on earth and goodwill to all?” Today Jesus says, “no! I have come not to bring peace but division.” You almost want to look at him and say, “we have enough division, thanks.” What about some peace?
What is this about? There is a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer which reads, “Almighty God, who created us in your image: Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression.” To make no peace with oppression.
Jesus follows in the line of the prophets. He is asking the people to look around themselves, to really see what is going on. As the prophet Jeremiah said of old, “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.”
I read today’s Gospel as a wake up call. The peace of Jesus, it is no peace with oppression. Peace was a common word in the time of the Gospels. Politicians often proclaimed the famous “Pax Romana.” But Jesus and his followers experienced this so called peace as the tip of a sword, as exorbitant taxes on the poor to support the might of the occupying army. Amidst this culture of fear, Jesus told his disciples to be “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” Jesus was known to flee the territory of a government official who was angry over his preaching. Rome wanted all of its subjects to believe in the doctrine of the Pax Romana. Jesus and his followers refused. The empire’s peace was a fiction.
In his speech accepting the Nobel Prize, Dr. King famously prophesied: “We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path.” Peace is not negative, it is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. As Saint Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of El Salvador preached, “Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.”
The Difference Between Peace and Fear
We are living in days when some believe that peace can be enforced. We are living again in times when authorities are trying to create peace through fear. But you don’t find peace through fear. You don’t.
If you are looking for peace, you have to move past fear. That’s true whether you are the person in power, or the person on the receiving end of power. I worry about the number of decisions being made out of fear today, to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, to avert the ire of the federal government. I worry about journalists who are choosing not to pursue certain stories, I worry about prosecutors deciding not to try certain cases. I worry about siblings and parents who are choosing not to talk with their family members with whom they disagree.
Fear isn’t generative. Fear doesn’t allow for growth, for change. Peace is not simply an absence of conflict. Jesus today is telling us not to look for that sort of peace. Peace based on fear is no peace at all.
I want to posit to you today, that we are living in cultures of fear on the macro and the micro level. Too many systems are governed by fear. Too many systems ask for our compliance, ask us to fit a very particular mold, a very particular way of thinking. Too many systems threaten to ostracize any difference, any disagreement, anyone who “causes conflict.”
One of the gifts God gives us in community is our diversity. One of the most important ways that we grow as people is to encounter people who are different than we are, who love differently, act differently, think differently. Cultures of compliance, cultures of fear, seek to silence opposition, to quell debate.
Real Peace
One of the signs of real peace, the kind of peace that is not compliance, is healthy disagreement. When I have a fundamental trust that we are committed to staying together in community, staying together in relationship, I have the freedom to disagree with you. We can disagree without becoming disagreeable, and often by arguing our points we can find a better solution than what we would have come to on our own.
Likewise, when we have a strong bond in a community, we can give one another room to make mistakes. No one is perfect, especially not among the clergy. I’m grateful for the people who have called me to account, and given me grace. One of the ways I know that I am in a healthy community is when I am forgiven. When I am given a chance to learn from my mistakes. I hope I practice this forgiveness too. That is part of what makes places like St. Michael’s so important. This is a place where you can still mess up. This is a place where you can disagree. This is a place where we can choose to hang in there together, to prioritize community over compliance.
People are hungry, so hungry for this kind of community, this place of real belonging. People are hungry for it, but we are settling for so much less. We are settling for “likes” on social media. We are settling on cheap versions of validation.
Did you hear about the unexpected reactions to an update to ChatGPT? This summer the company that owns the most popular AI chatbot rolled out an update. The idea was that this update would generate more accurate answers, but something was different with the code, and the chatbot seemed slightly less human. What the company didn’t expect was the grief that followed. Users posted eulogies for the old model online. They had treated ChatGPT like a friend, a therapist. The update felt like a death. So the company decided this was a chance to make money. And they offered access to the old software, for a price. We don’t need a more human seeming chat bot. We need humans. We need community.
One of the dangers of our moment is losing our capacity for human relationship. We are in danger of losing our capacity for community, for holding together even when we disagree, even when we make a mistake. The more we allow fear to govern, the more we shut out difference, the less room we make for grace and forgiveness, the more we rely on artificial and social media centric versions of relationship, the more we endanger our very faith.
Faith Vs. Fear
That word, faith, I know there is some angst about the word faith. Sometimes when we are asked if we have faith, we are really being asked if we belong to a system of compliance, whether we deny science in favor of creationism or if we vote a particular party line. That’s not what the Bible means by faith. God doesn’t stand at the pearly gates with an intellectual checklist.
Whoopi Goldberg was once talking about Pope Francis, and she said that though she wasn’t a Catholic, she liked the late pope, because he brought the church back “to the original program.” Jesus wasn’t scanning a punch card for beliefs. Jesus asked his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned. The faith of Jesus’ followers was meant to be shown in the way they lived their lives, the way they cared for one another, the way they took care of their whole community.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the assurance of things unseen, as the 11th chapter of Hebrews put it. Faith is about how you survive when the world around you is making peace with oppression. Faith is the counterweight to fear.
This chapter of Hebrews lays out a long list of the heroes of faith, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, it’s a fascinating collection. These mothers, fathers, fore-parents of the faith shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the Red Sea.
I was imagining this week who we might add to this list of the great cloud of witnesses, the heroes of faith. This past week marked the 60th anniversary of the martyrdom of an Episcopal seminarian, Jonathan Myrick Daniels.
By faith, Jonathan Daniels left his seminary in Boston. He had heard Dr. King’s invitation to white students to join in the work of Civil rights in Alabama, and Daniels said he couldn’t get Mary’s words out of his head: “God has fed the hungry with good things and lifted up the lowly.” Jonathan was arrested for picketing whites only stores. Held for six days in a cell without air conditioning, after release, his small group of protestors were waiting for a ride home from jail, when an off-duty sheriff’s deputy leveled a gun at a 17-year old black girl, Ruby Sales. Daniels jumped in front of the blast, saving her life and sacrificing his own. Jonathan is remembered as a martyr of the Civil Rights movement, a martyr whose faith led him to believe in a world he had not yet seen, a world where black folks and white folks had equal rights under the law, a nation where all people were treated with equal dignity. Jonathan chose faith.
The aftermath is also a story of faith. Though the county where it happened was over 70% black, Jonathan’s killer was acquitted by an all-white male jury. No black person had ever served on a jury in Lowdnes county. The Episcopal Society of Cultural and Racial Unity sued in federal court, and they won. The court ruling forced Alabama to integrate its juries. Bringing the case took faith. It was the first time a federal court connected the 14th amendment to discrimination in jurisprudence. Alabama did not appeal. They were worried the Supreme Court might integrate the juries across the whole of the country. Faith, sometimes aided by lawyers, can move mountains. We can do the seemingly impossible.
We are invited to live by faith, not fear. We are invited to move from faith, not fear. As our times grow more fearful, the invitation of faith is even more important.
I have to tell you, despite what he tells his disciples, I believe Jesus came to bring peace. Jesus simply knew that the peace his people were settling for wasn’t real peace. “The peace I give you, the world cannot give,” Jesus says. You cannot make peace with oppression. You cannot find peace through fear. God wants more for us.
The peace of God will ask you to stand up for what you believe in. The peace of God will ask you to choose faith over fear, community over compliance. The peace of God will not leave you alone. God’s peace is a peace rooted in justice, a peace with room for all. All.