Called to peacemaking
The Rev. Nancy Gammill, First United Methodist Church
Friday, September 26, 2008
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
— Matthew 5: 10
I am writing this on Sept. 11, and reflecting on the horrendous events of that day in 2001.
I can remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday, especially watching as the events unfolded and we received it instantaneously on our television or computers. There was a time not so long ago when we wouldn’t have known about something like that until later, when it could have been replayed. But now technology, for better or worse, beams it into our homes the instant it happens, and it’s almost as if the trauma were happening to each of us, right now.
That’s the way it felt, like someone had called to say there was a death in the family, or a member of the military knocks on your door and you know, even before he speaks, that his news is not good. Your breath is suddenly sucked out of you, you feel like you have been socked in the stomach, and the sense of unbelief settles on you. Maybe what we are watching is only a foreboding, like those shows on the Weather Channel, “It Could Happen Tomorrow.” This can’t be real. But it is.
And the repercussions were immediate. I remember well, because it was my son’s birthday and we were headed out of town for a party. We stopped at a gas station where gas prices had gone up dramatically in just a few minutes, and where suddenly and inexplicably frantic people were crowding in, trying to get what they thought would be the last vestiges of gas, I guess. Perhaps it was simply a way of reacting when you felt like you had to do something, anything. Anyway, many had turned from well-mannered, civilized folk into what almost seemed like frantic animals fighting over their prey. Simple courtesy turned into frustration, anger, sorrow that expressed itself in shouted words and obscene gestures when they thought someone had tried to break into line. It was surreal, and revealed how quickly sudden trauma can turn us into someone we don’t like. It may be understandable, but it does not provide the kind of community and sense of hope that is most needed at that moment.
Throughout the scriptures, Old and New Testaments, God calls us to be peacemakers in the midst of those events that create total chaos. When Christ is preparing to leave his disciples on his last night with them, one of his final discourses is about peace, “My peace I leave with you, not the kind of peace the world gives, but my peace.” Peace that is so much more than just the lack of warfare or conflict for a time. That is only a truce. Christ has given us the gift of that peace that Paul in his letter to the Philippians calls the “peace that passes all understanding.” That kind of peace allows us to live in a new dimension that transcends the craziness and the turmoil that so often seems to exist around us in a broken world. When we live in his peace, we live as people called to be peacemakers, called to offer forgiveness rather than take revenge, called to bring about reconciliation rather than more conflict, called to reach out to our “enemies” with love rather than “an eye for an eye.”
There were two country-and-western songs that really caught my attention not long after 9/11. One was written by Toby Keith. “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” was a song of revenge, a song that proposed the USA respond with a ”quid pro quo” attitude, to let the world really know who is in charge here. I detest that song; it makes me hurt still every time I hear it. The other song was one written by Alan Jackson, a song entitled “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?” It was a song that called us to gentler, kinder responses to each other because of what had happened, a song that reminds us that God calls us to be people who seek out community with our families, our friends, even those who have wronged us, and begin to create a new world within that community. It was a song that went a long way toward beginning the healing process of peacemaking that day.
It’s easy now almost to forget the events of that day, to believe almost that it didn’t happen. But it did, and we constantly have the reality of the war in Iraq to remind us of that. People are dying daily as a result of that war, and yet it is very easy to continue our day to day lives over here, forgetting that now more than ever we are called to be peacemakers so that events like 9/11, or even a phone call or a knock at the front door, will no longer be a common occurrence.
The greatest travesty of all would be to forget 9/11, 2001, and the call to peacemaking that it sounded to us loud and clear. How are you answering that call?
F “Sunday Sermon” is a forum for Emporia area ministers to share their sermons, thoughts and observations. This week’s sermon is from the Rev. Nancy Gammill of Emporia’s First United Methodist Church.