Hilton Head Island, SC – May 22, 2015
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 55:6-13; Mark 9:42-50
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” – Matt. 5:9 (RSV)
Blessings For The Dedicated Peacemakers
There is a word in Hebrew with which nearly everyone here is familiar. It is widely used by all kinds of people, and not just Jews. But it is one of those words which cannot be defined by using other one-word synonyms. The Hebrew word to which I refer is shalom.
Shalom, of course, means “peace.” But in the common understanding, peace means the absence of war. If nations are not fighting one another, they are said to be at peace.
However, the peace of which biblical shalom speaks is different from a situation in which there is no war or overt hostilities or the threat of the use of weapons or bombs or other lethal military devices. The essence of shalom is not a negative reality; that is, peace is not fundamentally a situation in which there is no war. Rather peace is a positive reality. When there is true peace, there is good will among people, there is harmony among disparate groups, there is genuine love offered to everyone, to enemies or adversaries as well as to friends and relatives and neighbors. Peace means the Hatfields and McCoys consciously seek to get along well with one another, it is where the Jets and Sharks live happily together in any West Side story, it is where the Japanese and the Koreans become natural friends instead of natural enemies, it is where Democrats and Republicans in Congress equally seek the good of the entire nation rather than the good of their own party or the likelihood of victory only for themselves in their next election.
The Hebrew word shalom is found scores of times in the Hebrew Bible, which we Christians called “the Old Testament” and Jews simply call “the Bible.” The entire 55th chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah points to a picture of what the world is like when it is truly at peace, when shalom reigns. The hungry are fed, the nations get along with one another, and even nature itself is no longer, as the poet observed with such poetic sobriety, “red in tooth and claw.” Instead, the prophetic poet Isaiah of the Babylonian Captivity wrote, “For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isa. 55:12) Instead of thorns there shall be cypress trees; instead of briers there shall be crepe myrtles.
When Jesus said in the seventh beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God,” the absence of international hostilities was not the kind of peace he was talking about, even though it is what we usually think about when we contemplate what peace truly means. The peasants who listened to Jesus had no ability to create peace among nations. But they, and all of us, do have the capacity to establish peace on earth, starting with us.
Last Tuesday I was in Pearl Harbor for my son’s change of command ceremony. Andrew has been the captain of the nuclear fast-attack submarine USS Charlotte. He was turning over the command to another US Navy commander.
It was no small feat to get the Charlotte out on its most recent six-month deployment. Because they had so many mechanical problems that had to be fixed, the whole crew was a few months later than originally scheduled to get out to sea. They and their captain worked many long hours over many long and arduous weeks to get the vessel ready. But when they came back through the broad opening of Pearl Harbor, a few of the crew were gathered on top of the tall conning tower, which in a nuclear sub is called “the sail.” They were in their white uniforms, and there also was the captain : my son, the submarine driver. It was a soul-stirring moment, I can tell you, and a memorable display of naval power.
This past Tuesday morning was the time for the actual change-of-command ceremony. Andrew had asked Admiral Kirkland Donald to be the speaker on the occasion. Andrew served as Admiral Donald’s aide for three years. The change-of-command ceremony was one of the proudest moments in my life, first, because a four-star admiral was happily willing to fly to Hawaii to honor Andrew by his presence, and secondly, because I still find it little short of astonishing that any son of mine should have the technological, mathematical, and engineering skills to command a nuclear submarine. Where those abilities came from literally only heaven knows, because both his mother and I possess absolutely zero aptitude in any of those mind-blowing endeavors.
And why do I tell you all this? Well, I am first pleased to say it in order publicly to brag about my son, whom I honestly if perhaps not totally objectively deserves to be bragged about. As the Charlotte left Pearl Harbor on its first deployment over three years ago with Andrew in command, they encountered a giant sea turtle slow paddling across its path into the sea. After they returned to port, one of the junior officers told Joanne, Andrew’s wife, that the men on deck that day asked themselves what kind of man the new skipper really was. Would he continue on, damn the sea turtles, full speed ahead, or would he slow down? The young man told Joanne they were pleased to see they had a commander who has a sticker on the back bumper of his submarine which says, “We Brake for Turtles.” I too am very pleased.
When the Charlotte slowly and majestically sailed into the mouth of Pearl Harbor, I heard the voice of Walt Whitman whispering in my ear, “O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,/ The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won/ The port is near, the bells I heard, the people all exulting/ While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.” And we in the crowd of family members who waved at them at the Missing Man Memorial at Hickam Air Force Base were happy and relieved to see them; “Home is the sailor, home from the sea/ And the hunter home from the hill” (Robert Louis Stevenson).
All of us on the shore drove to the submarine section of the gigantic Pearl Harbor, the focus of myriads of memories but of one particular December day long ago. There I began to discover in the Homecoming Celebration what I later observed in much greater detail at the Change of Command, that the military makes the Church look like wishy-washy slackers in the Tradition Department. But about an hour after the homecoming ceremony started I again came up to Andrew, who was talking to a man several years younger than I but nearly a generation older than Andrew. It turns out he was an officer in the Soviet submarine service during the Cold War. He moved to the US in 1992, and has been a naturalized citizen for many years. His son, who was one of the enlisted crewmen on the Charlotte, has applied for admission to the United States Naval Academy. Partly because of my son’s strong recommendation for his son, the young man will soon be in Annapolis. There was some serious peacekeeping going on in all that, and with tears in his eyes the Russian former sailor was effusive in his gratitude to his son’s skipper.
However, in a sermon about peacemakers my primary purpose is to dispel a common misperception that the military of any nation are engaged in peacemaking activities, because they are not. They are peacekeepers, but they are not peacemakers. And there is a difference.
The term “peacekeepers” suggests that armaments prevent others from using other armaments. And it’s true; they do. Since its inception, the United Nations has had “peacekeeping” operations in areas of conflict all over the world. It is important work, and it one of the things the military forces of all nations do best. I might note parenthetically that making war is not what they do best; it is never what they do best. In the best of all circumstances, the military continually keep the peace. But the military does not and it cannot make peace. Neither the Defense Department nor the military make peace; if it is made at all by any branch of government, it is almost always the State Department and the executive branch who enable peace, or at least the avoidance of hostilities, to occur.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God,” Jesus said. However, he was not talking about international peace; he was talking about interpersonal peace.
But what does that mean? It means the deliberate attempt to nullify strong differences between two or more people. It requires facing interpersonal problems and seeking to overcome them. For example, there is someone who constantly irritates you. To be a peacemaker means to work on obliterating the mental factors within you which cause the irritation, and to create harmony between you and that other person. It means having strong ongoing differences of opinion with someone over something or other, and you consciously and conscientiously make peace with the person, even if the opinions on neither side ever change. To learn to disagree agreeably is to make peace. God does not require us to erase our differences with one another. He only requires that we do not allow the differences to create rifts between us.
Can that always be done? Probably not. Should it always be tried? Absolutely. Not to do so is to opt out of the difficult assignment of wanting to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. We let ourselves off far too easily. God doesn’t demand the impossible. But He does ask us to try to make the difficult easier.
Nobody who ever regularly watched Norman Lear’s All in the Family could ever forget Archie and Edith Bunker or Gloria and Mike (Meathead) Stivic or George and Weezie and Lionel Jefferson. In many ways, however, the most admirable of all those characters was Edith. She who put up with being called “Dingbat” innumerable times was the very epitome of what it means to be a peacemaker. She was always trying to make peace between herself and Archie or between Archie and Meathead or Archie and George or Archie and Gloria or Archie and everybody else. To attempt to be a peacemaker where Archie Bunker was concerned was to take on a full-time vocation, because Archie was a huge handful.
Edith did not dress or act or think like a lovely woman, but a more lovely woman than Edith Bunker has never existed, ether in Videoworld or in actual life. It was part of her DNA to be a peacemaker, and she could not not attempt to do whatever she could to promote peace. But maybe it wasn’t genetic. Maybe being married to an Archie Bunker would turn any woman either into a peacemaker or a Shakespearian shrew. A shrew Edith never was. But a peacemaker? - - - Always.
Let me cite a another woman as a peacemaker, not a television character but a living person. She is Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany. It has been Mrs. Merkel who has tried to lead Europe through its own economic Great Recession since 2008. It has been she who has tried to hold the European Union together despite the many economic, political, and monetary problems it is facing. But quintessentially it is Angela Merkel who, more than any other individual, has attempted to bring peace to the lives of millions of refugees fleeing the chaos of central and western Asia and northern Africa for the safety and security of Europe. She hasn’t stopped any wars, but she has afforded countless men, women, and children the opportunity for personal peace and a much safer future. Whether other government figures from other national governments or her own will allow her to continue her remarkable efforts as a peacemaker remains to be seen.
Neither you nor I can do what Chancellor Merkel has been doing to achieve peace for great numbers of people. But we have it in our power to make peace with those with whom we may have been at a figurative sword’s point for years. Your husband, your wife, your children, your sister or brother, your neighbor, the financial advisor whom you think cheated you, the couple who sold you a house with so many unseen problems you discovered it was like Swiss cheese, your accountant, who every year charges you an arm and a leg to do your taxes and you have no more arms or legs and you think he should have done better by you: half-hearted peacemakers can’t overcome such difficulties, but dedicated peacemakers are capable of it, if they seek God’s assistance in the seemingly impossible obstacles which confront them.
To get along with certain people is an enormous assignment. Neither God not Jesus would ever claim it is easy.
But to get along with someone with whom we have been at very serious odds for years, there is only one way to go; we must get along. We must get off the dime. We must move on. Re-living old grudges only gives them new life. We must put them behind us, even if we think we are not at fault. We must attempt to make a fresh start.
It may not work - - - but it might. It definitely won’t work unless it is tried. Of all the beatitudes, attempting to inculcate purity of heart is the hardest, and that is because most of us are incapable of it. Either we have it, or we don’t. But becoming a peacemaker is the second-hardest way to attain the blessings Jesus promised. That we can do, if we put our hearts and minds to it. It takes dedication. It takes persistence. It takes diplomacy. Those are difficult virtues to acquire.
No one can make peace with someone else by mere willpower. We need both the assistance and the inspiration of God. And God is always there to provide His assistance. When we construct the peace that passes all understanding with someone else, we shall discover ourselves to be children of God to a degree we never imagined possible --- for ourselves, but especially, so we shall discover, for the other person.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.