How to unlearn war

Sermon on Luke 3:1-6

During our bible study last Thursday, we talked about the devotional text of the day. You know, from the little devotionals you all either picked up on last Sunday at church or you got it delivered by Melinda or Debbie Pollak. Thank you, to both of you for that great gift of your time.

And the text happened to talk about unlearning war. How to become peacemakers in this world with the help of God. As you might imagine, a conversation like that quickly can turn into despair and hopelessness. Because, obviously there has always been war in the world, basically beginning with Kain and Abel. Which is also why the topic of how to end wars is so prominent in our holy scriptures. We long for peace, and yet, don’t know better than fighting. Even if we believe that we are fighting for peace. In our group there was a notion that to be a peacemaker, you have to come from a place of strength. 

And that’s where it gets interesting. How does a place of strength look like in God’s eyes?

Today’s Gospel provides a great answer. It starts with listing seven seats of wealth, power, and influence in just one sentence.  Seven centers of authority, both political and religious.  Seven Very Important People occupying seven Very Important Positions.  But God’s word doesn’t come to any of them. It comes to John, a relative nobody in that list. Even though, he really isn’t a nobody. After all, he is a PK, and at least 4 of you listening right now, know that that’s special, and not always easy. 

John hails from priestly ancestry on both sides of the family (Luke 1:5-6). His father, Zechariah, is a priest whose rotation of duties includes service in the Jerusalem Temple. Elizabeth, his mother, descends from the line of priests originating with Aaron. If John were following the family business, he would be engaged in work associated with the Temple, the holy place in Jerusalem where God is said to dwell. 

But, God has other plans for John. Great plans, extraordinary plans. God trusts John with his son. And, God will watch John be killed as a young man. For serving God. It’s not easy to understand how God blesses God’s people.

God gives divine authority to John by having John hear God’s word. And John listened and preached. He went into all the regions around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance as a change of hearts and for the forgiveness of sins.

Now, what’s even more interesting is that people actually listened. Which makes me wonder what kind of a preacher John must have been. Probably not the yelling, threatening kind of guy. 

Last week, a pastor and friend of mine showed the new movie “Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Troubling times” as part of evening prayer. In this deep movie, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu share science-backed wisdom of how to live with joy in troubled times. Inspired by the New York Times bestseller The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, the film showcases the exchange between these two Nobel Peace Prize winners that led to that book. The audience is invited to join these luminaries behind the scenes as they recount stories from their lives, each having lived through periods of incredible difficulty and strife. Or, as the film team claims: “MISSION: JOY is an antidote for the times.”

Now, that movie could be mistaken as a typical “be happy and you will be fine” attitude message. And many might hear that. 

But, Bishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama are deeply faithful, deeply spiritual men, who have both lived through nightmares. Bishop Tutu grew up in great poverty with an alcoholic father who was loving during the day and violent when drunk. He fought against polio and cancer, and, most importantly, against the apartheid system. What he became most known for, was his approach after the legal and official end of the apartheid. The Truth-and-Reconciliation commission he headed. 

This commission was about telling the truth to ask for forgiveness and for reconciliation between the oppressors and the families of the victims. The primary focus of the commission was on victims, investigating human rights abuses committed from 1960 to 1994. It received more than 22,000 statements from victims and held public hearings at which victims gave testimony about gross violations of human rights, defined in the Act as torture, killings, disappearances and abductions, and severe ill-treatment suffered at the hands of the apartheid state. The commission received more than 7,000 amnesty applications, held more than 2,500 amnesty hearings, and granted 1,500 amnesties for thousands of crimes committed during the apartheid years.

And Bishop Tutu listened to hundreds of those hearings. He heard the atrocious stories, he comforted mothers breaking down in tears when listening to their kids’ perpetrators describing what they had done to kill them. He surely knows that life isn’t fair and that being blessed by God often doesn’t translate into a good life, or even into a long life. He knows that God’s people so often suffer. And even suffer at the hand of people who also claim to be God’s people. In South Africa, just like here in the US, the oppressors and the oppressed all were and are Christians. 

And yet, Bishop Tutu is a joyful man. A man who at 80 giggles like an 8-year-old and jokes around. A man who has seen the worst in humankind and still believes in the freeing power of God demonstrated in truth-telling. And in forgiveness. Without forgetting. Not because those mothers and fathers don’t care about what happened to their sons and daughters. But because they know that the hatred and the anger towards their children’s murderers will eat them alive, will kill the love and joy for their own lives. 

And so, they choose to let go of that anger and hatred. They choose to forgive. They choose to agree to a change of heart. And they choose to witness the change of heart in the oppressors telling the truth and repenting that truth. It’s nothing short of a miracle. It’s what John preached in the wilderness: To repent and to have your sins forgiven. Even the worst. By the people who have suffered the most from them. Which requires a change of heart in all flesh, in all of creation. And it’s something no one can force upon us. A change of heart is a gift of God, like our baptism. The strength to tell the truth is a gift of God. And the strength to listen to that truth is a gift of God. It’s a gift found in the wilderness of deepest human suffering. 

And on the other side of that baptism through truth, we will come out joyful. At least, that’s what Bishop Tutu experienced. Not happy, not jolly, maybe silly, definitely joyful. A joy born out of pain. 

John the Baptist, Bishop Tutu, and the Dalai Lama have a lot in common. Their stories, their faith, their joyfulness and love for God’s creation are incredible. 

And if you choose to watch the movie, you will most likely cry and laugh and cry some more. And you will feel a great need for meditation and prayer. Because, that’s their answer to the question of how to unlearn war, how to be joyful people in this world: To pray. To meditate. To ask God for a change of heart and the forgiveness of our sins. Not because we have to. But because we want to. And to cry and lament, to tell the truth, and listen to it. To listen to the cries of rage, fear, horror, and pain.  And to listen to hope. To their fierce, muscular hope in a God who cares.  A God who vindicates.  A God who saves.  Something about the wilderness experience birthed in John, in Jesus, in Bishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama a capacity for profoundly life-changing hope.  Salvific hope. Hope beyond hope.

Because this world needs a change of hearts and joy as an antidote to wars and hatred. We are called to follow them. With the help of Jesus Christ! Amen.