Theme: How does God build a house of peace on Earth?
We
remember.
This
weekend, we and other people of faith around the community and across the
country remember in our places of worship those from our congregations who
risked and lost their lives in the Great Wars of the last century. Here at Fifty in World War I, four went overseas
and did not come back; in World War II, five – the hopes of their families,
part of the heart of the community lost in war.
On
Wednesday we take time as a nation to remember and honour those who paid the
supreme sacrifice, and grieve the human cost of war. In World War I, close to 18 million people
were killed – 11 million military personnel, and 7 million civilians. Another 20 million injured. Sixty thousand of the military personnel who
died were Canadian, and 2,ooo of the civilians killed were Canadian.
In
World War II the numbers are even greater.
Between 60 and 80 million people were killed – about 3 % of the world’s
population at the time. 20-25 million of
the deaths were military personnel, about 50 million were civilians.
And the
numbers don’t end there.
Last
week the federal government released the information that in addition to the
deaths of 158 Canadian military personnel that we knew about in our mission in Afghanistan,
54 other soldiers have committed suicide since returning from their time there.
Also
last week, the paper reported the killing of a four-year-old Syrian girl by a
Russian missile while she was enjoying a special visit with her grand-parents
at their house. The story also reported
that according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Russian air strikes
in Syria in the last month have killed 131 IS fighters, 279 Syrian rebels, and
185 civilians including 46 women and 48 children. US-led air strikes have killed close to 4,000
IS fighters (an average of 252 a month) and 225 civilians.
What
do the numbers mean? Whether it’s 4 and
5 from Fifty in Winona, or 18 and then 60-80 million around the world, or 54
military suicides, or a single Syrian girl killed from above by a missile, what
do the numbers add up to?
Peace? Security?
Democracy? A better world? The answer is not simple.
It
leads to the bigger question and mystery of how God brings peace on Earth? Unless the Lord builds the house those who
labour, labour in vain. But how does God
build a house of peace on Earth, or turn all the world into a temple of peace
for all its people and creatures?
This
morning we have read of Jesus teaching in the Temple, and one day seeing there
a woman – a poor widow – always a widow, putting into the Temple treasury two
copper coins. In value they are only
about a penny, but they are all she has to live on and she is giving –
sacrificing, all she has.
Jesus
sees this, and honours her for it. “All
the other people,” he says, “are giving out of their abundance; they are not
sacrificing anything. But she has given
all she has to live on; she has sacrificed everything.”
It
reminds me of the Dead Man’s Penny first issued by the British Government in
the First World War and given to the widows and next-of-kin of soldiers killed
in action, accompanied by a letter from King George V that said, “I join with
my grateful people in sending you this memorial of a brave life given for
others in the Great War.” It was a way
of honouring the sacrifice made.
But in
the story of Jesus in addition to honouring the sacrifice made, he is also
saddened and even angry about its having to be made. A few days before this, when Jesus first
enters Jerusalem and goes to the Temple – the first place he wants to be once
he reaches the city , he is appalled at the corruption and thievery going on,
and the way the poor and powerless are being exploited. That’s when he overturns the tables and
drives the moneychangers out.
Then
in today’s reading he warns the people against the lawyers and leaders in
charge of the temple who sound good and committed to what’s right, but who are
really just profiting off the people who support the Temple and all it stands
for. Instead of the Temple and its
leaders serving the good and well-being of the poor and powerless, the poor and
powerless end up supporting and serving the well-being of the Temple and its
leaders. In Jesus’ eyes, that’s just
wrong.
And
it’s then Jesus sees the poor widow coming to drop into the Temple treasury her
last two coins. And there’s something
about her – about the few coins of her life, and what she chooses to do with
them, that touches him – moves him in some way, maybe stirs and strengthens him
in his own openness to the way of God for him.
Oh
Jerusalem, he laments, if only you knew the ways of peace – only know the things
that make for peace! But alas, you do
not!
One
other thing I heard in the news this week is that this week past was the 20th
anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Itzak Rabin. Rabin was shot 20 years ago in a public
square in Jerusalem by a Jewish ultra-nationalist – by one of his own people,
when Rabin began making serious overtures of peace towards the Palestinians and
offering to cede part of the disputed territories of the West Bank to
Palestinian authority for the sake of peace together.
So how
does God build a house of peace on Earth?
How does God engage us in making of the Earth a temple of peace for all?
It may
be that peace only and always comes through sacrifice – through the sacrifice,
through the giving and the giving up of something precious to ourselves, for
the sake of meeting the needs and serving the well-being of others – of others
beyond ourselves, of others even against ourselves.
But
oh! When the cost, and what is
sacrificed is human life! When what’s
given and taken is human life! No matter
how many and what the number – whether 1 or 100 million, and whether a
four-year-old girl or a Prime Minister.
That we lament!
And in
our lament – in our joining with God in the valuing of human life – in our
openness to the pain, the injustice, and the sorrow of that kind of sacrifice –
we open ourselves to real prayer. We let
ourselves be cast and drawn into the deep mystery and life of God.
And we
ask quite simply to know what is required of us. What are we asked to give and give up? What are we asked and called to sacrifice of
our life – of our time, talent and treasure, to be part of God’s peace-making
work on Earth in our time?
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