The Shadow Side of Peace
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
March 14, 2021
Hebrews 12:14-17 (The Voice)
14 Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness, since no one will see God without it. 15 Watch carefully that no one falls short of God’s favor, that no well of bitterness springs up to trouble you and throw many others off the path. 16 Watch that no one becomes wicked and vile like Esau, the son of Isaac, who for a single meal sold his invaluable birthright. 17 You know from the stories of the patriarchs that later, when he wished to claim his blessing, he was turned away. He could not reverse his action even though he shed bitter tears over it.
Good morning Friends, I hope this finds you well, as we are beginning to see the Light at the end of the tunnel of this pandemic. I am happy to say that I received my second vaccine this past week and I join many of you who are in the process of helping us get back together in-person. Keep getting those vaccines and stay patient. We are making great strides to end this difficult time!
A couple Sunday’s ago, I began having us look at bearing one another’s burdens or what I labeled being “Burden Bearers.” In that first sermon I concluded by rooting my thoughts in the Quaker Testimonies or what we call S.P.I.C.E.S. I also said we would spend the time leading up to our Easter Celebration exploring in more depth each of the SPICES and how they speak to carrying one another’s burdens.
Last week, we started by looking at the gift of simplicity. We were reminded by Quaker Richard Foster that Simplicity points us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good.
The conversation around Simplicity continued last week in a beautiful way in our Fellowship Hour, where we discussed the challenges of “stripping off the excess” and acknowledging our efforts and behaviors and getting to the root – the gifts that simplicity offers – that deeper relationship with the Divine and a deeper concern and love for our neighbor and self.
This week, as I began to prepare for looking at Peace, I continued many of these same thoughts. I believe peace too is a gift bestowed upon us from the Divine, but it is also a gift we are to offer our neighbors and ourselves.
In the Quaker’s Peace Testimony from the United Kingdom their concluding paragraph points to how peace is not only foundational for Quakers, but how it should be part of our daily and ordinary lives. Just listen to how well they articulated this final paragraph of their peace testimony.
The peace testimony is not something Quakers take down from a shelf and dust off only in wartime or in times of personal or political crisis. Living out a witness to peace has to do with everyday choices about the work we do, the relationships we build, what part we take in politics, what we buy, how we raise our children. It is a matter of fostering relationships and structures - from personal to international - which are strong and healthy enough to contain conflict when it arises and allow its creative resolution. It is a matter of withdrawing our co-operation from structures and relationships which are unjust and explorative. It is a matter of finding creative ways of dealing with conflict when it does arise, with the aim of freeing all concerned to find a just and loving solution.
Keep these thoughts in mind as we continue on.
I think I have said this before, but when I was out in the Northwest, I was invited to write curriculum for our annual Peace Month. Each January, we took the time to focus our attention on unique aspects of our testimony of peace. We focused on topics such as:
· Sabbath as Peace-making,
· Conflict Resolution as Peace
· Locally Aware Meetings for Peace
· We even looked at Making Peace through Lament.
· And one of the final times I worked on a Peace Month curriculum, we actually looked at how each of the S.P.I.C.E.S drew us back to Peace.
I always enjoyed delving into the study, writing, and development of this curriculum. But…the implementation and the actual teaching and preaching about Peace at the local Meeting level was another thing all together.
My fellow pastors in the Northwest (including myself), would often comment on the fact that Peace Month often brought anything but peace. We even started to label it as “Non-Peace Month.”
Just talking about Peace was disruptive to people. Weirdly, it caused them to feel uncomfortable. I even had a person come to me once and ask if we could end Peace Month early because it was causing people unrest.
Now, I believe, the reason this is the case is that when we begin to explore peace and enter into the process of how peace is achieved or discovered we must again do some soul searching.
Often this involves asking ourselves why we and our neighbors experience a lack of peace in our world.
This question immediately draws us to examine the shadow side of peace. We cannot have peace, if we are not addressing first what causes the lack of peace in our lives.
A few years ago, as I was consuming anything and everything Quaker Parker Palmer wrote, I came across his book
“A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.” A book I would highly recommend.
This week, I went to my shelf to look for the book and realized I had given it to a friend. It is one that I recommend often to people because, in it, Parker Palmer speaks to our yearning to live undivided lives―lives that are congruent with our inner truth in a world filled with the forces of fragmentation.
As I consumed Parker Palmer’s words and wisdom, I came across a section that has forever changed me. When I first read it, I had a mix of emotions and feelings well up inside of me. Parker Palmer was taking me into a deeper, more robust perspective of peace, BUT not by introducing me to silence or centering, but, of all things, through VIOLENCE.
Immediately upon reading Palmer’s words, I understood why Peace Month was so difficult for so many people. Peace Month would throw open the door to our physical, spiritual, and emotional lives and expose the world’s ways and the ways of our own hearts.
If the opposite of peace or the lack of peace is what is labeled violence, we immediately have some physical, spiritual, and definitely emotional responses.
So, as I READ Parker Palmer’s words this morning, please listen carefully to how he describes violence and allow these words to speak deeply. Do not feel as though you need to reconcile them or even respond to them immediately. Just let them speak to your condition, to your soul, to your inner life, and to your lack of peace.
Palmer begins by quoting Deuteronomy 30:19.
'I have set before you, life and death, blessing and curse: therefore, choose life.'
He then goes on to say,
“Yet when we 'choose life', we quickly confront the reality of a culture riddled with violence. By violence I mean more than the physical savagery that gets much of the press. Far more common are those assaults on the human spirit so endemic to our lives that we may or may not even recognize them as acts of violence.”
“Violence is done when parents insult children, when teachers demean students, when supervisors treat employees as disposable means to economic ends, when physicians treat patients as objects, when people condemn gays and lesbians 'in the name of God', when racists live by the belief that people with a different skin color are less than human.
And just as physical violence may lead to bodily death, spiritual violence causes death in other guises – the death of a sense of self, of trust in others, of risk taking on behalf of creativity, of commitment to the common good. If obituaries were written for deaths of this kind, every daily newspaper would be a tome.”
“By violence I mean any way we have of violating the identity and integrity of another person.
I find this definition helpful because it reveals the critical connections between violent acts large and small from dropping bombs on civilians halfway around the world to demeaning a child in a classroom.”
“Even if we do no more than acquiesce to small daily doses of violence, we become desensitized to it, embracing the popular insanity that violence is 'only normal' and passively assenting to its dominance.”
Now, because this was so profound for me, I needed some time to sit with what Parker Palmer was implying about peace and it’s shadow side, violence. Also, this week as I reflected on bearing one another’s burdens, I found this speaking to the need for peace and some of the foundational causes of our lack of peace.
I think to allow these words of Parker Palmer to engage our inner lives and spiritual journeys, I want to read his words to you again.
This time, I want to read it in what I would call a Lectio Divina style. If you are not familiar with Lectio Divina, it is Latin for Divine Reading. It is usually considered a monastic practice that was done with scripture and other spiritual texts. The hope is that the text would become seen as a living text and even ultimately become part of the reader’s life and action.
To do this Lectio Divina style, I will read a section and then pause – allowing the words to settle into our hearts. You may want to grab a piece of paper or take notes on your phone or other devise. Before I read it again, I ask you to consider the following queries as you listen…
· What words or phrases grab my attention or speak to my condition?
· What surprises me?
· What causes me to have an emotional response?
· Do these words cause me to want to make any changes, reconcile, or make amends?
· What is God teaching me about the need for peace and bearing one another’s burdens in this text?
After I READ Parker Palmer’s words again, we will put these queries up for you to ponder as we enter into waiting worship.
I do not want us to simply wrap these thoughts up and move on, instead I would like us to wrestle with these thoughts and take time to ponder them, digest them, and allow ourselves to have a spiritual, physical, emotional, even intellectual response or responses to these words.
Let me read again, taking intentional pauses this time for reflection, these words from Parker Palmer. Once again, he begins with Deuteronomy 30:19…
'I have set before you, life and death, blessing and curse: therefore, choose life'
[Pause]
“Yet when we 'choose life', we quickly confront the reality of a culture riddled with violence. By violence I mean more than the physical savagery that gets much of the press. Far more common are those assaults on the human spirit so endemic to our lives that we may or may not even recognize them as acts of violence.”
[Pause]
“Violence is done when parents insult children, when teachers demean students, when supervisors treat employees as disposable means to economic ends, when physicians treat patients as objects, when people condemn gays and lesbians 'in the name of God', when racists live by the belief that people with a different skin color are less than human.
[Pause]
And just as physical violence may lead to bodily death, spiritual violence causes death in other guises – the death of a sense of self, of trust in others, of risk taking on behalf of creativity, of commitment to the common good. If obituaries were written for deaths of this kind, every daily newspaper would be a tome.”
[Pause]
“By violence I mean any way we have of violating the identity and integrity of another person.
[Pause]
I find this definition helpful because it reveals the critical connections between violent acts large and small from dropping bombs on civilians halfway around the world to demeaning a child in a classroom.”
[Pause]
“Even if we do no more than acquiesce to small daily doses of violence, we become desensitized to it, embracing the popular insanity that violence is 'only normal' and passively assenting to its dominance.”
[Pause]
Let us now ponder the queries from before:
What words or phrases grab my attention or speak to my condition?
What surprises me?
What causes me to have an emotional response?
Do these words cause me to want to make any changes, reconcile, or make amends?
What is God teaching me about the need for peace and bearing one another’s burdens in this text?