Peace Sunday - Dream, Pray, Act
Nigh on a decade ago I was over in San Francisco and I attended Grace Cathedral for Sunday worship. In the basement of that Cathedral was a shop. It was there I purchased something I am wearing today. It is a small pendant and it is made from the metal of decommissioned nuclear missiles. This for me embodied that phrase “you shall beat your swords into ploughshares” for us in the 21st century.
We read today from the prophet Micah. The exact same passage is found in the prophet Isaiah’s book. Later in Isaiah we read the famous passage sometimes called the Peaceable Kingdom. It is linked with Israel’s hopes and dreams for a messiah and then goes on “The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.”
It pictures an ideal world where there is no harm to any creature. One of the titles of the hoped for messiah was to be Prince of Peace.
Sometimes we picture Old Testament prophets as being wild men hurling condemnation but these poems show another side of the prophet. These beautiful poems bring a dream of peace. One can imagine these men with gifts of rhetoric similar to that of Martin Luther King Jnr in his famous “I have a dream” speech.
Peace is God’s business and God wants us to dream of peace. But not just to dream.
The second reading today urges us to pray for peace and we have been and will continue to do that today. In our Anglican NZ Prayerbook there is a section called “prayers for various occasions” and we find there a prayer for peace.
“O God,
it is your will to hold both heaven and earth
in a single peace.
Let the design of your great love
shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows,
and give peace to your Church,
peace among nations,
peace in our homes, and peace in our hearts.”
Scripture pictures prayer not as some quiet ritual, kneeling in a church with eyes closed and hands folded. Prayer is seen as partnering with God, participating with God in God’s work. The beloved prayer of St Francis picks up this idea with its opening words “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” So prayer for peace is not just about us saying God please fix it, but volunteering to join God in God’s peacemaking work.
There was a line in our final reading “God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” and it reminded me of a joke - God sends his rain on the just and the unjust - but more on the just because the unjust has swiped his umbrella. Peacemaking is hard work - it is confronting and challenging - we are called to love - to want the best for others - all others - even the ones we don’t like, the ones who hurt us. we are called even to love our enemies. Peacemaking begins with us and those around us, those we relate to.
God wants us to dream for peace, God wants us to pray for peace and finally God wants us to act. I want to tell you some stories of action.
Earlier, I mentioned my pendant with its swords into plowshares image. In the US there is a group called the Plowshares Movement - a Christian pacifist movement formed in the 1980s. In 2002, Sister Ardeth Platte and two other nuns breached an intercontinental ballistic missile facility in Colorado. The three poured blood in the shape of a cross to remember victims of war. Then they rapped on the blast lid with a household hammer. They were imprisoned for 2 years. You can read many other stories of Plowshares peace activism online.
When testifying, these nuns do not describe their actions as “civil disobedience,” because that would mean they did something illegal. Instead, they prefer “civil resistance,” which Montgomery called “divine obedience” to higher principles of peace.
In 2012 I had the privilege of visiting Coventry Cathedral in England. On November 4th 1940, the city of Coventry was bombed with incendiary bombs for over 11 hours. 451 people were killed and the beautiful medieval cathedral was in ruins. The walls and spire remained but the roof and contents were gone. The cathedral’s stonemason climbed the tower and looked down over the ruins of the cathedral and the city and something caught his eye. In the middle of the chaos two giant oak roof beams had fallen in the shape of a cross.
As a man of faith he saw this as a sign; a sign of death (Jesus’ crucifixion and death of the Cathedral) and also hope – hope of resurrection. Inspired he bound the two pieces of wood together and stood them in the Chancel, creating an altar of rubble.
Meanwhile the cathedral Provost had been considering Jesus’ words ‘Forgive your enemy and do good to those who harm you’. He wrote the words FATHER FORGIVE on the walls of the Cathedral by the Charred Cross.
A local vicar formed the medieval nails of the cathedral's roof into the shape of a cross and the Provost used it as a sign all around the world for peace and reconciliation.
Even while the war was still fresh, new relationships with Germany were forged, and links developed between Coventry and the German cities of Kiel, Dresden, and Berlin. These cities received replica crosses, and took on the commitment to work and pray for peace, justice, and reconciliation. Now the community of the cross of nails is an international community of people actively working for peace and reconciliation.
On August 6th 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima killing an estimated 120,000 people and 3 days later another one was dropped on Nagasaki killing an estimated 73,000 people. In 2018 I visited the peace museum in Hiroshima. I saw the impact of that horrific act. I met a woman who was a survivor. She was 8 years old when it happened and she recounted her lived experience to a group of us. Later that night at dinner she presented each of us with a gift. This elderly woman had folded paper cranes for us. They were about the size of my thumbnail and she had had to use toothpicks to do the job. Each was in a tiny folded paper box. This is my most treasured piece of memorabilia from my time in Japan. The paper crane has become a symbol of peace because of the story of Sadako Sasaki. Ten years after the bombing of Hiroshima 12 year old Sadako was found to have Leukaemia as a result of the radiation poisoning.
During Sadako's stay in the hospital, her best friend told Sadako of a legend. The crane, a sacred bird in Japan, lives for a hundred years, and if a sick person folds 1,000 paper cranes, then that person would soon get well. After hearing the legend, Sadako decided to fold 1,000 cranes and pray that she would get well again. She died in October 1955.
The act of folding a crane started by Sadako and her classmates turned into a national, then an international, children's peace movement. Children from all over the world still send folded paper cranes to be placed beneath Sadako’s statue. In so doing, they fulfill the wish engraved on the base of the statue:
This is our cry, This is our prayer, Peace in the world.
We have our own stories here in Aotearoa/ New Zealand.
The peaceful village was invaded by troops, the leaders arrested and detained without trial and many of the women were raped. This story is a blot on our history.
But there is also hope: Many in the community are thinking about how to fulfil the legacy of Tohu and Te Whiti in the 21st century. Some would like to see Parihaka become an international centre for peace studies.
Let us pray
Gracious and loving God
thank you for the stories of these and so many other courageous peace activists
May their stories inspire us to dream, pray and act in search of peace.
We long to join with you in your work of peace and reconciliation
as we worship the Prince of Peace
Amen
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