Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace

Scripture: Psalm 46

Peace, be still. Peace be still. The storm rages peace, be still.

As many of you know, I attended a Quaker college for my undergraduate degree. There are many, many things about that experience that continue to guide and shape me. But as I’ve thought and prayed about this morning’s sermon, two of them seem relevant. The first is that I was a Peace and Global Studies major. The second is that Quakers, known formally as the Religious Society of Friends, refer to other members as “Friends” and they usually focus their theological reflections less through doctrine and more through guiding questions that they call “Queries.”

So, this morning, as I’ve reflected on Psalm 46 and what I might share around our Lenten theme of Peace, I’ve revisited my formation in Peace and Global Studies and what role theological queries shared amongst friends might play.

And this brings me to my first query for the morning: as we reflect on our Lenten theme of Peace, what do we mean by peace? What are the resonant parts of peace for you? When you hear the word peace, what makes you smile? What are the dissonant parts of peace for you? When you hear the word peace, what makes you cringe a little?

As I have asked myself these questions, there are two parts to how peace has been defined and used that make my teeth itch. The first is when peace is used as a synonym for unity and then used to quash any kind of difference. Marvin Ellison, a gay Christian ethicist tells the story of the day he left the Presbyterian church. It was the 1980’s and he and several others were at a Presbytery meeting to support lesbian and gay people. They had introduced a measure that would support lesbian and gay people, when the moderator of the meeting ruled they were out of order and threatening the peace and unity of the gathering. Their microphone was turned off and they were literally and figuratively silenced. And then the gathering was invited to sing, “They will know we are Christians by our Love.” Marvin reports he couldn’t sing that song for over thirty years because it literally turned his stomach with the hypocrisy of how twisted peace, unity, and love were for him.

A second example of how peace has been used in distorted ways is when police or military are used to violently harm people using the language of “keeping the peace” and restoring order. In September of 1973, Augusto Pinochet led a coup which ousted the democratically elected government of Chile. Prior to the coup, Chile was a symbol of a long-standing democracy. Under the dictatorship of Pinochet, over 30,000 people were tortured and many thousands murdered. But, as one of the wealthy supporters of the coup said, “finally, the trains run on time and peace is restored.”

The director of the Peace and Global Studies program at Earlham was an American who worked in the Allende government and who survived the coup. He often talked about the corrosive nature of using the word peace to describe what happened in Chile.

How about you? When you hear the word peace, what rubs you the wrong way?

What about peace is a balm to your soul? What resonates with you?

Even as I struggle with how it has been misused, I am deeply drawn, in my own spiritual practice and in my activism to peace as shalom. Shalom is the Hebrew word often translated as peace. But it means much more. It means healing, wholeness, completeness, justice. It is this word, Shalom, that Jesus uses throughout his ministry. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says and he is saying, I greet you with a blessing that you might be healed, that you might know wholeness and completeness. I greet you with a blessing that your life might be lived amidst justice and love.

It is the Shalom-invoking one that I hear named in today’s scripture reading

God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
    though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble with its tumult…

God makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
    The Shalom-invoking One breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
     This God burns the shields with fire.

And then the one of Shalom reminds us:

 “Be still, and know that I am God!”

Psalm 46 is one of my favorite of the Psalms. I have returned to it countless times over the course of my life. One of the things I love most about it is that its imagery is big enough to hold my personal life, our life as a congregation, our nation’s life, and that of the world. God is our refuge and strength… God is a very present help in trouble. And even if the earth should change (maybe through climate shifts, 70 degree days in what is supposed to be winter, or a wildfire raging out of control in the rainy season in Texas), even though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea (maybe it’s earthquakes or what feels like personal tsunamis of heartache)—here and now, amidst whatever trouble, God is a very present help. God is the bringer of Shalom: for me, for you, for all of us and our world in tumult.

God is our comfort… Be still and know that the Shalom-invoking One is God.

And this brings me to another query for the morning: What is it you need God to be a refuge and strength, a very present help with today?

As I’ve healed from our accident and returned to work, I am very aware that one of the areas I most need God’s help is my own personal nervous system. My heart aches, literally, as I watch and read about the devastation of Gaza by Israeli bombs… and all the children killed. And my heart starts to race sometimes when I’m driving and someone cuts me off. From the global to the deeply personal, my nervous system needs the stillness and the knowledge that the Shalom-invoking One is God.

I need God to comfort me and our beautiful and broken world amidst affliction.

But even as I say that out loud, I can hear my mom sharing one of her favorite prayer-sayings: asking for God to comfort us in our affliction and afflict us in our comfort. And it makes me lift up another query: what is the relationship between Shalom and comfort? When ought God comfort us in affliction and when ought God afflict us in comfort?

I don’t think this is always obvious and it certainly isn’t easy, but I think it has to do with power and privilege. When my power and privilege mean that I get to be comfortable at the expense of someone with less power and privilege, indeed when my privilege and power afflict them, then I pray for God to afflict me in my comfort.

One example of this is that our child, Shannon, came out as non-binary last year. This means a number of things but one of the things it means is that Shannon has asked us to use they/them pronouns when referring to them. And, I have to say that since I have referred to Shannon using she/her pronouns since they were born, I have definitely made a bunch of mistakes and have mis-gendered them a lot. Mis-gendering someone is when we call them by the wrong pronoun. This has meant discomfort for me. But, my discomfort is a small price to pay for Shannon’s wholeness.

For me, this is the part of shalom that is connected to justice. God’s comfort washes over us when we are pressed under by injustice. God’s comfort is a balm, a salve when we are disempowered. And God’s holy affliction can be the prophetic nudge that moves us towards God’s just-peace when our privilege makes us complicit in harming others.

A few queries as I end. These are queries for our individual nervous systems, for our beloved community of Lyndale, and for our beautiful and broken world.

How are we resisters of twisted and hypocritical distortions of peace-as-unity that too often silence others’ truths?

How are we dismantlers of toxic peace-as-dictator-imposed-order?

How does rooting ourselves in God’s shalom allow us to be comforted in the deepest part of our souls?

How does being still and knowing that the Shalom-invoking One is God allow us to be afflicted in our comfort when we need to be?

Somehow, I think the writers of the Prayer of St. Francis may have been grappling with these questions when they wrote these famous lines which were recited heavily during WWI and WWII.

God, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.