2/5 Lectionary Notes, Pt. 4: The Meditation

"Small Things"
Florence Church of the Brethren Mennonite
February 5, 2006

The second half of Isaiah, beginning with chapter 40, was written during a time in history which became crucial to the identity of the Jewish people. Having experimented with earthly power, the Israelites suddenly found themselves removed from the Promised Land like pawns shuffled off the board in a political game. Their exile in Babylon lasted approximately 50 years.

This passage is appropriate as the basis for today's meditation because it represents the voice of God to a people who are displaced—that is, not at home where they are. While few of us have experienced or ever will experience such literal exile from our homes, how many of us currently have a sense of exile as a state of mind? The dominant spirits of the age seem to be contradicting all that we believe is true and good. How can we possibly maintain action and hope for peace while world leaders power-grab in the form of military violence and political deception and profit-monger in the form of crushing the poor and raping the earth? How can we work together for justice while family and community structures continue to disintegrate? We hope today's service will provide a something you need to continue working toward answers, both as individuals and a community of faith.

We can begin with the Word as it comes to us through Isaiah. Our lesson for today offers concrete hope to people in both literal and figurative exile. The image of God that we receive here is so full. God is sovereign, above all things. God is so unfathomable that even the earthly powers, which can seem despairingly tenacious to us, simply fall over in a wisp of God's breath. Lest we think the Unnamable One is distant, Isaiah also reinforces God's compassion in creating for us a habitat that is hospitable, magnificent and beautiful—reflective of God's own nature. Just look at the stars! God is more infinite than space in strength, understanding, power and compassion. And to those of us who simply wait, God channels those qualities.

If our role is to "wait for the Lord," we would do well to explore what that waiting might look like. When we wait, we are active with expectation. We make various kinds of preparations for the thing or the person that we anticipate. I think of the anticipation of a pregnant mother, and I also think of the parable of the ten virgins, in which some succeeded and some failed to keep their lamps lit until the bridegroom arrived. Like a mother who makes no effort to prepare for the coming of her child, the foolish virgins lose their memory of that which they anticipate and their lamps are dim when the time comes. But like a mother who plans with joy, the wise virgins are vigilant and ready for the fulfillment of their hope.

As actively expectant believers, we wait in the belief that the victory of God, complete in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, will be fully realized as God's Kingdom on earth. We wait in the conviction that the bridegroom is on his way. We practice resurrection. But like a people in exile, it's difficult to maintain this conviction when the events around us contradict our hope and we tend to fall into fear and despair. The apparent impossibility of our hope for justice and peace can weary us into doubting ourselves and the unattainable principles of our faith.

I'm not about to say doubt is a sin. Frederich Beuchner's statement that "faith without doubt is fragile and irrelevant" sticks with me as a truth about the importance of doubt. However, when fear and doubt and despair begin to pervade our waiting, we begin to act in ways that contradict our hope. We begin to feverishly desire a grand plan for change or to feel like we're going to suffocate for all of the injustice and greed and violence in the world. We become paralyzed from action. Jewish playwright Tony Kushner cautions us, especially those of us in wealthy countries, against despair because despair is a luxury afforded those who aren't too busy simply surviving to have an existential crisis. Hope, he says, is an ethical obligation for those of us with material means.

The opposite of despair is hope and our hope for peace finds its home in the making of peace. I think it's a commonly accepted notion, especially in the peace church tradition, that peace is more broadly defined than just the absence of conflict between people or entities; it's a comprehensive concept that has implications for all areas of our lives. A state of peace is a state of right relationship: between human and God, between human and human, between human and self, between human and creation, and so on. Once we acknowledge peace in this way, peacemaking becomes much more than just political activism. Peacemaking is a daily way of life and peacemakers become members of the Eternal's own family. Listen to this adaptation of Psalm 24 by Stephen Mitchell to hear a vision for peace on earth:

The Earth belongs to the Lord
and everything on it is his.
For he founded it in empty space
and breathed his own life-breath into it,
filling it with manifold creatures,
each one precious in his sight.

Who is fit to hold power
and worthy to act in God's place?
Those with a passion for the truth,
who are horrified by injustice,
who act with mercy to the poor
and take up the cause of the helpless,
who have let go of selfish concerns
and see the whole earth as sacred,
refusing to exploit her creatures,
or to foul her waters and lands.
Their strength is in their compassion;
God's light shines through their hearts.
Their children's children will bless them,
and the work of their hands will endure.

Here again, we have the theme of right perspective that is present in Isaiah. We are because God is. But we also have some very simple directives for right living. Be passionate about truth and horrified by injustice. Show mercy to the poor and use your voice to advocate for those who have none. Understand yourself as part of a sacred community that includes the creatures, the land, the air, the water. Then God's light will shine through you and what you do will endure into eternity.

We are not called here to phenomenal acts of grandiosity like toppling unjust powers or redeeming the whole of the created world; in fact, that power is reserved for God alone. But we act, in small ways, as agents of God. Author David James Duncan wrote recently of having rediscovered, in the middle of despairing about the direction of our country, Mother Teresa's words that "we can do no great things; only small things, with great love." He writes:

Mother's advice gave me permission to do stuff like play with my kids and go fishing again…. I have no faith in any kind of political party, left, right or centrist. I have boundless faith in love. In keeping with this faith, the only spiritually responsible way I know to be a citizen, artist or activist is by giving little or no thought to things such as saving the planet, achieving world peace, or stopping neocon greed. Great things tend to be undoable things. Small things, lovingly done, are always within our reach.

What Duncan and I think all of us struggle to remember is that we are grasshoppers—significant and loved, but still grasshoppers—who are only being asked to do what is within our power to do, trusting grace to make our efforts complete.

And what is most within our power to affect is that which immediately surrounds us and so our efforts to form a culture of peace should begin as close to home as possible: namely, in our homes. I'm not licensed in family psychology, so I cannot speak well to peaceful family relationships, but I do have a sense of how a house itself can reflect values of peace. Brian Walsh, an author and professor from southern Ontario, notes how a home is a living testament to our deepest values. He observes:

Beyond the symbols with which we adorn our dwellings, it is important to note that diverse architectures, different terms of tenure, varied constructions of inside/outside, public/private dynamics, house size, building materials and location--all are symbolic of class, status, cultural identity, and most foundationally, worldview. An oversized house in the suburbs on an acre and a half lot with a three car garage may have the external and internal symbols of Judaism, Islam, Christianity or any other worldview, but the very structure of the house may well have more symbolic power and be more revelatory of the practiced worldview of its inhabitants than these more traditional symbols.

Essentially, our houses tell on us by betraying in which worldview we feel truly at home. Relevant to community peacemaking, if peace or right relationship is indeed a deep value, how is it reflected in our home? And if it's not reflected there, is it really integral to our identity? If we hope to make peace in our local communities, we should look at the very plot of land or dwelling we occupy to determine how we might begin within those boundaries to be at peace with our co-habitants, our natural environment, and the thousands—perhaps millions—of people with whom we are in relationship by virtue of the stuff that fills our homes: people like artists, farmers, laborers, factory workers, grocery store clerks, and so on.

If the structure and the content of our homes can reflect the value of peace, we would also do well to consider the spirit that fills our homes as we welcome both friend and stranger. Ideally, this spirit will be one of hospitality. Henry Nouwen explains that hospitality

means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.... Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.

Hospitality, Nouwen emphasizes, is not limited to hosting people in one's home, but is an attitude that can be projected at all times, an attitude that offers others the freedom both to be who they are and to be who they are becoming. This is where we can begin to bring peacemaking out the door, down the stairs, through the gate and into our neighborhoods.

Both our homes and we ourselves should be in relationship with our local neighborhoods, by which I mean our block, our town, our county and even our region. We make peace in our neighborhood when we counteract the fear of invasion by getting to know our immediate neighbors. We make peace when we walk across the street—literally or figuratively—to ask someone who is different from us to tell his or her story. These suggestions are interpersonal, but we also need to think of our participation in systems.

Wendell Berry provides key resources for this sort of consideration. He has much to offer the topic of peacemaking in our community, starting with his observation in an essay titled "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" that "possibly the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: what sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints of 'right livelihood'?" By economy, Berry does "not mean 'economics,' which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of nature." He observes a cycle of give and take, cautioning that we must draw on the interest of creation, never the principle.

For Berry and for others who consider the question of "right livelihood" in community, the process begins with learning to see. Berry writes:

If you want to see where you are, you will have to get out of your spaceship, out of your car, off your horse, and walk over the ground. On foot you will find that the earth is still satisfyingly large and full of beguiling nooks and crannies…. Abstraction is the enemy wherever it is found.... Local life may be as much endangered by those who would "save the planet" as by those who would "conquer the world." For "saving the planet" calls for abstract purposes and central powers that cannot know—and thus will destroy—the integrity of local nature and local community… The right scale in work gives power to affection. When one works beyond the reach of one's love for the place one is working in and for the things and creatures one is working among, then destruction inevitably results. An adequate local culture, among other things, keeps work within the reach of love.

Again, we have the theme of understanding ourselves in relationship and in perspective. I gather from Berry the importance of supporting local agriculture, minimizing waste—and literally getting out of the car, off our horses and into our neighborhoods on foot and on bikes to be in closer relationship with their people and with the spirits that pervade them.

Of course, if the extent of our destruction has begun to extend to the farthest corners of the earth in our global economy, we must also find ways for the whole world to be "within the reach of love." I'm not suggesting that we regress to "saving the planet," but that we must learn to be faithful in those global relationships into which we have already entered. We must ask such questions as: where is my food coming from? Where was my clothing made? Do the items I purchase represent fair wages in the process of their creation? If not, where can I make a change? How can my purchases reflect my desire to live off of the earth's interest, rather than its principle? We might start answering these questions by shifting a portion of our spending each year to that which is organic, fair trade, and locally produced.

In closing, I return, as I do again and again, to a poem that has been a great reassurance for Rob and I in our own work and we hope it holds some comfort for you, as well. Here is a portion of "A Future Not Our Own" by Archbishop Oscar Romero:

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

In this room, we share a desire to see and create peace and thank God that the seeds we plant and water, the foundations we lay, the yeast we provide will be different according to our individual circumstances and callings. If each one of us does something, that will be a big thing. Let us remember Mother Teresa's words: "We can do no great things; only small things, with great love." And let us transform the world through small, conscious acts of hospitality, of love, of beauty, of generosity—whatever acts we are presented with the power to do each day so that we overcome the weariness of longing for that which is beyond the reach of our love and become strengthened for the rest of our journey. To God, we are small, but significant things. Let our actions toward peace in our community also be small, but significant.