by Rev. Kate Lore

A sermon given March 2, 2008

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

I want to begin with a story.

Once upon a time, there was a good and kind woman who yearned for peace in the world and peace in her heart but she was very frustrated.  The world seemed to be falling apart all around her.  She would read the newspapers each day and get so depressed.  Thus, she did what many of us Americans do when feeling this way – she went shopping!

She headed over to a nearby mall and picked a store at random. When she walked in, she looked all around and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter.  She knew it was Jesus because he looked just like the pictures.  But it seemed so unlikely!  Finally, she got up her nerve and asked, "Excuse me, sir, but are you Jesus?"

"Yes, I am," he replied.

"Do you work here?"

"No, I own the place."

The woman took a breath. "What do you sell in here?"

"Oh, just about anything,” he said. “What do you want?"

"Well, I don't really know."

Jesus looked at her kindly and said, "Well, feel free to wander up and down the aisles and make a list of what you want.  Then come back and I'll see what I can do for you."

So the woman did just that.  Walking up and down the aisles, she found peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, happy families, no more drug abuse, clean air and water, careful use of resources, and equality for people of all colors, abilities, and sexual preferences — so many wonderful things!  She wrote furiously and returned to the counter with a long list.  Jesus took the list and skimmed through it.  Then he looked up at her and smiled. "No problem."

Then Jesus bent down behind the counter and rummaged around for quite a while.  When he stood up, he laid out an assortment of packets. "What are these?" the woman asked. Jesus replied, "Seed packets."  "Seed packets?  You mean I don't get the finished product?"  "No, friend,” he replied.  “This is a place of dreams.  You come in and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds.  It is up to you to go home and plant the seeds.  You will need to nurture them and help them to grow, and in the end someone else reaps the benefits."  The woman swallowed. "Oh."

And she went home without buying anything.[1]

Yes, that’s right:  She turned her back on her dreams of a better world that day.  She just didn’t feel up to the enormity of the task: so much work and somebody else reaps the benefits?  No thank you!  I’m sure some of you can relate to this woman; I know I can.

Now I’d like to think that if the woman in our story had not gone into that store alone, but rather with a bunch of her friends of fellow church members, she might have chosen a different path, but this we will never know.  What we do know is that working for peace is difficult and daunting work that is impossible to do in isolation.  We need each other.

Another thing we know is that creating peace is the greatest challenge of our times — or of all times, for that matter.  All one has to do is take a look at human history and one will see how unsuccessful we have been at maintaining long periods of peace.  As far as I know, the longest period of peace that this world has ever known was the 200-year reprieve from war during the Pax Romana.  But this was a form of peace enforced by the Roman Empire on its subject nations, so I am reluctant to call it peace.  The subjects of the Roman Empire weren’t happy and their lives were not equal to those of the Roman citizens.  They were a repressed people who were intimidated into submission.  It was more like a state of constant threat than a state of constant peace. 

Which is remarkably similar to the peace tactics of the Bush Administration.  The leaders of our country like to call themselves peacemakers.  But the peace of which they speak is not true peace.  It is maintained in much the same way as the Pax Romana.  It is a peace derived by threatening and attacking any country whose worldview does not conform to the worldview of American hegemony (might I dare say Halliburton hegemony?).  So although we are assured that our foreign policies are ostensibly about peace they’re really about profiteering and defense – defending a privileged way of life that, I might add, is increasingly at risk.  This is not true peace.

So what does true peace look like?  Can you even imagine it anymore?  Do you find yourself doubting that peace is even possible?  Let’s face it: this is a particularly difficult time to ponder this question.

This month marks the 5^th anniversary of a horribly immoral war and some leaders are suggesting that this war might — and should — go on indefinitely.  In addition, random gun violence is erupting in all segments of our society so that few places feel safe or peaceful anymore.  Even our language reflects a tendency towards violence.  There’s the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, the war on poverty and the war on crime.  Americans have become war-obsessed.  Some might even say war dependent.  How is one supposed to nurture seeds of peace in an environment like this?!

Well, according to Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn, it is precisely at times like this that we have be become active gardeners of peace.  This mess in which we find ourselves is ugly yet fertile.  Like the lotus that emerges from the mud, we are called to bring forth something beautiful from the ugliness in which we find ourselves.

But before we begin this transformation, before we lay anything into the soil, we must recognize the full array of seeds within our grasp.   Our minds contain all kids of seeds: seeds of understanding, seeds of forgiveness, seeds of mindfulness and seeds of ignorance, fear and hatred.  We must realize that at any given moment, we can behave with either violence or compassion, depending on the strength of the seeds within us.

When the seeds of anger, violence and fear are watered in us several times a day, they will grow stronger.  Then we are unable to be happy and unable to accept ourselves.   We suffer and we make those around us suffer as well.

Yet, when we cultivate the seeds of compassion, we nourish peace within us and around us.  With this understanding, this awareness, we are already on the path of creating true peace.

But, you might ask, what about the very real threat of terrorism?  How can we seriously and successfully nurture peace outside of ourselves when so many in our world hate us?  Wouldn’t it be naïve to think that we should show compassion to our enemies?

Thich Nhat Hahn responds to this question with these words: “To uproot the weeds of terrorism, we first have to look at what anchors its roots.[2]”  We must ask ourselves why it is that so many hate this country.  What is being done in our name that would threaten them?  Could it be that much of the world feels coerced by our government?  Could it be that the world is tired of supporting our unhealthy addictions to fossil fuels?  Or our bottomless greed?  Or our arrogant desire to control the world economy?

Now please don’t get me wrong.  I am not suggesting that any action justifies acts of terrorism.  But I want to emphasize that the seeds of terrorism lie within the hearts of all human beings.  When we feel oppressed and exploited, when we feel that attempts at dialogue are being disregarded, those seeds of terrorism take root.  When we see our governments overthrown, when we watch our friends and family die all around us, when we feel powerless to remedy a peaceful remedy, then those seeds of terrorism grow into strong, vital plants.  And that’s what is happening today.  The longer this war goes on, the more terrorists we create.  This has been proven time and again over the course of human history.

Take these words from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan:

“No one ever promised it would be easy to rid the world of the scourge of war, which is so deeply rooted in human history -- perhaps, even in human nature.  No one ever said there would be no setbacks.  No one ever promised us that the road would always be clear, or that those sincerely committed to peace would not sometimes be deeply divided.  We all want peace.  [But] we all also want justice.  No one wants to choose between the two.  All of us feel instinctively that they must go together.  Is not injustice one of the main causes of conflict and war?”  He goes on to ask, “Can there be true and lasting peace without justice?”

The answer, of course, is no.  Peace is possible, but if we want to create peace that is true, if we want to create peace that is not based on threats and repression, we must also work for justice for all people.  Not just for the privileged; not just for the people who live within our national borders.  Not just for people aligned with one political party or religion, or skin color or sexual orientation.  We must work for justice for everyone.

So where do we start?  I believe we must begin by both turning and turning to one another.  By looking deeply and listening deeply, we discover the suffering within our own lives, the lives of our neighbors and the lives of people in other countries.  Once this awareness is born, we come into the realization that punishment, violence and war are not the answer to our problems.  As so many of our spiritual leaders have reiterated, the true antidote to hatred and violence is love and compassion.

Does this mean that we all have to become saints?  No.  As Thich Nhat Hahn tells us, “The first step is to come home to ourselves.  You don’t need to become a Buddha.  You need to become yourself[3].”

Dick Gilbert, a friend of mine who is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister and social activist once shared a story about Manuel Lubian, who is a Mexico City taxi driver.  Manuel made the news because he refused to accept a reward after spending two days hunting down a passenger who had left $53,000 in his cab.  Explaining why he didn’t just keep the money, he said, “I felt that I would lose the beauty inside of me.”

These seeds of beauty are inside each one of us, my friends.  Let us water them.  We are also born with the capacity to love deeply.

Feminist theologian Carter Heyward speaks of love in her book, Passion for Justice:

“Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete...  [It] is ...a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relations with one's friends and enemies.

“Love creates... justice, here on earth ...  As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk.  People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm, fuzzy experience...

“... loving involves commitment.  We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God.  Love does not just happen.  We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love."  Love is a choice – not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile.  Love is a conversion to humanity – a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives.  Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.”

As we go into this month’s focus on the war in Iraq, it seems this is a good place for us to begin, with the understanding that peace and justice are the products of a hard won, hard-earned love.  However difficult the journey might be, we are each called to be aware of life, to be an ambassador of peace, and to be worthy of our own best self.  If the journey were too easy, it wouldn’t be worth the investment of our lifetimes.  And in the end, it is not by ourselves that we are fulfilled. It is by love that we are made more whole.

May it be so.

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Copyright 2008, Rev. Kate Lore.  All rights reserved.