A few months before he died, I got out a tape recorder and interviewed my Dad. What follows is a story he told me that I have transcribed directly from that tape:
“Long ago, [my father said] I went to Rangoon, in Burma. In the countryside I saw a huge tree. It was a hot day. Three mothers sat in the shade of the tree breastfeeding their babies. What a beautiful sight! This was a picture that God drew. This picture represents the gospel. Thoughts should be soft. Soft thoughts start by embracing relationships first. That big tree was creating soft shade for those mothers. I imagine that those infants must have been enjoying their mother’s soft breasts.”
This morning is the second Sunday of Advent. Jess and Kerri just lit the candle of Peace for us.
So this worship service is dedicated to peace.
I like the way my father spoke of the gospel in that story. I like the way he said that God drew the beautiful picture of the women in the shade of the tree breast feeding their children.
God drew.
Being a minister means trying to think spiritually. To me, this means trying to see the things that God draws.
As a poet and as a writer, I am well suited to this. I am not very interested in one plus one equals two. I am more interested in the spiritual truth, which we discover, not through the precise language of 1+1=2, but through the imprecise language of symbol and narrative.
I prefer not to define the spiritual, because I think that God doesn’t want to be defined.
As soon as someone defines God, that thing is no longer God.
But God doesn’t mind being described.
That’s what the Bible is – a very long and involved description of God.
And that’s what my father meant when he said that God drew the picture of the women in the shade of the tree.
God was describing something.
I would say that God was describing peace.
**
When I describe peace, I think of the pond at twilight.
It is midsummer and there is hardly a breath of wind.
See, the surface of the water is still, and as the day grows old and darkens, the reflection of the trees lining the shore merge with the briny depths.
The crickets have begun calling out to the night, and somewhere far off there is a sound of water – a fish jumping, or maybe the slap of a beaver tail.
My breath slows down, and with it my heart rate.
The sun, which is making its descent somewhere beyond the far ridge, has painted the high horsetail clouds a pink that changes from moment to moment.
This peace is a kind of vanishing. A universal contentment as the self dissolves into its origins. It is the peace that comes with the spiritual certainty that this rhythms that the earth and water obey cannot be distinguished from the beat of my heart.
Like every water molecule condescending in the upper atmosphere .
Like every pine needle, all a tremble in the stir of evening…
Like every leaf moving beneath the surface of the water…
this body too, is made of the stuff of stars, briefly given this shape I have called I.
I am that I am
God said to Moses.
Survival, Joseph Campbell said, is the second law of life. The first is that we are one.
**
When I think about peace, I often think of this place – the sanctuary of our church.
I remember that Cynthia once told me that she used to come here and sit in the quiet, when no one else was around. I too have loved this place when no one else is around.
On Sunday mornings I try to arrive here with plenty of time to get everything done. The first few minutes, as I walk through the sanctuary, flipping on the sound system and turning on the lights and opening the front door, are among the most delightfully peaceful minutes of my week.
There is a special kind of eeriness that you feel in a space that is intended for gatherings of people, but is empty. Stadiums, auditoriums, movie theaters, but especially church sanctuaries seem to contain the memory, or perhaps the echo, of human life even when they are empty. It is like a potential energy that seems, at any moment, could swell from silence into a chorus of rustles and whispers.
Our spaces are haunted, not by ghosts, but by us – by the love that we have known here, in this place.
And a church sanctuary – if it contains a loving community, as ours does – takes that feeling and deepens it, transforming it from something eerie to something beautiful.
Something that gives me a feeling of reverence.
The pews, so still, seem to mix our shadows with their own.
There is Cynthia Hamilton smiling quietly at the front on the left side. Mary K Duquette is a few rows back, and Sandi Carland, and Pauline Halfpenny are near the back.
The old wood bears the teeth marks of grandchildren who have now grown up and have families of their own.
The Pilgrim hymnals are threadbare from generations of hands.
Way back, under the last balcony pew the last fleeting notes of a Silent Night sung when our boys were fighting in the trenches of the Somme, and there, in the windows, the lingering reflection of candles lit during the Great Depression.
To say that our sanctuary is a beloved space is an understatement.
It is, of course, where we worship together, but it also where we greet each other, listen to each other, argue with each other, marry each other, and say goodbye.
This quiet place is the place where our people become community.
This is where, for generations, we have encountered the mystery, challenge, and comfort of God.
This is where we come to describe our God.
**
So far, this morning, I’ve described what I think of when I think about peace…
I hope that you can recognize the way that I describe peace because my descriptions are naturally influenced by what we, in our language and our culture, understand to be peaceful.
A pond at twilight is quiet and peaceful.
The sanctuary of a church is still. It is filled with the peace of a community.
Both places are peaceful also, in the sense that they are not places where war is taking place.
But what about Jesus?
Since we are followers of Jesus, it would be helpful for us to get a glimpse of the way he might have described peace.
Jesus was Jewish, and in the tradition of Jewish spirituality – of which the Hebrew Bible (formerly known as the Old Testament) – is our primary source, the word that is most often translated as peace is the word shalom.
On the back of the bulletin, you will see what the word looks like in Hebrew script — which, by the way, is read right to left. The first translation of the word shalom is “peace” — but consider, for a moment, the other meanings that the word shalom would suggest to a Jew like Jesus: things like wholeness. Well-being. Harmony with others and with God
My descriptions of peace – the twilit pond, and the quiet church, were moments of solitary peace.
But maybe Jesus, thinking of the word Shalom, might not have described peace in solitary terms.
He might have described peace in more communal terms.
The feeling of wholeness – the feeling of well being – these feelings that, to the Jewish mind are intimately related to the feeling peace…
these feelings are not solitary feelings. Wholeness and well-being are described as a kind of harmony – harmony with God and with other people.
In the passage from Isaiah that I read for you earlier, God spoke to the Children of Israel through the prophet. God admits that the divine anger flared against them, but God regrets that anger. God also makes a promise.
A covenant of peace.
The word that is translated as “covenant” is B’erith.
B’erith is a promise that either God makes, or an agreement between people that includes God as part of the agreement.
As an agreement, B’erith is an act of faith in the community. When God gives a covenant – a promise to the people – this promise involves shalom – peace, wholeness, well-being, harmony with God and others.
Covenant.
Being in community with each other and with God is to create peace. Create wholeness. Create wellbeing.
**
When God draws, God makes us whole by bringing us together.
This is why God draws for us the picture of a woman who sang in a choir for seventy years…
who walked the country roads with her daughter until two days before she died…
who lived among us
sat among us
who we loved.
and who we have only just learned to lose…
This is why God draws a picture of a child
born in a manger
because his parents could not find room in the inn,
who was born into a time of darkness,
but was filled with light.
Jesus is the covenant of peace.
Jesus is how God describes peace,
Emmanuel.
God among us.
And on this second Sunday of Advent, as we mourn the loss of our dear Gwen…
we, as people of faith, know that she was – that each of can be – a life that God drew.
The pictures that God draws promise us wholeness,
well being
and harmony.
When we come together, as a church community, that shalom becomes real in the world.
Amen