A Peaceful Church – or a Peace Church?

Good morning, Friends! Thank you all for coming to worship today.

There are a couple of interesting things going on this week, which might have slipped by you. Did you happen to notice on Wednesday, that some people around town had a black mark on their foreheads?

Last week was Ash Wednesday. It’s a day that marks the beginning of Lent, the six week season of preparing for Easter. It’s a time to reflect, and read the Bible. It’s a time to clean up our lives a little.

When I was a boy, in the Catholic church, Lent was a time to fast. Everyone gave up eating meat for six weeks. Some people did extra, and gave up chocolate or desserts or something they really liked. It was a reminder that Jesus suffered so much, and that we could give up something, too.

The other thing you might not have noticed, is that last week was the beginning of the Muslim month of Ramadan. Ramadan is a sacred month for Muslims. It honors the time when God gave the Quran — the Muslim holy book — to them.

During Ramadan, Muslims all over the world fast – they don’t eat or drink anything – every day from dawn till sunset.

You might think of that as a hardship, but most Muslims feel that fasting helps them to focus on their spiritual life. It’s a time for unity and togetherness. In the evening, you break your fast with family and friends. It’s a time for quiet celebration.

If you have Muslim friends or neighbors, you can greet them this month with the traditional greeting, Ramadan mubarak, which means “Have a blessed season of Ramadan”.

The traditional reply is, Ramadan kareem, which means, “May Ramadan be a sweet time for you.”

You may not be aware, just how much we owe to our Muslim neighbors. During what we call the Dark Ages in Europe, the Muslim world was flourishing.

Muslims were great scientists. They were astronomers, mathematicians, doctors and scholars.

Literally hundreds of words in English are actually adopted from Arabic. Algebra is an Arabic word. So are words like cotton, sugar, zero, algorithm, and chemistry.

We use words every day like orange, lemon, magazine, alcohol, mascara, tariff, mattress and sofa and we never realize that these are Arabic words, and all these things originated in Muslim countries.

Maybe we need to learn from our neighbors, and respect them a little bit more!

For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about what it means to be a church. We’ve talked about the fact that we are the church, and there are many good things that we do together.

We talked about unity and division, and we talked about who our role models are. Not just what our opinions are, but who are our role models.

Last week, we talked about how to build a church. And we looked at some different examples. Building a church is like taking a walk with Jesus. It’s like planting a garden. It’s like starting a new job. It’s like sewing a quilt. There are lots of ways to think about how to build a church.

Today, I want to turn to a different subject. The world needs peace. And everybody knows that Jesus is the Prince of Peace. But how is that real for us?

I’m going to start someplace you might not expect. Here are some words from one of Jesus’ own sermons, the Sermon on the Mount.

Don’t condemn others, and God won’t condemn you. God will be as hard on you as you are on others! He will treat you exactly as you treat them.

You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye. How can you say, “Hey, friend, let me take the speck out of your eye, when you don’t see the log in your own eye? Don’t be a hypocrite! First, take the log out of your own eye; then you can see how to take the speck out of your friend’s eye.

Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. Everyone who asks will receive. Everyone who seeks will find. And the door will be opened for everyone who knocks.

Treat others as you want them to treat you. This is what everything in the Bible is all about.

– Matthew 7:1-5, 7-8, 12

A peaceful church can mean a lot of different things. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago – a church which isn’t divided against itself, a place where people accept each other, where people treat each other well, where people don’t hate each other.

Even if we disagree about some things, in a peaceful church people still manage to love each other. We matter to each other. We know that we need every person here, because each person brings some very special gifts.

A peaceful church is also a place where people simply feel a spirit of peace.

Paulo Barata has spoken often to us in open worship, about how he feels a sense of peace every time he comes into this place. The land, the light, the love, all combine to bring a feeling of strong and lasting peace.

This is such an incredible gift! The world needs more places where people can feel peace.

Away from the noise of the world. Away from the constant battering of news and opinions.

A place where it’s all right, it’s more than all right, to simply be yourself, to feel God’s presence, to be still and be renewed.

The world needs more “thin places” – places where God feels very near, where people aren’t mocked because they’re seeking God, where you can feel the presence of generations of invisible saints.

A peaceful church is a gift to the world, and this meeting is that kind of place.

But is that enough? Is it enough to be a peaceful place? Maybe that’s all we can be. Maybe that’s all we have the strength to be. I don’t know. But I think there may be more.

Do we rest on our past too much? Do we talk too much about things our church did 100 years ago? Do we ever go out and share our peace with the world?

Jesus talked about this when he told his disciples, “Whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, and stay with him until you depart. As you enter the house, salute it. 13 And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you . . .” (Matthew 10:11-13)

I listen to other churches and church leaders, who keep saying that we need to stand up and witness.

Last month in the news, an Episcopal bishop told their priests that they all need to be willing to lay down their lives to resist the evil of today. A very strong statement.

Other church leaders say that if we’re not out on the front lines, shouting and demonstrating, then we aren’t Christians at all.

There’s some truth to this. I think we focus so much on being a peaceFUL church, that we may be missing out on our calling to be a peace church.

Being a peace activist takes a lot of energy. And I have known many, many, many activists who have crashed and burned.

Maybe behind every peace activist, there needs to be an entire congregation, supporting them. Maybe the world needs witnesses and martyrs. But witnesses and martyrs also need peaceful people to sustain them.

Not everyone can be a witness or an activist for every cause. It’s OK to focus on one thing, or a few things, rather than trying to shout or convince people about everything.

And even though shouting is sometimes necessary and important, shouting isn’t the only thing to do. Not everyone is convinced or changed by huge crowds of demonstrators, or by making lots of noise.

Peace is also about endurance and loyalty, and not just responding to the latest outrage. Peace is about prayer just as much as protest.

Sometimes peace is simply walking. I’m thinking about that group of Buddhist monks who walked through our community last month.

They care a lot about peace. And they decided to walk 2,300 miles from their home in Texas all the way to Washington, DC. The walk took 4 months. When they reached High Point, more than 9,000 people turned out to see them.

For four months they walked. Through heat and rain and freezing weather. The monks reminded us that walking is a powerful form of witness.

They didn’t ask anyone to join them on their walk. They didn’t hand out leaflets. They didn’t shake hands. Most of the time, they kept their eyes on the ground, so that their prayers wouldn’t be interrupted.

All along the way, they ate just one meal a day in the evening. They slept on the floor, In churches and schools and fire stations.

And for almost three-fourths of the way, many of them walked barefoot, because that’s the way they normally walk, and because walking barefoot is a way to be humble and connected to the earth. 20 or 25 miles a day, for weeks on end, praying for peace.

This week, I’ve seen reports that the monks may have been nominated already for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I can identify with those monks. When I was in college, when I first joined the Quakers, the nearest Quaker meeting was 7 miles out in the country. There was no bus, and I didn’t have a car.

So every Sunday, for four years, I got up very early, and I walked for 7 miles out to the meetinghouse.

Every week, I saw the sleeping city as I left it behind me. I saw the seasons change. On many mornings, I saw the sun rise. I saw the deer in the fields, and I got to know many of the trees and plants along the road.

The meeting was a peaceful place, a peaceful church. But to get there, I had to walk seven miles, roughly an hour and three quarters.

When I got there, every week, I borrowed the key to the meetinghouse, which was kept hanging behind the door of a neighbor’s barn.

I went into the kitchen at the meetinghouse and made a simple breakfast. I kept some oatmeal and raisins and brown sugar in the kitchen, and I cooked my cereal and ate it quietly.

And then I would go into worship. In four years at college, I probably walked over 1,000 miles. Not quite as much as the monks, but enough for me to understand a little about them.

Another way to look at being a peace church is to look at how we support a few things, without giving up, for a long time.

About 135 years ago, a couple of traveling Quaker ministers stopped for the night in the village of Ramallah in Palestine. Ramallah had about 3,000 people living there back then. There are about 40 or 50,000 people there now, with another city nearby and a couple of large refugee camps.

According to the story, a girl from Ramallah asked the Quaker ministers, Eli and Sybil Jones, if they could start a school for girls there. The Friends school at Ramallah has been going ever since.

One of our members, Laura Davis, was a teacher there for 7 years. Some people here still remember her! Laura Davis planned to be at Ramallah for only 3 years, but the Second World War came along and it was too dangerous for her to return to the United States. So she stayed teaching at Ramallah for 7 years.

Many Quakers from North Carolina have visited and taught there, including Max and Jane Carter.

It’s great that many of us support our local schools here in this community. But there’s also this other school, this Quaker school, full of kids who want to learn and who are like kids everywhere in the world.

The students and the teachers keep going under incredible pressure. They’re arrested and detained and harassed on a daily basis. The Israeli government and settlers would like to close it.

But with a lot of help from Quakers around the world, the school at Ramallah is still open and provides a first-class education.

This week as I was out doing some errands, I listened on the radio to a new story from Gaza. Food is still very scarce. Between 80 and 90% of the buildings have been completely destroyed.

And remember, all of Gaza is less than a quarter of the size of all of Guilford County. Two million Palestinians live there, more than four times as many people as live in this county. And close to 75,000 people in Gaza have been killed

But one of the first things that people in Gaza have asked for, is help starting schools for their children again. Almost all of the schools in Gaza were destroyed, or are being used for emergency housing or medical clinics.

The radio interview said that last month, UNICEF started delivering what they call “schools in a box” – large cardboard shipping crates.

Each crate contains all the materials for a class to start – a tent, seats or mats for the children to sit, a blackboard, books and paper and pencils and all the basic supplies to start teaching again.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/unicefusa_unicef-delivers-school-in-a-box-kits-to-gaza-activity-7427730138038951937-RV6G

The teacher they interviewed said that the Israeli military drones are constantly overhead. She sometimes has to shout for the children to be able to hear her. I don’t know what we would do, in those conditions. But the people of Gaza have an incredible spirit, and they’re trying again.

This is a LOT to fit into one Sunday morning! What I want us to take home is how important peace is.

Wanting peace is a human thing. We all want peace. But we also believe that peace is what God wants.

It’s important for us to be a peaceful place. It’s important for us to seek out and celebrate stories of peace.

And it’s important for us all to pray for peace, every day. But if we find an opportunity to witness, take it. And if someone we meet is working for peace, help them.
We need to be not just a peaceful church, but a peace church.