If I
performed my calculations correctly, this weekend our nation celebrates
its 229th birthday. Most families will be celebrating the holiday with
barbecues, picnics, and perhaps watching the local firework displays.
Other families will be celebrating at the shore. They’ll be swimming,
sunning to build up a tan, and perhaps eating cotton candy while taking a stroll on the
Boardwalk. Still some other families will have traveled to distant locales
for family vacations.
It all
sounds so very relaxing and peaceful, doesn’t it? For me, the image
conjures up a portrait reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell cover on the
Saturday Evening Post.
Yet, in
the midst of this celebrating, we dupe ourselves if we fail to remember
the fact that our nation is at war. Peace is currently a pipedream and a vague
hope, not a reality. Our men and women in uniform are engaged in a
deadly battle against the insidious forces of worldwide terrorism that
threaten not only the peace we oftentimes take for granted but also our
freedoms—if not our lives—as we discovered on the tragic morning of 9/11.
It was
the much the same when our nation was founded 229 year ago. While
Patrick Henry was saying “Give me liberty or death,” thousands of
soldiers were giving their lives for the cause of liberty during the
Revolutionary War. Just a short distance from our church, many of our
nation’s first soldiers starved and froze to death in Valley Forge.
It was
no different during the Civil War, as the memorial at Gettysburg
attests. Nor did the first and second World Wars, the war in Viet Nam,
and the subsequent conflicts in Korea, Kuwait, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq prove any
different.
War
requires generous citizens, women and men who are willing to sacrifice
their lives by serving at the tip of the sword, to preserve the peace
that their fellow citizens oftentimes take for granted.
As we
pray for the end of the war against terrorism and the healthy and safe
return home of our men and women serving in the Armed Forces, we need to
recall that our faith instructs us that it is not through war and by
conquering enemies that nations achieve peace. A temporary cessation of
hostilities might ensue after one nation conquers another; but, as
history sadly proves instructive, war inevitably will break out again. In
contrast, faith teaches that our hearts are “programmed” or “hotwired” for peace.
Yet, this peace is not the peace we oftentimes define as “the absence of
hostilities.”
The
prophet Zechariah announced God’s word as the Jewish people living in
Jerusalem at the turn of the 3rd century before Christ feared for their
lives. Alexander the Great and his army were mowing down enemies one by
one and pressing, the Israelites feared, toward Jerusalem. The
Israelite army was no match for Alexander’s mercenaries. “What’s going
to happen to us?” Israelites were asking.
Twenty
three centuries later, the same fear raged within the hearts of the
citizenry of Paris, France. On June 3, 1940, as Nazi air raids were
bombing the French capital into submission, 2000 German tanks were moving with
lightning speed toward Paris to take it over. Eight days later,
with the
city standing in ruins, the French government fell. “What’s going to
happen to us?” Parisians asked one another. Then, almost three
weeks later—on June 22nd—the French signed an armistice with Germany in
the same railway car Germany signed its humiliating armistice to end
World War I.
In the
face of threats like these, the prophet Zechariah told the Israelite
people that fidelity to God is the only thing capable of bringing about
the kind of peace for which their hearts yearned. “Even if the enemy
should be victorious,” Zechariah asked the Israelites, “what does it
matter since allegiance to God brings the peace for which your hearts
yearn?”
It
would be as if Zechariah asked the Parisians in 1940, “So what if the
Nazis conquer you? What does it matter? Even if you lose your liberty,
fraternity, and equality, fidelity to God will bring you true peace.”
Or, a little closer to home, it would be as if Zechariah was challenging
us, “So what if the Islamofacists win? What does it matter? Even if
you lose your freedom and liberty, if you are faithful to God, you will
have true peace.”
The
kind of peace defined as “the absence of war” obviously is not the kind
of peace about which Zechariah was teaching. Speaking on God’s behalf,
the prophet was teaching the Israelites—and all generations of humankind
as well—about the kind of peace the heart yearns for when, for example,
spouses are estranged, family gatherings are filled with tension because
relationships with the in-laws at the breaking point, or parents are at
wits’ end because a child has been defiant. All of these evils—and each
truly is an evil—turn families and homes into war zones. It would seem
easier, wouldn’t it, to live in slavery to an evil regime than to live
with a broken heart that yearns for peace with one’s spouse, in-laws,
and children?
That is
the idea the prophet Zechariah wanted the Israelites—and wants us
also—to ponder.
We can
narrowly define peace as “the absence of war” or “the cessation of
hostilities,” but we dupe ourselves if we believe that is the peace for
which our hearts yearn. Our hearts yearn to “rest in peace” with God
and neighbor, in relationships where there is no enmity, shame,
embarrassment, or hurt. Our hearts yearn to “rest in peace” where we
feel secure and are able to enjoy the most important in things life.
Our hearts yearn to “rest in peace” where we don’t fret, worry, or
become anxious about what tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year
may bring.
As strange as it may
sound, this peace is what Viktor Frankl reported in his book, Man’s
Search for Meaning. As Jewish women, men, and children faced
extermination in the death camps of Auschwitz and Dachau, Frankl
discovered that human beings have a will to meaning that, if frustrated,
leads to spiritual sickness.
Frankl
wrote:
This
was the lesson I had to learn in three years spent in Auschwitz and
Dachau: other things being equal, those apt to survive the camps were
those oriented toward the future—toward a task, or a person waiting for
them in the future, toward a meaning to be fulfilled by them in the
future.
Even in the most dire
of circumstances, human beings can discover meaning in the moment which
offers
“a sequence of unrepeatable situations each of which offers a specific
meaning to be recognized and fulfilled.” Meaning—experienced in
peace of heart even in the most difficult and trying of circumstances—is
not invented but discovered.
Jesus’
teaching about how to bring about this kind of peace is very different
from how human beings seek to achieve peace. Throughout the
generations, political leaders have concluded that there is no other way
to achieve peace other than by the force of armed conflict that brings
an enemy to his knees or obliterates him from the face of the earth.
But, translating what the prophet Zechariah taught the Israelites as
they pondered the desire for peace in their day as Alexander the Great
and his troops advanced toward Jerusalem, Jesus’ life and death stands
in stark contradiction to what political leaders throughout history have
believed will bring and sustain the peace.
Don’t
get me wrong. It is not that going to war is always wrong.
As St. Augustine taught in the fourth century, there is such a thing as
a “just war.” What Jesus’ teaching warns his disciples about is
that they will not discover the kind of peace for which their hearts
yearn simply by declaring and winning wars. Jesus wants his
disciples to contemplate his life and to make it their yoke, the pattern
by which they live their lives, so that they will rest in the peace for
which their hearts yearn. This is what “the wise and the learned”
have failed to understand throughout the centuries but the “little ones”
have always understood. Yes, strength and power do win wars, but they do not
bring the abiding peace for which human hearts yearn. Jesus tells his disciple
that simplicity, humility, and meekness bring that kind of peace.
If we
really want to rest in the peace of heart that so many soldiers
throughout the ages have given their
lives for, Jesus teaches his disciples to recognize that the pathway of
love and forgiveness—not the pathway of power and domination—is what
brings abiding peace of heart even in the most difficult and trying of
times and circumstances, like a crucifixion or an extermination camp.
Yes,
sometimes it is absolutely necessary for nations to declare war and to
engage in it as a necessary evil. But, as Jesus disciples, we must
remember that throughout history war has proven only to bring about a
temporary cessation of hostilities. War is not the pathway to rest in
the peace for which our hearts yearn.
“Even
if the enemy should be victorious,” Zechariah asked, “what does it
matter since allegiance to God brings the peace for which your hearts
yearn?” “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” Jesus said to
his , “for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for
yourselves. |