Peace Begins at Home

Easter 6, Yr. B, May 12, 2012

Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

“Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
 Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence indicate possession.
 As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of counsel.
 Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
 Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace ...
each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
 and the earliest period consistent with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international questions,
the great and general interests of peace.”[1]

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe took on a new issue and a new cause. Distressed by her experience of the realities of war, determined that peace was one of the two most important causes of the world (the other being equality in its many forms) and seeing war arise again in the world in the Franco-Prussian War, she called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. She issued a Declaration, hoping to gather together women in a congress of action.”[2]  That declaration is what you just heard.

She never was able to get her Mother’s Day for Peace formerly recognized by the government. It took until 1914 for the day to be marked officially on our national calendar.  By that time, it had morphed into a day to honor mothers and motherhood.  The concern for peace had been all but been forgotten.

Peace isn’t just about ending the violence one nation commits against another.  Its focus is not the military activity of a country.  Its foundation is in the human heart.  If we cannot love one another, how can we expect communities to express love for one another, or countries to act out of love toward one another? 

F.D. Maurice, an Anglican Theologian of the 1800’s, wrote that we begin to learn how to act morally in our families, through relationships with parents and siblings.  Those relationships are the incubator for the development of things like trust, obedience, authority, and fraternity.  In those relationships we also learn about our own tendency toward self-interest, greed and covetousness.  In families, we experience that first inner tension between concern for our own desires and concern for the desires and needs of another… a tension that can lead us into confrontation as we place our own desires above others or into communion when we choose to give for others. 

These familial experiences become the building blocks of “conscience”.   They become the foundations from which we will make decisions about how to act in the larger society.  Families play a critical role in bringing about peace in our communities and in our world, because families are the training ground for love.  As parents and guardians of children we have an awesome responsibility!

At a clergy meeting a while ago, a few priests talked about how they had removed some of the language about sin from the baptismal liturgy.  They said that parents had met with them and were “turned off” by the frequent mentioning of sin in the service.  The parents felt that it sounded negative and accusatory.  They didn’t want their child’s life in the church to begin on such a negative note.  They wanted it to be an experience of joy.   They didn’t realize that the joy is there!  They didn’t realize that the joy in our baptismal liturgy exists precisely because we are able to admit that we are bound to sin.  The joy is there because we are made free in God’s love, and our acceptance of it.

Baptism keeps us honest.  We’re reminded that we are not always on the mark.  Baptism reminds us that we should have our sights set on God’s priorities, not our own.  It reminds us that we are called to live looking outward, and not focusing all of our energies inward.  Without an awareness of sin, we could easily forget that what we do has an impact on others.  We might just fall into a pattern of thinking that it’s “all about me”.  Baptism reminds us that it is our loving relationship with God that saves us from sin.  In it, we are called as one of Christ’s own; we are God’s beloved.  We are reminded that the very relationship we have with God is one we are to replicate on earth with others.  That love isn’t something that is meant to be tucked away like a treasured photograph in a locket.  It’s a locket meant to be given to each and every one of us, opened wide and shared with the world. 

When Peter was speaking with the crowd, the Holy Spirit fell on everyone … not just the Jews who were there.  It fell on the Gentiles also, and that surprised everyone.  It surprises us still.  Wherever the Spirit is present, we are in the company of brothers and sisters in Christ.  Wherever God is present, the Spirit is at work binding us together in love.  We are called to act lovingly … with mercy and compassion.  No ifs, ands or buts.  Not just to members of our immediate families; not just to others who look like us, not just to those who earn the same salary as us, or to those who live in the same neighborhood as us.  It’s bigger than that, and it all starts in our homes.

Julia Ward Howe wrote this.  “I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. Religion is primarily our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, who is highest and who is not; of that we know nothing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion.”[3]

            As adults in families, we have tremendous power, the power to bring about peace.  May we use that power to invite peace into our own hearts, and into the world every day.  Happy Mother’s Day to all women who touch the lives of children with love, whether they be children of their own or someone else’s. 

Amen.

---

[1] By Julia Ward Howe.  Mother’s Day Proclamation.  Written in 1870.

[2]Lewis, Jone Johnson.  Julia Ward Howe: Mother's Day and Peace: Beyond the Battle Hymn of the Republic, http://womenshistory.about.com/od/howejuliaward/a/julia_ward_howe_4_mothers_day.htm

[3] Howe, Julia Ward, 1893. Julia Ward Howe spoke at the Parliament of the World's Religions at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, Chicago World's Fair. Her topic, "What is Religion?" outlined Howe's understanding of general religion and what religions have to teach each other.  Taken from http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_1893_pwr_howe.htm.