Waking Up to Peace
DATE: December 7, 2008
SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 11:1‐9
Later this afternoon I’ll be flying down to Kentucky for two days to visit my Mom and Dad. While I’m looking forward to seeing them, I’m not looking forward to the trip. I’ll have to drive to the airport, struggle to find expensive parking, wait in line to get my boarding pass, wait in line to go through security, walk around stocking footed for a few minutes, endure lousy food and noisy television monitors, all for the privilege of being shoved into a tiny seat on not one but two separate puddle jumpers, which may or may not be on time. On the plus side, I think I can avoid the baggage carousels this trip, but when I get to Kentucky I still have to wait in a line to get my rental car and then drive another hundred miles to their home.
I’m reminded of the story about the holiday traveler who plopped down his suitcase at the ticket counter, and noticed a bit of mistletoe above the scales. “Why is that there?” he asked the ticket agent. “So you can kiss your luggage goodbye.”
No wonder folks at airports and on airplanes are rarely at their best. I’ve heard angry customers rip ticket agents to shreds. I’ve seen people bump and push their way through lines like they were the only person in the world who needed to get somewhere. And most times I fly I am amazed at the amount of junk and litter people leave behind them on the seats and in the aisles when they deplane. Air travel is usually frustrating, and sometimes downright infuriating! Indeed, one recent survey indicated that 83% of the respondents claimed travelers today are ruder today than ten years ago.
But that, according to Jason Barger, may be precisely what makes airports the perfect place to hone our skills as peacemakers. Barger, you see, is a consultant and a frequent flyer, who recently conducted an almost masochistic experiment. He decided to spend seven consecutive days and nights in the air travel system to see how people respond to the stress and anxiety of flying. He traveled from Columbus, Ohio to seven different destinations on both coasts. And he kept a journal, noting all that he observed. “I started thinking, maybe the airport—with so many people going in literally different directions and so many different agendas—is where we could start thinking about beginning a more civil and graceful society.” (New York Times, 12‐2‐08, B4) Maybe, he says, instead of jumping up when the captain turns off the no seat belt sign, and cramming into the aisle with everybody else at the end of the flight, we could just stay seated, and let the frenzy go by. Instead of jostling for the best position at the baggage carousel, maybe we should just, stand back and wait calmly for our bags. And as we live with a greater measure of peace and serenity, it will influence others.
Barger’s premise is quite simple. If we want to have peace in our lives, he says, “we just have to start small… [We can]…change the world, by the way we live at the airport.” (Ibid) Idealistic? Perhaps. But no more idealistic than our passage from Isaiah. It is a beautiful description of what has been called the peaceable kingdom. It portrays a variety of traditional enemies, living at peace with one another. Lions and calves, wolves and lambs, little children and snakes. While its language is that of poetry and metaphor, it conveys a very real truth: peace is possible, even in the most challenging of situations. And he should know, for these words were offered up to the tiny nation of Judah as it faced the prospect of being conquered and occupied by Babylon, the superpower of the eighth century BCE.
But what is that makes peace possible? Faith—faith in God, and faith in God’s way of life. Not just intellectual belief, but faith in the sense of trust. Living our lives as God would have us live them, and trusting that ultimately that will lead to peace—inner peace and peace in our world.
And how would God have us live our lives? There are complex answers to that question, and there are simple ones. But ultimately, they all boil down to love. And that means honoring God by treating others as you would want to be treated yourself.
It starts, of course, with loving God. That means recognizing that you are not the final authority. It means finally realizing that that the world doesn’t revolve around your concerns and issues. It means acknowledging that the Creator stands at the center of the universe— and at the center of your life. But also, it means truly believing that you are loved. You hear me say it every week, and I will say it till the day I leave this pulpit: “You are loved, you are accepted, you are forgiven, you are welcomed home.” It is that sense of being at home with God that can give us the real inner peace we so long for in this troubled world of ours.
No one has ever captured this sense of peacefulness any better than D. H. Lawrence, in his poem, “Pax” (peace in Latin).
All that matters is to be at one with the Living God,
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire of life.Feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master, sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.
You see, peace ultimately, is all about feeling at home. Feeling at home in your own skin. Feeling at home in your own house. Feeling at home in your neighborhood, in your church, in your town, in your country and in your world. When we feel threatened, when we feel unsafe, that is when the peace is broken. That’s when the fights break out.
But the good news is that when we do feel at home, when we are at peace with God and with ourselves, then we can be at peace with others. And peace can spread. We all love the song “Let there be peace on earth” for it holds up an ideal we treasure—but it does so in a very realistic way as it reminds us to let it begin with me. It starts in our very souls, as we come to peace with God and with ourselves. And then it spreads outward—to our families, our church, our community, our world, and, yes, as Jason Barger, suggests, even to the airport.
Which brings us full circle. Back to the airport, where I will get to test out my theory first hand this afternoon. But in a more significant way, I’ll get to test it out when I arrive in Kentucky, where my parents live. For you see, two weeks ago, my Dad was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. After a messy stay in the ICU at their local hospital, the doctors sent him home with the care of hospice, and more importantly, my mother.
Dad has been through a lot over the last sixteen years. As most of you know he has been mentally and physically disabled, ever since he was struck by a drunk driver while on his evening walk. So this comes as yet one more blow in a long series of blows. But through it all my mother has been a source of peace and calm for our whole family. Her live changed on that January night in more ways than I can imagine. But she has remained steady through it all. And her sense of calm has helped her children, her friends and her neighbors, be at peace. Sometimes people ask me how she does it. And sometimes I wonder myself.
But then I remember, that every morning, my mother gets up long before Dad is awake, long before her helper arrives, and takes her cup of coffee and quietly sits in her favorite chair. She reads from the scriptures, and the writings of the spiritual giants, and writes in her journal, and she prays. It’s early yet, the sun is barely rising, so she may yawn, and stretch a bit, but she is once again reassured of God’s great love. And so she is at peace. Like the cat in the D. H. Lawrence poem, she is at one with the living God.
And when she gets up from her chair, that sense of peace and calm will spread once more throughout the house, throughout her world.
And what’s true for Connie Danner can be true for you as well. In your family, at church, at work—and yes, even at the airport.
Amen.
John H. Danner