“Hands of Peace”

August 13, 2006

Scripture Reading:   Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

In a Peanuts cartoon, Lucy demanded that Linus change TV channels, threatening him with her fist if he didn’t.  “What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” asks Linus.

“These five fingers,” says Lucy.  “Individually, they’re nothing but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.”

“Which channel do you want?” asks Linus.  Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?”

Linus is right organized fingers can be very powerful.  The question is how to organize our fingers so that they are the most powerful. 

Organizing them in a fist is a very tempting possibility.  We chuckle at the Peanuts cartoon.  After all it shows a side of human nature that we all are familiar with.  We all have known a Lucy in our lives.  We all have known an annoying bossy older sister (or cousin, or friend…) who threatens us into compliance.  We all know what it feels like to be a Linus.  We want to be as powerful as her so we won’t get pushed around any more.  A fist is very effective.  It can slam into your hand making a point.  It can bonk a big sister on the head.  Or give her a black eye. 

I have just returned from vacation.  A lot has happened internationally since I have seen you last.  War has broken out in the Middle East.  We see television footage of bombs blazing in the night.  Israeli foot soldiers taking over the countryside.  Invisible Hezbulla soldiers raining down rockets on Israel.  Bloody civilians, holes in the tarmac, bodies on the street.  People everywhere in the Middle East have their hands in fists and are waving them across the border at their enemy.

 Although the Peanuts cartoon is at first funny, Lucy’s fisted approach to life quickly becomes a terrible approach when we see what grown ups can do with it.

Then, of course, there was the thwarted terrorist who were just about to execute a plan to highjack ten planes and detonate bombs on board.  Continental Airlines, United Airlines, and American Airlines were each to become a finger in a huge fist that the terrorists were trying to hit the United States and Britain with.  They wanted to get in the Guinness Book of World Records from hell  and beat the record for number of people killed in a terrorist attack.   Bodies, American and British, falling down from the sky like rain. 

What is the problem with a fist?  A fist is not about conflict resolution.  A fist is about violation.  It is about the violation of someone else’s rights.  Lucy violates Linus rights by demanding he change the TV channel with her fist.  Likewise, whoever starts a war violates the rights of the other country.  But, as all parents know with children if you try to break up a fist fight they both will declare absolutely that the other was the first to start the fight.  “I didn’t do it!”  “It was Linus who never…”  “It was Lucy who always…”  Every child makes a claim of being the victim and accuses the other of being the perpetrator. 

Linus is right organizing your fingers can be very powerful.  He looks at them and wishes, “Why don’t you guys organize like that?”  At first, a fist looks like the most powerful way to organize your fingers.  But, soon enough a fist really creates mayhem, confusion, fear, scattering broken pieces.

What other ways can we organize our fingers?  How about this one?  “Here is the church.  Here is the steeple.  Open the doors and here are the people!”  Like the cartoon this is a little jingle that children sing.  But, like the cartoon it really says a lot.   In fact, the whole letter to the Ephisians which we read today could be summed up with this children’s jingle.  “Here is the church.  Here is the steeple, Open the doors and here are the people!”

 For Christians, the people are a pivotal and essential part of Christianity.  When you think about it the jingle could have ended other ways.  Ways that at first might make more sense.  For instance, how about… “Here is the church.  Here is the cross.  Open the doors and it points to the Boss!”  The point of this jingle would be that the church is all about finding God through Jesus.  In this jingle, the people in the church are who you happen to bump into on the way to finding God.  The people are important in as much as they are who help you pay for the heating bills of the church.  The people can even be casual friends.  But, the people are not essential to the journey.  This is sort of like going to a Yoga class.  It can be very effective in some ways.  But the community of the class is not essential, really.  Whereas for Christianity we are.

  Or, how about the jingle ending this way.  “Here is the church.  Get the picture?  Open the doors and you read the Scripture.”  The theology behind this jingle is that the church is really about learning the Bible.  Again the people in the church are not essential to the church.  It is like a book club.  People who come together because they have all read the same book and want to discuss it.  Book clubs are very, fun and informative.  But, the important part is the book that is being read the people who come are add ons. 

No, the jingle the way we learned it as kids reveals a very important part of Christianity.  “Here is the church.  Here is the steeple.  Open the doors and here are the people!”  The people of the church are as important as Jesus and the Bible.  The revelation of God and the work of God continues through and amid us.

Earlier in the letter to the Ephesians we hear about the gifts of each one of the people of the church contributing to the whole.  Each person has been given a grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.  Some are apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers.  Each of us builds up all of us.  We as the community of the Church are more than the sum of our parts.  You all, make me a better Christian.  I pray that in some way, I make you a better Chrisitan.  The hand working as one can do so much more than the fingers working individually and without coordination.  The fingers grow together inot one hand, and one body.  They are knit together by every ligament.  Have you ever seen a great violist play the violin?  Like Linus said, “Hey why can’t you guys get organized like that?” 

Remember the story about the violin master that I told at the beginning of the service?  At that time I made the metaphor that we are like the 20 dollar violins that the mast was able to make sing in his hands.  But, the metaphor goes further.   It is also fair to say that the people of the church are the master’s fingers.  When we are working together, we make up the hand that moves by the will of the master and creates fabulous music in the world. 

However, living in a Christian community can be one of the hardest things about being a Christian.  After all the person next to you might be the person you were trying hard to avoid all week!  The person next to you might be the one who voted for the a political candidate that you think is the last living Neanderthal.  The person next to you sings too loudly, wears funny clothes, invades your personal space when talking to you at coffee afterwards.  Then, of course, there is the age old malady of church conflict.  I have been interim minister for lots of churches that have gone through church conflict.  The funny thing is that there might be few people conflicting with one another.  However, many quit showing up, not because of the issue, but because they don’t want to tolerate the conflict.  There version of the little hand jingle would go something like this, “Here is the church.  Here is the steeple.  Open the doors and I am not going into those people!” 

Given all our foibles and failures how can the community of the Church be as important as the Bible says it is?  We might even think that maybe when the Bible was written people were different than they are now.  Not so!  The earliest churches had lots of conflict.  We can tell from what they write about in the letters.  Those people got annoyed with each other just the same.  They angered each other in much the same ways that we do now.  But, the apostles didn’t back off.  They didn’t give up on opening the doors to find the people.  They didn’t concede that maybe it is really just about the Bible and Jesus. They didn’t then suggest a Yoga class model and or book group model of the church instead.  Rather they advocated ways church people learn to live with each other.  We are to speak the truth.  We are not to steal.  We shouldn’t bad mouth one another.  We should quit bickering and slandering one another.  We should reach out in kindness to one another.  There is charity for each other which means to behave so that good will befall others.  There is compassion which allows us to envision ourselves in the place of another person.  There is mercy a greater good than justice.  And then there is commitment to be a member of the community and to follow Christ.  Commitment is daily and  happens as we pray, and worship, and do acts of good works.    We are to live as a community in such marvelous ways that we are to end up loving one another just like Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering.  On vacation I bought a bar or rosemary/mint soap.  When you wash your hands with it they smell wonderful.   

For Christianity the church people are very important.  The old classic song by Barbara Streisand, “People,”  is close to what Christianity believes and what the letter to the Ephesians was trying to say:

People.  People who need people.

Are the luckiest people in the world.

We are children needing other children.

And yet letting our grown up pride

Hide all the need inside

Acting more like children than children….

 

…no more hunger and thirst but

first be a person who needs people.

People who need people

Are the luckiest people in the world.

 

How should Linus get his fingers organized?  It is tempting to do the Lucy fist thing.  But, it is better to do the church people thing.  There is one more way of organizing your fingers that I would like to mention.  It is this, when we gently and gracefully place both hands up against each other.  In the west when we see someone do this with their hands we automatically think of prayer.  But, I have seen it done in the east.  Particularly, I have seen Mahatama Ghandi use this gesture.  You put your hands together like this, and gently gesture towards another person.   In this way, it seems like it means more than prayer.  It seems to be saying something like, the part in my soul which prays honors the part in your soul which prays.  Or, the deepest part of me honors the deepest part of you.  As you all know, Ghandi was a major political and spiritual leader of Indian and the Indian indepence movement from Britain in the 1940’s.  He was the pioneer and perfector of Satyagraha which is resistance through mass civil disobedience strongly founded upon ahimsa (total non-violence).  This movement has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.  Including deeply influencing the philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. in our country. 

Ghandi would organize his fingers in this way.  And he would use this gestures in large crowds acknowledging the masses.  He would use this gesture greeting his friends.  But, and most importantly, he would us this gesture in greeting his enemies.  It is almost like shaking a prayer towards your enemies rather than shaking a fist. 

Back to the problem in the Middle East.  It is very complicated and I don’t pretend to know the answer of how to solve it all.  But, I wonder is there anything we the people (show hands of “the people”) do in response to it?  I think we can do this – (show hands together.)  We can do this to each other… and we can do this to our enemies.

It is not easy to do.  When you hate someone, when you feel entirely vulnerable, and inflicted.  But, when you do do it, something begins to shift.   Do it when you are alone some time.  Think of your enemy and then do this gesture towards them.  When I try it something opens up in me.  Some great graciousness beyond me expands.  I honor my enemy.  Now, I am not a complete pacifist.  However, I do think that no matter who your enemy is you will loose the moral high ground if you no longer pay homage to the depths of their soul, no matter how lost that soul might be.  By doing this, no matter what our personal idea of political solution to the Middle East might be, it will make us morally and spiritually different than the Hezballah.  Their leader Nasralla takes the Lucy approach to life.  He does the fist thing with his hand.  He says of Jews that they are the most cowardly, despicable weak and feeble in mind, ideology, and religion.  He advocates people killing Jews and Americans. 

It might be hard to do that right now.  It might even seem stupid, given what he says about Americans and Jews – given that he advocates killing us all.  But, I think it is important that we do not demonize them as they demonize us.   I agree with Gandhi and Jesus on this,  “There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality.  Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, and cruel and claim to have God on his side.”  

You all have seen the bumper sticker “Act locally, Think globally.”  I think it applies to peace as well as the ecology.  It is important in this time of increasing world violence that we at the Blue Point Church, no matter how small and how very local we are, build a community of peace and safety amongst ourselves.  “Here is the church.  Here is the steeple.  Open the doors and here are the people.”  It is important what we the people, the community of God,  do.  It is important that we great each other not with a fist, but prayer, blessing the depths of each other’s souls.  Our friends surely.  But, also our enemies.