Never Alone

Lent Series: Our Nonviolent Jesus for a Violent America -- Part 2 of 5

Scriptures   Genesis 15:1-6     Luke 13:31-35

Just yesterday, through a student at my son’s high school volunteering at our Saturday lunch, I learned that one of my favorite writers was teaching a course each year at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School – known to many of us as B-CC.

The writer’s name: Colman McCarthy. A longtime columnist with The Washington Post, McCarthy now directs the Center for Teaching Peace, a nonprofit organization that helps schools establish peace studies programs.

For over 30 years now, McCarthy has taught classes on nonviolence and conflict management to close to 7500 students in places such as: a Laurel juvenile prison ... Georgetown University Law Center ... the University of Maryland ... American University ... and several high schools such as B-CC.

No grades are given in McCarthy’s peace studies classes. In fact, it’s the only course offered at BC-C where no grades are given. One student wrote recently in the B-CC school paper that despite this lack of the usual incentive, she has learned more in McCarthy’s class than in any other she has taken – and it’s the only one she talks about with her parents. (All of which makes me wonder: Perhaps Adam and Eve would have enjoyed life more if they had just refrained from keeping score ...)

McCarthy has written a wonderful little book about his passion for peace education – chockfull of eye-opening stories borne of one semester of teaching peace in six of these schools. In the Preface to that book, titled I’d Rather Teach Peace, he shares a thirteen-word paper written by one University of Maryland student that has stayed with him through the years. Here’s the paper: “Why are we violent but not illiterate? Because we are taught to read.”¹

Again: “Why are we violent but not illiterate? Because … we are taught to read.”

 

Scripture makes it clear for humanists of all ages: Our grade-by-grade ways of literacy need the grace-by-grace ways of God’s peace in we can even hope to redeem our Jerusalems for the common good.

The ways of peace that reflect our communion with our Creator – versus the ways of violence that by very definition rend us apart. The ways of peace found in the intimacy of a Jesus who sees himself today as a hen gathering her brood beneath her wings – versus the ways of violence based on a single devilish fear: that each of us exists in this world alone.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” Jesus wails today, to the center and lovers of power in his homeland. “The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” And then Jesus adds, “See, your house is left to you.” Left to Jersusalem. All alone.

Jesus may as well be crying out, this week before the threatened sequester: “Washington, O Washington! The city that kills the just and stones those who are peacemakers!”

It’s a sad and sobering fact: Peace-and-justice makers tend not to last too long in any nation’s capital – Jesus’, or ours. Contemporary examples of such abbreviated life expectancy flourish. Indicative of how so many of our politicians wrestle and wrangle about what is a "just war" – when a just peace is what God's people really need. And when they have talked about peace, when has it been the way of Jesus – peace through justice – and not the way of Herod – “peace” through victory?

For a nation’s power to be super – meaning, above all – meaning, above even God’s: that, my friends, seems a lonely place to be. "See," Jesus groans to our American Empire -- "See, your house is left to you."

No nation was his – in fact, his people were dying – but Abram felt quite alone, as well. His slave was his future; you could say he was enslaved, as well.

Abram’s feet on the ground, God showed him the stars. And Abram received it with the faith that Toni Morrison writes about in her novel Beloved: The only grace he could have was the grace he could imagine.

Note that Abram needed not conquer to “grow his economy.” He needed simply to embrace a new vision of communion.

 

A vision of Communion spread out before us today. Teaching us more than how to read. Teaching us now the making of peace.

 

We are taught the ways of peace in a violent world through Abram. Through his hope envisioning countless stars – and through his faith freeing him from a future enslaved to despair. And we are taught the ways of peace in a violent world through Jesus. Who pulls himself away from Herod’s love of power – it could be America’s – to see himself as a brood-embracing mother hen: the power of love.

And yet, the faith and hope of Abram and the love of Jesus do not become complete for us in these pages. They can only become complete when we participate, as well.

Through what we bring to this table today. Even if it be a mustard seed of faith. Even if the hope are not stars but points of light. Even if the love seems conditional enough to get us through just today – neither harmful or regretful.

And not only through what we bring to this table – but what we receive at this table, as well. For it is here in Communion with one another we receive a singular and undying promise: We are never alone. That in our brokenness, our pain is never alone. That in our healing, our pain in never left alone.

And what a joy that peacemaking journey is: made manifest to us -- made manifest to others!

¹Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002, xx.