Pray for Peace Service

Alice Walker tells us: “Anything we love can be saved.”

We know God so loves this world, and we do as well. So we gathered to create the time and space to be with our own hearts and spirits and to be within a collective heart and spirit and recommit ourselves once more to love. Each week at mass our presider says “Lift up your hearts.” And the congregation responds: “We lift them up to the Lord.” So we came together to lift up our hearts to the Lord and open our hearts to the peace of Christ.

There was a request that we print the scripture readings and the reflection included in this service. We thank Tom Fiutak for preparing and sharing his reflection, and thanks to Pete Eichten and musician Steve Kremer for their work.

Our scripture readings began with the prophet Jeremiah, who grieved for his own people as we grieve for ours:

Oh, the walls of my heart!

My heart is beating wildly;

I cannot keep silent;

For I hear the sound of the trumpet,

The alarm of war.

Disaster follows hard on disaster,

And the whole land is laid waste.

Suddenly my tents are destroyed,

My curtains in a moment.

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;

And to the heavens, and they had no light.

I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,

And all the hills moved to and fro.

I looked, and lo, there was no man,

And all of the birds of the earth had fled.

I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,

And all its cities were laid in ruins,

Before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no physician here?

Why then has the health of my people not been restored?

O that my head were waters,

And my eyes a fountain of tears,

That I might weep day and night

For the slain daughter of my people!

O that I had in the desert

A wayfarer’s lodging place,

That I might leave my people

And go away from them.

A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping,

Rachel is weeping for her children…Because they are no more.

One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well Jesus had answered them, asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mid, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher. To love him with your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

Beloved, I am writing no new commandment to you but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. And yet I do write a new commandment to you, which holds true in him and among you, for the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. If you say you are in the light, yet you hate your brother or sister, you are still in the darkness. When you love your brother or sister you remain in the light and there is nothing in you to cause a fall. For this is the message we have heard from the beginning: we should love one another. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in you.

A reading from a prophet named Dylan:

I've spent many long hours thinking about this,

That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss;

Now I'll not do your thinking, you'll just have to decide;

Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side.

And now we find that about the same time as Dylan’s verse, a scroll was uncovered in Egypt, the Gospel of Judas, written in the 2nd century of the Common Era and translated over the past few years. This ancient scroll passionately proclaims that Judas, as the willing servant of Jesus, betrayed Jesus and bore the vilification of history at the request of Jesus.

A colleague of mine at Cornell used to lecture as such: the opposite of what is false is true; but the opposite of what is true, may also be true.

Can I accept both interpretations, though contrary, and still remain rooted in my faith? Can I remain at peace with myself by recognizing that this alternate view, once passionately held and recorded in the Gospel of Judas, forces me to rethink my own truth?

I have a conflict. Conflict is a physical and psychological condition where we recognize that someone else holds a truth that is incompatible with my truth. Conflict is not, necessarily, in opposition to Peace.

Peace is a choice. It is a choice to confront the world of paradox and contradictions, and to do so with our moral headlights on. Peace is not the absence of conflict. But it is the absence of physical and psychological violence.

Peace is the stuff of accepting that I can love someone whose truth is not mine. My side of the conflict can be at peace even when the other truth may still be in darkness. Peace is, at its core, that place where we are not violent to ourselves; where our self-doubt is secured in acceptance; where our haven for envy, jealousy, and self-pity has been dismantled.

Peace is not something given to us; Peace and grace is where we began. When we long for peace, when we sense in our soul its loss, somewhere deep inside there is a glimmer of this truth, that Peace cannot be taken away from us. It is something we have surrendered.

Once surrendered, a spiritual hole is exposed, an emotional vacuum is formed and in our rush to fill this void we embrace fear, that emotional chill that seeps into our core, that twirling of our spiritual compass, this longing for security welcomes fear, for fear is the opposite of Peace and this barrier to our ability to embrace opposing truths, hides in the spiritual corners of our souls making us afraid to confront the ease, the false-peace, that fear brings to our lives.

When fear abides:

I do not have to choose;

I do not have to think;

I do not have to question;

I do not have to feel;

For I no longer have to look my neighbor in the eye for fear that her truth will call in question mine.

But your truth may be the opposite of mine, yet embraceable by all.

False peace is that internal state where fear compels us to wait; to believe that to be vigilant is sufficient to our truth.

If we are here to wait, if we are here only to hope, to pray that someone else will take away our fear, we have embraced a false peace. If we are here to engage, to challenge, to seek out the arenas of conflict waiting for our witness, for our voices outside these doors, for our prayers, not for Hope but for fortitude in these trying times; then we will find these next six months invigorating to our souls and empowering to our spirits, for you will retake control of your own peace and purge our collective hearts of the fear we have been taught to love more than our fellow humans.

The next six months will be a test for those who believe that hope, faith, good intentions and prayer are sufficient to change the hearts and actions of those who kill in our name.  Our prayers should be for clarity, strength, and fortitude to act responsibly yet effectively to secure a peace that saves the innocent. 

Psalm 26:6:

Lord, I love the beauty of your house and the place where your glory dwells,

Destroy not my soul with the impious, nor my life with the men of blood,

In whose hands inequity abides.

Fear robs us of the joy to love ourselves. Peace opens the gate for us to enter into the real conflicts that face our world and our hearts.
No more vigils;
No more grieving;
There is peace to be made. This is the time to pick our gaze up from the floor and to look our neighbors in the eye for we are at Peace in ourselves. And as the African saying goes - if you do pray, move your feet.