Dear
Emanuel Members and Friends –
“So Jacob called the place
Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is
preserved.” (Genesis 32:30)
“Jacob said, ‘No, please; if
I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand, for truly to see
your face is like seeing the face of God - since you have received me with such
favor.’” (Genesis 33:10)
“Depart from evil, and do
good; seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:14)
“As [Jesus] came near and saw
the city [of Jerusalem], he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only
recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden
from your eyes.’…Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who
were selling things there.” (Luke 19:41-42, 45)
Peace
is in scarce supply these days. Our news
tells heartbreaking stories of conflict around the world, particularly in
Israel and Palestine, which has claimed upwards of 1500 lives in Palestine (most
of them civilians) and 60 lives in Israel, as well as in Iraq, where an extreme
fundamentalist Islamic group called ISIS is persecuting more moderate Muslim
citizens, and has driven Mosul’s ancient Christian community to flee the city,
ending (at least for now) 1800 years of Christian presence in Mosul. (The area
known as Mosul is referenced in the Bible under its ancient name, Nineveh.) Here at home, extreme political hyper-partisanship
has rendered the US Congress virtually non-functional, to the point where
passing even the most routine legislation is a huge struggle. Our country suffers
extremes of wealth and poverty not seen since the Gilded Age of the late
1800’s. Our Bridesburg neighborhood
struggles with petty theft and vandalism, to the point where there is
consideration of hiring private police to supplement the efforts of the 15th
District officers. And many families in
Bridesburg, as in any other neighborhood, struggle with addiction and violence
within the home. And how about our own
peace of mind? Conflicts without and
within.
Jesus
wept over Jerusalem, saying “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day
the things that make for peace!” If Jesus were looking down on Jerusalem today
– or Washington DC or Philadelphia, PA for that matter, I’m sure Jesus would
say the same thing. What are the things that make for peace? Will more weapons bring peace? More money, more gadgets and toys, more
“stuff”? (Jesus’ driving the moneychangers out of the Temple would appear to
indicate otherwise.) Will forcing others,
perhaps by violent threats, to accept our point of view bring peace?
And
what is peace? The pax Romana, or Roman peace, of Jesus’ day was enforced by brutal
violence. Violating the pax Romana
got Jesus crucified. Cemeteries are generally peaceful, but we can’t live in
cemeteries. Is peace the mere absence of conflict? Or is it something more positive, a spirit of
cooperation and willingness to care for neighbor as well as self?
On
the run from his brother Esau, whom he had cheated out of his birthright and
paternal blessing, Jacob grappled by night with a stranger, understood to be a
divine apparition. Perhaps we can see this
is as a picture of Jacob wrestling with his conscience over a lifetime of
“getting over” on others. At the end of
it, he declared that he had seen God face to face. And later, on reconciling (briefly) with his
brother, he said that meeting Esau on favorable terms was like seeing the face
of God. Twice in one passage, that
phrase is used, first to describe a divine encounter, and then to describe an
encounter with another human being – and that repetition is meant to draw our
attention to what is happening within Jacob and between Jacob and his
long-estranged brother Esau.
The
peace promised by Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper (John 14:27) is an
inside job. It can’t be imposed with
force from outside by others. It begins
within us, as we recognize our connection to the Divine and to the presence of
the divine, the “face of God”, within us.
It moves out from us to others, as we recognize the “face of God” in our
neighbor. How would we treat our
neighbors if we remembered that they, like we, are created in God’s image and
have “that of God” within them?
May
the peace of Christ that passes all understanding provide us with solid footing
on which to stand, and a calm center within us from which we can move to cope
with the challenges of our day.
See
you in church! - Pastor Dave
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