The God of Love and Peace Will Be With You

Scripture Lessons: Genesis 1: 1-4 and 2nd Corinthians 13: 11-13 Sermon Title: The God of Love and Peace Will Be With You Preached on June 5, 2020 One morning week before last I was walking our dogs around the block. I wasn’t exactly happy to be doing that, but it’s an important thing to do. Since being stuck inside our home all day myself, I have new sympathy for what their lives are like, so maybe it was more of an obligation than a joy to greet the morning by slowly walking around the block while our dogs smell every mailbox, stump, and branch, then dutifully picking up whatever they leave behind. Only about halfway the block around a woman hauling limbs from her front yard to the curb said something to me which changed the way I greeted that new day. I missed it the first time she said it, so I stopped, took my headphones out, to hear her say it again, “This is the day that the Lord has made!” Do you know that feeling of being stuck in an obligation or to be simply moving through the steps and all at once your eyes are open to how lucky you are? This was the perfect thing to hear someone say that morning. For one thing it reminded me that this was the day that the Lord has made. It was a beautiful morning and it was gift. It also evoked my awareness of the divine moving around us. But most of all it was so nice to hear someone say something that I knew exactly how to respond to. With a smile on my face I responded to this woman’s “This is the day that the Lord has made,” with my “Let us rejoice and be glad in it,” yet how many other times is it not nearly so easy to know what to say? I remember vividly standing in the foyer of our old house in Tennessee just a few years ago. Our two little girls stopping me in my tracks to ask, “I know that when we were tiny babies we were inside Mama’s tummy, but how did we get out?” Worse than that, have your children or grandchildren asked about the events of the past two weeks? The protests? Did they ask you if it was true that as George Floyd died, he called for his mother? Did they have trouble understanding why the police, who is called to help, had his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck? Or why his partner stood idly by as he said, “I can’t breathe”? Were they scared when they saw the damage done to the CNN Center just down I 75? What did the children of police officers think, should they have witnessed the video of squad cars burning? Or what did the parents of protestors think when they read the tweet: “When looting starts the shooting starts?” Then, how does anyone make sense of that picture of our President taken after the crowd was dispersed with gas and rubber bullets, standing in front of a church holding up a Bible? Where is God at work in all of this? What are we to say to anyone, much less our kids as they make sense out a world that all of us are having trouble making any sense of ourselves? An old friend of mine, Rev. Amos Disasa sat his son down to talk about race. Amos serves First Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas as their Senior Pastor. The two of us have a lot in common, though we don’t look alike. He was born in Ethiopia to Ethiopian parents, so race has played a subtle part in our friendship since we were classmates at Presbyterian College. Just after seminary the two of us spent several days in Montreat, North Carolina, for a conference of Presbyterian ministers. One night we went out for a beer at a bar called the Town Pump. Immediately, upon sitting down, it became obvious to me that this was a bar for locals, not out of town Presbyterian ministers, so I said to Amos, “I feel a little out of place.” Amos said to me, “Joe, do you see anyone else from Ethiopia in here?” Amos married a white woman from West Virginia. Their two children are of mixed race. Last Thursday Amos told the congregational of First Presbyterian in Dallas that in light of recent events he sat his 10-year-old son down to explain what’s been happening and what it means for him as a male with dark skin. “Your skin color will make some people uncomfortable. Some people will see your body as a threat,” he told his son. Then, thinking about George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, or any number of other unarmed African American men who have been killed recently, his son asked, “Can that happen to me?” His father said, “yes.” Then, his son’s second question was, “Can that happen to you?” Again, his father said, “yes.” Our children have asked me many difficult questions, but “where do babies come from” doesn’t come close to either of these. Among all the many difficult questions our children have asked me, they’ve never asked me to answer a question that I would have been so sad to answer truthfully as these two questions, but we all must say something about the events of the last two weeks. Only, where do we even begin? I wonder if where we ought to begin is with the words of our Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Or with those words which have marked the beginning of each school day for my children and your children: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Or those words which lady liberty holds precious sheilding Ellis Island: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door. Or with the dream Dr. King preached about 57 years ago before the Lincoln Monument: I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. Even in these moments when the table of brotherhood has erupted in protests and riots with shielded police facing off with the crowds as democrats and republicans prove that truly anything can be made into a political issue, we turn to these words to remind us of who we’re intending to be. We turn to these words to remember again, that even if they don’t describe where we are, they do describe where we are going. And then we turn to the words of Scripture to remind us of who is with us on our journey. In our First Scripture Lesson, God spoke our world into existence. Some people think that these verses are trying to replace the Science text books, but I say they are trying to remind us of the power of our words. God spoke our world into existence. My friends, if we don’t like the way our world looks today, then know that our words have the power to create a new reality. So, we must remember again those words which gave birth to our nation and stand against those words which might take it all away and the violence that would burn it all down. Violence is how we lose ourselves, while words, beautiful words are how we find our way back. The words of Scripture testify to the reality that hovering over a formless void was the wind from God which swept over the face of the waters. When God spoke light into that darkness and as the Spirit swirled the waters of chaos into order, God spoke again saying that it was good. Don’t forget that He still does. God hasn’t given up on His creation. Neither can we. And he calls us to show the indifferent, the prejudiced, the polarizing, the power drunk, that a more ideal union is possible, that justice might roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. The Apostle Paul ends his second letter to the Church in Corinth saying, Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. This is a powerful way to end a letter. It’s a call to order and harmony. It’s a call to love. It’s a reminder to recognize God at work in our midst. And it is likely his great goodbye. How do we honor his memory or the memory of any of God’s saints if rather than agree with one another, we make our brothers and sisters our enemies? How do we follow the model of any who have loved us if we stop working for peace? How do we honor the memory of those who spilled their blood for the ideals of this nation is we turn to tyranny and chaos rather than love and the communion of the Holy Spirit? As Americans and as Christians, our persistent charge is to join the God of creation in forming a more perfect union, a more noble brotherhood, to continue on in the building of that city on a hill where all are valued, all are honored, and where all so truly matter. Let us never ignore the brokenness. Let us never silence the angry, saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. Instead, let us listen to the lady who called me to recognize that this is the day that the Lord has made. Today, let us pray, let us listen, let us walk, let us dance, let us work for something better for our children, but above all else let us rejoice and be glad in this world our God is still creating, sustaining, and redeeming. Alleluia. Amen.