This week is designated in our Church Calendar – Peace Sabbath … the resources I had to work with note that it is the Sunday when we pause to reflect on the source of Peace in our world, it’s fragility, and the challenges that we face in achieving, maintaining and promoting it.
Good and noble ends …
But it got me thinking – where does this day come from in our calendars? What’s it’s origin and it’s original motivation?
I wondered if it was like the original intent of Mother’s Day, when in the wake of the the American Civil War, mothers who mourned their fallen sons rose up and said they needed a day to remember the grief and sacrifice of the mom’s on both sides of the conflict who lost their sons in such a horrid and almost pointless way …
So, I went looking … and I looked and I looked and I looked … even google failed to turn up any background on the day for me. Eventually I found one small almost cryptic reference that said: “On October 24th 1945, the United Nations’ Charter was approved, and in 1947, October 24th was designated United Nations’ Day. The Canadian Council of Churches and the National Council in the USA, established Peace Sabbath/World Order Sunday to correspond with this date.”
That’s it … that’s ALL I found. No resources, no background, no history, not even a suggestion of what to do on the day … yet, here we are on Peace Sabbath, with resources designating the day, and offering little else …
I wish I could say this was unusual in the Church … but alas, it is far more common place that I care to think about … we’re often barraged with slogans and statements and calls to action, without providing the foundation and background we NEED to do the work we’re being called on to engage.
“It’s Peace Sabbath …” But we’re left to fumble around in the dark trying to figure out what that means.
And in our world today when we are inundated with images of war and violence, as we continue to wrestle with the legacy of 10 years of armed conflict in Afghanistan, and as we move towards Remembrance Day and all that it entails, we are truly left in a strange place … we yearn for peace, yet our world is torn apart by war … we celebrate peace, yet our world offers us conflict and violence … our words say one thing, but our actions as a human race unfortunately frequently offer something very different.
So, how do we proclaim and embrace this concept of Peace Sabbath?
Do we use the images that filled our news this past week of a dictator bloodied, beaten, and then dead, as a symbol of peace? Or do we have the courage to step back and proclaim the power of Peace and Shalom found in the teachings that make us who we are as a community and family of faith?
“And they asked him, ‘which is the greatest commandment?’”
And Jesus answered them by quoting two well-known passages from the Hebrew Scriptures – the Torah that was part of the Covenant with Moses: We are called to love the Lord your God with your WHOLE being – with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind – and you are to love your neighbour as we love ourselves.
On Peace Sabbath, the path to peace is found in that foundational teaching. We are not called to live and deify two commandments, but to live the inseperable concept that when we love God with the WHOLE of our being, we then share that love unconditionally and unhesitatingly with others.
To love God, is to love one another … to love one another is to love God … failing to live, share and embrace the wholeness of this love is where the root of much of our world’s brokenness lies …
If we love God and love each other, violence is no longer an option.
If we love God and love each other, we will lookout for and look after one another.
If we love God and love each other, we will live our values of compassion, care, love and faith …
In the passage from Deuteronomy, we see Moses letting go and accepting that it is time for someone else to take over the leadership and guide the people into the Promised Land. The Psalmist reminds us that God is our home, and that our souls have a restlessness until we find that home and the peace it contains. Then Paul speaks of the peace that he has been able to find even in the midst of the adversity that dogs him because he focuses on the Will of God and not just seeking to please others. Then finally, in the Gospel reading we have a summation of what is important in our lives and in our faith: we are to fully and honestly love God, love ourselves, and love others in pursuit of this elusive peace in ourselves and in our world…
Dare we think it is THAT simple? Can we even suggest that it is that easy? It may well be that simple …
Our Old Testament reading gives us a defining moment in the journeying of the Israelite people. For many long months, that have turned into years, they have wandered in the desert between Egypt and the Promised land … they’ve left the slavery of Egypt behind, and are poised to enter and claim the Promised Land that has been drawing them forward. In the context of the reading, we are to understand that their long sojourn in the desert was part of their punishment for disobeying God.
After the whole Golden Calf incident, God promised that those who had been born in Egypt would NEVER set foot in the Promised Land … their disobedience robbed them of that opportunity to truly know freedom.
So, when the last of the elders had passed away, there remained only Moses … and today we read the account of his death.
On one hand, it is part of that promised punishment – Moses too is not allowed to set foot in the Promised Land. But on the other hand, the death of Moses outside of Israel, and his burial BY GOD, in a secret unknown place has enormous significance for the people.
One commentary on the Death of Moses notes that it has both a positive and negative meaning. On the negative side, Moses’ death is a critique of any and all attempts to idolize or deify him or any other human achievement.
Human achievements, even spectacular ones like Moses’, will fall short and flounder on the rocks of time and mortality. They are simply not as important as God and what God offers.
But, on the positive side, Moses’ death functions as an example of how our lives are to be lived.
Moses, in the face of God’s wrath and anger over the Golden Calf offered himself as a sacrifice for the common good. Rather than having the people destroyed for their disobedience, Moses appeals to God to preserve the nation, while allowing him to die short of the promise.
If we read the texts in the 9th chapter of Deuteronomy where God and Moses engage in the exchange over the Golden Calf, we can see that God wanted to destroy everyone BUT Moses, and then from Moses alone, God wanted to create a new and faithful nation. But Moses declined the offer and allowed himself to be the sacrifice by allowing the people to live and enter the promised land, while he himself was denied that achievement.
Everyone else enters the promised land, but Moses is left behind figuratively and literally …
Modern writers and theologians parallel this moment to a speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr in April 1968 when he said:
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!
King spoke those words in Memphis Tennessee on April 3rd 1968, and he died at the hands of an assassin the next day …
One commentary notes of this – “He knew God would one day overcome. Moses, King, and countless other faithful servants of God have had visions of an end that they would not see. But the little bit they tasted gave them the courage to carry on with their lives and their work. They trusted God to continue to work and to bless love after they themselves were gone.”
Our readings today – on Peace Sabbath – call us to the same long term view and vocation. We are to work and hope for the promised land that lies ahead without ever really knowing if we ourselves will see and experience it. The Promised Land will be God’s doing, and God’s gift not ours.
We’ve caught glimpses of the Kingdom that is to come.
We’ve had a taste of the Kingdom that is to come.
We’ve even been called to CREATE it in our midst, knowing that what we bring into being is a tiny sliver of what WILL BE …
AND, all of this comes from the simple understanding that we are to love the Lord our God with ALL our heart, ALL our soul, ALL our mind … with the WHOLE of our being, and we are to love one another …
With that simple truth, the world can and will be transformed …
May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …
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