In Chasing Francis, a Rwandan nun lectures a confused pastor about what it means to be a peacemaker. She insists that a peacekeeper is not the same thing as a peacemaker.
A peacekeeper, she says, avoids intervening in things that upset others. He accepts things as he finds them. He doesn’t say or do anything that might challenge his world because he longs above all for a type of ‘peace’ called security. This ‘peace’ leaves him spiritually undeveloped. It may even lead him to become evil if security requires him to turn a blind eye to injustice.
A peacemaker, in contrast, works to bring God’s shalom into his world. Ultimate shalom is a whole person flourishing within a whole society through a living relationship with a holy God. Because we live in a fallen word, we will not fully experience that state until the Prince of Shalom comes to establish it. Until then, the people of God work to bring about states of relative justice and righteousness in a world that is controlled by forces that resist shalom. Because this work challenges the status quo of the societies in which they live, peacemakers often experience pressure, persecution, and even martyrdom.
For all these reasons, a peacemaker may suffer, not in spite of, but because he is a disciple of Jesus.
What the peacemaker must not do is use violence in the name of Christ, even in order to create a good society. The popular way of expressing this truth is “the ends do not justify the means.” The reason this statement is true is because the means we employ always shapes the end we achieve. As the New Testament puts it, “the wrath of men does not work the righteousness of God.”
In all these cases, Christians justified the use of violence because they claimed they were establishing Christian societies. In retrospect, we understand that these moments were incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Then again, evil is always easier to identify by those standing outside of the societies gripped by it. It is much harder to spot when we are inside such societies.
Evil is especially successful at covering its tracks from those who seem to benefit from its work. Most of the time, the ones who first become aware of evil within their society are those who immediately suffer because of it. However, their reactions to evil may contribute to its power. Evil actions encourage evil reactions. Those reactions often provoke yet new reactions.
Jesus calls us to destroy this cycle by warning us against resisting evil. He knew that a resistance to evil easily becomes another form of evil.
Therefore, when a Christian advocates the use of force to bring about a righteous end, he must utterly ignore The Sermon on the Mount. He replaces obeying Jesus with praising Jesus. Unfortunately, this is all too common.
The main place Christians face this temptation is not at the national or global level. We can easily voice our passionate opinions about the people and issues at those levels because they are too far away for our opinions to make any practical difference. No, it is nearly always in our everyday lives where our choices to speak or to act make real differences and invite real consequences. It is in our families, communities, and churches where we are called upon to become peacemakers. It is in our everyday world that we lovingly speak and act the truth, without coercion; without threats.
We are often tempted to use some form of power to maintain our security instead of speaking or acting against injustice. Manipulation,gossip, withholding good from someone, raising an eyebrow, and sighing are ways of communication that allow us to cover our tracks. They are forms of falsehood and are, therefore, often evil. They seem small but they result in violence.
Jesus calls us instead to openly speak the truth, as we understand it. We must give people an opportunity to consider our words; so that those who hear us can make a decision free of coercion. They may reject our words. They may even become our enemies. Even so, we must speak without malice. We must act without coercion. We must speak and act whatever the cost because we are Kingdom people.
Sometimes, a type of limited force must be used to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Whenever possible, an officer of the law should do this. He or she is appointed by the state and, according to the scripture, by God Himself. Private citizens, however, should not, unless protecting the lives of those for whom they have responsibility. Private Christian citizens therefore do not need bazookas and Uzis. The desire to own such weapons is connected to our culture’s preoccupation with violence. It is difficult to understand why a follower of Jesus would have the slightest desire to associate with such destructive force, created as it was for the express purpose of maiming and killing other human beings.
That is apparently what the Lord asks of us. But is it humanly possible? And if it it is not, do we dare edit Jesus’ words or simply ignore them so that we can keep up the appearances of a culturally acceptable religion we call Christianity? Just because we call it Christianity, will it really be Christian?
The tile of my blog asks whether Jesus was a pacifist. I do not know the answer.
Jesus said that he had not come to bring peace to the earth but rather a sword. He said he would turn father against child and daughter against mother. So what are we to think? Does a pacifist claim to bring a sword to the earth?
When we fail to speak and act, are we participating in the "peace" Jesus said he did not come to bring? On the other hand, he did say once he would give us peace, but not as the world gives. So are there different kinds of peace?
Does Jesus not intend to contrast the sort of “peace” that comes through our collusion with the status quo with His Shalom, which comes only through trusting in His ways of God and living accordingly?
None of us want to be cast out, despised, or ridiculed. We prefer to be powerful, wealthy and honored. Sometimes faithful believers get to be all of that. Usually, however, they don’t. Whether they do or not, they are always obligated to do all they can to speak and live the truth in order to spread God’s shalom. They must do this whatever the cost.
In Chasing Francis, the cost seemed to be astronomically high to the struggling pastor. It threatened the loss of his friends, reputation and financial security. But the cost of a soul, which the Lord once insisted was worth more than the entire world, cannot be measured. That was what was really at stake for this pastor, and for all of us. Will we trade our soul for security, or for human favor, or will will risk all to bring our soul and the parts of the world influenced by our soul, into harmony with God?
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God,” Jesus said.
Perhaps these are the words of an idealistic prophet, a man we love but do not intend to follow. Then again, they may be the preamble of a constitution meant to govern the heavens and the earth.
Kevin Guenther is a man in our church who won’t stop talking about dirt. He is obsessed with tomatoes and turnips. And bees, by the way! He thinks gardening is a sacrament.
If you see him, run for your life. If you don’t, you may soon hear a speech about healing your soul by digging in dirt. Soon, you may find yourself in a discussion about compost.
Kevin talks people into raising chickens and rabbits, even if they live in a city.
I have been watching the people involved with him passing around cheese and eggs. Just today I found a hunk of cheese in my office. He denies any connection to the cheese but no one in our church had ever passed cheese around before he came.
What’s up with this guy?
Well, he believes that when Christians lose their connection with nature, they lose a part of their faith. Their understanding of God begins to get distorted. People start thinking that meat is created in the backroom at Kroger; carrots come into the world in little pieces wrapped in cellophane. After a while, it gets difficult to thank God for our food. You begin to wonder what God actually had to do with it.
So, Kevin leads people to the dirt and teaches them to grow their own food. He even invented a contraption called Farm Garden in a Box. A person can use it to grow food on the balcony of a high-rise, if he so desires.
He teaches us to “dress, till and cultivate the earth,” because he believes we can meet God there.
In Chasing Francis, a confused pastor goes off to Italy. He meanders around the vineyards outside Milan. He goes to Rome and Assisi. He eats good food. He then returns home with a new lease on life and faith.
Crone, the author of Chasing Francis, seems to think the pastor found his way because of the work of Francis of Assisi. Kevin’s theology indicated it might have been the garlic, olives and wine. The pastor may have been transformed by eating naturally grown vegetables.
Maybe there is a third option. Perhaps the pastor was healed because he returned to a culture in which one eats and talks with people who work in the dirt, a culture such as we once were.
How many times did the Lord say, “the kingdom of God is like this farmer who …” Jesus must have told those stories because the spiritual world operates very similarly to the natural world. That would certainly make sense if the same creator designed both the natural and spiritual parts of the universe. We actually confess that in the creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of all things, visible and invisible.”
Kevin thinks that one can learn how the invisible part of the universe works by becoming familiar with the visible part. Getting tomatoes at Kroger won’t do that for you. Growing tomatoes in your back yard just may.
Oh, and did you know that “Adam” means “soil?” We are made of that stuff. We return to that stuff. Our nourishment comes from it.
So our faith can be explained in three movements:
The Garden
The Kitchen, and
The Table.
An old communion prayer sums it up.
We thank you, Lord God, King of the Universe, for this bread and this wine, which you have created and human hands have prepared. They shall be for us, the body and blood of Christ.
People like Kevin remind us that the source of human life is earthy, common and precious. He helps us move beyond the plastic and artificial not because they are evil, but because they are insufficient instruments to nourish life.
Kevin takes a handful of dirt and tells us how to prepare it to feed ourselves.
So if you can’t go to Italy, take a trip to the field behind our church! Kevin has plowed up some land back there that might have made a perfectly good parking lot. He filled it with boxes. He filled the boxes with soil and seeds.
Kevin isn’t exactly St. Francis of Assisi. However, he is willing to go out into the field and talk about birds and rutabagas. And, along the way, a few souls are gathering around him; getting steadily pulled out of a world of tomatoes that taste like plastic and into a lifestyle that celebrates “all creatures of our God and King.”
I’m not a Kevin groupie yet. But after meeting him, I do sing This is My Father’s Word with a lot more gusto than before.
This message was surely approved by Francis of Assisi!
When looking through a copy of the Kama Sutra in a bookstore; wear a hat, a pair of sunglasses and a raincoat. If a member of your church catches you, don’t say, “I wasn’t really interested in these pictures; I was just reading the text.”
They won’t believe you.
No one will!
In most bookstores, the books with the words “Kama Sutra” in the title have very little text, which no one reads.
The real Kama Sutra is not about casual sex. It is about the spirituality of lovemaking. It teaches a person to become mindful, purposeful and focused upon his or her lover. It instructs one how to transcend the ego by attending to another person. The word sutra means teaching or instruction. Hence, the Kama Sutra means, “Instructions on Love.”
The Indians gave it to us.
They also gave us wonderful cuisine.
Behind the Kama Sutra and Indian cuisine is a deliberate approach to life and religion. An Indian table is filled with delectable foods of many textures and spices. The colors of the foods and sauces range from the brilliant red dhal to the green mint and the white nan. It takes hours to prepare. The one who prepares it assumes it will also take many hours to eat the food.
When civilized people eat a great meal they stop to comment on the taste of the food. From there they continually meander into other subjects. But the food is always a safe place to which one may return if things get too tense or awkward; “but my, this chutney is unbelievable!”
I am told that Hindus have a Sutra for food. If so, I haven’t seen it. Perhaps that’s because cooking naked is not a good idea, in any culture. (See what a wicked imagination I have? I am assuming that a Sutra on food would be like our Western versions of the Kama Sutra: filled with pictures of naked people in pre-traction poses. Sick! Sick!)
Whether or not there is a sutra on food, there is a common idea behind the Kama Sutra and Indian cuisine. It is that real pleasure, in any area of life, requires one to pay attention, remain purposeful, and move beyond one’s self. It requires a healthy surrender to the surprises of relationship and life. To truly live we must take time, open our eyes, open our hearts, and express what we are experiencing.
Multitasking is disrespectful to all those things we are trying to do at once. It is also disrespectful to those we are doing those things with. When we work; we should work. When we play; we should play. When we eat; we should eat. When we make love; we should make love.
I learned about the Kama Sutra while studying about Hinduism. As I read it, I thought it a shame Christians didn’t have similar scripture about sex and food.
Then I saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding. As I watched it, a light went off in my head. I understood why Jesus began his ministry at a wedding and why a three-day wedding festival required wine. Common laborers had very few opportunities to enjoy, really enjoy food. The festival also kept the guests preoccupied so the new couple could have privacy for their own pleasure.
Making a family requires, among other things, a purposeful attention to joy. Maintaining a family requires the same.
This brings us to the difficult question about how to understand Italians.
In Chasing Francis, God sends an uptight, frustrated pastor to Italy. Well, of course! That’s what God would do.
In Italy the pastor cries, laughs, reads, and eats. He doesn’t fill his day timer with appointments every fifteen minutes. He doesn’t read corporate reports between appointments.
He doesn’t eat out of Styrofoam.
He doesn’t eat in his car.
He doesn’t drink a cup of coffee while walking, driving, or writing. He savors his coffee. He sighs. He eats his food and laughs. When he works; he works. When he eats; he eats.
In Italy, in other words, the pastor becomes a person.
He sits and takes some time to eat good food. He talks with people as he eats. Really talks. He punctuates his conversations about God and the meaning of life with “Oh gosh, this pasta!” and “mmmmmm, ohhh, how can eggplant possibly taste so good!”
Italians teach the pastor how to venerate his food. That, in turn, teaches Him how to find God.
Only people who understand the spirituality of food can comprehend what occurs at the Lord’s Table. The rest of us are doomed to keep running for the next big gulp of spiritual junk food, wondering why we have such indigestion and why “we can’t get no satisfaction.”
It was in Milan that Augustine heard the voice in his garden saying “tolle, lege;” (take, read.) The voice invited him to eat the bread of life with his eyes. It called him to savor, consume, and digest the scripture. Once Augustine started, he never stopped. After that he was continually hungry for the words of God. He was hungry to discuss with others how the word tasted.
True spirituality can’t be rushed. If you rush it, package it, take it on the run, or try to suppress the emotions or the intellectual questions it provokes, spiritual life will elude you. You will either give up or you will spend your life running to “the next big thing God is doing,” which will always be somewhere else than where you are.
If we learn to eat like Italians, we might learn to pray like Francis.
The Italians I know don’t read the Kama Sutra. That may be because their wives will kill them in a fit of passionate rage. However, most Italians don’t need the Kama Sutra anyway.
They have a table.
Like the confused pastor in Chasing Francis, Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi found God in Italy. That is not because Italy is holier than other places. It is because Italy cultivates a love for everyday life that real spirituality requires. Neither of these saints called people to overthrow the emperor or to yell at sinners. They just sat down, ate, strolled, and pondered. They savored the world because they knew it was deliberately constructed to reveal the presence of God at every turn.
God is everywhere. He is the source of all delight. We spend our lives seeking pleasure because we are seeking Him. But he is not far from any one of us because in Him we live, move and have our being.
So we don’t need the Kama Sutra. We just need to wake up and live.
An Italian taught me that.
