3. Ruminations on Psalm 122

Trying to catch up on some of the thoughts I've been meaning to blog on over the past week or so!

1I was glad when they said to me,
"Let us go to the house of the LORD!"
2Our feet are standing within your gates,
O Jerusalem.
3Jerusalem-built as a city that is bound firmly
together.
4To it the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give htanks to the name
of the LORD.
5For there the thrones for judgment were set up,
the thrones of the house of David.
6Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
"May they prosper who love you.
7Peace be within your walls,
and security within your towers."
8For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say,
"Peace be within you."
9For the sake of the house of the LORD our God,
I will seek your good.

We spent worship tonight reflecting on this passage.
What does it mean to have peace in the midst of war and violence? What does it mean to be a source of peace in this midst?

I'm trying to compile my thoughts while mine and those of some others in discussion are still fresh:

There must be a clear distinction that peace is defined by and through experience. The back of the bulletin tonight had a quote from the UNESCO Constitution in
1945, "Since wars began in the [human] mind, it is in the [human] mind that the defenses of peace must be constructed."

This "invention" of ours--this continual fight over property, over land and a hand in the abundance--enough for everyone if we could just take the time to share it rather than hoarding it--if we could stall the progress of this invention, than we may have a hand in stopping it.

But as it was experience by experience that built it up, to be an acceptable regime to live under, it is experience by experience that must break it down again. Someone else mentioned in discussion that those living in war-torn countries don't know what to do when war stops--because it's all they've lived with, and so they often begin another war in the first's place, or another conflict. We live in a world where war and violence have become acceptable. There is no longer any shock in hearing our nations (or even our one nation "under God") are at war--are engaged in constant conflict with their brothers and sisters.

Experience. Shane Claibourne, and I come back to him again and again as his book is so full of living a life for God in the small, tangible experiences, shares the story of his trip to Iraq. He and a small group of friends traveled to the Middle East in the middle of conflict with no clear agenda other than to show God's love to the people of Iraq--wowing in itself. While there, they were traveling through a desert riddled with landmines and I believe that it was one exploding that sent one of the cars in their caravan into a ditch. A few passengers were badly injured, and as they tried to determine how to get them help, a car full of Iraqis happened to be driving by. It was the Good Samaritan experience. Those in the car helped the Shane and the other travelers to the nearby town to get to the hospital for treatment and gave them a place to stay and rest in their home.

They turned to Shane, knowing his mission there, and thanked him--saying (and I guess, having returned the book to the next reader at the library) "I know you serve a God of peace. I have great faith in such a God, and I hope you will work to spread the knowledge of such a God to those in your country, because we serve the same God here in Iraq and we do not know either why we are in this war."

And all I can do is sit back in awe. Mother Theresa lived her words, "We are not called to do great things but to do small things with great love." I think all of us in mind of peace seek to do these things, and want to do them. If someone were to turn to us for help, we would gladly give it, but when we do not know the "things to do" because so many crowd our attention until we are numb, and we fall back into a routine of the daily things that need to be done.

An image I often use with Wesley's theology of perfection in love and sanctifying grace is that of a young child. As children try on the clothes of their parents, baggy and ill-fitting, and look in the mirror in awe and trying to understand how they might possibly ever grow up to look or act or be like their parents...so we too look at God. We stare in the mirror with our greatest parent, God our Father, standing behind us with his hand on our shoulder and we look at our ill-fitting clothes and wonder how we will ever fill them out to be anything like our God, but through the nurture we receive from Him, and from others, we continue to grow. We continue to inadvertently grow into the love we were first shown. Two important distinctions exist here. First, a child never grows up to be identical to the parent. They share common characteristics but the child is an individual and rightly so. Their independent decisions will shape them in ways separate from the experiences of their parents. And second, because of these separate gifts and graces, a child never truly fills those same shoes they tottered in in childhood. We will never truly be perfect in love as our God is, but we continue on the path to meet that goal.

The Chicago Temple--tallest church in the world and United Methodist to boot--has two sanctuaries. One is at ground level, and the second (separated from the first by levels of law and business offices as the church is located literally in the middle of one of Chicago's busiest business sections of towns--right by State Street shopping) is at the level of a skyscraper--"the sky-high chapel." An image on the altar of the ground level sanctuary shows the scene of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and wanting peace for his people. The chapel shows the scene again, this time with Jesus weeping over Chicago. The pastor shared the church's intention to show that Jesus weeps for the peace, truly, for all his people. Jerusalem represents the center we return to, the central conviction of our search for peace.

As Jesus weeps, we cry too. And we try to do our part.

Pastor Weatherly shared the words of a professor who told his class that "The Fall was the greatest thing that happened to humanity, because without it, we would never have had any cause to seek salvation." Because we have fallen, and our brothers and sisters have fallen with us, we continue to seek salvation. We continue to seek peace.

For myself, this means taking off the blinders and taking a good look around me. I turn first to prayer.

Grace & peace, to any who may happen upon this, in the name of our risen savior and perfector in faith, Jesus Christ. :)