Every Mother’s Prayer

May 13, 2007

            It is one of those conversations I remember having with my mom.  I am not sure when or even how many times.  It might have started during the Viet Nam war when my brother was granted Conscientious Objector status and began his alternate service at a state mental hospital during his second year of college.  It could have started though when she showed me pictures of her father as a young man in Russia.  He too was a Conscientious Objector but for his alternate service he put on a uniform and worked at a YMCA in Moscow.   Maybe it happened the first time she held my son in her arms, her own memories flooding over her.. What I remember about those conversations is that my mother would tell me that when my brother was born she cried.  They were tears of joy for sure, welcoming a son into her heart, but they were also tears of fear as our world had just come through a second world war and the United States was on the brink of with Korea.  As she held her newborn son in her arms, her tears were tears of sadness and worry.  Would he, like her own brothers who had fought in World War II, be changed forever if he was called to go to war?  Through those tears, her prayer as she rocked him to sleep in the stillness of the night, was a prayer for peace.  Today, more then ever before, this must be every mother’s prayer.

            For those of you who came this morning expecting a traditional Mother’s Day message, you might be wondering why I am choosing to talk about peace.  If you have had a traditional Mother’s Day experience in worship where all of the mothers are honored and flowers are given to the oldest mother and the youngest mother and the mother with the most children and the one who has traveled the farthest to be with her children and the one who has traveled the farthest to be away from her children… if you have ever experienced this Mother’s Day tradition, you are certainly scratching your head right now.  Why on earth would worship today be centered on peace?  Shouldn’t we just be celebrating mothers?  Or on a more cynical note, you might be asking, isn’t Mother’s Day really, after all is said and done, a day invented by the flower and greeting card industries?  Isn’t Mother’s Day nothing more than a way to get people to spend more money on candy, perfume, or jewelry and give restaurants more Sunday morning brunch business?  Shouldn’t we honor and respect and love our mothers every day?  The answer to all these questions is most certainly yes!  But answering yes still doesn’t connect Mother’s Day and peace.

            So let me offer a little lesson in history.  While the roots of “Mother’s Day” go all the way back to the Roman feast of Matronalia, the goddess of motherhood, our current celebration of Mother’s Day can be traced back to Julia Ward Howe and the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” of 1870.  Julia Ward Howe, most famous to us as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was a prominent American abolitionist and social activist, working to bring an end to slavery.  Upset by the tragic effects of the Civil War, especially the pain of mothers losing their sons or husbands, she challenged women to join her in a “Mother’s Day For Peace.” A mother herself, she called women to start a movement to bring an end to all war.  The words of her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation give us pause this morning as we acknowledge that even today warfare continues to tear our world apart.  She challenged women, saying:

                                    Arise, then, women of this day! 

Arise all women who have hearts,

   whether your baptism be of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by 

    irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage,

   for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have

   been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another

   country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. 

It says, ‘Disarm!  Disarm!’”

            During a time when the war in Iraq is front page news every day and the number os lives lost or devastated continues to grow… in a season when presidential candidates are positioning themselves by their stance on that war… I know that preaching about peace is seen by some as mixing politics and religion.  I know that people of faith have taken their place on all sides of the debate about any war as a matter of conscience.  I know that some here have sons and daughters in the military and some think that speaking about peace is speaking against the.  I have to take the risk though, because as followers of Jesus, the Prince of Peace… as those who profess faith in the one who blessed the peacemakers and wept for his community, wishing that they knew the things that made for peace, I believe we must remember the centrality of the gospel of peace for our time and all times.  In the midst of a time when wars continue to be fought and peace seems the impossible dream, we are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  It is our responsibility to give voice to the good news of God’s peaceful reign.

In his new book Covenant of Peace, Willard Swartley offers us a comprehensive study of the theme of peace in the New Testament.  He contends that Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God… of that time when God’s kingdom will be realized on earth… is deeply rooted in the Hebrew scripture from Isaiah: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’”  God’s shalom is not just the absence of warfare but is descriptive of a time when wholeness, completeness, and fullness of life are experienced by all people and all creation.  Justice and well-being for all are central to the biblical understanding of God’s shalom.  The peaceful reign of God is to be sharply distinguished from the Pax Romana, which maintained order through force against other nations.  Swartley reminds us that the so-called peacekeeping tactics of the Roman Empire – plundering, stealing, butchering – did not bring about shalom.  He goes on to say that the message of the New Testament is clear.  Christ is our peace.  Jesus came proclaiming peace, breaking down of the walls of division and hostility. 

                I believe that it is this image of  shalom that is found in the passage read from the Book of Revelation.  While some believe it is an image of heaven, something  we can only imagine coming after we die, I believe that the passage speaks of God’s dream for life before we die… for life here on earth.  The 21^st and 22^nd chapters of Revelation proclaims  a new heaven and a new earth.  It speaks of a time when the tree of life will become the healing of the nations. (You remember the Tree of Life don’t you?  It was in the center of the Garden of Eden.)  In Revelation we find again the sure and certain hope of a time when God’s name will be on our foreheads and there will be no more night because God will be our light.  It describes a time when God will reign.  It describes a time when our world will become the world of God’s dreams. 

            As people who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, what do we do?  What can we do?  The war in Iraq is not the only place where violence is begetting violence.  There are people and places and situations the world round where the promise of peace has long since faded away.  What can we do today to save our world from the destruction and despair that fail to bring God’s shalom?

            I wish I had an easy answer.  I considered offering the ideas found in an article from “Response” magazine titled “Christian Peacemaking 101” calling for us to recognize that peacemaking is at the very heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  They are great ideas but somehow listing out ideas as if there is an easy eleven-step process to insure world peace doesn’t make sense to me today.  Because it isn’t an easy eleven-step process.  Step number seven on the list reminds us that peacemaking is a lifelong journey.  And although we all need to take more than a few steps on that journey, I want to offer you just one – maybe two – that you can take today.

In the midst of our family gatherings and gift-givings and phone callings and Sunday brunching, let us reclaim a sense of the original Mother’s Day and celebrate a Mother’s Day for Peace.  At one o’clock this afternoon you can join women and men all around the world who are participating in The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering.  You don’t have to be great or a grandmother to do this.  All you have to do is go outside at one o’clock and for five minutes pray for peace in God’s world.  Choose your front yard rather than your back yard so your silent witness will be seen by others.  If you want to join others in Eugene go to the park on the corner of 8^th and Oak where we hold our Saturday market.  Or join with me in the small neighborhood part just south of the church on Charnelton and 17^th or on the bike path near the Valley River Inn.  In you live in the Ferry Street Bridge area you can go to Brewer Park on Brewer St. between Norkenzie and Gilham.  And then, if standing silently isn’t enough for you, come join me in the Million Mom March at 2:30 this afternoon at the EWEB plaza.  We will walk the mile or so to the Rose Garden along the river.  If you can’t walk, just come to the Rose Garden.  We will walk and talk and pray and witness to the power of people coming together to stand for peace in our world.

In the most recent edition of “The Christian Century,” I read a small article about Ava Lowery, a 16 year-old United Methodist peace activist who has made a video titled WWJD – want would Jesus do?  I went to her website (peacetakescourage.com) and watched the video and considered showing it this morning but decided the images were too graphic… too difficult.  Believing that the love of Christ is not ours to keep for ourselves but has the power to change our world, she pairs the song “Jesus Loves Me” with images of grieving, wounded, and dying Iraqi children.  It is powerful.  It is heart-wrenching.  It is difficult to watch because our world is so broken.

The truth is, we can pair images from all sides of any war with this song and begin to understand Christ’s call in our lives to be peacemakers in the world today.  The truth is, we all have people we love who are members of the military and they find themselves in harm’s way today and we cannot bear to think about the danger they are in.  What better thing can we do for any whose lives are being torn apart today by war than to pray for peace… to work for peace… for God’s world?

While I stand silently today at the park just south of the church, I am going to remember the image of my mother cradling her newborn son.  And then I am going to think about all those who are fighting today all around our world… fighting for what they believe is right even though I may think it is wrong… and I am going to imagine their mothers cradling them in their arms.  I am going to imagine those mothers crying, just like mine did, tears of joy and tears of sadness.  And then I am going to sing silently… “Jesus loves you!  This I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to him belong; they are weak but he is strong.  Yes, Jesus loves you!  Yes, Jesus loves you!  Yes, Jesus loves you!  The Bible tells me so.”

.  I remembered the words I had seen on the side of a bus in Portland… part of an add campaign for Oregon Public Broadcasting..  The words are “Ever had a song stuck in your mind?… Try an idea!”  This man has an idea stuck in his mind… the idea of world peace and, no matter how silly I might think he letter writing idea  is, he is doing what he believes is right to make world peace a reality.