Westwood Presbyterian Church

     Every Remembrance Day I remember my two grand-fathers, two men I never met. My father's father fought in WWI on the western front and was gassed in the trenches. Another time a bullet entered his backpack hit his shaving kit and went out the back of his backpack, knocking him out cold. His unit kept on moving and he was listed as missing in action, which during WWI meant that you were dead and they just hadn't found the body. His family knew that he was alive, because they had received letters from my grandfather dated after the date he was listed as missing in action. Anyways when my grandfather returned to St. Catharines, people meeting him on the street called him by his brother's name - not believing that it could be my grandfather.

      But I think of my other grandfather as well, my mother's father. Living in Steinbach, they were Mennonites and pacifists. He did not fight in the war, and he was criticized by those outside the Mennonite community for that decision.

      I remember both of them on Remembrance Day - one who fought and one who did not fight. Seemingly on opposite ends of the spectrum on the question of war and peace ­but I believe that they would agree on this one truth: War is evil.

      I want to invite us today to think about war and peace not just as something that is a remembering of what happened, and as something more than an abstract conversation in which we end up debating whether this or that war is justified. I am not saying that there is no place for remembering - there is. Nor am I saying that there is no place for a debate about just war theory - for there is. It is just that I want us to think about some other angles of this question.

      We read the Beatitudes this morning, and as we get to the end of the Beatitudes Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God." Being people who make peace, who act as those who establish peace in our own relationships, within our communities, in our world, is a good thing. And Jesus clearly affirms that. People who live as peacemakers, will be called the children of God - pretty cool to be known as the children of God.

      Hear that Jesus says - blessed are the peace makers - people who step in the gap between warring parties, people who do things that cause people to find peace. This is an active thing - peacemakers get into the game and do their thing. We are going to talk a lot about peacemakers this morning - and it is important that we hear "peacemakers" as referring to not just UN Peacekeepers (although they are certainly in view), but as a multi-leveled thing - meaning military personnel, keepers of the peace -like police officers, and ourselves as we stand up for those who are threatened by violence - be that verbal taunting and ridicule or even physical violence.

      You may have noticed as we were reading the Beatitudes that we went from "blessed are the peacemakers" to "blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake", I think it is no accident that Jesus puts this saying right after the one about peacemaking. To be a peacemaker - to be a person who stops warring parties from killing each other - to be someone who stands up and keeps destructive evil from overwhelming weaker people - all of that is to risk persecution, it is to risk life and health and personal safety. Think of the Canadian forces that stood between the armed forces in the Sinai Peninsula, on the Golan Heights, in Cyprus, in Bosnia. Think of police officers who walk into domestic disputes. Think of people who step in to prevent people from being beaten up by more powerful people. These are all peacemakers. They all know what it is to risk their well-being, their life and health and reputation to be someone who says, "No" to those who would use violence and intimidation to get their way.

      To be a peacemaker is costly, it means surrendering one's safety and one's comfort to stand in the gap, to risk the hostility and anger of others. Peacemaking is dangerous work - be that peacemaking in our neighbourhood, in our city, or in the world at large.

      What follows is the start of thinking about some principles that might guide our thinking about being peacemakers in our world. They may appear contradictory - and I am not going to try and balance them with one another to say that one is more important - somehow I think they all have a role to play in thinking about war and peace from a Christian perspective.

      There is evil in our world - people are not basically good. Evil people are seeking to destroy other human beings and the creation. In Rwanda 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed about 1.5 million people as they took the nation back to the Stone Age, wiping out anyone with more than a grade 6 education. And that is not touching on Darfur, the Holocaust, and the list could go on. For destructive evil exists not just at that macro-level. People want to destroy other people, do things that have no other purpose than to be-little, attack and destroy someone else.

      In the face of evil, God's wrath flares. We catch a glimpse of that hard reality in the passage that we read from Revelation 11. We catch a glimpse of heaven, with all the glory and honour being given to God - the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And then we stumble across the line - and those who destroy the world will be destroyed. And we are taken aback - this is not the picture we have of God as the loving God. But a loving God cannot allow the destructive power of evil to continue forever. God stands against the destructive powers that kill and destroy -- and we can ask why God does not act now to prevent that stuff from happening. And in fact God does act to stop it from happening - it is just that we cannot see what He is doing. But we do know that at the end of time - when everything is put right in our world - when justice flows - at that time God will exercise justice. For as the Bible says, vengeance is mine, I will repay saith the Lord.

      So while evil is powerful and real - it is not ultimate. And we are invited by God to stand on His side in the face of evil and destruction. We are invited to stand on the side of the angels.

      We are human - we are not God. We may be called to exercise justice - but vengeance is not ours. There is to be proportionality in our response to the evil that we see around us. That is because we are limited human beings - and we cannot see completely what is needed. Nor are we ourselves free from exercising evil purposes in the world. We are selfish; we are prideful; we are motivated by self-interest.

      The story is told about a small village, every Thursday people from the village would go to the large town nearby for market day - and there they would sell their produce and would buy what they needed and then they would return home. To get to the town they needed to cross a bridge that went over a river. One Thursday the first carts out of the village were met on the bridge by an ogre who would not let them pass over the bridge. So the people driving the carts started to yell and scream at the ogre and in response the ogre shouted back at them twice as loud as they were yelling and screaming and he would not let them pass over the bridge. So they went back to the village. The villagers sent their strongest fighter out to fight the ogre - but the ogre was twice as strong as the strongest fighter -- and easily beat him. And then they sent their fastest runner to see if he could outrun the ogre and go and get help from the town - but ogre ran twice as fast as the runner and he was caught and sent home packing.

      The villagers did not know what to do. So they had a town meeting. At the town meeting a teenage girl- a wisp of a thing said, "I will take care of the ogre." People laughed when they heard her say this - but since no one else offered to do anything else, she was allowed to go the next day to meet the ogre. She went out the next morning with a picnic lunch basket. And when she got to the bridge, she set out her picnic stuff and invited the ogre to join her - and the ogre was twice as generous and brought out twice as much food as she had brought.

      Today there is no problem on the bridge, everyone crossing the bridge greets the ogre and is gracious towards him and he is twice as welcoming and gracious back.

      Sometimes those people we believe to be our enemies, who we believe to be completely opposed to us - are simply reading back to us the messages that we send out through our words and actions.

      Notice the proportionality in the beatitude - "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy."

      Yes there are enemies in the world - and in the words of "Pogo" a comic strip from the 1970's - "We have met the enemy and he is us."

      The Remembrance Day service in Mitchell was the service for the whole community of West Perth - that part of the county. People would drive in from Brodhagen which was 15 kilometers north-west of Mitchell. Brodhagen had been settled by German immigrants in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. And many of the German families in the area still have relatives in Germany. One Remembrance Day I was asked to do the pastoral prayer at the cenotaph service. I made a point of praying for all those who remembered loved ones who had died in war - including those who had fought with Canada and those who had fought against Canada. A couple of days later I got a phone call from an elderly man who lived in the Brodhagen area. He thanked me for remembering those who had died fighting for Germany in the two world wars.

      It hit me - here were Canadians living in our midst who would have at one time been seen as enemies of Canada. But through the miracle of God's quiet transforming peace ­ we were now neighbours - living at peace with one another.

      We must be wise in how we open ourselves up to people who have hurt us; there will be a measure of guardedness in our actions and attitudes. However, whatever happens in the wars that we fight - no matter how fiercely we may oppose an enemy - there must always be the possibility in our hearts and minds for God to bring healing and transformation - to bring about reconciliation and restoration.

      We must never say, "They can never be forgiven. I will never be able to eat with them." The word "never" locks out the possibility of God's transformation renewing our lives - transforming our relationships. In the miraculous power of God, no relationship can not be healed - even one that has been marked by violence and bloodshed.

To sum up the principles:

1. Evil exists in our world and it must be opposed. While that is dangerous, we do so knowing that God is the ultimate power in the universe.

2. Our human response to people who do wrong must always be proportional, for we ourselves are not free from doing evil.

3. We must always allow room for the miraculous transforming power of God to turn our enemies into our friends and neighbours.

The psalm we read invited us to pray for the peace of our community - for peace within its gates. And that prayer was encouraged because it is the place where God's temple - God's house resides. Well, in our world, there are communities of Christians in every nation in the world. Together they gather to worship the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - just as we do. We are invited to pray for peace for every country of the world - because God's people reside there.