The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

October 2001

Even today I can still feel shaken by the terror of early experiences of death, even if I am no longer consciously aware of them, and even though "the activity of my reason" tells me that these experiences are 47 years old, and go back to the fire-storm that raged through Hamburg in 1943. But for all that, these experiences are present with me still. I can feel myself back into them, and they still plunge me into the same terror as they did then. Ever since, my life has been hung over by the tormenting, insistent questions: "where is God?" and "Why am I not dead too?" In the depths of experiences like this, there is apparently no such thing as "time the great healer", and no merciful forgetting. So we can never say about and experience of this kind "I had it" as if it were finished and done with, something past and gone. We are continually still involved in experiencing confronting events like these, because they continually, over and over again, press for an answer.

These words of the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann open up for us a pathway through God’s Word this day. In the midst of the terrors and violence of his times he began a journey to try to understand what all the violence and what did God have to say about it. All of his friends had been killed in the War, and he, only 15 years old, was hauled off to an American prison camp. Throughout his early years in college and after he tried to understand why such terrible things happen in the world, why some are spared and others killed and what he could do to work for the good. He began that journey that leads to God and the affirmation of life that comes from this God. And he learned something important on this journey—that finding the answers and God calls for discipleship.

Discipleship is that commitment in uncompromising loyalty to Jesus Christ. This commitment does not look for support from others, praise from others or acceptance from others. In fact, such a commitment expects rejection, ridicule, and perhaps even persecution. Such a commitment leads to freedom. Think of it, is not much of our unhappiness based on our needing the acceptance and praise of others? Does not much of our resentment and sadness come from expecting from others, and ourselves the world unrealistic things? Jesus wants to spare us this ordeal in life. To find happiness that comes from the Lord following the Lord and not expecting goodies is the way to happiness. This commitment will take us into new places to address the violence and devastation in the world.

This, of course, is nothing new to the mission of the disciple, however it is rarely done. So often we trade discipleship for mere membership in a church community. That is not what Jesus calls us to—he calls us to follow his new way, Religious doctrines, practices etc. are important only as long as they embody the mission and reality of the discipleship we are called to. Perhaps the key element is this mission is the courage to live it. The letter to Timothy tells us we have been empowered by the Spirit of Christ to live out this new way of discipleship in the world—we have been given no cowardly Spirit of mere belonging to the Christian community but the Spirit of power to transform the world—if only we say yes to it!

Our nation has suffered a staggering and horrifying blow. Now we are challenged to respond to these times of violence. How will we respond? What do we expect people to think of us if we raise the standard of the Lamb rather than the banner of revenge? Will they think us utopian dreamers, appeasers, wimps? Or, maybe we are really practical visionaries of the way the world ought and can be? Maybe we are not appeasers but choose to face down evil with nonviolent and active measures directed toward conversion rather than annihilation. Whatever, we choose to do as individuals or as a nation will determine the course of history for the next few decades. Maybe in the midst of this horror God has called us to a new way, and necessary way for the future peace of the world. Whose servants are we? And what do we expect from those we choose to serve?

For those of us that choose to follow the Lord we will be challenged to believe in the way of the Kingdom of God and to utilize the gifts God has given us to help blaze a new trail in confronting evil and violence in our world. The memories of the violence in our age will be remembered by us and should be. These things need to be remembered so that we may not allow the dead to die in such a terrible event without committing ourselves to changing and transforming our world so that such things will not happen again. Then when we have done all that we have been commanded by our Lord we can state: we have done what we were obliged to do in the Spirit of the courage that is given to us in Christ.

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Created October 6, 2001