The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - A

A time to choose

In 1990, then Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev wrote:

"The ultimate absurdity of relying on nuclear weapons was dramatically revealed to me, and I am sure to President bush as well, when we met in Washington in the summer of 1990. During that visit, we shared a helicopter ride together at Camp David. Near President bush sat a military aide with the nuclear codes enabling him to destroy the Soviet Union. Near me sat my military aide with the codes required to destroy the united States. Yet President Bush and I sat together on that small helicopter talking about peace. Neither of us ever planned to use the awesome power we each possessed. Yet we possessed it. And we both knew how ordinary and fallible we both were. And, how we would both choose, would be decisive for the planet!

The Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence, E Weber, ed. p. 13

Our readings remind us that among all of God's creatures, we alone, as human beings have the power to choose among several alternatives in life. This is the thrust of the reading from Sirach ! There are moments in our lives when our choices will yield life or death; a curse or a blessing. This is the awesome responsibility of human freedom ! What's more, human freedom is not so much about choosing between this alternative and that, so much, as it is choosing who we are becoming in relation to each other and the world around us--and in relationship to the Lord.

The words of Mr. Gorbachev remind us of this truth ! These past two generations of human beings are the only generations in which the survival and thrival of the planet hangs in the balance--hangs by the choices we make today and each day. So awesome in dimension and scope, such problems seem to confound our deepest aspirations to live in peace and wholeness and sometimes to fail to choose to confront it. Yet, the choice must be faced. It does no one any good to aver our eyes from such a choice, because that it what it means to be a disciple, it means looking at what we would rather not and entering into that difficult moment to take responsibility. This happens everyday when we choose for the Kingdom that Jesus describes for us today. It happens when we choose love over hate; kindness over cruelty. For us in our time Dr. King put it most clearly: "For us in out time it is Nonviolence or Nonexistence." Or we might say it is the choice for the kingdom, or one of its impostors.

Jesus calls us to this truth, and choice for it. If we look at his statements in Matthew we hear him saying through all of these--"choose the Kingdom, choose its way, so you and your children, and their children will live with a blessing. Do not let hate rule the heart; do not be anything less than you are meant to be--a child of God. But to do this means to make a choice. We cannot avoid it; we cannot postpone it, we cannot pretend that it is not there--the future of who we are, and the future of the world for our children depend on our assumption of Christian adult responsibility for the world. There can be no Christian neutrality in the face of the existence of evil. This was put so eloquently by the writer Dante when he stated:

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.'

He makes this statement because he has heard the Lord. He knows that in certain moments, our very selves--who we are--is on the line. This is Paul's concern too. he knows what's at stake for the believer--his or her very person and integrity as a Christian. What's more, he acknowledges that our choices will not usually conform to the wisdom of the age. For our age the wisdom of preventing global war has rested on the fear of the balance of terror through nuclear deterrence. With such a lie has come a huge cost ! Wasted money, wasted lives, forgetfulness of the poor and the least and a poisoning of the human spirit. It would be easier to not talk of such things. But it would also be irresponsible and a betrayal of the choices we are called to for the creation and nurturing of life. It would be a betrayal of Jesus command to cast out that which causes us to deny the Kingdom!

It is a time to choose. The new millennium is nearly upon us. It can be a time for renewal, a change in direction, the time for entertaining new possibilities to enflesh the wisdom of the Kingdom for our children and their children ! It can be a time to build a new world based on the vision of the Sermon on the Mount. And this Sermon on the Mount of the Lord is based on the coming future of God that we are called to join this day in a choice for love, in a choice for justice, in a choice to commit ourselves to the hard struggle and complex struggle for peace. One writer put it this way: "For believers the transfiguration of life in Easter joy which they experience is no more than a small beginning of the transfiguration of the whole cosmos. The risen Christ does not come just to the dead, so as to raise them and communicate to them his eternal life; he draws all things into his future, so that they may become new and participate in the feast of God's eternal joy."

Coming of God, Moltmann p. 338

We stand on the cusp of the season of Lent. It is a season that knows it is time for renewal, to choose the way of the Lord in anticipation of celebrating the love feast of Easter. And it is a time that asserts the question that beckons from the future and echoes in the present: How we will choose?

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded January 20, 2000