Scripture: Luke 1:68-79 and Jeremiah 23:1-6
Shepherds to Shepherd
The War to End all Wars.
The Great War.
The first and last time all the world would go to war with itself.
We know Armistice was signed November 11th, 1918.
We also know it was not a lasting peace. It was not the end of the War to end all Wars. We know it was not the first and last time there would be a world war.
The peace would last roughly twenty years.
Just enough time to raise up a new generation of soldiers.
Pope Pius XI noted this rumbling in 1922. Pope Pius XI was worried about the state of the world. He’d witnessed World War I; witnessed the fall of the Habsburgs, Ottomans, Hohenzollerns, and Romanovs. He’d seen kings and queens and countries and nations fall. He saw rising nationalism – people identifying with their countries. He saw people putting their country and country’s interests above refugees, world good, and mercy. He wrote, “Since the close of the Great War individuals, the different classes of society, the nations of the earth have not as yet found true peace… the old rivalries between nations have not ceased to exert their influence…. Conditions have become increasingly worse because the fears of the people are being constantly played upon by the ever-present menace of new wars, likely to be more frightful and destructive than any which have preceded them. Whence it is that the nations of today live in a state of armed peace which is scarcely better than war itself, a condition which tends to exhaust national finances, to waste the flower of youth, to muddy and poison the very fountainheads of life, physical, intellectual, religious, and moral.”
He wrote of his concern of class warfare, political parties that seek power and control over the common welfare of people (even if that means compromises and working with rival political parties!); he was worried about how everyday men and women were falling to an evil patriotism. “Patriotism” he wrote, “the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ – becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life.” (Ubi arcano Dei consilio (English: When in the inscrutable designs of God.) 1922.
He called for people to choose to identify first as Christians, and let their national identity be under this. To choose to first do what is Christ-like, and then consider the interests of their nation. To choose to belong to the kingdom of God rather than the commonwealth and kingdom of Great Britain, or Russia, or presidency of the States. True Peace, lasting peace, soul peace, world peace, could not be found except under the Prince of Peace, the King of Heaven, Christ the King.
His calls for identifying with Christ first and other identities second or third grew. A few years later he proclaimed a new feast – Christ the King. This Feast Day was for all the church – not just priests or nuns. “The faithful,” he wrote, meaning the people in the pews, “by meditating upon these truths [That Christ is King], will gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal. If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God.” In other words – the Roman Catholic Church Pope desired everyday people to commit their bodies, wills, minds, and hands to God.
This feast day was moved, and was picked up by other denominations – the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Methodists and Reformed and other ancestors of our own denomination. Here we are – almost 100 years later – and this day is in our liturgical calendar now. A day to remember we belong first and foremost to the realm of God through Christ, and then to our own mortal countries and nations.
It sounds really nice. It sounds like a kumbaya moment where we hold hands and proclaim world peace.
But in actuality, it’s a pretty audacious statement. It means setting war aside.
Consider the present moment: there is war in Ukraine. There is war in Myanmar, and Afghanistan, and Colombia, and Ethiopia, and Somalia, and… Actually, I have a map.
These are the places where war is happening this very year.
There will be more and more conflict as more and more refugees from climate change move away from areas that now are uninhabitable – now flood too often, now do not rain enough, now are hot enough roads melt in the summer. We have begun to feel the strain here in Canada. The last census showed 1 in 4 people in Canada are immigrants. Census Canada predicts the next census will show 1 in 3 people are immigrants. When there is an influx of immigrants, a country’s people usually become more nationalistic. More likely to say, “This is MY country and this is how we act HERE.” What language we talk here. What religion. What we value. (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026a-eng.htm)
In the United States, the prospect of white protestant Christians no longer being the majority has sparked and is sparking intense racism, attacks on Mosques, and “deterring” immigration or refugees by separating children away from seekers and housing arrives in dog kennels.
In the southern EU, this is called the “European Refugee Crisis.” Italy and France refuse refugee ships and hundreds of people die stranded at sea on these boats, or die trying to cross the Mediterranean by raft. According to SOS Mediterranean, since it began operating in 2015, 20,182 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean, including 1,337 since the beginning of 2022. France says it is part of Fortress Europe. A fortress that resists these outsiders. Italy’s Benito Mussolini supporters grow – and publicly ask their new prime minister to reinstate a fascist state. It reminds me of when we in Canada refused the refugee Jews fleeing Germany in World War II. Refugees are blamed for everything from high unemployment, to crime, to inflation, to the spread of infection diseases.
Just as refugees have been for… for forever, I believe.
Sticking by your group, standing strong shoulder to shoulder, and tribalism is how we have survived for millennia. Since before we knew how to write or read and maybe even speak with words.
But the message of God is that our group is all of creation. All these foreigners are still human, still siblings, still people God loves. Our enemies – whether in war, or through risking our way of life – are people with hopes and dreams like ours, families and loves like ours, and are owed kindness, hospitality, and care.
It is very risky to welcome in strangers, foreigners, and refugees. Yet… those who follow the way of God are asked to do just this and to see themselves as part of God’s realm where we are all citizens, all welcome, all family. There is a reason God came to us in Jesus — a refugee.
In our scripture today, Jeremiah has heard the word of God. He has heard God is angry with the wicked kings. These are the leaders who forsake justice, don’t care about oppression, and abandoned those most at risk in society: foreigners. Widows. Orphans. They are the leaders who fail to pay people living wages and become massively wealthy at the expense of the poor. These are the leaders who have blood on their hands – whether from war, or from ignoring the plight of their own people, or that of non-citizens. The leaders were supposed to be shepherds, good shepherds, to protect people from the evils of the world and to guide their people to green pastures. But instead, these shepherds have attacked their own flock.
Jeremiah hears God proclaim God will destroy the evil leaders and raise up new leaders from those who were victimized by these evil leaders. And a new king is prophesized who will do justice and righteousness.
In Luke, Zachariah prophesizes. He recalls that God has promised to raise up new leaders to protect the people from evil. Zachariah predicts this child, John, shall be called a prophet of God Most High. This child, John, will go before the Lord preparing the Lord’s way. And through John’s work “the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace.”
For we Christians, this dawn is Jesus. For we Christians, this dawn has come and yet must come again because the world is not yet in full peace. For we Christians, this dawn is the light we know came into the world, is in the world, and yet will be in the world more fully. For us, on this Christ the King Sunday, we dream of that realm where we are all kin, all family, in the kin-dom of God, the family realm of God, with Jesus as our leader. A leader who is a good shepherd. A good guide. A leader who brings the Peace of God – a peace not maintained with weapons, or fear, a peace that is more than a lack of conflict. A peace that is, instead, a wholeness and completeness in all of us and in all things. Unity. Restored wholeness. Shalom. The thriving of all our relations.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 