I am not at peace. The world is not at peace. And despite all the festivities, food and family, nothing about the holiday season is peace-filled.
In my experience and in accordance with nearly every personal, professional and academic reference, the church is not at peace.
On I-30 just southwest of Little Rock, Arkansas, a church sign as large as a commercial billboard reads, “Jesus is the only way to peace.” I drive by it slowly most mornings while fighting my way through traffic. Our roads are not at peace.
The Jesus story in our Gospels presents one who disrupts the status quo to such a great extent that the establishment recommends execution. With the voice of the scriptures, this is the one we call “Prince of Peace.”
I’ve been guest preaching recently for a congregation with a massive, tired facility with a shutdown as imminent as Christmas—an all too common story.
What peace? It’s the zombie apocalypse. It’s all in pieces—at least from my scorched earth perspective. Call me “Bah humbug.”
The lectionary reads in Amos 6:11b, “and the great house shall be shattered to bits, and the little house to pieces.” What, then, shall we say?
“The Peace of Wild Things” is how I would like to respond. The title alone of this Wendell Berry poem is deeper than anything I might muster here on a word processor.
It begins precisely the way I am ranting:
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be…”
I assume your favorite (and your least favorite) news source resounds similarly: fear of what is happening in the world. How, then, shall we live? Berry describes going into nature, a strategy I personally commend and yet one which has its own crises.
Where, then can we go?
One possibility, for me at least, is grief. I grieve the conflict in the world that renders the lives, homes and cultures of some less valuable than mine.
I grieve the death of beloved institutions that needed to die. I grieve the consequences of my own behaviors producing the planet my children will inherit.
I can deny. I can bargain. I can despair in my hopelessness. And so I do.
I do deny.
I do bargain.
I do despair.
Luke 1:58-63 reads: “On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, ’No; he is to be called John.’ They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed.”
To me, this story stands in a great tradition of naming– naming the animals in the very beginning and being called by name by a God who claims us. And yes, there are countless stories of those who go unnamed and wrongly named in our scriptures— most notably women.
To be honest, I don’t know what to do. I don’t have the solutions to the wars of our world, the wicked problem of our climate or the demise of the institutional church.
And in my grief, it seems, at this moment, appropriate to name it. I’m grieving and not filled with peace.
As a child, all my teachers told me that someday we would convert to using the metric system of measurements, and it still hasn’t happened. Today, my children are learning inches, ounces and miles. A recent Saturday Night Live sketch played on this tension.
Of course, there are 5,280 feet per mile. It’s so easy to remember, although no one knows how many yards that is.
Of course, the counterpart to Celsius is impossible to spell. Of course, it would be easier to use the base ten model. Yet beyond units of measure, SNL reminds us that our country’s freedom did not include all.
Does it now?
And so, I’m trying to name it. It’s a hot mess.
I have other four-letter words for it as well. And in my grief process, to name the dumpster fire and measure it in Fahrenheit might be a step towards acceptance, healing and peace.
Berry concludes:
“…For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Chaplain Resident at UAMS in Little Rock, Arkansas. Jake has served congregations in Virginia and Texas. Married to Allison, their family of four includes two wild kiddos.
