October 7, 2007: World Communion Sunday
An Abundant Life: Peacemaking (Luke 17:1-10, Ps 137)

Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church

Friday morning about 5 AM, the dog and I were wakened by raccoons hauling themselves into our garage attic through the common wall next to our bedroom. I have had an uneasy relationship with raccoons ever since Susie, the three-legged camp scavenger, cornered me in a laundry tub after dark one night at Pioneer Girls camp. Not yet twelve, it was a painful introduction for me that was only affirmed the year my family tried to raise 100 straight-run chicks, all but 29 of whom were consumed by the raccoons living in the construction equipment next to our coop. When the coon's moving van pulled up Friday morning, I implemented the Chicago-area pest control strategy: I tuned a radio to the most raucous country western music I could find, and turned it up full blast. This has been an active season for raccoons in our neighborhood. I don't mind them being raccoons, I just don't want them in my house. So, having done my bit to make at least my world safe from raccoons, I decided that, as long as I was up, I could pray about today's sermon. Which was my mistake. The thought of raccoons kept intruding, so that I had to recognize that peacemaking is not like raccoon eradication.

For instance, peacemaking is not passive: surrender your poor and vulnerable chickens to the aggressors, hoping that "enough" chicks will survive to adulthood. Nor is peacemaking aggressive: making the situation intolerable to the dreadful "other" through using the functional equivalent of full-blast country western music. Today, Jesus offers a third way, one in which peacemaking differs radically from raccoon eradication.

When we tune in on today's story, we find Jesus setting demanding criteria for being a disciple. He does this by describing the challenges of living in community. The first challenge is accountability. Sure, keep your own nose clean, make sure you live an exemplary life. But then Jesus proposes something really unpalatable: his followers are to help each other maintain their discipleship. They do this by pointing out when they fall short of his standards. This is as hard for the apostles to hear as it is for Presbyterians, because their response is a dismayed request for more faith.

Jesus apparently flunked his pastoral care course, because he minimizes their concern. He says, "The life of a disciple is not about getting it right, it's about doing what you're called to do." After his famous mustard seed saying about tossing trees, Jesus concludes that even with increased faith, we'll never be more than servants, never more than people who need to do what we're supposed to do. And that's the good news. Because we come to faith by doing it.

The logical conclusion is "An Abundant Life," which is (coincidentally) our theme for peacemaking month this year. The premise of the connection between abundance and peacemaking is that Christians are called to be peacemakers (it's our job). Abundance is the source of our peacemaking (why we can do it). Our children learned during Vacation Church School last summer that "abundance" means "more than enough and plenty to share." What a great understanding of abundance! Our abundant God, providing not just "enough" but more-than-enough, and inviting us all to live an abundant life by sharing-surely a more effective and longer-lasting means of making peace than negotiating how many bombs each side gets to stockpile.

Last week, our visitor from Tajikistan, Jonna Reeder, invited us to pray for an abundant life. If peacemakers is what we were created to be, it's not a matter of waiting to be thanked or even told what to do. It's a matter, she said, of not placing restrictions on our prayers for an abundant life. She challenged us to pray, asking "What is the abundant life for you right now?" and "What abundance does our heart seek this week?" and "How do we respond to our already-abundant lives?"
And I've been hearing how your prayers have been answered this week, these peacemaking prayers. "We have so much" you have said, and then I would hear about a response of peacemaking. To volunteer at the Food Bank. To perform the ministry of chicken soup. To embrace the indignities of illness by remembering the dignity of life. To accompany others to the dark corners of failure and discouragement. To send a note, "I'm praying for you." To leave the comfort of home to bring tools to poor farmers. To dream about a medical mission to Tajikistan. To listen without judgment to the story of someone else's loss. Most of the people who tell me these stories are as baffled at hearing this is peacemaking as are the servants in Jesus' story at being thanked. "We are only doing what we are created to do" they say. "It is life-giving," they say.

Friday evening I participated in a workshop by one of the artists who will be in residence with Springwater while I'm on sabbatical next summer. Using collage-making materials, we were invited to open ourselves to the movement of God's Spirit. Since I'd been working all day on a sermon about peacemaking and abundance, I meditated on abundance as I worked. I was astonished to discover that there is a not-very-fine line between "abundance" and "wretched excess." I wanted to "show" abundance, and what I found was that "more and more and more" is not the same. The result of excess is not even pretty! Abundance, I found, has a spiritual quality to it which is rich and deep and good-and not necessarily the same as "quantity." Excess is "more" motivated by a fear of scarcity and the zero sum game-if you get some, that means I get less. Abundance is always "There's more where this came from."

Peacemaking based on the raccoon eradication method is like "excess." We may not be engaged in actual conflict, but the so-called peace we experience is based on separation, on an understanding of "we versus them." Real peacemaking is based on a shared humanity, finds its source in the abundance of the One Who Provides. If I'm going to make real peace with the raccoons, I'm going to have to embrace their essential nature, so that when I remove them from my house, it won't be out of fear and disgust. That's not "peace." Real peace will find its source in love of our mutual Creator which overflows into compassion for all wild things just trying to adapt to the loss of habitat.

This is why Jesus insisted his disciples follow him as part of a community. When the world is divided into "we versus them" it's easier to see where other people have gone wrong than it is to see where we ourselves have. When, in addition, we can't accept the abundance of God, it's only a matter of time before "we" gotta get what "them" has got, or there won't be enough for us. But living in community requires us to see that our neighbor's faults are reflected in us. We've got them, too. If, in addition, we can accept the abundant life God offers us, we can only respond as peacemakers. More than enough-and plenty to share. Thanks be to God.