How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

November 28, 2004 (First Sunday of Advent)

  by The Rev. Linda Yeager, Deacon

- Isaiah 2:1-5
- Psalm 122
- Romans 13:8-14
- Matthew 24:37-44

(From The Lectionary Page)

Those of you who are fans of the rock group U2 are surely aware that their new album arrived in stores this week. It is titled "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," which I find an appropriate title for this week's readings.  It is time, isn't it, to dismantle all the weapons of war, much as today's passage from Isaiah suggests. Is there any better image than that of swords turning into plows or spears into pruning tools, dismantling weapons of destruction and forging symbols of usefulness and peace? Isaiah visualized the city on the hill crested with the temple, and he dreamt of the days that the people would come to the temple and learn the ways of God and walk in those ways. The longing for peace that filled the heart of Isaiah fills our hearts as well, and fills our eyes with tears as we listen, week after week, to the names of those who have given their young lives for peace. Why have we, fruitlessly, sought peace for centuries and continue to seek it today? Where is peace? When will we find it?

These are, of course, questions that have filled and continue to fill the spirits and minds of millions from generation to generation. The psalmist in today's psalm entreats, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem . . . Peace be within your walls and quietness within your towers." These pleas are aimed at a world that aches for peace but strives for power.

Paul, in the reading from his letter to the Romans, gives us an answer to the quest and questions for peace. Paul writes, " . . . the one who loves another has fulfilled the law." He says, further, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. . ." This is where peace becomes personal. Peace is an attitude, an attitude not only for nations, but an attitude that begins within each of us. Only when we find peace within ourselves, and peace within our personal relationships, can we think about peace on a larger scale. And aren't we tempted to "sleep" rather than work toward peacemaking, both within ourselves and within our lives? Paul describes a world of darkness, filled with reveling, wickedness, arguments, and decadence, a world where self-satisfaction rules and then encourages us to wake up and leave this world of darkness for the world of light that Christ gives us.

Today we enter the season of Advent, which, as most of you know, means "coming." Since this season precedes Christmas, we often perceive of the coming as meaning the coming of Christ as an infant in the beautiful peace of the night when the angels filled the skies and proclaimed to the shepherds the birth of the young king. But the season of Advent goes beyond this, for Advent is also the season when we are urged to watch for the arrival of the Savior and to make ready for the coming of the Lord.

The other night, I was going home on I-35, traveling in the right lane. A large transport truck swerved from an exit-only lane directly into my path.  I veered sharply to my left and escaped a collision. But, just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, I realized that I had not checked the left lane before I moved over there. Oh, my word, I thought! What if someone had been in that lane? I could have hit another car and injured or killed someone, and it would have been my fault! How quickly I could have changed the lives of a number of people, including, perhaps, my own family. In just one second, people's lives are altered permanently. It doesn't have to be an automobile accident. We all know people who have died at their desks at work from a sudden heart attack or who have had life-ending accidents at home.

In the gospel for today, Jesus uses images of a sudden, unexpected end. Two men working in a field -- suddenly it's over. Two women grinding meal -- in an instant everything is changed. As soon as we are born, we are on a path to death. There is only one way out of this life.

Is this what drives people to strive for power rather than peace? Is the knowledge of our own mortality the primary reason that control becomes the issue? "Keep awake," Jesus says, "for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." And, later in the reading, "Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." When Jesus speaks this way, when he reminds us to get ready, to get our house in order, it is not some kind of threat that should incite us into fear, that should make us more intent on grasping what the world has to offer. Rather it's an invitation to peace, to develop a relationship with the one who created us and who loves us more than anyone else has ever loved us, will ever love us, or can ever love us. This is the invitation to peace that the world seeks.

We all know people who radiate that peace, who live a life in full relationship with God. We want to be close to them, to feel the power of the peace they exude. Jesus came to announce the Kingdom of God, the time of God's reign. And he said that the kingdom of God is coming, and now is -- both in the future and right now. C.S. Lewis, in describing his friend George Macdonald, said, "His peace of mind came not from building on the future but from resting in what he called "the holy Present.'"

The peace that the world seeks begins inside each of us, and it comes when we become at one with the one who exists yesterday, today, and tomorrow -- for it is in the present that we find eternity. Peace will come when we love and when we accept love. Lewis said, "Because we love something else more than this world, we love even this world better than those who know no other."

I was so curious about the U2 album that I purchased it, actually getting the last one on the shelf on the day it came out. (Never mind the expression on the face of the young clerk when I asked for it.) One of the songs is called "Love and Peace or Else." Written by lead singer Bono, the haunting words repeat, "We need love and peace, love and peace." The song ends with these phrases, "And I wonder where is the love? Where is the love? Where is the love? Where is the love? Love and peace."

The world chants this question, but the world has no answer. We will never find the answer to where we can find love and peace until each one of us looks in the right place. The world will have no peace until we look beyond it for peace. For peace begins within; it begins with an acceptance of God's love, an acceptance of the reign of God, an acceptance of the peace that passes understanding. It comes when we acknowledge our mortality in this world and when we acknowledge our life beyond this world. This peace must be more important to us than anything else; we must be willing to spend time seeking it and living in it, in giving in to God's search for us, and in helping one another in this surrender. When we find that peace, the world will see and know. Isaiah's dream of people walking in the ways of God will be fulfilled. Peace has to begin with each of us, within each of us, and then, and only then, will we finally dismantle the atomic bomb.

Lewis, C.S. George MacDonald; An Anthology
Lewis, C.S. God in the Dock
U2 How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, Universal Music International, 2004