Peace, what would that even look like?

When imagination is an important spiritual practice

This past week we lit the peace candle. It was less than a week after a sixteen year old lost his life tackling another teenager with a gun to save his class mates. The hero died. The gunman is in jail. I suppose I could mention the names and places but the reality is that unless a lot changes, and quickly this will just happen again.

It seems America has accepted this. This happens sometimes. It is just what we have to live with. None of this is true, but it feels true. Columbine happened when I was in high school. I am pushing 40. Still nothing has changed. Living in a world where horrible things happen leads us to believe that we must accept this.

But instead of accepting this, the church lights the Peace candle. We pray for peace to come. We insist that it doesn’t have to be this way. We imagine a better way. I think imagination might be our greatest teacher of peace. In a world trying to force us into complacency, telling us that hurt and poverty and violence and hunger are just how things are sometimes, the holy spirit pokes at the church, asks us to start by saying….but what if it weren’t?

In past years I would have spent the first four paragraphs explaining the difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker, arguing that we weren’t actually at peace and that the one trying to keep the peace was actually trying to keep the status quo and what we really needed was a new way. A way we could make peace. I don’t argue that anymore because everyone already sees that it is true.

I serve a congregation that is very different from me politically. Here are all the things we can agree on: God doesn’t want guns in schools, everyone should get to eat, public servants should make more money and be treated with respect, people should get to live someplace safe. I could go on. When we start with imagining a world God wants we are able to come together to find ways to make that peace.

We have strayed far from the original plan. It is going to take some wild imagining to get us to a place where peace is even possible. I think that is why the children could lead us. I think Advent is the time for imagining. What if…. What would that look like? What would it feel like? Why would we want it? I think God also works in the how. How are we going to get there? But I think if we have any chance at peace we first have to imagine a world in which peace is possible. I think that is holy work. I think it is the work of preparing for the advent of the second coming.