Today is the last of our “Are we really going to talk about…” series.

The last one for the year, and maybe ever. I have to admit, I’m kinda proud of myself, because I actually followed through on this series all through the year. J

We’ve talked about hell, environmentalism, communion, atonement, poverty, the Holy Spirit, evangelism, politics…and now pacifism. Many of these, including pacifism, are difficult to talk about because we have divergent opinions on them.

Our differences don’t have to force us into silence. We don’t have to all believe the same things in order to talk about what we think in church!

It’s easier to avoid our differences.

And sometimes we do that because we believe we can pursue a “basic” Christianity, a kind of belief system that is just the “essentials”.

I think what I’ve wanted to demonstrate in this series is that there is a different approach.

Rather than narrow down what we talk about to just the essential things we can agree on…let’s work to discuss (and live!) a broad and far reaching faith in Christ that touches every part of our lives. And let’s strongly say that we don’t all have to agree on everything to be in the same church community.

[Try on coat]

If it’s cold outside, I need to wear a coat. This one could do just fine. [Try another] So could this one.

Coats come in all sorts of styles, materials, and colors. Unless you’re attending a black tie event, the style of coat doesn’t matter. No matter what they look like, they’re going to keep you warm.

Faith in Jesus is what is necessary for life: life now, and life forever with God. Faith in Jesus is our “coat” for the cold. Different denominations, different people have a faith in Jesus with different styles and colors, different emphases and beliefs.

A good coat has a cohesiveness to it. It fits together well. The lines flow, it looks like it belongs. These sleeves on this coat would look hideous, for instance, on that coat.

And there is no such thing as a coat with no color, no style, no shape.

You can’t make a “generic” coat. You can only make a coat with a particular color and shape and size.

It’s the same way with our faith in Jesus. There’s no such thing as a “generic” faith in Jesus. Our faith will have a particular set of beliefs that are lived out in a particular way.

As Friends, our color and style of coat takes on a particular shape. It keeps you warm just like a Baptist or Presbyterian or Catholic coat, but has different beliefs and practices that make its color and shape unique.

You are welcome here at this church, even if your beliefs and ways of living out your faith in Jesus don’t take on the same shape as ours! Faithful followers of Jesus have different looking coats.

You don’t have to believe just as we do; but you deserve to hear clearly what the outlines of our faith are.

And pacifism is part of our coat.

It’s a minority position in our world, and a minority position in Christianity. For us, for me, it’s an integral part of the whole of what we believe.

So as I’ve thought about today, I’m excited to try and state one way of developing a biblical basis for pacifism. I do so knowing that in this room sit people who have served in the military, and done so thoughtfully and done so as followers of Jesus.

My intent in sharing is not to place judgment on those who think differently, nor to say that you don’t belong with us.

It’s simply to say, this is an important part of who we are as Quakers and as Christians. If we don’t present the peace message in a historic peace church, where else will it be spoken?

As I describe the shape and color of our coat today, the part known as pacifism, I hope you’ll use it as an opportunity to look at your own beliefs, and where the Bible and the Holy Spirit give support to your coat.

When I look at Jesus’ life, I see someone who consistently demonstrated a love that was willing to give up what he rightfully deserved.

What I see consistently, time and time again, is Christ giving up what he could have rightly claimed for his own.

I see him living a life characterized by the cross. The cross is not just his death; it is his way of life.

This choice to go the way of the cross started at the very beginning of Christ’s ministry, with the temptations he faced in the desert.

READ ON SCREEN Luke 4:1-13

Satan’s temptations were not just a choice between worshiping the devil or following God. The temptation was that the WAY in which he WENT ABOUT his ministry would either be worshiping the devil or following God. Jesus discovered that taking the road of a conquering king, of having all the nations bow at his feet, was NOT his call.

Our danger is to overspiritualize this very real choice. We might be tempted to say, “Sure, he didn’t become a military king because he had a spiritual mission.”

While in some respects that is true, I think it goes much deeper than that. The way Jesus chose to save us, save us spiritually, politically, nationally, and globally, was a life and death marked by sacrifice and submission. He showed us that the way to love as God loves and act as God acts is the way of submission, not power and lordship.

In other words, Jesus didn’t refuse to become a political messiah because politics aren’t as important as spirituality; no, to be God in the flesh saving the world meant playing by a different set of rules. To follow God meant he could not be a political messiah, conquering the Romans and rescuing Israel.

It could have been easily justified.

If ever there was an unjust political system, if ever there was a case to be made for a “just war,” than the Israelites could have made it against the Romans.

Israel had been occupied territory for hundreds of years. They had been taken over by godless empires (Assyria, Greece, and Rome), subjugated to religious and economic and physical oppression.

They were perfectly within their rights to want to be free, to be able to worship as God intended. Wanting a military king to come and free them politically was a very obvious desire and need.

Jesus knew that. He knew what it was like to be oppressed by the Romans. I imagine there was a big part of him that longed to be that kind of messiah. And that was the true temptation he was facing at the beginning of his ministry. What kind of messiah am I called to be?

Will I be one who seeks glory and lives by using rightful power?

Remember, this was a power and glory that he rightly deserved as God’s Son, a power and glory he would use for a just cause, the freedom of oppressed Israel.

That is the temptation Jesus faced before Satan. Political power is seen as Satan’s to control and a temptation to be resisted. Calling it a temptation shows how much God turns our world’s wisdom on its head!

God incarnate fights evil and rescues the world from sin and evil through submission, not power!

Jesus was living out God’s loving character in a perfect way. God doesn’t force us. God doesn’t coerce us. God chooses to overcome evil with good. God chooses to surrender his right to hold us accountable for our sin, to forgive us through Jesus, and to be in a loving relationship with us. Jesus not only died to show us that, he lived in a way that demonstrated that sacrificial, self-giving love.

It wasn’t the only time he faced that temptation to be a military king.

Remember Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where the crowds praised him and called him King?

Why were they there? Why were they so excited? They saw him as a political messiah. They saw the end of their oppression. They were ready to be led to fight against the Romans in a just cause by the man whom God had called.

Let’s look at Luke 19: 37-44.

READ ON SCREEN

The people wanted a king-political, ruler, military. He Pharisees were scared-be QUIET! Don’t get us in trouble with the Romans!

Then the climax. He weeps over Jerusalem. Why? because they don’t get it. They long for the wrong thing. There is a much deeper reality here that is more important than political freedom. And they are blind to it. They can’t see it.

Jesus wasn’t saying that our spiritual lives have nothing to do with our political lives. Rather, he was saying just the opposite.

Too often, we think it was his mission to die on the cross to save us spiritually, and that somehow that was completely separate or more important than the political revolution Israel was longing for.

His life was living out a completely new and different way of following God. To follow God means giving up our rights, it means submission to God, it means loving your enemies, it means serving, not being a lord. Those are the choices Jesus made again and again.

These are the choices we are called to make as we follow him.

If we begin to see Jesus’ life and ministry in this way, if we refuse to overspiritualize his message, if we take seriously the thought that there is no part of our lives that God’s Kingdom can be kept out of...then these words from Luke 6:27-36 lead us to consider radically re-orienting our lives.

Let’s read it all together. [ON SCREEN]

This is part of what it means to let the Kingdom of God invade every part of my life. There’s nothing left for me to hold on to on my own, no right I can hold on to, however legitimate it seems.

This is the radical teaching of the man the world calls a great teacher! This way of life pushes against everything around us. It challenges prevailing wisdom, it comes at a great cost…and because Jesus was obedient to this way of life, our lives and our eternal future have been changed!

I have come to see pacifism as the way of the cross.

It is a way of life that takes courage and trust that God’s upside down way of doing things wasn’t just a one-time way to save the world from sin, but is a way of life. Jesus choosing to die rather than fight is seen not as a one-time thing needed for forgiveness of sins. It’s seen instead as the ultimate example of how evil is truly defeated. This is how God conquers evil; and this is the ticket for humanity to get out of our cycle of violence and evil.

The kingdom of God is not here in its fullness. When Christ comes, peace will truly reign.

I believe, though, that we can’t just live by the world’s rules now until Christ comes. I believe the kingdom of God wants to have all of my life now. I believe God is calling me to give up my personal rights, to literally try to live out what Jesus said here in Luke 6.

Ron Sider is a contemporary Christian leader who speaks to this as well:

“Christians do not claim that we should wait to live by the kingdom’s standards on lying, theft, or adultery until non-Christians stop lying, stealing, and fornicating. Nor, then, should the church delay implementing Jesus’ nonviolent method of overcoming evil with good until the Caesars and Hitlers disappear.”

We’re all aware of the huge gap between what God wants the world to look like and what it looks like now. We all long for God to act, to make it right, for Jesus to come again. We know nothing short of Jesus’ return will completely remake the world as we know it.

Will it “work” in our militaristic world to be pacifists? Likely, the consequence is the same as it was for Jesus: in our world, power often triumphs.

But resurrection power can’t be shown without death first! When Jesus, in Acts 1, tells the disciples they will receive power from the Holy Spirit, power that will make them his witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and around the world…when Jesus says that, the same word translated “witnesses” is the word that is the root for a martyr.

What power might come in us if we followed Jesus’ example with courage?

Aaron Dunlop loaned me a book by a famous scientist, Freeman Dyson. It had a chapter on pacifism, a chapter which outlined well the difference between personal pacifism and what it would take to have effective national pacifism.

It would take virtually 100% of a nation committed to it before any hope of it “working” in our world could come about.

I think that’s probably true; and in the now and not yet of the kingdom, the question for us is how personally we will choose to live, even if others don’t join us.

The perfect peace that is coming will not come through our conquest; it will not come because humanity does enough “random acts of kindness” to just overlook all the evil that has happened.

Peace will come because the Prince of Peace was born, died, and lives again, and made possible true forgiveness--a forgiveness between us and God, and a forgiveness that can overflow to our human relationships marked by strife and hate.

I’ve spent too long this morning to be able to adequately talk about the implications of living this way. Forgiving those who hurt me; not holding grudges; wanting the best instead of the worst for those whom I envy; releasing my right of retribution on those who have hurt me emotionally or maybe even physically.

Jesus lived out a self-sacrificing love that led him to suffer and die on the cross, and that love changed the world.

It gave us the ability to live in a real relationship with God. It sent a powerful message that God’s way, the way of love, is not one of power and might and glory and protection of rights, but one of surrender and forgiveness and compassion and love.

In reality, living as Jesus lived, loving as Jesus loves, allows us to have relationships with each other that last.

May God show us how to love as he loved, how to let the kingdom of God touch us in a way that lets us love our enemies; the ones next door and across the world.