Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

 

 

August 17, 2003

 

  

“Many Ways to Peace”

 

 

Rev. Kathy Duhon

 

           

“Without inner peace, it is impossible to have world peace.”  So says His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  The Taoist reading today gives us that stair-step understanding of peacemaking:  that if you want peace at any level, socially, you have to work on peace at the level below it, so that peace between nations needs peace in the cities, and peace in the home needs peace in the heart.  World peace depends upon peace at every social level below it, all the way down to inner peace, just as the Dalai Lama said.  So there are many ways to peace, all of which will ultimately help achieve world peace.  You may be called to work on peace in the heart, in the home, with neighbors, in your city or town, in the nation, or in the world, but whatever way to peace you choose, you are working on peace at every level, for all the many ways of peace are interconnected.  A good example of this is in the Gandhi story we heard – the man was working on inner peace, but his marriage as a Hindu to a Muslim had to have a peaceful effect on his community, and ultimately on the situation in India and Pakistan.   

After Lao Tse’s peace reading, we heard the teaching of Jesus about peace that is sometimes used as a formula for peace with neighbors and in the home, but as it is usually understood, does not lead to inner peace, or to any real peace at all.  In fact, the first phrase is often referred to by victims of domestic violence for why they go back, “to turn the other cheek”, which usually leads to more violence.  The giving away of your shirt, not just your coat, can be used to justify why you wouldn’t ask for fair compensation for  your work while taking a cut in benefits, along with many other forms of being a doormat to others.  The last bit, go the extra mile, was used by the first President Bush to help support the first Gulf War.  None of these usages are peaceful in their outcomes.  Yet, this passage is meant to bring peace and justice, so what are we not understanding?

For the first teaching about being struck on the cheek, I need a volunteer, so I can really “hit” this point home.  . . .  It says, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”  So I strike you [a right hand pretend punch to the volunteer’s face], but what cheek is this?  (The left cheek)  It says the right cheek; how would I do that?  (The left hand?)  It’s not a left-handed society.  In fact, it is a primitive society before the days of toilet paper, and then, as now in certain places in the world, the left hand is reserved for private matters, and never used in public.  So how could I hit the right cheek with my right hand?  (This is where tennis would come in handy.)  Only by a back-handed slap.  In that time and place, a back-handed slap was reserved for people who were unequal in power.  A man could use this against a woman; a parent against a child; a slave-owner against his slave; a Roman against a Jew. 

If someone would degrade you by back-slapping you on the right cheek, you can refuse to be humiliated.  You can turn the other cheek, the one that would only be used for equals, and essentially give the message:  “if you mess with me, it’s as an equal.  You have no power to demean me.”  Gandhi taught, “The first principle of nonviolent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.”  Before I go on, I want to say that I am indebted to Walter Wink for his excellent biblical analysis of this passage, and that I will be skipping the supporting details, but he was quite thorough.

I want to tell you about a Unitarian Universalist who turned the other cheek in a way that Jesus would have liked.  His name was Linus Pauling, known to some of you for his ground-breaking and controversial work on the healthful effects of Vitamin C.  But that’s not his peace contribution.  Linus Pauling was actually awarded two Nobel prizes, the only one to achieve that honor, one in Chemistry, and later the Nobel Peace Prize.

Pauling was responsible for several advances in Chemistry, but by the time he received the Nobel Prize in 1954, he had also turned much of his attention to the dilemma of nuclear weapons.  He became an activist in the early 1950’s, primarily with other scientists who were alarmed about the effects of radiation.  First, the National Institutes of Health cut his funding, so that his university work was in jeopardy.  He did not take the hint though, and kept up his peaceful objection to nuclear testing and build-up.  As he tried to go to the United Kingdom for a chemistry lecture, his passport was denied.  It would have been easy for him to decide that he was only a chemist, that the powers that be had effectively slapped him around enough, that he would have given up being a peace activist, but he persevered.  In 1954, when he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, he had been denied a passport for two years.  The press got wind of the controversy and brought it to light and he got his passport back, so he could travel to Norway to receive the Nobel Prize.

He turned the other cheek, the one that says I am equal, I have the power of truth, and he continued to study and explain what the effects of nuclear testing and deployment are.  He helped organize a massive worldwide petition campaign against nuclear testing, with over 11,000 signatures when it was done, of which 9,235 were scientists, including Albert Einstein.  The non-scientists were folks like Albert Schweitzer.  Linus Pauling presented this petition to the U.N. in 1958, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 came about partly as a result of this witness by scientists and others.  For this effort, as well as for his work to promote peace, Linus Pauling was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962.

There are many paths to peace, and Linus Pauling took the one of researcher and witness to the truth as he knew it.  Do you know what the one demographic is that distinguishes Unitarian Universalists?  We are the most educated religious group in America.  I figure there are some others among us who are called to witness to the truth that they have studied, in the service of peace, in the footsteps of Linus Pauling.

Let us return to the Jesus teaching.  The next phrase is not translated as well as it could be, which hinders our understanding.  It reads, “if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.”  This is the Middle East – people didn’t have two jackets, a coat and a cloak.  They had an undergarment and an outer garment.  In the similar passage in the Gospel of Luke, it says, “from anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt.”  What is translated shirt was a tunic of linen, worn next to the skin.  “If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your inner tunic as well.”  Even with a better translation, we wonder, what is this passage talking about?

At the time, Rome was an occupying empire with a large army that ran up a lot of expenses with its wars and occupations, and so taxed the nations it controlled heavily.  The wealthy looked for ways to get others to pay their share of the taxes, and a system of debt grew up.  If a poor small landowner got behind in his tax payments, because the weather was bad and his crops failed, he went into debt at an exorbitant interest rate to a wealthier person in order to pay the taxes.  He forfeited what he had, bit by bit, to pay his increasing debt, often after being sued in court.  Many poor people of Israel at that time were essentially indebted servants, who were forced to relinquish first, part of the harvest, next, some, then all of the land, the animals, personal possessions, his home, all the way till he only owned the coat on his back.  Why would a rich person sue you for the coat on your back?  Hebrew law was clear that you could take a coat as pledge against a debt, but Hebrew law was also compassionate and said that you must return it in the evening, for the desert was cold at night, and the person might be harmed without his coat.  To take the coat was an act of humiliation.  You could go each evening and let the whole neighborhood hear you holler, “Hey Joe, here’s your stinking coat.  You still owe me!” 

In a court of law, if you had to give up your coat, and you wanted to respond in some meaningful way, to transcend being humiliated, you could strip off that undergarment too, and stand there, in the days before BVDs and Calvin Klein’s, buck naked, and embarrass the heck out of the creditor who has been harassing you.  And, in Jewish law at the time, it was more of a sin to view nakedness than to be naked, so everyone was in trouble, and you had made a point about your own power. 

You can see why I didn’t ask for a volunteer this time.  And no Unitarian Universalist peacemaker that I know of has gone to this great a length in terms of exposing himself or herself for peace, but I want to use this opportunity to speak of John Haynes Holmes, who did stand naked emotionally in the cause of peace.

John Haynes Holmes was an important minister in New York City in the early 20^th century, someone who had the ear of presidents, and who introduced Gandhi to the United States, literally bringing the unknown Indian pacifist to our shores to speak.  Holmes was a pacifist himself, through both of the World Wars.  When he first declared his views in 1917, he offered to resign his ministry, and said he would rather be arrested or fined than be false to his own soul on the issue of war.  The church did not dismiss him, but many were unhappy with his stance, and even more disagreed with his pacifism during World War II.   He felt very alone, isolated, naked in his beliefs before a judging world.  He said that Gandhi saved him, and their friendship over the years not only comforted Holmes, but seems to have been helpful to Gandhi as well.  Just before his assassination, Holmes visited Gandhi, who told him, “Holmes, I have failed, totally failed.  They will worship me, but they will not follow me.” 

At one point Holmes tried to bring an anti-war proposal to the American Unitarian Association meeting that was the precursor to our General Assemblies, and he was not even allowed to speak about it.  He resigned his ministerial fellowship with the Unitarians in protest, and only was reinstated decades later, very late in life, when the merger was about to happen in 1961.  So he not only exposed himself as a pacifist, but he also took off the robe of ministry, representing the security of both job and self-identity.  Community Church remained in covenant with him as their minister through it all.

The final part of this teaching in the gospel of Matthew is again plagued by a poor translation.  The passage reads, “if anyone would force you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”  In what context would anyone force someone to walk with them?  The word translated “anyone” actually means “occupying soldier”.  The Romans did occupy Israel and they marched through their territories carrying famously heavy packs – 60 to 85 pounds, plus weapons.  (Can I have a volunteer?)   They sometimes brought their slaves to carry their stuff, but they also conscripted the locals, someone like my volunteer here, who is now going to carry my very heavy Bible.  At the time, the Roman army had real ethical standards, codified in military law, and subject to penalty if violated.  One such rule was that you could only compel someone to walk one mile, because then they would be far from home and tired.  After we walk this mile, I don’t thank my volunteer.  (You can go home to your sheep now – you peasant – you Hebrew.)  I might even give you a kick because I resent taking back my heavy load, but my commander is watching and I could get fined, demoted, rations cut, humiliated at the camp tonight, or some other form of punishment if I made you carry it longer.  But you offer to carry this an extra mile.  (Are you trying to get me in trouble?  Are you implying I’m not strong enough to carry this?  You’re going to file a complaint, aren’t you?)  Who has the power and the dignity now?

For my last look at dead UUs who made a difference for peace, let me tell you about another Nobel Peace Prize winner from our ranks, a friend of John Haynes Holmes and Mohandas Gandhi, Jane Addams.  How many have heard of her?  Yet during her lifetime she was called the “greatest woman in America”, and she was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, back in 1931.  Even our greatest women’s voices are barely heard.  Jane Addams was best known for founding Hull House in 1888 in Chicago, a social and cultural community center for the poor.  They heard lectures from folks like W.E.B. DuBois, had day care, book groups, ESL, an art gallery and libraries, the first little theater in America, the first college extension courses, the first public swimming pool, and the list of firsts goes on.  Hull House had 13 buildings.

Jane Addams lifted the heavy burden of poverty and oppression for many, helped found the NAACP, the ACLU, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the entire field of social work.  She walked the first mile that society’s inequalities imposed, carrying that load.  Then she walked the second mile, as I see it, when as a young woman she moved into the poor people’s community she founded, Hull House, and lived and worked there for the rest of her life, another 47 years.  Her dedication made a difference to peace not only in her neighborhood, but in the world – they took her seriously when she worked internationally for peace, for she was a woman who knew how to use power for the good, starting in her own neighborhood.

There are many ways to peace.  Some break the law in civil disobedience, some work for the law in diplomacy, some use the law in peaceful protest.  Some write letters, make phone calls, organize groups, gather petitions.  Some pray or meditate.  Some feed the hungry, save animals from harm, build houses and even community centers for those in need.  Some give the world art, humor, hope. . . .  Some will not allow themselves to be humiliated, but take the power of truth as their weapon against injustice, and turn the other cheek, give the shirt off their backs, or walk another mile for freedom and peace.  Blessed be the many ways to peace.