SL02-10 From Retribution and Revenge to Grace and Peace

Conflict, retribution, revenge, hostility, accusations, denials.  Themes such as these are what we’ve been bombarded with in the opening weeks of 2020.  Be it the US drone strike in Iraq that took down an Iranian commander, Iran’s retaliatory attacks against American bases in Iraq just days later, which tragically included the accidental downing of the Ukrainian passenger plane killing all 176 people on board, or the partisan rhetoric being spewed by both parties as the Impeachment trial of President Trump completes its first week in the Senate, it seems as though peace among mankind is impossible.  It seems as though in the 21st Century, the peace that Jesus heralded and the love and humility he exhorted his disciples and followers to model has no meaning as Christians and religious faithful of all traditions in our country  remain silent while our government expands military power and flexes that power across the globe without first attempting any form of diplomacy.

We are being led to believe that only might makes right.  That righteousness comes to those with the strongest military power not afraid to exercise it against those who “might” harm us.  That vengeance and retribution, not God’s grace and God’s mercy, should drive all of our country’s actions in order to make the word “safe for future generations.”  Peace does not motivate military actions by our government as much as stoking fear by constantly reiterating the need to “insure the safety of future generations”.

We are not called to live in fear, to live in anger, to live in such a way as to seek revenge and retribution.  We are called to the transformative power of love and humility. 

This episode is being recorded about a week after Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2020 — January 20th, 2020.  A quote from his his speech on the occasion of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964, echos some 55 plus years later to the challenge still besetting humankind, “Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

I thought it fitting in the current environment we find ourselves in and the occasion of remembering Dr. King this week, to imaginally pray the beatitudes from Matthew 5:3-11.  The Beatitudes in Matthew are the beginning teachings of Jesus to his disciples and the crowds who followed him up the mountain.  Teachings that are just as relevant today as they were back then when Jesus walked and taught.

I hope you will join me in imaginally praying the Beatitudes seeking to be transformed by Divine Love and to be inspired to respond in Love to God’s call to each of us to reflect a spark of the Divine in the world around us.