Lecture by the Rev. Dr. Sathianathan Clarke, professor of theology, culture and mission at Wesley
Moderated by the Rev. Dr. David McAllister-Wilson, president, Wesley Theological Seminary
Delivered on Friday, October 19, 2007, at the Canon Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

This afternoon, I shall present before you some thoughts on the theme, "The gospel of peace in a world of competing religious fundamentalism." One can say that the 21st century is essentially an era of competing religious fundamentalisms. I state this categorically because through the 20th century in general, when we did theology, we thought that the overcall context was one of secularization. We feared that secularism would replace religion. Therefore, as theological educators and as pastors we desperately tried to bring passion back into religion. The 21st century really has an abundance of passion. In fact, often passion is getting out of hand in religion. I think the distinct religious calling of our century has to do with how we can mediate between authentic and passionate forms of the religious in our world today. This is the challenge for theology, for ministry, for public policy, and also, for personal living. I believe that in our context of growing religious fundamentalisms, what we need to do is come back to our respective religions in order to extract and mine much-needed resources for peace. Extracting and mining the sources of peace invites us then, even as we seek to be passionate Christians to the ends of the earth, to also be compassionate through all our dealings with people that are religiously different from us.

All religions have an abundance of such resources. My own religion, and I'm a Christian priest, also has an abundance of this resource for peace. How do we mine these sources? It is indeed a challenge. If we look at the 21st century, we are amazed that traditionally peaceful religions have also joined in competitive and conflictive battles of sorts: battles involving their symbols, their language, their theology, and their practice. Religions that we thought of as being the fund of non-violence have also found themselves in some way to be enmeshed in conflict.  Take Buddhism and the forms through which state religion legitimizes violence against its own people. Or take Hinduism, a religion that always claimed that it had enough within it to take in the whole sea of religions and still be an ocean of life. Even it is being utilized to support dangerous forms of violent religious fundamentalism. Why look outside. Christianity also has a record of inciting, legitimizing and supporting violent conflict in the world despite being founded by Jesus Christ, the embodiment of non-violence and forgiving love.

Most of us have felt that as Christians, we can either isolate ourselves by spending all our time away from such conflict, sometimes praying on our knees but mostly resting on our couches while thinking and ruminating about such matters, or we feel that in some way we have to engage in this conflict with the belief that it is only through such conflictive engagement that OUR God's truth can have a chance and OUR Jesus can be gifted to all of humanity. I believe that within the heart of Jesus Christ, which indeed for us Christians, reveals the whole heart of God, there is the gift of reconciliation, love, and peace that holds together and embraces all parts of creation.  I believe that the good news that Christians ought to be inflected with and proclaim is the possibility of this peace for all human beings. Of course, Peace incorporates justice. But peace also stems from loving oneself and accepting each other knowing that we are all flawed and therefore have the propensity towards injustice. Peace thus grows out of reconciliation. But peace is also the ability to hold all things together in the faith that God wants all God's creation to be redeemed for God's purposes, which cannot exclude love toward God and all human beings. In this sense, peace is not a negative category; peace indeed is a positive category that comes through because of the movement and the dynamics of peace that flows from the heart of God that gifted us the prince of peace, the child of peace, the son of peace, the Lord of peace, Jesus Christ. It is when we grasp such a gift that we can stand up to proclaim the right word at the right time or we can say the ripe word for our raw (violent) times. 

I want to leave with you, in the next several minutes, two formulations of what this gospel of peace involves for us. One addresses religion in general and Christianity in particular and the other implicates each of us as individual persons of faith. I submit that there are two aspects of our living in this world that concern us as we seek to bring about the gospel of peace.  One has to do with our corporate witness as Christians and therefore links us all together. And the other is an individual calling that cries out to you and me. With regards to the gospel of peace for Christianity there are clearly three facets that we are asked to bring in our relationship with persons of other religious persuasions. As Christians, we are invited to be peace bearers, peacemakers, and peace dreamers. All three components are part of what it means to live collectively as Christians as we proclaim the gospel of Christ in our world of many religious communities.

Sometimes the call to be bearers of peace comes from the outside. It is important to listen to such an invitation to pursue the path of peace when it comes from most unexpected sources.  There has been a recent letter that is interestingly entitled, "A Common Word Between Us and You." This letter was released on October 13, 2007. Just a week ago! It is signed by 138 Islamic theologians, leading imams, and senior muftis from all around the world. Let me read you a portion of this communication that invites us, as Christians, to be bearers of peace:

And to those who nevertheless relish conflict and destruction for their own sake or reckon that ultimately they stand to gain through them, we say that our very eternal souls are all also at stake if we fail to sincerely make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony. God says in the Holy Qur'an: Lo! God enjoineth justice and kindness, and giving to kinsfolk, and forbiddeth lewdness and abomination and wickedness. He exhorteth you in order that ye may take heed (Al Nahl, 16:90). Jesus Christ u said: Blessed are the peacemakers ....(Matthew 5:9), and also: For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? (Matthew 16:26). So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill.

This letter summons us to claim the marks of being children of God together by uniting as bearers of peace, which indeed is the insignia of God. Being peace bearers becomes important in our Christian communities. I was talking earlier with Dr. Cynthia Schneider about one of our common objectives as academics: The responsibility to sift through our own traditions and offer to students, pastors, disciples, preachers, and theologians the gift of generous lenses with which to view those who are religiously different. Most of us easily imbibe suspicious lenses when viewing people who are different from us. It is our responsibility to gift to our faith communities lenses of generosity that would allow them to be bearers of peace as we seek to live our lives in the world.

Being peacemakers is also a fairly important part of our collective calling in the 21st century. No doubt this is a specific Gospel vocation. Jesus extends this call to his disciples in the words, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers; for they will be called children of God.' (Mt 5: 9) Peace makers need to work outside of their own narrow walls and find inlets into the world of conflict. It is here that peace makers and justice workers will find a common agenda. Prayers for peace within must galvanize Christians to make peace in the world of conflict, especially religious conflict. I dream of the day in which Christian peacemakers will realize that the church's boundary is fluid. If the church's boundaries are not fluid, mission cannot happen. Mission happens when boundaries are soft, when people can go out and come in for the purposes of wholeness, salvation and peace. We need our faith to flow outside into the broken and fragmented world in need to peace and wholeness. We also need to let other peoples come into our churches. I pray that there will be a day in the United States in which our churches, at least once a year, will open our doors in order to hold a service for all people of various faiths. That at least once a year we will use our sacred space to celebrate that we're all children of God. This will also enable others to know that we love the world, we pray for the world and that we go out to reconcile the world to God and restore hostile communities to the reality of peace.

Dreaming peace is important. Peace dreamers refuse to succumb to the reality of violence and conflict. They weave prophetic imagination with compassionate action to propel religious communities forward with alternate visions and peace missions. In the spirit of God they courageously think us into and creatively guide us toward a new way of living as children of God. Native American and Australian aboriginals remind us that "There is a dream dreaming us" and that its aura is peace with justice for all living creatures. Gandhi was one such peace dreamer. He set out a radical challenge to Christians as a people and a civilization. He says:

Peace is unattainable by part performance of conditions, just as a chemical combination is impossible without complete fulfillment of the conditions of attainment thereof...This is clearly impossible without the great powers of the earth renouncing their imperialistic design. This again seems impossible without great nations ceasing to believe in soul-destroying competition and to desire to multiply wants and therefore increase their material possessions. It is my conviction that the root of the evil is want of a living faith in a living God. It is a first-class tragedy that people of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus who they describe as the Prince of Peace show little of that belief in actual practice. It is painful to see sincere Christian divines limiting the scope of Jesus' message to select individuals. (M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, 18 June 1938 in William W. Emilsen, ed. Gandhi's Bible, Delhi, 2001, p. 23.) 

As Christians, our calling is to reclaim what it means to be peace bearers, peacemakers, and peace dreamers. But it is not only about our collective life together as Christians. It involves you and me as disciples of Jesus Christ. It involves what we can do in our own lives to allow the church of God to be about the business of bearing peace, making peace, and dreaming peace. Very briefly, since I am running out of time, let me suggest specific practices for disciples of the gospel of peace. This may involve some relearning of simple lessons that we learnt as children.  I love the way in which Jesus elevates children as facilitators rather than just recipients of wisdom. For me this is quite radical because most of us grew up with our parents teaching us everything. The logic was simple: you're a child now; keep doing what you are taught; eventually you'll become an adult; and you will know that what we taught was always quite right. Jesus did something quite different. He tells the adult to learn from the child. Relearning involves the risk and the vulnerability of being a child. What I'm asking and inviting us to do is to rethink what we learned as children and to relearn how to be emissaries of peace. This aspect of the gospel of peace recruits individual disciples to relearn how to be emissaries of the Prince of Peace. I suggest three principles from the life of Jesus that such emissaries of peace will find useful:

First, propel yourselves into arenas of mistrust and mutual suspicion; your proximity to such situations is your foremost advantage. Most of us have been taught exactly the opposite. I recall a popular slogan used in childrearing: ‘Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who are.' What I am suggesting is that leave- taking from one's own circle of like-minded, similar-looking and akin-believing people is a step away from the security of our own kingdoms to the risk of entering into God's kingdom of flowing reconciliation and growing peace. It is this risk in faith to journey with the Prince of peace that propels us into arenas of mistrust and mutual suspicion within which we can become ambassadors for peace. This is so different from what we've learned and practice about issues of security and self-preservation as peoples and nations. Jesus reverses some of what we have learnt when he indicates that if you want to gain your life, you have to listen to a secret teaching, and enquire about ways to lose your life for the sake of the perishing other? This is the cost of Christian discipleship for peace.

Second, learn to make friends with those who are most unlike you; they will teach you the art of embracing the radical other (the different, the disliked, the disgraceful, the detestable and the discarded). I always ask people to take a social audit of their sphere of connectivity and relationship. Ask yourself this question: Do you have a friend that you can take before Jesus who indeed is most unlike you? We always think that being with people who are like us would actually make us better people. No, it doesn't. It actually simply allows you to be yourself, just as you are without the challenge of being more. We surrounded ourselves with people that are like ourselves in order to feel that we are all really very good people. It is only when one steps out from the security of sameness and encounters radical otherness that one can even start to imagine what it means to be in the work of reconciliation and peace. Sameness does not necessitate mediation of difference which is part of being a missionary for peace. 

Let me, briefly, share with you a story. I was an interim priest at an Episcopal church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Because of my preaching, I became acquainted with the Hindu gentleman, who was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. It was a great opportunity and it came about unexpectedly. I have a tendency to tell stories through sermons, just like I'm doing right now. One of my parish members, a homecare nurse, was caring for this Hindi gentleman. She would go and tell him these stories from India. He communicated to her that he would like to meet me. We must have met about five to six times between 1994 and 1995. Each encounter was a significant meeting. These were also difficult meetings because he really was not able to communicate much. Yet I recall how his eyes would sparkle. He would say something occasionally and his children would interpret this to me. He even insisted on having me over for an Indian meal. He said he supervised the making of the meal. We didn't speak much, especially not about religion, but we kept meeting. Our eyes did much of the communication. I did realize he was not baptized. I presumed that he was a good Hindu. On the day that he died I received a call from his daughter. He had told his children that if anyone should do his funeral, it should be Father Clarke. 

I was surprised, even shocked. He was not baptized. We had never talked about Jesus Christ. I thought about what this would involve. I also knew that all those who would come to his funeral would be Hindus. I honoured his dying request. The funeral gave me an opportunity to stand up and say what we shared as radically different human beings and also what I believed in as a Christian. Something I couldn't fully communicate to this Hindu gentleman who reached out to a Christian sojourner. I was able to say all of this with him being there in cold dead body and warm lively spirit. I learned that when you make friends with those who are most unlike you, you learn the secret of embracing the other in the love and compassion of Jesus Christ.

Third, and very briefly, dirty hands and feet are the marks of peace-makers; antiseptic living is not a requirement for table-fellowship in God's peaceable kingdom. I believe that this insight is extremely important for pastors, theologians, and policymakers. If we don't understand what is involved in reconciliation, it can be very difficult for us to understand what works, to bring people to the table of peace. Board room planning both in the church and for the government can be best informed by peace practitioners. God is working for peace among all God's children in an era in which religions are spreading violent conflict. Christians have a Gospel for this conflictive 21st century: God sent God's peace child to teach all of humanity a new way of life. God's reign, involving reconciliation with our loving creator and peace among all God's children, is at hand in Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God is recruiting peace bearers, peace makers and peace dreamers. 

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.  I am honoured to be with you this afternoon.

Concluding Prayer (DR. CLARKE):  Oh gracious, living, and loving Lord, creator of the whole universe, father of all humankind, mother of all creation, we thank you, gracious God, for your gift of peace in our lord, Jesus Christ. Thank you for this embrace of love. Enable us, oh Lord, in our world of conflict and violence, to lift up your gospel of peace to all human beings with great love and with a grateful sense of truth that has been placed among us. We pray that you will send us out in some way to be bearers of peace, makers of peace, and dreamers of peace. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.