Peaceful Epiphany
It was around this time in 2014 I sat glued to my television in Christchurch, New Zealand seeing for the very first time commercials on The History Channel advertising, “100 Years: The Great War.” The history of wars have always fascinated me from both a psychological and theological point of view and I was intrigued to find that much of the 2014 programming was going to be dedicated to expounding on the centennial anniversary of World War I. I am an American Expat so my interest peaked more so upon hearing unfamiliar words such as, “Gallipoli” and “Anzac.” Until that moment, I was looking forward to talking about World War I with my friends and colleagues from the States but, quickly realized that 100 years ago the United States was not yet involved in the war and therefore would not be honoring The Great War’s 100 year anniversary until 2017.
This epiphany of unknown understanding sparked something in me and I began researching a bit more about the country I resided in. Fathoming my own culture 100 years ago was exceedingly difficult, but then to imagine someone else’s culture 100 years ago was next to impossible, especially at a time of war. New Zealand is a small country and the loss of life from World War I was devastating and still apparent 100 years later.
It was fascinating to take part in another country’s memorial services and to learn the history I was so unaware of. There were documentaries and mini-series to watch along with stories from families that were willing to talk to me. I even read about how my own profession took shape during the Great War, as chaplains of the day were parish ministers who enlisted, many of them serving on the front lines with no formal training at all, some fatally so with only the basic mandatory training.1
While learning about New Zealand’s history and important words such as the Anzacs and Gallipoli, I also began learning about other forces around the world that were involved in World War I. I started to recall the many memorials I encountered around Europe including, battle sites, countless names of deceased people etched into stone, and various flags flying around memorials. The only differences between any of these memorials were the flags.
Memorials and services about the wars are fiercely patriotic to whomever the flag was flying for in that place. We memorialize our own particular heroes just like everyone else in the world, no matter what side they fought on, their human lives are missed and remembered all the same. In New Zealand and other countries, the words “Lest we Forget,” are strewn across memorials all over the country, “in case we forget.” No, we will not forget, we will always remember. We will always remember so that it does not happen again. We will always remember the lives lost and the families broken. We always remember our own. Do we need to remember others?
Most of humanity hopefully looks toward peace between nations and people. We hope for a better world for our children and go out of our way to learn about one another’s cultures to broaden our perspectives and bring awareness to others not to fear those who have been interpreted to be our enemies. We anticipate something that resembles the Prophet Isaiah’s “Peaceable Kingdom,” where:
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.2
Like our own thoughts, Isaiah’s hopeful poetry, does not come from a peaceful place at all. It comes from years of war and the enemies of Israel finally falling. The “Peaceable Kingdom” found in all of chapter 11, is a beautiful reflection of what things looked like when everything was going well for Israel. Isaiah suggests that once all the enemies are gone they will go back to a time that was similar to the affluent time of David’s reign or the peacefulness of the Garden of Eden and finally maybe of the miracles of the Exodus. These were good memories for the people of Israel. Isaiah was attempting to give the people hope in thinking about the good days of the past.3 Unfortunately, making a particular country “great” again isn’t indicative of who it was actually great for.
In the United States, World War I was sold to the people as “The War to End All Wars.” We know this to be untrue as many more wars have been waged since then both at home and abroad. How is it that we can envision a future of peace, a future of love, a future of laying down with the lion? How can we truly love our neighbors as ourselves? We can learn about our neighbors. We can start by learning about the names that are etched into memorials around our home towns. We can hear 100 year old stories that will be lost forever unless we revive them. We can learn what happened to the families that were left broken when their loved ones did not return from distant shores. We can make life as peaceful as we can for more recent veterans who have returned to their own country as a foreign land. We can be more aware of how other countries have lost their children too.
To create a peaceable kingdom in 2017, we need to hold one another accountable. We need to ask the hard questions and we need to keep being persistent. The only way to live peaceably is to begin to understand our discomforts, especially those with other people. I hope you learn something new this year, get involved in something you feel passionate about and talk about it with others. Talk with someone who is completely different from you and find out their story.
It is time to learn, share, and listen to stories. With our stories, we can get a glimpse of what others are dealing with and what happened in the past. We can learn so much from just asking and actually listening to hear, not to react or to have an opinion. We must listen to hear and after, we must share again, and again, and again. We can heal one another through our stories and eventually, no one will think twice when a group of young people of all colors come together to learn from one another, or two politicians from differing sides have lunch together. We can come to a time when we finally put an end to these wars. Let us learn the stories, so as not to repeat the past, again and let us do it together.
Notes
1. J. Bryant Haigh, Men of Faith and Courage: The Official History of New Zealand’s Army Chaplains (Auckland: The Word Publishers Limited, 1983).
2. Isaiah 11:6–9
3. Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford, Student Bible: NRSV notes (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 709.
