One Hour For Peace

Jack - 7-11 & Unconscious Christians

I finally made it back to the One Hour for Peace monthly peace vigil community tonight for 60 minutes for peace. It was great to be out working, standing for peace, deepening community in our neighborhood. I found myself thinking about the whole "one hour for..." thing. I came out to stand for peace, for 60, no 59 more minutes....yet experienced something much more. Yet maybe it was just experiencing what peace really is.

While there I met, or re-met, a neighbor - Jack - who has lived in the neighborhood, in the same house, for nearly 85 years as the city of Oakland transformed, morphed, emerged and built-up all around the house. We'd met at a Christmas Dinner at our church two years ago. I remembered him and knew his house...often parking in front of it to run to the post office at 4:59pm. We talked of the neighborhood, mutual acquaintances, his work with the police department and changes in the Dimond. A walking encyclopedia, our talking invited me to actively remember that so much more is going on all around us all the time. What has he seen out of those windows over the past 85 years? Where the street car use to run he now sees a 7-11, where a hillside used to be there's now a litter layered street. How much do I miss out on when I'm focused on me, on my stuff, looking only straight ahead instead of looking at the big picture in a more peripherial or holistic way.


At the same time as we stood there, waving to those that honked in response to our "honk for peace" signs and swaying to the bongo drum beat I had this theological wave of reflection come over me in the neon light glow of the massive 7-11 sign hovering over us. We're doing a Bonhoeffer class at our church, reading his book on Ethics in a discussion about being followers of Jesus and what that means for us in our life, work, relationships, and ministry in the 2007 East Bay. In the reading we shared from this week we shared about a selection in which Bonhoeffer talks about the "unconscious Christians" that he worked alongside and with in his resistance eforts to the Nazi Regime including smuggling Jews out of Germany and to bring down the regime by removing Hitler. Bonhoeffer realized that many of the people he worked with were doing the same thing as him, with a similar passion, and shared purpose and perspective. He was doing it because of his Christian Faith, and so concluded that his colleagues - not involved in the larger Church community or claiming to be disciples of Jesus of Nazareth - were unconscious Christians....following the movement, mission and mystery of Chrsit in the world without knowing it. So I found myself reflecting on the group I was with, in which some are Christian, some are seeking - interested in Jesus and his teaching - but not exclusively, and others who knows?


How is it that we in the church community seem to think that we own or know what God is doing in the world? Why is it that we - and I mean me - so often think that the God works in and through the church, revealing things to that community...when maybe that's not at all it. That as Paul says the Spirit is intereceding for all of humankind as creation waits in labor pains for the revelation and redemption of the children of God (Romans 8). Much food for thought, in particular after great conversation with a friend at Peet's earlier in the day about the purpose of the church, the challenges facing pastors, and the way in which we in the Presbyterian Church are so slow to jettison our past baggage and systemic structure in order to move more effectively, fully and passionately into the reality of God emerging within our own reality? Bonhoeffer argues against thinking of 2 spheres in the universe, the sacred and the profane, or the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. He says there are not two, but one, integrated reality based upon and from the ultimate reality of God. Why do we, what is it in humanity that so often splinters and divides things, polarizing and making two from the one. Why is it that so often the "good" stuff happens in our unconscious? Maybe Eugene Peterson is right when he says, that God accomplishes most of his work when we're asleep.


Maybe that's what Peace really is? Biblically speaking it's "shalom" in Hebrew meaning not just the absence of war, but the presence of God's fullness, wholeness and love. Mabye the whole unconscious Christian thing that Bonhoeffer experienced and wrote about is just that...discovering a radical wholeness, oneness, integrity and unity in life. Mabye that's what is the key, the secret, or the foundation of peace....where we polarize, divide, debate, destroy, oppose and bifurcate God is actually calling us to seeing life and experiencing the reality of the universe in God, through God's love and by God's grace.