Friends,
By way of giving you a preview of the next sermon I’ll be preaching, let me say that November is an interesting month in that it plays host both to the day we Americans set aside for giving thanks, and Veterans Day, which originally was set aside to commemorate the end of the 20th century’s first global war.
Most of us grew up believing in the importance of giving thanks for those who serve in the military, and not just on Thanksgiving: in recent experiences on airplanes, I’ve noticed that active duty military are given priority seating as a matter of course, presumably as a way of thanking them for their service.
I get this. I am a pacifist, but I understand the urge to give thanks for those who are willing to serve their country in various ways. Nonetheless, it seems to me that there are far more reasons to be grateful for peace than for war. In peacetime, we need not fear the terror of military violence. In peacetime, we can celebrate the creative and economically generative work of commerce. In peacetime we can travel freely to be with a loved one. In peacetime we engage in artistic pursuits and we can explore ideas without fear of retribution.
So let us give thanks for peace, and work for peace, even when our nation chooses to betray its better angels by waging permanent war. Let us create reasons to give thanks by working for peace.
I’ll close with a poem—Claire Cavanaugh’s translation of Adam Zagajewski’s poem “Death of a Pianist”—which I will have in mind as I write Sunday’s sermon.
While others waged war
or sued for peace, or lay
in narrow beds in hospitals
or camps, for days on end
he practiced Beethoven’s sonatas,
and slim fingers, like a miser’s,
touched great treasures
that weren’t his.
God’s Peace,
Ben