“Jesus calls us to be aware of the systems that impoverish people and, through the parable of the mustard seed, teaches us of the power of small acts of peaceful resistance to crack those systems open,” the conference theme statement points out. Numerous speakers confronted participants with peace and justice issues and ways they need to respond.
Mark Lomax, interim dean of Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary and chair of the homiletics department of Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Ga., brought the conference sermons. Christians need to love people, and focus on what is important, he said.
While injustice and poverty exist, Christians need to identify with the poor and unjustly treated. “There’s a mandate to love your neighbor like you do yourself. Not bomb them to hell, but love them,” said Lomax. “It seems to me like we have come to a place and a time where we have to decide who we are.”
Using the example of a computer felled by problems with its peripherals, Lomax called for would-be peacemakers to look at their own peripherals. “What if we just stop buying stuff we don’t need? What if we unplug the consumer habits that we have?” he asked. “What is justice? It’s the right thing. Where do you do it? Right where you are.” Lomax suggested the alternative, simply following Micah’s words to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God (which was the theme of the recently-held 218th General Assembly.)
That Assembly’s new moderator, San Francisco pastor Bruce Reyes-Chow spoke words of encouragement and hope to the conference.
As the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) makes a transition into the future, into “something new,” Reyes-Chow said the future of the church would come from church members with the hope that there is such a future. “Until we grasp the hope that we are joined by Christ, until we live that out, we are going to head nowhere,” he said. “I hope to keep asking the question, ‘Do we believe beyond our own imagination that God can do amazing things with this denomination?’”
Among the international participants at the conference were representatives of the organization Joining Hands partnership, a program to build bridges of solidarity between coalitions of churches in the United States and networks of overseas churches, grassroots organizations, and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs). Partners from Bolivia, Palestine, Cameroon, and Peru told stories of their activities, most of which focus on issues of land reform, water, food security, and trade.
Such partnerships are critical in the “new world” of globalization that opens doors of both economic possibility and exploitation.
Lisa Schirch is professor of peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., and involved in the university’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, which sponsors the 3D Security Initiative, referring to the “three pillars” of foreign policy: development, diplomacy, and defense. Schirch confessed to the group that often she misses the ties between her own comfortable lifestyle in the United States and what is happening to people in other parts of the world. We need to address this disconnect, she pointed out.
“We are all one and we are all influencing each other,” said Schirch. But we in the West can have a tendency toward “global chaos overload” or “compassion fatigue,” which can dis-empower us. “There is a cognitive dissonance between what others are suffering and what we are living,” she pointed out. From our vantage point, there are no food or water shortages.
Schirch said the answer to injustice and our own soul sickness is simple — “truly loving our neighbors as ourselves and living as if everyone matters.”
