First Friends Meeting
Micah 4:1-4
The Quaker Testimonies, Part 5: Peace
Doug Gwyn

YONDER STANDS THE QUAKER
Doug Gwyn, March 1997

yonder stands the Quaker
the one with peace buttons on his coat
looking slightly confused
like he just stepped off some kind of boat
or like God promised to meet him there
quite some time ago
and he wonders whether God is dead
or only hopelessly slow
yonder stands the Quaker
quaint as a box of Quaker Oats

yonder stands the Quaker
the one with the placard in her hands
in the rush hour crowd
looking for a place to make a stand
she’s standing for peace and justice
she’s standing with the oppressed
a standing example to the upstanding
and a standing joke to the rest
yonder stands the Quaker
big as life and twice as right

yonder stand those Quakers
on the far side of the back of beyond
misfit mystics, a boil on the bum of Babylon
they're too few to make much difference
too peaceful to break many laws
an endangered species of spiritual life
practiced in the art of lost cause
yonder stand those Quakers
singing "We Shall Overcome"
yonder stand those Quakers
God help those poor fools carry on

This week, I was driving around town, listening to WECI’s Morning Ramble. I heard a song by the Country Gentlemen. It started out with the line, “When I hear some squirrel talk about peace.” Well, that got my attention. The singer seemed to think that peacemakers are by nature unpatriotic, just trying to “run down our county,” I think he put it. In the song’s chorus, he kept repeating that these peace people just “bring out the fightin’ side of me.” Well, the song I have just sung meditates on the way Quakers can look like a bunch of ‘squirrels’ sometimes. The guy in the first verse with the peace buttons seems a bit lost in the world as he finds it (that’s me there in the first verse). The woman in the second verse is the perennial Quaker activist, out there for every good cause – an inspiration to some and a joke to others. The third verse looks at Quakers as a group – misfit mystics, too small and obscure to be more than a minor irritation to the powers that be.

We’re continuing with our series on the Quaker testimonies, looking at the peace testimony this morning. But all the testimonies are really invitations to become a bit odd, a bit eccentric to your neighbors and extended family, I suppose. You try to live the testimony of simplicity and people make fun of you for that funny little car you drive. You try to stand up for equality and people get annoyed with you for rocking the boat. Actually, things like that were the most noticeable Quaker traits until the 20^th century. But over the last one hundred years, the world has experienced so many wars, at a technological level that turns them into genocide. And countries like our own are geared to a permanent war economy. We are constantly preparing for the next war. And all that preparation becomes an irresistible temptation to find another war. For our first 250 years, the Quaker peace testimony was basically just a refusal to participate in war, which didn’t come round that often. But in the last century, Friends realized that we can’t just opt out of war, we need to work actively for peaceful solutions to conflict.

Along the way, our traditional peace testimony inevitably became an ideology of pacifism. That is, an act of faith became a generalized philosophy. We began simply by following Christ’s teaching and example. But we ended up having theories of how the world could work without war, and opinions on every minutia of American foreign policy. Now, I do think that development has been important. We need to imagine a world without war, and then work on how to get there. We need to work on removing the causes of war. We need to help build institutions that can mediate in conflicts, find alternatives to violence. But sometimes, we peacemakers do overstep. Sometimes we catch ourselves looking over the shoulder of Presidents and generals, second-guessing every move. I think we can find ourselves in an untenable position that way at times. To imagine what I would do as President would be to imagine myself as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. And I’m not going there.

When I read the earliest statements of Quaker pacifism, back around 1660, I notice a different approach to peace. Early Friends believed they had been truly ‘born again’ in their encounter with Christ. Really made over by their daily practice of standing in the light. They were standing in a different place – and it was not a place where they could see over the shoulder of generals or Presidents and offer free advice. They simply acknowledged that the world isn’t coming our way, at least not yet. We hope and pray for the day when the nations of the world become the kingdoms of God’s peace and justice. But in the meantime, they said, we can’t participate in wars. We will live peaceably under any government – even a bad one. But we won’t fight for any government – even a good one.

Now, this is a very painful position to take. It’s completely unsatisfactory. But I believe that it has great integrity. Michael Birkel’s book, Silence and Witness, has a good story of an American Quaker who was debating a group of soldiers during the Civil War. One of the officers argued that, of course, he would prefer peace to the horrors of war. But there are terrible evils in the world, and until those end, he would take up arms to protect the right. The Quaker replied, the difference between us is that I want to be among the first to enter the peaceable kingdom, and you want to be among the last. He said the General, who was quietly standing by, smiled at that point. Maybe the General just enjoyed the Quaker’s clever remark. But those who have served in the military often know the horror of war better than the rest of us. Even when they reaffirm their decision to fight in war, they often ache for peace more painfully than anyone.

If you’ve ever taken up the argument for peace, you may have been confronted by that old favorite, well, what would you do if someone broke into your house and attacked your family? That’s a tough one for any man to answer. And I’ve known a number of women who got a pretty crazed look in their eyes and said, if anyone attacked my kids, I’d tear their lungs out. The truth is, none of us knows what we would do in such a terrible situation. That’s why Jesus advises us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Because he commands us, “do not resist an evildoer” (5:39).

The point is, I think, if you indulge in violent fantasies of what you would do in such a situation, if you justify violence in those “what if” situations, then when a sudden, unexpected crisis arises, you are more likely to react violently. But if you try to think what you might do to solve a crisis nonviolently, then you’re more likely to see an alternative if a violent situation suddenly erupts. Our culture trains us to think automatically of violent solutions. We have to train our hearts and minds otherwise. But finally, if the violent situation does suddenly burst upon you (God forbid!), and if you do react violently, you don’t have to justify it. Our God is not violent. Our God is a God of love and compassion. God knows we live in a violent and frightening world. God will forgive us if we succumb to that violence and terror. But God also demands that we work ourselves and our world away from violence.

I know I preached on Micah 4 back in January. But I couldn’t resist using it again today. Because Micah’s vision pulls together all the pieces I think are necessary to peace. In fact, I think I can see in Micah’s vision all the Quaker testimonies we have been considering. The mountain of the Lord’s teaching, accessible to all the nations, fits with our testimony that God’s truth is accessible in the hearts of all people everywhere. We come to that same truth, that one mountain, as we come to God’s light within us. And when we meet one another there, God works justice and equity between us, and our testimony of equality becomes real. And community forms among us too. And as we settle our lives in God’s light, we become more content, less grasping. We begin to live the testimony of simplicity. In Micah’s vision, everyone is content to sit under their own vine and fig tree. But that means that everyone has their own vine and fig tree to sit under – their basic human needs are met. These are foundational to any hope for a peaceful world. Finally, Micah sees us not learning war anymore – not conditioning our minds to the violent option. Instead, hammering swords into plowshares – converting our economy from the technologies of war to the technologies of peace and productivity.

It’s a beautiful vision. But it’s also painful to think how far from it we still live, 2500 years after Micah spoke it. We live our lives painfully suspended between that beautiful vision and the sordid realities of the world as we find it. So, “yonder stand those Quakers, singing ‘We Shall Overcome’; yonder stand those Quakers, God help those poor fools carry on.”