The Work of Easter is Risky Acts 7:55-60 Fifth Sunday in the Easter Season May 18, 2014 Rev. Kelly Love Davis United Methodist Church

We continue in the Easter season – week five of these seven weeks celebrating hope and new life, even in the face of suffering and death.

One way we might understand the meaning of the Easter story, is that Easter demonstrates that God is One who works for hope in the face of pain and despair. God is one who works for life in the face of forces that would destroy life. And perhaps we too do the work of Easter, when we bring hope and life into situations of despair or destruction.

For most of us, bringing hope and life into situations of hopelessness happens in small, simple, and ordinary ways. Given the way most of us live our lives and live our faith, there is generally not significant risk involved.

But that was not the case for Stephen, an early follower of Jesus. We hear the tale-end of his story in our scripture for this morning, but it makes more sense if you know the whole story of Stephen.

In the earliest days of the church, as recorded in the Book of Acts, the number of disciples grew and they discovered a need to divide up the work of the church. Stephen was one of seven who were chosen to ensure that the widows among them had enough to eat. Stephen is described as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.”1 They say Stephen was “full of grace and power,” and “did great signs and wonders among the people.”2 But some in the community argued with Stephen, and when they couldn’t win the argument, they conspired to turn popular opinion against him. When questioned about the charges against him, Stephen proclaimed his faith, and recounted the history of God’s actions among the people of Israel. But this just made people more angry, and they stoned him to death.

It is a sobering thing to think of someone losing their life for living and acting in the ways that seem most faithful to them. And the stories of people dying as a result of their commitment to live their faith are not just a thing of the past.

Tom Fox was a father of two from Clearbrook, Virginia. He was a devout Quaker from young adulthood. He was an accomplished musician, playing both bass clarinet and recorder. He loved to cook. He also had worked as a grocer.

Tom Fox devoted much of his time to working with children. He served as an adult leader of youth programs and worked at a Quaker camp for youth. Mr. Fox was a quiet and peaceful man, respectful of everyone, who believed that "there is that of God in every person." Tom believed in

1 Acts 6:5 2 Acts 6:8 2 peace. At the age of age 54, Tom Fox became involved in the Christian Peacemaker Teams, known as CPT, and joined the team in .

Here is a piece of one reflection Tom wrote home: “Day after day around supper time a mother and her three children walk by our living room window to the park across the street. The western sun illuminates her face. She looks tired, as do so many, many people here in Iraq. She looks a bit fearful too. Will today be the day the insurgents set off a car bomb near the park? Will today be the day the young men of the Iraqi National Guard, riding like cowboys in the back of their pickup trucks, get trigger happy and start shooting, with her children in the line of fire? Underneath the fatigue and fear I sense hope and courage in her heart. It reflects on her children as the setting sun reflects on the nearby Tigris River. She lives in the present moment – aware of the dangers and uncertainties, yet not giving in to despair. She gives me courage to face the overwhelming difficulties of life in this broken land.”

Christian Peacemaker Teams has its roots in the denominations known as the “peace churches;” its four supporting denominations are the Mennonite Churches, of the USA and Canada, the Church of the Brethren, and Friends United Meeting, better known as the Quakers.

CPT is a non-governmental organization which works around the world. They go to places where they have been invited by local peace and human rights workers – places where local workers have an idea for a role for North American peace-workers. CPT places teams in crisis situations of violence around the world. They believe in the vision of committed peacemakers boldly attempting to transform lethal conflict, as a reflection of God’s love. In organizing and inspiring themselves, they ask the core question: “What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?"

CPT began their presence in Iraq in October 2002, six months before the beginning of the U.S.- led military presence there. They documented human rights abuses and the impact that sanctions were having on civilians in Iraq. Tom Fox went to Iraq in 2004.

Tom began a normal day in Baghdad with yoga and meditation on the roof of the apartment building where his group lived. One of his companions for a time in Baghdad said of Tom, “I was in awe of his peacemaking work with Iraqi Human Rights groups, especially the Muslim Peacemaker Team, and [in awe of] Tom's stories of Shias and Sunnis, Muslims and Christians, Iraqis and Americans all working together in war-devastated Falluja to create space for peace and a more just society.”3

One Saturday, the group received a call from a group of Palestinian refugees in Baghdad. The group included 6,000 Palestinians, many born in Iraq of parents who sought refuge there as far back as 1948. They are without Iraqi citizenship or passports, unable to travel or own property; employment and income are meager at best. In war-time conditions in Iraq, these Palestinians in Iraq are often targeted by Iraqi police and army; they often fear for their lives.

3 http://cpt.org/cptnet/2006/04/05/toronto-bob-holmes039-eulogy-tom-fox 3

A group of the Palestinian refugees had decided to attempt an exodus to Syria. This was the occasion for the call on that Saturday. Would the Christian Peacemaker Team accompany them, and help them through the ever-present police and army checkpoints along the way? The team decided “yes,” and Tom and two others boarded a bus in the refugee camp before dawn one morning.

They made it to the border of Syria. Tom and the other Christian Peacemaker Team members spent three weeks camped there with the fleeing refugees. The Palestinians were finally received into camps north of Damascus. This is one example of how the presence of Christian Peacemaker Teams can contribute to the safety of people in circumstances of war. Then team-members returned to Baghdad.

“On November 26, 2005, four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq were abducted, including Tom Fox. They were seen in a video released by the captors, broadcast on Al-Jazeera television. And the four kidnapped Christian peace activists were seen together in three subsequent videos aired by in December 2005 and January 2006. The kidnappers of the peace activists threatened to kill them unless all Iraqi prisoners were released from Iraqi and U.S. prisons. A fourth video aired in March and showed all of the hostages except American Tom Fox.”4

“On March 10, 2006, Fox's body was discovered in a Baghdad neighborhood.”5

“On March 23, 2006, Fox's three colleagues - Jim Loney, Harmeet Sooden and Norman Kember - were freed in Baghdad, after nearly four months in captivity. All reports indicate that the three were freed by a multinational force, that no shots were fired, and none of the captors were present at the time of the raid. Kember, Loney, and Sooden, were found inside a house in western Baghdad with their hands tied."6

Here is a piece from another statement made by Tom, written the day before he was abducted: 7

“The Christian Peacemaker Iraq Team went through a discernment process…. It was a healthy exercise, but it led me to a somewhat larger question: Why are we here?

“If I understand the message of God, [God’s] response to that question is that we are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. Again, if I understand the message of God, how we take part in the creation of this realm is to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength and to love our neighbors and enemies as we love God and ourselves. […]

4 http://electroniciraq.net/news/bytopic/Abduction_of_four_CPT_members_in_Iraq_November_200_2211- 2211.shtml 5 ibid 6 ibid 7 http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2005/12/03/iraq-most-recent-reflection-tom-fox-ampquotwhy-are- we-hereampquot

4

“I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as "love" is the word "agape." I have read that this word is best expressed as a profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all God's children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as "never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow human beings."

“As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other. […] It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts, or find its way into the outer world, and become expressed, verbally, psychologically, structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death. "Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.”

…

Easter is the sacred understanding that God is One who works for hope in the face of pain and despair. God is one who works for life in the face of forces that would destroy life, like war. Surely, bringing the hope of peace and humanity into a context of war and dehumanization is the work of Easter.

Here is a last word from Tom Fox:

“… if Jesus and Gandhi are right then I am not to give in to either [anger or fear]. I am to stand firm against the kidnapper as I am to stand firm against the soldier. Does that mean I walk into a raging battle to confront the soldiers? Does that mean I walk the streets of Baghdad with a sign saying “American for the Taking?” No to both counts. But if Jesus and Gandhi are right, then I am asked to risk my life, and if I lose it, to be as forgiving as they were [- as Jesus and Gandhi were - ] when murdered by the forces of Satan. Standing firm is a struggle, but I’m willing to keep working at it.”8

It is sobering to think of someone losing their life for doing what they felt called to. And we are not all called to enter into situations of extreme danger.

But perhaps knowing the risks that some have taken, can move us all to be a little braver. Perhaps we all can be inspired to be a little less cautious, a little more bold, more willing to take risks – in order to do the Easter work of fostering real hope and life. Amen.

8 https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.cpt.org/files/PP%2520- %2520Tom%2520Fox%2520Statements.pdf&sa=U&ei=2At4U6HHD8qHogTCxoHYCw&ved=0CAUQFjAA&clie nt=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNE_6RQ4zB3U1pBZNERkDdPQVdA92A