767 ELM STREET * ROCKY HILL * CONNECTICUT 06067
|
767 ELM STREET * ROCKY HILL * CONNECTICUT 06067 |
           
|
It was a pleasant day in April of 1990. I had gone to New York City to attend a conference at the United Nations. Just as I was walking down the street headed for the U.N. building I spied a statue across the street. I went over to look at the statue. It was statue of a man with a hammer trying to hammer a sword into a plowshare. On the marble base of the statue it read; They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another; not shall train for war again. Underneath this quotation from Isaiah was the inscription, “Gift of the People of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. I chuckled at first thinking that the biblical image and citation of the statue was from an overtly atheistic government-though I knew few Communist Party members still embraced atheism-quite the contrary, on any given Sunday in Russia one could spot party officials waiting to have their children baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. Then I thought to myself, “Well, isn’t this something, here is the place where all the nations stream toward this mountainous blue building to try to live the vision of a world without war and a world of justice that promotes the good of all. As imperfect as the U.N. is it represents more than its successes and failures. It represents a vision of what “we would like to the world to be”. Such is the vision of the return of the Son of Man! The coming of the Son of Man includes a vision of what the world can be! It is the vision of a transformed world, a world made new, not an abandoned world. That is, creation is not just a place to work out our destiny, this world shares and will share to the fullest extent, the transformation of all things in the power of God’s Spirit ushered in with the return of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ! When will this happen? No one really knows. But that is not important. What is important is that we live as thought the Lord were coming today. That is, make choices and arrange priorities in your life based on this and choose to love today! Choose to live today! Choose to work for justice today! Choose to be compassionate today! Choose to build peace today! For we do not know the time of the Lord’s arrival! This admonition given to us by Jesus is not meant to throw us into a state of terror. It is meant to be an admonition that fosters hope. And this hope will begin to generate in us choices that lead to lives that begin to live the reality of fullness of the Reign of God, at least in part, in the now. The hope and anticipation of the arrival of fullness of God’s reign becomes so powerful that our lives are caught up in love and service to others. All other distractions are just that, distractions. No longer obsessed by things, God and people become our priority. No longer consumed by the need for status, we are free to serve others without regard to having the “good opinion of others”. This goes for nations and individuals. This vision of the Reign of God in the power of the Holy Spirit is that which makes all things new. President Harry Truman once commented that nuclear power was the most awesome responsibility to have as a nation. But he also stated that if we got it right what a paradise we could make on earth. Well, many years have passed and no paradise. Paradise will not come by a technological “slight of hand”, rather it will come via a change of heart by all nations, animated by the vision we see in Isaiah. It comes when change heart work with God and others to co-create a new world from the old world. And one day to some future generation someone come across a statue in a time when war is no more and it will read; Here is a gift from the peoples of this world to those who came after us. We believed in the vision. Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D.Min. Return to Saint James Home Page |