10 December 2004

Another piece from "A Passion for the Possible" by William Sloan Coffin.



Human beings are fully human only when they find the universal in the particular, when they recognize that all people have more in common than they have in conflict, and that it is precisely when what they have in conflict seems overriding that what they have in common needs most to be affirmed. Human rights are more important than a politics of identity, and religious people should be notorious boundary crossers.



There is a powerful song that tells of "Flanders Field" and a battle scene that took place there in World War I. Germans were facing off against British forces in a bloody trench war filled with the brutal weapons of that era. But it was Christmas Eve...and in the silence of night time, hymns could be heard...then a white flag...then a soccer match in the field...then shared goods. But then, the universal had to be put aside again and the particular of nation against nation prevailed as the soldiers returned to their trenches and...prepared for the bloody mess of war even though both sides knew better than the ways of war. Now, the ones at the other end of a rifle site were ones that, just last night, were friends and neighbors. It is so easy to turn people into enemies and to demand their destruction or ruin but that is not the way of the followers of Jesus. We, as Coffin says, should be "notorious boundary crossers" because the world needs a vision other than the one that runs the world today.



Connection: Changing the vision of life begins for all of us today. Yes, we will be great at falling short of the vision...but we are invited to begin again and again and invite others to share in the vision for new life.



Lord God, as you created us in your image and it was indeed good, give us the vision to see that goodness even as it appears differently than what we would like or expect. Encourage us to reach out and move pass the trenches we place between us. Amen.