"And Let It Begin With Me"

This is the sermon preached by Rev. Akiko Van Antwerpen on Sunday, February 23rd, 2025, to the congregations of Unfinished Community and Ashiya Christian Church marking the occasion of three years since the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, and drawing from Luke 6:27-36

Tomorrow, February 24th, will mark three years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. Even though Japan rarely ever accepts refugees - from anywhere - when this invasion first happened, Japan immediately opened its doors to accept refugees. As of January this year, 1,982 Ukrainians have fled from their homeland to Japan, and many of them remain here to this day. Out of these 1.982 people, 106 live here in Hyogo prefecture, with Hyogo having the 6th largest population of Ukrainian refugees in Japan. 

Even though our church is small, we have been supporting a refugee family from Ukraine for about a year or so now. After today’s worship, we’ll be having our church Bazaar, and you will have the chance to meet them, try some Ukrainian food, and get to know them a bit better. You will also have a chance to buy some stuff, or make donations to help out our refugee community, so I hope you’ll stick around after the service.

But even though 1,982 people have “escaped” from the war, and made it all the way here to Japan - where the rumble of falling bombs, the constant shriek of sirens, and the ever-present, oppressive sense of unending fear, are all happening at the other side of the world, they still haven’t totally found peace. Some of them still have family members living in Ukraine, still living in constant terror of violence, destruction, and death. Or worse, some of them have family members who have already died in the war.

Just because they have escaped from the war doesn’t mean that the war, or its effects, have gone away or that peace has come at all.

And to make matters worse, this war isn’t the only war going on right now, nor is it even the most recent. In the last few years, for example, the conflict between Israel and Palestine - particularly over the region in Gaza - has reignited too. I have to admit, I am not the most attentive to current world news, so I had to look up just how many wars and conflicts are still going on in the world today, and do you know what I found? It was shocking, horrifying, to realize that there are more than fifty conflicts that are still ongoing, many of which have been going on for decades, or longer!

Consider for a moment, the very first few verses in our Bible;

"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.”

These very first words tell us all about who God is, and how God created the world in which we live. Those who are familiar with the Bible will know the phrase that God uses a lot in the creation story, “Let there be;”

“Let there be light,” God says, “and there was light.”

“Let there be sky,” God says, “and God made the sky.”

“Let there be dry land,” God says, and it was so.

“Let there be,” God says…and boom; there is the thing that God wanted there to be, made real.

Yesterday, while I was washing the dishes, I was listening to a song called, “Let There be Peace on Earth.” It is a fairly well known song, often sung in churches on days when we talk about world peace. We’re actually going to be singing it in today’s worship, so I was listening to it to prepare myself emotionally for today. As I was listening, and singing along, the lyrics just hit me:

“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. Let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be.” 

Can there actually be peace on earth? Just like that? 

Sadly, we’re not God; we can’t just make peace appear, make it just happen the way God did in making the light, the sky, and the land.

Peace is something we need to work at. Something we need to create.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Jesus said these words about peace in his famous Sermon on the Mount more than 2000 years ago. Peacemakers are blessed, because peace is something which must be made, not something that magically appears. Peace is not freely given, but is meant to be created by us; something that requires actions.

Peace will not come to us, will not abide with us, if we just keep doing what we are doing. Peace will not come to us if we keep things just the way they are.

We all have regular routines in life; we wake up in the morning, go to school, go to work, eat lunch, come home, do homework, do housework, eat dinner, take a shower, hang out with our family, and go to bed. In these routines we find ourselves spending time with all kinds of people; family, teachers, friends, co-workers, bosses, restaurant workers, other service workers and more. Intentionally or unintentionally, out of all these people, we tend to spend time with the ones with whom we think alike, who share similar values, or who have similar likes and dislikes. We spend time with those who respect us, those who are familiar with us, and who make us feel comfortable. This is normal; something we all do, right?

I mean, its not like we’re harming anyone by living this way, are we? We’re not physically harming anyone, not attacking people; we’re not making war, after all. War is something that leaders of nations do, destructive decisions made by powerful people, no people like us.

We’re not the ones dropping the bombs, not the ones creating destruction, right?

But I imagine Jesus might say to us,

“But are you creating peace? Are you being peacemakers?”  

If your commitment to peace is only to avoid doing harm, if you leave the making of peace to be someone else’s problem and responsibility, then it’s the same as creating harm yourself.

It’s just like not making peace at all.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.” (Luke 6:32-34) 

Guess what? Those who make war, who shatter the peace and bring harm and destruction to other; they live in just the same way we do. They hang out with people who think the same, who share similar values, who share the same likes and dislikes. They spend their time with people who make them feel comfortable, who affirm them.

Just like we do.

If you only ever hang out with the people you like, if you do not engage with people who might challenge you, make you feel uncomfortable, or even make you feel offended, you can never make peace. Because the only thing that separates a peacemaker from a peacebreaker is the willingness to reach beyond ones self, beyond ones own comfort, and instead, do the hard, hard work of loving someone who isn’t like you in the same way you love people who are like you.

To love others as you love yourself.

I know, I know; this is a tough thing to hear. You might be thinking, “I’m not hurting anyone! I’m doing my best to be a good citizen, so why should I have to be uncomfortable? Why should I have to be challenged? Why don’t we blame the people who are actively doing evil? It’s not my fault that evil things happen in the world!”

You see, Jesus knew that what he was asking of people was a lot. He knew that because of how hard that message of love really was, how hard it would be to reach beyond simply “being nice to our circle of similar friends” into “being actual peacemakers among others who are different.” He knew not everyone would be willing to listen, and to follow this path towards peace.

In today’s reading, Jesus starts off saying, “But I say to you who are listening…” (Luke 6:27)

If you are willing to hear and feel challenged, if you are willing to be part of this hard work of peacemaking, then here you go. This is where you begin. Jesus says explicitly in today’s reading.

"Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again." (Luke 6:27-30) 

What Jesus says here might not resonate with some of you, especially those who live in Japan like me. We live in such a polite culture; nobody actually seems to actively hate anyone here. People don’t curse people, at least not in public. Violence is rare, and usually pretty subtle when it does happen. It can be hard to imagine active hatred at all, when you live in a place like this.

But whether the hatred and evil is totally invisible, or whether it’s as blatant as a bomb, Jesus’ lesson is the same:

Do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. (Luke 6:27-29)

Do you see what he’s getting at? Do you see it?

We need to do more. Go the extra mile. Be different. Love more boldly than the bombs. Bless so brightly that hatred can’t hide, even in the most quiet, secretive, or polite of cultures.

Have the courage to be unusual, to love so truly that it breaks the patterns of your life, shatters those routines completely. Your friends and family might tell you to ignore those who treat you badly, or who offend you; to forget about those who are unkind or disrespectful, simply letting them go. Or they might tell you to pay back those who have hurt you, to revenge yourself upon those who have wronged you.

No. Be different. Choose to be different. Make the effort to be more than just being nice.

Instead, Be a peacemaker.

If everyone in our world repays harm with harm, evil with evil, disrespect with disrespect, or hurt with hurt; if we all repay each other in this way, then peace will never be achieved. If we all just stay in our lanes, silence our voices, hide our lights under bushel baskets, and just quietly pray for there to be peace on Earth just as long as it begins with somebody else, then nothing will ever change.

No. Be different instead. Choose love, instead.

But still I believe there is more. I feel as though Jesus isn’t simply telling us to take action. But I feel as though Jesus is telling us to be the first to take action. Not to be the ones who follow the crowds towards peace, but to be the ones to step up, to take action; to create peace.

Don’t wait until others start talking about peace to get on board; be the first one to shake off your disinterest. Get over that feeling that this Ukrainian war isn’t important because it doesn’t affect your life directly. Don’t just sit there, watching TV, buried under the weight of hopelessness and sadness because of what is happening. Get up! We have people right here in our community whose lives have been changed forever by this war.

Get up! Shake off that feeling we all have that I am too small to do anything, that there is nothing we can do to stop this endless and terrible war. Of course we can’t put an end to the war with a snap of our fingers, but we can listen to the stories of those who have escaped. We can seek them out, and ask them how they are doing. We can call them what they need today, what their families need today, and then we can try to see what can be done to help.

You don’t have to wait until your life’s situation is good enough, or stable enough, or secure enough, before you can help. God never asks you to take care of the people you care about first, to place the people you love above those in need; that’s not who God is.

Be different. Be first. Let love be what moves you to action, even if that’s not what everyone else around chooses to do.

The work of peacemaking is everywhere; it’s all around you, if you look closely enough. There are hostile relationships in every corner of our lives; at home, at work, at school, even in church. There is peace to be made everywhere.

On Friday night, I was talking about today’s bazaar with Yelena, my mom-friend from Ukraine whose sister, Lana, came to Japan as a refugee along with her two children. She told me that today her Russian friend would make a bunch of Piroshki for the bazaar, and when I heard this I was totally struck. Imagine the kind of love, in that act; the choice to be different. Yelena and her friend chose to be different, to be the first to cross those lines.

I have to admit, I had thought that it might be good to invite people from the Russian community and gain some support, but I wasn’t sure how our Ukrainian folks might feel about that, so I chose not to act. But Yelena and her friend didn’t allow themselves to be held back, and they showed me how to be different, how to love more strongly, and work together for today’s bazar.

A few days ago, I was reading an article about a school near Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. During this war, the Russian army destroyed the entire campus of this school; some of the students, and the teachers, lost their families in this war. But rather than remaining in a place of hatred or despair, the principal of this destroyed school chose to be different. This is what she said: 

“Ukrainians are being killed, we are devastated and tears are flowing. We cannot remain calm, but we cannot close our doors,” said Principal Antonenko. We must do everything we can to foster friendship among children from all countries because they are the ones who will build the future.” 

So there, in the midst of all that devastation, she chose to teach her students how to talk to people different from themselves, to teach them foreign languages even in the midst of war. This is her peacemaking. 

“Instead”, Jesus says, “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” (Luke 6:35) 

Consider this word that Jesus starts with here; instead.

Choose to be different instead. Choose to love instead.

Your choice matters. Your choice impacts people all around you. Your choices can change the people around you, even change our community.

Your choices can change the world. If you choose to be different, if you choose to act first; if you choose to reach beyond your comfort, to make peace begin with you, then our church will be different.

And if we all do it together, the world can be changed, too. 

Let there be peace on earth. Let it begin with me. Let it begin with us. Amen.