This sermon was preached on Wednesday, June 6 for the Feast Day of Ini Kopuria. The readings for this sermon were: Zechariah 1:7–11, Revelation 14:13–16, Matthew 8:5–13, and Psalm 31:19–24.
The story of Ini Kopuria is a story of return.
Ini was born at the start of the last century in Guadalcanal, one of the islands in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. Ini left there as a young man to attend the Anglican St. Barnabas School on Norfolk Island. There, missionaries trained young men in the religious life with the expectation that they would return to their people to teach about the Christian faith. But Ini defied expectations, returning to his home island as a police officer, not a missionary. Soon after, however, Ini came to realize that God was calling him to return to the religious life. He founded his own Anglican religious order, the Melanesian Brotherhood, which still exists today, serving the South Pacific region of Melanesia.
In 1927, three years after taking his vows, Inia was again asked to return—back to the police service, to the island of Mala, in order to quell local unrest. But Ini refused, saying, “It would be bad if I were to go there with a rifle; I may want to return one day with the Gospel.”
This was a Christian who knew that the way one returns, the intention with which one returns, matters. He also knew, it would seem, the difference between peace without justice, and the kind of peace the Gospel promises.
In the selection from the book of the Prophet Zechariah, we read about Zechariah’s first vision of angels, horses, and myrtle trees. The angels, we learn along with the prophet, have been patrolling the world and report, “the whole earth remains at peace.” Our passage ends here, but the vision continues. The very next thing that happens in Zechariah’s vision is that the angel laments to the Lord, “How long, O Lord, how long?” And we realize that the peace that the horseman is reporting is an expectant peace, the peace of holding one’s breath, as Jerusalem and Judah waits and longs for the return of the Lord to Zion and the Temple that is just now being rebuilt. The peace that the angels have witnessed is not the peace God intends for God’s people.
When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was accused of stirring up unrest, disturbing the peace, he declared, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.” The Prophet Zechariah knew this. For the peace that the horseman reports is not a presence, but an absence waiting to be filled by the long-waited return of the Lord. Ini knew this, too. He knew that returning with rifles and the maintenance of order was not true peace. Only in returning with the Gospel, only the promise of words of eternal life, could bring what the islands needed.
His brothers knew this about peace, too. Eighty years after the founding the Brotherhood, ethnic tensions in Ini’s home country exploded into violence, oppression, and death. Ini’s Order played a significant role in brokering the Townsville Peace Agreement of October 2000. And after the agreement was finalized, it was the brothers themselves who went to the combatants, gathered up the rifles, and threw them into the sea.
So as we think about return, I wonder where you might be called to return in your life. I wonder how God might be calling you to return, and I wonder if the world has been asking you to return in a different way. I know that for me, I have been profoundly changed by my encounter with Jesus and the Gospel, and throughout my journey of listening for God’s call in my life. I have been changed by other things, too, falling in love and college, and difficulties in life. And when I return to the people that I knew before, to the roles I had played, I found it is difficult to hold those two truths—who I was and who I now am. I wonder if that’s been true for you, too. If that’s true for you, now.
I imagine that the selectors of these readings today saw parallels between Ini the police office and the faithful Centurion of the Gospel. I wonder if this truth about returning was true for the Centurion, too. The Centurion, who was accustomed to keeping peace through violence and the sword, and who found himself face to face with another kind of peace in Jesus Christ. Was he changed? Could he return to his duties the same way? I wonder, when we look through the eyes of faith and see peace in our world, in our lives, in our church, what kind of peace can we report? Is it the peace of rifles, of suppression and absence, or the peace of the Gospel, of liberation and presence? Or something in between?
The story of Ini Kopuria is a story of return.
Ini was born at the start of the last century in Guadalcanal, one of the islands in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. Ini left there as a young man to attend the Anglican St. Barnabas School on Norfolk Island. There, missionaries trained young men in the religious life with the expectation that they would return to their people to teach about the Christian faith. But Ini defied expectations, returning to his home island as a police officer, not a missionary. Soon after, however, Ini came to realize that God was calling him to return to the religious life. He founded his own Anglican religious order, the Melanesian Brotherhood, which still exists today, serving the South Pacific region of Melanesia.
In 1927, three years after taking his vows, Inia was again asked to return—back to the police service, to the island of Mala, in order to quell local unrest. But Ini refused, saying, “It would be bad if I were to go there with a rifle; I may want to return one day with the Gospel.”
This was a Christian who knew that the way one returns, the intention with which one returns, matters. He also knew, it would seem, the difference between peace without justice, and the kind of peace the Gospel promises.
In the selection from the book of the Prophet Zechariah, we read about Zechariah’s first vision of angels, horses, and myrtle trees. The angels, we learn along with the prophet, have been patrolling the world and report, “the whole earth remains at peace.” Our passage ends here, but the vision continues. The very next thing that happens in Zechariah’s vision is that the angel laments to the Lord, “How long, O Lord, how long?” And we realize that the peace that the horseman is reporting is an expectant peace, the peace of holding one’s breath, as Jerusalem and Judah waits and longs for the return of the Lord to Zion and the Temple that is just now being rebuilt. The peace that the angels have witnessed is not the peace God intends for God’s people.
When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was accused of stirring up unrest, disturbing the peace, he declared, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.” The Prophet Zechariah knew this. For the peace that the horseman reports is not a presence, but an absence waiting to be filled by the long-waited return of the Lord. Ini knew this, too. He knew that returning with rifles and the maintenance of order was not true peace. Only in returning with the Gospel, only the promise of words of eternal life, could bring what the islands needed.
His brothers knew this about peace, too. Eighty years after the founding the Brotherhood, ethnic tensions in Ini’s home country exploded into violence, oppression, and death. Ini’s Order played a significant role in brokering the Townsville Peace Agreement of October 2000. And after the agreement was finalized, it was the brothers themselves who went to the combatants, gathered up the rifles, and threw them into the sea.
So as we think about return, I wonder where you might be called to return in your life. I wonder how God might be calling you to return, and I wonder if the world has been asking you to return in a different way. I know that for me, I have been profoundly changed by my encounter with Jesus and the Gospel, and throughout my journey of listening for God’s call in my life. I have been changed by other things, too, falling in love and college, and difficulties in life. And when I return to the people that I knew before, to the roles I had played, I found it is difficult to hold those two truths—who I was and who I now am. I wonder if that’s been true for you, too. If that’s true for you, now.
I imagine that the selectors of these readings today saw parallels between Ini the police office and the faithful Centurion of the Gospel. I wonder if this truth about returning was true for the Centurion, too. The Centurion, who was accustomed to keeping peace through violence and the sword, and who found himself face to face with another kind of peace in Jesus Christ. Was he changed? Could he return to his duties the same way? I wonder, when we look through the eyes of faith and see peace in our world, in our lives, in our church, what kind of peace can we report? Is it the peace of rifles, of suppression and absence, or the peace of the Gospel, of liberation and presence? Or something in between?
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