Biography
The Rev. Ann Svennungsen is President of the Fund for Theological Education in Atlanta, Georgia, an organization whose purpose is to promote excellence and diversity in Christian ministry. Ann is a Lutheran minister and former Senior Pastor of the 3,700-member Trinity Lutheran Church in Moorhead, Minnesota. She is also a frequent guest speaker at gatherings around the country. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Peacemakers in the Household of God" 
A reading from Isaiah, the second chapter:

Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

On the west edge of Glacier Park, my cousins, Donna and Matt, have built a simple retirement home constructed around their hope that guests would come to experience genuine hospitality and friendship. Each bedroom was planned to communicate welcome and the open space overlooking Flathead Lake draws people together for delicious meals and healing conversations. And, yes, people come, from near and far, to be refreshed in this grace-filled home.

In the year that he died, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. compared the world to a global house. He quoted an author’s idea for a novel where a widely separated family inherited a house in which they all had to learn to live together.” King said, “This is the great new problem of (human) kind. We’ve inherited a large house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together—black and white, Eastern and Western, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu—a family…separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”

My cousins, Donna and Matt, know how to create a home of welcome and peace. Now, we are faced with the greater challenge of making the world a place where all are welcome, clothed and fed. Oh, it’s easy to look around this global house and see other places where that’s not happening. There are corners of injustice, rooms filled with brokenness. And, it’s easy point the finger at those who’ve gotten it wrong.

Yet, as people of faith, we also know that we’re called to first look first at our own room—at the log in our own eyes, as Jesus says—and to clean our corner of the house. That’s where we begin, cleaning out the dirt in our own corner of this global house, repairing that which is broken or soiled. Reinhold Niebuhr said it best in his prayer: “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

We’re called to explore our own corner of this global house, to look close, and to clean up the things we can clean up. And, there are a few things. Consider: Today, one out of every seven barrels of oil produced in the world is consumed on American highways. In our country, suicide has become the second leading cause of death among college students, where this consumeristic culture defines their success in terms of possessions or sexual marketability. In this corner of the global house, top CEO’s earn at least four hundred times the pay of the average worker, a ratio that’s increased exponentially over the past thirty years. The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and forty-five million Americans have no health care insurance.

Dear friends, as we look to the incredible gifts of this country—democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, our abundant resources—we still need to ask: Why isn’t the United States a leader in the environmental movement? Why can’t we sign a treaty on global warming? Why have we come to learn to live with a permanent underclass as if they’re not there? Why are thirteen million American children hungry?

Our faith calls us to look closely at these things. And, even more closely, we’re called to look at our own hearts, our own lives. Look at your life as it’s unfolding. When all is said and done, what will people say was your purpose in life? For me, I think folks will say, “She loved her family, she loved being a pastor, she loved watching her daughters play volleyball and reading good books and going to Glacier Park at least once a year.” But, I wonder, will they say she loved the poor, she spoke up for justice and peace? Will they say that she took a risk for the sake of the Gospel?

The Bible calls us to look at our world, our country, and our own lives—to look at what needs to be cleaned up in our own little corner—to do the work which makes for peace.

In today’s lesson, the prophet Isaiah paints the picture of perfect peace, that place where instruments of death are turned into implements for life, for harvesting the fields, and where nations don’t even have to study war anymore. And, the vision of Isaiah doesn’t just fill one corner of the globe. Isaiah describes a day when many peoples will come to the house of God, when many nations will come to live in the ways of justice and peace. In the Book of Revelation, this vision is expanded, for now God brings down a whole city, the new Jerusalem, right down to us from heaven to earth. And God promises to dwell in this home, even to plant a tree of life there for the healing of the nations. Not just the healing of one nation. Not just the healing of the United States, but the healing of Iraq and Palestine, of Israel and Afghanistan.

That is God’s vision, God’s promise. And, we are renewed in that promise each time we gather for worship. For in worship, God speaks to each of us saying: “Welcome home, my beloved child.” “In my name, you are forgiven and made new.” “Even if you don’t always get it right, and you won’t, you are welcome in my house of prayer.” As Ephesians puts it: “You are no longer a stranger, but a member of the household of God.”

Oh, yes, we live together in this global house. We work with passion for its welfare and wholeness. We strive to clean up our corner of the world, to reform our own lives. But, just as we live with passion for this global home, we also live with amazing hope, knowing as Augustine reminds us, that we’re also residents of an eternal home, a heavenly household. That hope sets us free to truly engage the world, to serve without fear because we know that our future is held secure in God’s hands.

Yes, in worship, we glimpse the vision, this peace from God which spans the globe, this tree of life for the healing for all the nations. And, in worship, we are freed to seek, to live out that vision, to love and act and sacrifice with boldness. For we know that God will hold us as we face that hard work of living and loving—and cleaning up our global home. We are peacemakers and we work for peace with joy and with hope, because we know that our life is held secure in the eternal household of God.

Interview with Ann Svennungsen
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Ann, your message on peacemaking centered in the prophet Isaiah’s scripture: “...and they shall beat swords into plowshares.” That’s probably the most critical assignment we have for the future of our planet these days. But have people of faith and their congregations lost their nerve in taking it on?

Ann Svennungsen: Sometimes you wonder. As you heard in my sermon, I do think weekly worship is the place where we are centered in both the vision of peace and also in the power of God to not give up our nerve, but to be sent forth into our daily lives. But I think sometimes we also lose our nerve in the ambiguity and the bigness of the issues. Sometimes we have to say: What can I do? What can I change? How can I live more simply and share more generously? How can I serve more lovingly?

Talbot: What do you say to people who want our country to flex it’s muscle in a more bellicose way around the world in the name of freedom and democracy?

Svennungsen: I do have a deep philosophical belief that it’s also in our self-interest to be in relationship with the countries around the world. So to be a bellicose nation, I’m not sure finally it is in our self-interest either. I think from a perspective of faith, one has to be careful. But also from a perspective of what is finally practical if we live in a global house, we need to be in partnership as much as we possibly can.

Talbot: Martin Luther King’s wonderful metaphor for the world, comparing the world with a global house. You refer to those corners of injustice. Where is the worst dirt that we need to clean up?

Svennungsen: In this country?

Talbot: Start there.

Svennungsen: Well, I think of Robert Franklin who speaks about a sense of “normative inequity.” That somehow we think that inequity is just going to be normative in our country. Or, as I referred to, sort of a permanent underclass that we just ignore. There is a part of me that just wants to say, “Can’t we do better in this land, in terms of health care, in terms of thirteen million children who are hungry?”

Talbot: And our most precious legacy. Ann, from summa cum laude in mathematics to ministry in the largest Lutheran church pastored by a woman, to your current passion as head of the Fund for Theological Education. What difference is the Fund making these days for the next generation?

Svennungsen: Oh, I’m so glad you asked me that. I’m so pleased with the Fund. We’re celebrating our fiftieth anniversary. Our mission is to promote quality and diversity in Christian leadership. As you heard from my sermon, I believe what happens in the congregation is so vitally important. I truly believe that leaders of those congregations are so vitally important. So we do whatever we can to encourage high school and college students and young adults to think about using their gifts to serve God and God’s world as pastors and theologians.

Talbot: And you have three beautiful children. In fact, you’re taking a flight home right after this show to see your son, who has Down Syndrome, in his high school chorus. Tell us what you’re saying to your children these days about peacemaking?

Svennungsen: Oh, my! I’m so proud of my kids. I mean sometimes you raise them and you think, “Are they getting any of this?” And now my oldest is in law school and she is so involved in the political world. My youngest thinks she wants to be a politician. I keep saying, “How about being a pastor?” But as long as she sees her life as a way to serve God and God’s world then I’m happy.

Talbot: Like her mom. You are just terrific and a real gift, Ann..