Keynote Address

Bernice Powell Jackson

Bernice Powell Jackson
October 18, 2002

One of my former colleagues had a bumper sticker on her office door which said, Jesus is coming....look busy. We once had a philosophical and theological conversation about that choice of words...not get busy, but look busy.

Charles Schulz, my favorite 20th century lay theologian once did a Peanuts cartoon which featured Charlie Brown's little blonde sister, who sits up in the bed and says, My alarm clock didn't go off. As she comes into the kitchen she sees Charlie Brown, and she says, Maybe I wound it too tight...adding, Sometimes if you wind an alarm clock too tight it won't go off...and a few minutes later Charlie Brown, says We're all a little that way... wound too tight.

Adam Gopnik, a writer in the New Yorker magazine recently did a story titled, Bumping into Mr. Ravioli. It seems that his 3 year old daughter had invented a playmate. Not unusual, you say. But her imaginary playmate, whose name was Charlie Ravioli, was too busy to play. She would talk to him on her play cell phone only to hear that he had way too many appointments to see her. Or when her mom and dad would ask about Charlie Ravioli, she would say that she had "bumped into" him on Broadway and they had a coffee together or shared a cab on their way somewhere.

When her imaginary playmate who was too busy to play with her hired an imaginary assistant to screen his calls, Adam Gopnik and his wife began to realize that there was something else going on here and that their daughter was reflecting their own lives, too busy to find time for friends and they began to think perhaps they should move out of New York.

But you and I know that living in New York is not the problem. We are all too busy...wound too tight..busy looking busy. If there is one lesson we all should have learned after September 11 it is that too often in our fast-paced lives, we take relationships for granted and that there is nothing more important than relationships...our relationships with each other and our relationships with God. That is a lesson which will never be forgotten by those who lost loved ones on that fateful day, but, I am afraid, for too many of the rest of us, it was one all too short-lived and almost forgotten only a year later.

God is still speaking... but are we too busy to hear? ...Are we too busy preparing for war?

Too busy to hear the words of Jesus....You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy...but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Some might say that is naive or gullible. Nevertheless, they were the words of the one we are bold enough to say we follow.

Love your enemies...who are our enemies? Clearly the ones who piloted those planes and the ones who sent them. But are the old men, women and children who have been killed as a result of our bombings in Afghanistan our enemies? Are those who were attending a wedding outside Kabul and in their normal way, shooting guns to celebrate, and were all killed by our bombs because our soldiers thought they were terrorists...are those family members our enemies? Yes, we rid them of the Taliban and women no longer must wear burkas and girls can now go to school, but are the ones killed and injured our enemies?

Or are the civilians who will be killed when we bomb Iraq, and we know they will be, not only because in our modern day world civilians are anywhere from 8 to50 times more likely to be killed in war than soldiers and because we know that Saddam Hussein will use his own people as shields for his arms and his soldiers, so that as we fire at military targets we will also be firing at civilians...are the thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been held captive by a ruthless tyrant who even used chemical weapons on his own people...people who have starved and become ill without medications because of our sanctions against their nation and who now will be killed by our bombs... are the people of Iraq our enemies? Are these human beings just collateral damage in a war between the world's super-power and the despot whom we supported and armed and allowed France to sell nuclear materials to only a decade ago?

Bishop Huber, the bishop of the diocese of Berlin in our partner church in Germany was visiting us last week and when he addressed the Executive Council, he reminded us that God hears the moans of the Afghan farmer who lost his beloved in our bombing just as God hears the cries of the families of those killed in the World Trade Center or Pentagon.

As we go around the world, who are our enemies? Are our traditional allies, who are right now in the United Nations taking a position against a pre-emptive strike against Iraq now our enemies? Nations such as France, where on September 12 its newspaper Le Monde's banner headline in English was We are All Americans, but where today we are seen by many French people as an aggressor and bully...are they now our enemies?

As we go around the world, who are our enemies? Are the Afro-Colombians and those indigenous Colombians who are the ones who really are suffering from our Plan Colombia and our spraying of chemicals to kill the coca plants, and which kill not only those plants but every living thing around them, including the food the farmers have planted...are they our enemies? As we give more money to the Colombian army to buy the arms which also go to the para-military so that these same Afro-Colombian and indigenous Colombian peasants who find themselves caught in the war between the drug cartels and the para-militaries are forced to leave their land for their lives, are they our enemies?

Perhaps that not-so naive prophet and Savior of 2,000 thousand years ago knew more than we think. You see, Jesus knew something about super-powers, about empires. He knew something about them from the underside of them. His words, therefore, were not words to the rich and powerful of Rome, but to those who had been crushed by the Roman soldiers, taxed by an empire far away. They were words to those who had lost hope that they could change things, who despaired that justice would ever prevail.

The great African American theologian and mystic Howard Thurman wrote a book entitled Jesus and the Disinherited in which he told the story of his visit to India in the 1930's during its struggle for its freedom from Britain. He was asked by a Hindu professor there how could he, as a black man, be a Christian, knowing how his faith had participated, even encouraged, the slave trade. How could he, knowing that a British slave vessel was actually named Jesus, be a Christian.

Dr. Thurman's response was say to him that you can't understand my faith in the context of the history of my religion, you must understand it in the context of Jesus. It is only when you understand Jesus' context, that Jesus was born into that great mass of the poor, that Jesus was a Jew in the Roman empire, only then can you understand how an African American man can be a Christian. It is only when you understand the context of Jesus' life that you understand that our faith, the Christian faith, is not an apology for those in power, but a technique for survival of those who are not.

But those words...you must love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...do they not have meaning for us, the richest, most powerful nation in the world as well?

Remember the words of a modern-day prophet, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, " the contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are."

Or hear the words of Henri Nouwen, the late Dutch theologian and one-time Yale professor, " If we want to be real peacemakers, national security cannot be our primary concern. Our primary concern should be the survival of humanity, the survival of the planet, the health of all people. Whether we are Russians, Iraqis, Ethiopians or North Americans, we belong to the same human family that God loves. And we have to start taking some risks ? not just individually, but risks of a more global quality, risks to let other people develop their own independence, risks to share our wealth with others and invite refugees to our country, risks to offer sanctuary ? because we are people of God."

Nouwen was saying we must take some risks for peace. King was saying the church can no longer remain a silent supporter of the power structure. Jesus was saying it doesn't mean anything if you just love those who love you or are like you or agree with you, you must love those who hate you....because ultimately only love conquers fear, only love conquers hate, only love conquers injustice.

Some more words of Dr. King, written in his last book, published after his death through violence, "Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence, you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence, you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do that."

Bishop Huber, whom I mentioned before, also called for an axis of peace. People around the world who are willing to work for peace. People who are willing to speak out against war. People who are willing to work for a world with justice and peace.

I know that not everyone will agree with me as I join other people of faith in calling for peace instead of war. In the UCC we have a wide range of views about the acceptability of war as a means of resolving disputes. Some of our forebears engaged in armed struggle for this nation's independence and during the Civil War. One of our noted theologians, Reinhold Neibuhr, argued from the standpoint of "Christian realism" that injustice must be resisted, if necessary by war. Some believe in the so-called just war theory. Others have opposed war in principle, including many who have been conscientious objectors during Viet Nam and even during World War II. Nearly 20 years ago our General Synod declared our church to be a just peace church, a church that would consistently seek nonviolent solutions to disputes whose attempted resolution by war would inevitably lead to death and destruction. Most recently, we joined our voices with other churches around the world in adopting the World Council of Churches' call to make this the Decade to Overcome Violence.

In our statement of faith we say that God promises to all who trust God courage in the struggle for justice and peace. God promises us courage in the struggle for justice and peace. What can we do for peace?

First, we can pray. There is power in prayer. Anyone who has ever been lifted up by the prayers of others in illness, in grief, in danger knows whereof I speak. If you don't know what else to pray, pray the words of the world peace prayer, which is taken from one of the most ancient scriptures of Hinduism (NCH #581): Lead us from death into life, from falsehood to truth, from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace, let peace fill our hearts, let peace fill our world, let peace fill our universe. First we can pray.

Then we can take seriously our responsibility as voters to talk and write and e-mail our Senators and Congresspersons and our President about war. I believe it is only because people of faith have been active over the past few weeks that we are not already at war. You can go to our justice web page at ucc.org or ucc.takeaction.org and write to your elected representatives with one-click and to your newspapers with another.

Finally, we need to spend time with each other, building those relationships and talking about not only war and peace, but security and power, violence and safety. We need to talk deeply with each other, not just those times we bump into Charlie Ravioli, but times we get to know each other's fears and passions. We can talk with those from your Conference who went to Colombia. We can attend the Nov 8-9 meeting in Cleveland of churches asking together what does it mean to be a just peace church in this new millennium. We can read, read, read all that we can about the Middle East, about Islam, about the world around us ? from the point of view of those in other countries.

We need to do bible study together, reflecting on God's words to us today, really struggling to understand what it is God is calling us each to do. Because God is still speaking...we can't be too busy to answer.

I started with Charlie Brown's little blonde sister, so I'll close with her too. Standing before her class, she is reading her essay. This is my report on how to live....They say the best way is just to live one day at a time...If you try to live seven days at a time, the week will be over before you know it.

Oh, and after Adam Gopnick's daughter's frustrations with her imaginary playmate Charlie Ravioli and his assistant, she imagined a whole life of adventures: winning a chess tournament, saving all the animals in the zoo, driving the taxi in which she and Ravioli had by chance shared. If Ravioli was too busy for her, she'd be too busy for him.

And the bumper sticker...if we slow down, if we take seriously our relationships with each other and with God, if we pray for peace, if we work for peace and justice, if we listen for God's words to us today, that bumper sticker will read...Jesus is coming...we're ready.

[Annual Meeting 2002] [Second Keynote Address]