Sermon for March 23, 2003 (the Sunday after war began in Iraq)
The First Church of Christ, Congregational (UCC) Suffield, Connecticut
The Rev. Dr. Brenda M. Pelc-Faszcza, Senior Pastor
Third Sunday in Lent
Text (lectionary): 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
After so many months of anticipation, we are now at war, as we all expected we would be. Maybe we should say we are finally at war, which is how it feels. To put it that way suggests that on some level we couldn't wait, that we've been eager to get at it after talking about it and hearing about it for so long. For some people, that is undoubtedly true. Maybe that's what Colin McEnroe meant on his radio program the other day when he said that "aside from the fact that this is all about the taking of human life, there is a strange comfort to it." An appeal. An excitement, even. It's our latest reality TV program.
Aside from the fact that it is all about the taking of human life. But how do you put that aside, since that is a war's chief aim? What else is it about, except the intention to kill, to wound, to damage, to destroy, to humiliate? Of course, the damage is inflicted to an end and for a cause, not just for nothing. But still, when you choose violence, you choose suffering and death as the means to that end, rather than some other means. How do we ever put that aside? Especially since we ourselves as Americans now know what it is for somebody to come in and kill the innocent and level the landscape in our own cities? Done to us, we have labeled it "atrocity." But we are the ones choosing to do it this time, knowing perfectly well we will hit not only the guilty but also the innocent. Can we ever put the means aside, for the sake of the hoped-for end? That is one question we are wrestling with now.
As so often happens, the lectionary Scripture of the day serves up an exactly appropriate lens for this moment in time. In 1 Corinthians, we overhear an apostle of first-generation Christianity already telling the young Jesus community -- a movement barely twenty years old when Paul writes in the 50's -- how hard it will be for them to remain Christian in the world. Never mind 2000 years later, but already in the first few years! Why? Because what the world generally counts as wise is not what God counts as wise. Because what we usually mean by "power" is not what God means by power. Because what God requires of us often looks like foolishness to the secular eye. Because the fundamental commitments of Christianity are counter-cultural, always have been. Most of the time, they do not prop up the principalities and powers, as much as challenge them and seek to transform them, to transform us, into creatures with power of another kind. The central sign of this is Jesus on a cross, rather than Jesus with a sword in his hand - and trying to say to anybody with a sword that the one who has laid his down reveals the greater power, is surely folly as the world would read it. But from the beginning, the Christian gospel has been that God chooses exactly that, the thing that looks weak and foolish in the world, to enact the divine wisdom. That is the strange claim of the gospel.
How timely, then, it is that the categories the Bible puts down in the midst of us today are wisdom and foolishness, since another question many of us are asking of this war - aside from is it right - is, "Is it wise?" Have we done the wise thing here, or the foolish thing? Have we done the one thing that will solve the problem and bring to ourselves and the rest of the world greater security and peace from now on, as some are convinced? Or have we done the thing virtually guaranteed to inflame an already unstable part of the world and escalate the very violence and hatreds we need to overcome, as others believe? What is wise and what is foolish in a time such as this?
People with faith in their hearts and good will in their bones differ now, and through history have often differed, on the question of whether war, any war, ever really solves anything, ever can be morally justified, or whether it can be counted on just to add another layer to the world's sin and misery, leaving that much more to be healed the next time. Within Christianity, there have been three distinct positions with respect to the waging of war. One of these is pacifism (root word - peace). Pacifists hold that no war ever, under any circumstances, is justified, because violence in any form is never justified. They look directly to Jesus who said "Love your enemies," "Return no one evil for evil," and who mustered no physical battle in his own defense. Alternatively, some hold to a just war position, rooted in the thinking of St. Augustine in the 5th century and developed by others in subsequent centuries. This position says that some wars, under some carefully identified conditions, are justified - regrettable still, but justified. Those conditions include: responding in self-defense, when you have been attacked first; going to war only for a right and just cause; going to war only when every other alternative has been fully exhausted; going to war only with a right and legitimate authority to do so; acting in proportion to the threat at hand; being reasonably certain of the outcome; and protecting innocent civilians. Through 1500 years of Christian tradition, the just war theory has been open to differing interpretations and applications. And so, not surprisingly, some say that this present war does fulfill all of those requirements, and others - including as eminent a humanitarian and Christian as former president Jimmy Carter* -- say it clearly does not. And then there is the third category, which is the crusaders. For those who go for the war crusade, the basic sentiment is a crude one, simply "let's go kill 'em." We're good, they're bad; we're right, they're wrong; end of story.
Do you recognize yourself in any of these postures? If you think that maybe you cross back and forth between a couple of them, you are not alone. Moral clarity is hard. Moral clarity about war is very hard. But that does not excuse us from trying. The main trouble for Christians, quite frankly, is Jesus. That is, the challenge to our comfort and ease, to our conventional wisdom about 'success,' to our regular, secular way of thinking about things, is Christ crucified - folly for sure if the measure of all things is military power or economic power or political power. Because Jesus clearly does not have any one of these things. Do you remember that scene from the gospels where Jesus has been arrested and is standing before Pilate to be tried, as told in the Gospel of John (John 18:33-38)? Pilate asks of him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" meaning something entirely political, the only kind of kingship Pilate would know or care anything about, the kind that could threaten him. Meaning, how many swords do you have? How many guns? How many bombs? How much oil? Those are the sorts of things that count for the sort of leader Pilate is. But in response to the word "king," Jesus replies with something like, Well, that's your term, not mine (v. 37). My 'kingdom' is not what you mean by the word 'kingdom.' My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my friends would be fighting right now - literally -- to get me released. But they're not. I have come to bear witness to the truth. Then Pilate delivers the haunting and memorable, What is truth? With that, we are left with the jaw-dropping truth that of all the causes in the world, even Jesus' cause does not justify violence; that if his life and death show us anything at all, it is that evil is met and transcended not by returning it, but by refusing to return it, by refusing to become just like the thing we hate, by being steadfastly willing to witness to another truth and another way entirely. Is that foolishness? A weak stumbling block for rational people? A naivete you can't possibly live on? Or is it the deepest of sacred wisdom? The heart of how the universe is made? God's own hope for the world?
Although my own view is that we should not be taking the actions we are now taking, I do not for a minute believe that everybody who wants us to be in a war or who is actually fighting the war in some capacity, is a bad person. (What incredibly brave self-giving there is among those who are in the middle of danger, far from their families....) But I do believe that collectively, as human societies across the whole world, we are in the grip of a bad idea, and that is that violence saves. That somehow, humans bringing ferocious brutality and suffering upon other humans, in displays of a certain type of power, will get us to the promised land. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the great American heroes of non-violence, is remembered for saying, "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Folly? Foolishness? Stumbling block? Or the wisdom and hope of God, who made the world to be one whole, unified and illuminated thing?
Here is a prayer I found this week:
If you were busier, Lord, you would not bother with us. But you have time to listen, so we praise you for having all things in proportion, and a time in your silence for us to speak.
If you were wiser, Lord, You would not bother with us. But you are foolish, and thus we are your choice. So, we praise you that your kingdom is indeed upside down, That your standards are not the world's standards, That you have bent down to touch us.
If you were content, Lord, You would not bother with us. But you are restless: Through anger, through excitement, through love, You will all things to change and be made new. So, we praise you that your restlessness has been born in us, In the pain of the world, The cries of your people, The urgency of your gospel, The holiness of your Spirit. Upset our easiness, and require us to respond.**
May it be so with us. Amen.
*See Jimmy Carter,"A Just War or Just War?" an op-ed in the New York Times, March 9, 2003.
** In Bread of Tomorrow: Prayers for the Church Year, ed. Janet Morley, 1992.
