Praying For Peace
On this, the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War, I find myself going, not just four years back in history, but many more years back to the religion of my childhood - a small Christian sect called the Church of the Brethren. As pacifists, they tended to have an entirely different way of reading biblical texts and engaging traditional ritual than other Christians do. And with this being the season of Lent as well as the anniversary of the war, I am particularly reminded of the Brethren's unique take on that widespread Christian practice.
Most of us are fairly familiar with the traditional way of approaching Lent. We know it as the reflective forty day period before Easter during which Christians give up something as a way of spiritually preparing for and identifying with Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. But for the Brethren, it's about something different.
Lent, they say, is mostly about the story of the 40 days that Jesus spent alone in the desert with the Devil. In sermons and in Sunday school lessons, we were reminded that the Devil tempted Jesus with great wealth and then with great power. "The treasure of the world and the kingdoms and all the armies of the world could be yours," the Devil said. All yours.
And Jesus rejected it.
You could be a superpower, said the Devil. Think of that! Think of all the good you could do. Think of how you could shape and control history. With such amazing might, you could straighten out this crooked world, make it right, shape it into exactly what you know it should be.
And Jesus said no.
That's the point of Lent, the Brethren say: to wrestle with this "non-sensical no." To wrestle with this uncomfortable, counter-cultural story that says plain as day that pursuing and trusting in economic and military might is the voice and logic of the devil.
Simply put, it's about another way, said the Christianity of my youth. Unlike all the other churches in our tiny mid-western town, mine said, it's not about believing Jesus is the Son of God as much as it is about Jesus trying to get all of us to believe that there is a better way to be. That's what religion is and should be at it's best, I was taught - not convincing people of a set of theological dogma, but an invitation into a new way of being - a new way of being that begins with and holds central the Lenten idea that pursuing and trusting in economic and military might is the voice and logic of the devil.
And friends, this morning - especially this particular anniversary morning - I miss having that constant invitation in my life. Don't get me wrong. I love our Unitarian Universalist faith; it fits me better than any other. I also greatly value all the peace work our congregation is doing. But none of our Unitarian Universalist efforts add up quite yet to what the Brethren were able to offer me.
The best words I have for it are "freedom" and "sight." That was their gift. To be constantly challenged by this radical other way of approaching things was like having blinders removed. This alternative world view - whether I completely accepted it or not - helped me see and question and imagine things I simply couldn't have otherwise on my own.
Now without that constant counter-cultural voice, it feels so much harder to maintain a critical distance.
"Might is right." "Strength keeps us safe." "As the sole superpower we have the ability and the duty to shape history and encourage its inevitable trajectory towards democracy." Think about how all those slogans are just the air we breathe as Americans. Ideas we as a culture so unquestioningly accept. Having left the Brethren, and yet remembering what it was like to be among them, I notice - sadly - how much easier it is for me to be swept up blindly into this worldview that trusts in American power and control. I have become, quite literally, less free and more blind.
And noticing this in myself, what stands out to me as I look around, is that it is not just me, it's all of us. We, as country, have become people without freedom and without sight.
For me, this is most clear when we look at the anti-war movement in this country. To be frank, we don't have one. I think this is something we have to acknowledge if we are ever to move forward. What we really have, when you step back and think about the dominant patterns and voices shaping us today, is a "war management movement."
Think about the leaders in the Democratic Party and their critical voice. From John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election to the voices coming from congress as we speak, the emphasis has been not anti-war, but anti-Bush's management of the war. "He's made a mess of this; we could have done it better" is the mantra.
Think about the growing focus on the Iraqi government's management. This is quickly becoming the story of the war, a story we as a country seem all too willing to accept. "If it weren't for the inept management of those Iraqi's, we could have made this war work."
Even those of us who are truly anti-war are trapped in this emphasis on management. Sometimes knowingly and sometimes without even noticing it, we allow our core message to be about ending this particular war, not about getting the country to re-think war in general. "Bring the troops home" is our mantra, not because it's the only thing we care about, but because consciously or unconsciously we know that if we said too much more, attendance at our vigils and all those supportive honks we get would drop significantly.
And please hear me correctly. These examples are not meant as a criticism of the devotion and persistence - and real successes - of the peace movement. Rather I offer these examples to help us more clearly see who we are as a nation and culture as a whole.
Yes, on this the fourth anniversary of the war, a tide has turned. Yes, it looks like American withdrawal from Iraq is only a matter of time. Yes, most Americans are now against the Iraq war. But none of that means America itself has fundamentally changed. We just want to get out of a messy war. It doesn't mean we love or trust in war any less than we did four years ago.
It doesn't mean America is re-thinking war as its primary means of safety. It doesn't mean America is rethinking its role in the world order or its "right" to use pre-emptive aggression. It doesn't mean America is rethinking its special role as history's servant called to spread freedom and democracy. And it certainly doesn't mean we are questioning our absurd military budget that adds up to more than the military budgets of all the other world's countries combined!
Simone Weil, the great French theologian, said, "Force is as pitiless to the one who possesses it, as it is to its victims; its victims, it crushes; its possessors, it intoxicates." What I'm saying today, friends, is that we need to recognize that regardless of the recent support for troop withdrawal, we as a country remain intoxicated by the love of force, power and control.
If one wonders why your minister is so intent on stressing this sad fact today, instead of taking at least a little time to celebrate the small but genuine successes we've made recently toward getting our troops home, one only needs to revisit the tragedy that occurred right after we left Viet Nam.
It's only being talked about by a few historians at the moment, but it's the piece of history that we all need to learn and remind ourselves of right now. The popular telling of the story of our exit from Viet Nam is that we as a country were fundamentally changed and humbled. We tell ourselves that solving international conflict through military strength was proven to be folly and that our special role as history's instrument of freedom was thrown into doubt. That heartening picture may be how it felt to many at the time, but in truth, the reaction was much more mixed. As a country on the whole, the failure in Viet Nam left us both humbled and humiliated, full of relief, but also full of worry about where to find a new source of security if military force was not the answer. In other words, the withdrawal was a double-edged knife that could cut either way.
And frankly, liberals and peace-niks got lazy. They were relieved and glad to have proved the folly of trying to control another country's history. They saw defeat in Viet Nam as a good thing and important lesson, but they did not take the next more difficult step of helping the rest of the country understand and feel that it was a good thing and an important lesson. So, a great many people were left after Viet Nam feeling not changed, but as though we had become - to use Richard Nixon's phrase - "A pitiful, helpless giant."
And here's where conservatives stepped in - the most brilliant of which was Ronald Reagan. He, along with others, affirmed this wide-spread shame. He encouraged us to see ourselves as having lost faith and surrendered to national weakness. But he also said he had the cure: "Don't believe it," he said. "Don't give in to these doubts!" In other words, he turned the failure in Viet Nam, not into an important lesson, but into a challenge to pick ourselves up and try again - to prove that Viet Nam was a one-time mistake, a misstep of a great super-power, not a sign that being a super-power is inherently flawed and dangerous.
And so rather than making us more hesitant about jumping into the Cold War or our Covert Wars in Central America or ultimately our Iraq wars, the real and sad story of our withdrawal from Viet Nam is that, in the end, it has functioned as a source of motivation to redeem ourselves and prove that we can "do war right."
And it can happen again! The same tragic and perverse twist can happen again. We will withdraw from Iraq. That I believe is clear. It's only a matter of time. But whether that withdrawal becomes a lesson that leads America to a new way of being or a humiliation that motivates us to "do war right" next time is by no means clear.
It all depends on a million moments like the one that is happening right now.
And if it's not obvious already, let me make it obvious: Today, in this moment, I am asking you to be for others what the Church of the Brethren was for me: a community committed to constantly challenging people to imagine another way.
We don't need better war managers. And we have to be more than a protest group reacting to wars as they arise. What our country needs, what our soldiers need, what the Iraqis need and what the world needs, are thousands of communities of meaning in America that cultivate a different vision in between the calls to war that will most certainly continue.
President Bush didn't get us into this war, and it isn't President Bush that has kept us in it; one man and his cabinet simply don't have that kind of power. The real culprit is a story which preceded President Bush and this war and which will continue to exist after the president is gone and the war is over. It's an old story. One as full of lies as when the Devil tried to sell it to Jesus. It's the terribly seductive tale that great power will keep us safe and we have a special calling to shape the world into a mirror image of ourselves.
After four years of great death, provoked animosity and misspent treasure, we have a clear picture of where such a story leads. The only question is, "Is there someone out there willing to start telling a new one?"
I believe that this "someone" can be us and must be us.
I have this image in my head of one day, my child, or your child, or your grandchild, standing before you, and saying, just like I said earlier at the beginning of this sermon, how grateful they are for this religious community.
I hear them saying that their greatest treasure is their ability to think differently and see differently than the world around them.
I hear them saying they experience themselves as having a freedom and an ability to imagine a different kind of world, and that they've been given the opportunity to work for and bring about that radically different world.
And I hear them saying that these gifts, these treasures, came from all of us.
A greater honor, I can't imagine.
May it be so. Amen.
March 18, 2007