Will there be a war between Iraq and the United States? I don't know,
but it appears likely, according to what I read in the newspapers and
magazines. Hope springs eternal, on the other hand, and there are times
that I am filled with the perverse hope that war's seeming inevitability,
and the intransigence of the parties involved, are but a very serious
game of chicken, and that someone, somewhere, will blink. But I am not
sure what blinking would mean, and how that would change things in a meaningful
way.
So, the question that I would like to talk about today is this - Supposing
that we do have a war with Iraq, then what? I am not talking about "then
what?" in terms of a military exit strategy, or what kind of government
will come to power in Iraq, or even how the military campaign plays out
over time. There is a part of me that just knows that we will have to
wait and see on all those questions as well.
Suppose there is a war in Iraq. And suppose like William Stafford, we
find ourselves saying "There are days when having the world is a
mistake. But then you think, "Well, anyway, it wasn't my idea",
and it's OK again." Can we be OK with the level of resignation that
he seems to portray?
He titles his poem "Mr. or Mrs. Nobody", and in it, he tries
to capture the thoughts of those who, in fact, lift and carry the entire
world everyday, but are not powerful, the "nobodies" whose opinions
seem not to count in the great scheme of things.
This is a social role that most of us do not see ourselves in. After
all, it is human nature, it seems, to rebel against those things over
which we truly have no control: aging and death, or our spouse's relationships
with his or her parents, or whether another person loves us or not. I
mean if you think that you can stay young forever or make another person
love you, then doesn't it seem possible that the President of the United
States will take your most earnest advice about foreign policy. At least,
it seems that he should return your phone calls.
Mr. or Mrs. Nobody. I would rather eat a bug than be a nobody. And yet,
the world that we are increasingly living in appears to beyond our control,
in which ordinary people are bit players, walk-ons, extras in crowd scenes,
living and even dying, as the consequence of decisions made elsewhere.
Certainly this is one of he lessons of September 11th. Nobody asked whether
we wanted Al Qaeda to declare war on us. The people in Iraq did not vote
to try to build nuclear weapons and risk a military confrontation with
the United States. Nobody asked for our opinion on whether it was a good
idea to make people wait two hours for an airplane and have their shoes
inspected and their nail clippers confiscated.
I would imagine that those of you who are older than I, perhaps of the
World War II generation, are less shocked than people of my generation
to find themselves in the current situation.
So, how shall we live in a world that is out of our control? How shall
we live if it turns out that the US and Iraq do have a war? How shall
we live if the future is one of wars, and battles, and skirmishes, and
terrorist attacks, and identity checks, and anthrax outbreaks, and long
lines to be vaccinated against small pox? How shall we live if fear is
an ever-present reality? When our children are in harm's way? If that
war, way out there, comes home to us, as it has already?
May I offer three pieces of advice for the Mr. and Mrs. Nobodies who will
have to live in a future that they did not plan, in a world that was not
their idea. Three words for all of you, especially those of you who will
find yourself seeking God's grace in a tank, or some other situation of
danger and distress.
[One]
Now is the time to turn away from every form of hatred and contempt. In
these times, when the issues of life and death are grave, in these times
when we need respond to every situation with great care to retain our
own moral center, contempt and hatred cloud our powers of moral discernment.
Give respect, whether it is to foreign enemies or fellow citizens with
whom you disagree. Even our leaders deserve respect when they are pursuing
courses that seem wrong. If there is anything that I regret from my life
as a political activist and partisan is the amount of hatred, contempt,
ridicule and ill-will I heaped upon the heads of Lyndon Johnson, Richard
Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. I still disagree with them about all the things
that I disagreed with them back then. And they were tough guys in the
public eye, so they had asked for it, in many a way. And since they didn't
know me, I am sure that my hatred had absolutely no effect on them. It
didn't matter to them.
But I dishonored myself, cheapened myself and coarsened our common life
together. Such hatreds are just compensations for intellectual rigidity
and laziness. Just as they were for all those who spent the 90's hating
Bill Clinton with such unrelenting fury. I sometimes wonder whether the
seeds of some of my poor choices in life were not the result of the ease
of my hatreds when I was young. You see, once you adopt hatred and contempt
as your way of thinking, then all sorts of evils deeds become possible,
even preferable and sometimes necessary.
Hold on to the meaning of life and death for all. People die in wars.
If there is a war in Iraq, Iraqis and Americans and people of many other
nationalities will die in all sorts of circumstances. Some of those will
be lives risked by conscious choice for a noble ideal: freedom; country;
honor; religion; a way of life; the defense of a friend or a buddy. Such
deaths are testimonies to honor among people, and they must be mourned.
Some deaths will be those of unwilling victims of intentional cruelty,
and they are testimonies to the capacity for evil among us, and they must
be mourned. And some will be accidental, and unintentional, and tragic,
civilians caught by bombing raids, collateral damage. And they are testimony
to human pride and arrogance, and they must be mourned. But every death
is meaningful, because every life has meaning. Let no one die in vain,
because of words that pass your lips.
[Two]
We are to be engaged, and not passive. You are you, unique, irreplaceable,
endowed by your creator with a freedom that is inalienable. Speak and
act with courage and authority, wherever you are, in whatever situation
you find yourself. Give up nothing except by your choice. Stand on the
street corner with signs. Protest the war. Write letters to the Editor
praising George Bush. Wrap bandages for our boys and girls at the front.
Speak out when you must. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns his followers
that they must not lose their saltiness. Your unique moral perspective,
your unique understanding of what is wrong and what it right, is your
saltiness. There will be a moment when it will matter what you say, or
do. Say it, or do it. Live it. Preach your gospel at all times, using
words whenever necessary.
Victor Frankl, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, for God's Sake,
said that we never lose our freedom to choose our own response to the
conditions that are thrust upon us. You retain your moral center in every
situation you find yourself, even if you cannot fully act upon it. The
world may not be our idea, and yet we are still called upon to carry it.
Like John Taylor Gatto, we may know that our main purpose is spiritual,
to find our way to God, but love and duty may still present themselves
such that we have to lift the whole heavy world. But we still respond
with our choices, and out of our integrity. William Stafford's was a conscientious
objector during World War II, so he is not counseling us to be passive.
Each of us will find that way that we are called to "be a hero without
knowing it," and those ways may not all agree.
[Three]
And finally, be alert to the unfolding of the new in every moment and
in every instant of possibility.
The question that animates this sermon is the one I mentioned in the newsletter
- "Can God's Grace be present in a tank?" And I believe, as
a matter of deepest conviction, that God's grace is never a separate thing
in this world, as though it were a distinct entry in the periodic table
of elements. No, God's grace is mixed into all that is. Wherever there
are men and women, there is the pull of love and duty and compassion.
Even in the darkest places of war, it is testified, there is simple loyalty,
and shared vulnerability, camraderie, and willingness to suffer for the
sake of righteousness. While God's grace is not a shield that protects
anyone from death, it is present everywhere.
God's grace is intertwined with human freedom, our capacity to choose
how we live, and act, and feel in every situation. And therefore, God's
grace is present in what we choose to create as new in every situation.
New things are created in every war, and I don't just mean new technology.
Nations come and go in war. Governments definitely come and go, as did
the Taliban in Afghanistan. Social institutions vanish, like slavery in
the Civil War. Social relations change in the armed forces and spread
throughout the society, as in the case of racial relations in our country.
In our unison reading this morning, Denise Levertov contrasts us with
much of nature that goes dormant in the winter, when conditions are threatening.
"I and my kind, [meaning humanity] battle a wakeful way to our [Spring]".
Whatever peace and freedom and safety, whatever new ideals and new goals,
that will emerge from this situation will come because we have carried
those seeds with us through all of whatever comes, remembering them, battling
a wakeful way.
This is the second winter we have been considering war. Last winter, it
was Afghanistan. Now, we are involved in this contention with Iraq. September
11, 2001 is further away, and passions have cooled as we are further from
those fires. The calculations are colder and the situation is grimmer.
Many more lives are at stake, but the dangers that we asked to contemplate
are more frightening. Yesterday's shocking deaths seem like a grim portent,
and I suspect that there was not a one of us, who did not immediately
think of terrorism when we heard the news. I have no special knowledge
that that qualifies me to tell you what to think about the policy choices
are before the nation, and you did not call me to conduct this parish's
foreign policy.
It has been a bitter cold winter and it stretches toward the future. But
it has also been a particularly bright and sunny winter, which is of course
a related phenomenom. When it gets colder, it gets clearer. That's simple
Minnesota meteorology, but also a metaphor, not only for the clarity of
our vision in tougher times, but also for the presence of God's grace
at this time.
My friends, do not be afraid of what is to come. It is bitterly cold now,
but the sun is shining. Act with courage and bravery; lose not your saltiness.
You, as are all humanity, light for all the world, let that light be seen.
You carry within yourself already seeds of a new and better world: your
compassion, your courage, and your commitments. It is for those that we
battle our wakeful way to Spring.