Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Hard questions before us
The things that make for peace
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop, Diocese of Bethlehem
[Bishop Paul preached this sermon during the Prayer Vigil for Peace with Justice, March 20, 2003, at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem. The gospel passage was Luke 19:29-47.]
Since the time that this liturgy was planned, the world situation has changed. Please permit me to add two prayers to those planned for this evening.Let us pray for the members of the armed forces
Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad, especially in this time of conflict. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Let us pray for the president and all in authority.
O lord, our heavenly Father, the high and mighty Ruler of the universe, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth; Most heartily we beseech thee, with thy favour to behold and bless thy servant The President of the United States, and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.Thank you very much for coming tonight. When Dean Lane suggested that we gather tonight, he wisely observed that our concern needed to be wider than what was then the possibility of war with Iraq. His concern was for a just peace throughout the Near East. Our readings and prayers tonight reflect that wide concern.
However, we are at war, and the polls indicate that the majority of Americans want that war. Some here tonight agree and believe that there are no alternatives, others in the room disagree and believe that non-violent solutions to the problem of the Hussein regime were not exhausted.
All however, are here to pray for a just peace.
Furthermore, I think I may speak for all of us in reproach of those opportunists who did not participate in the national discussion of these tremendous issues during the preceding months, but who now seek to make political hay out of national crisis. Equally dangerous are the attitudes of those other opportunists who build power or radio audiences by spreading the lie that to be opposed to the war -- or any other policy -- is to be anti-American, when the freedom to disagree is precisely what our system values.
Talk is cheap in times of crisis. Anxiety -- no, let's call it fear -- fear produces reactivity in even the best of us. I suggest that for these few minutes we listen to some words of Jesus that were not cheap, in fact they were very expensive for him. When our gospel passage tonight was written, Jerusalem lay in complete destruction after a failed rebellion. The writer looks back, and remembers Jesus not scolding, not belittling, not gleaning votes, but weeping - crying -- over a city that was heading for destruction. The difference between what could have been and what was to be devastated him.
So he says through his tears, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God."
They can be read as repudiation, as harsh words, and they are indeed painful to say and painful to hear. They had consequences for Jesus: telling people that they do not have all the answers right has never been a safe way to go. When we understand that Luke has Jesus saying these words through tears, they sound a bit different: they cease to be harsh and reveal a tragedy.
I have been fascinated by Jesus' phrase, the things that make for peace. The Hebrew prophets chided kings and citizenry for unwise foreign policy and unjust domestic policies, but it was Micah who brought it home, who realized that peace comes from peaceful people who manage in even the most trying times to "do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [y]our God"
Look at yesterday's New York Post {hold up}. It's a picture of Hussein with a two-word headline: Dead Man. If the object of such stuff is to sell papers, it works: I bought one. But that is the land of the panderer, the demagogue. Hussein is indeed accountable for a great deal. However, when there are those screaming for blood, we do justice; when there are those willing to demonize, we love kindness; when the temptation to demagoguery or careerism arises, we walk humbly -- and walk with God.
That is, the Church is called to a special ministry in a time like this. We must pray for all of those who are touched by this conflict, and especially for those who have been ordered to serve overseas. We must also provide a place for those whose friends and family members have been deployed; we must pray with them and accompany them as they face the possibility of great personal loss. We must at the same time support with our voices and hearts those who work for a rapid and just end to the conflict in which we are now engaged.
Well, that's in-house. How are we to be out there, out where the fear, the despair, the arrogance, the easy answers reside, where the bumper sticker is the substitute for thought?
Last Sunday's Epistle reminded us that we have a security in God that allows us to face anything that life -- or death -- can offer. IT IS ENORMOUSLY IMPORTANT FOR THE HEALTH OF THIS COUNTRY THAT WE ACT ON THAT BELIEF. Developing the skill of demonstrating one's calm, one's centeredness, in a situation awash in other people's adrenalin can bring healing and stability to people in ways that might surprise us.
Let's please remember that we have no choice about whether our presence influences those around us: we must choose to let that presence be one that is not arrogant or cock-sure, but one that knows that in Jesus Christ we are permanently secure. So easy to say; so hard to do. I suppose the arrogant and fearful can be against war, but only the centered and rooted heart has any idea of what it means to be for peace.I believe that we rightly chide the Japanese, that, to this day, even university students in Japan are not given anything like an accurate picture of the atrocities committed by the Imperial Government in the 1930s and 1940s. They have virtually no context for evaluating the decision to drop the bomb, no way of knowing that it caused less civilian injury than did the Japanese rape of Nanking alone.
I rehearse this not to defend or attack Truman's decision, but to point out that if other nations are not scrupulous in looking at the ambiguities of their own history and policy, might that not also be true of us and what is done in our name? What are the odds that Japan is the only country not to be honest with itself about its past?
As a people we do not seem able to examine how our commitments and habits may institutionalize injustice and oppression. Take something as simple as gum Arabic, which largely comes from Sudan. The tell me that every time we drink an RC Cola, a Pepsi™, or Coke™, money is put into the hands of the Sudanese who seek to exterminate the people of our partner diocese of Kajo Keji. I'm not a chemist and can't swear to that fact, but I certainly prefer not to think about it, as I did not when I had my own cold caffeine this morning. Or to shift focus, why has the death of Rachel Corrie gone virtually uncommented upon in our country, as with similar deaths? What interests of ours make Palestinians and their friends disposable? Loving justice is complicated business, and it may well be bad for business.
It may be bad for business. Humans tend to believe that anything we are capable of doing by way of earning a buck, we are permitted to do, and do not expect to be criticized, especially by religion. Thus we delude ourselves into thinking that religion has nothing to say about political decisions -- we Episcopalians adamantly insisted on that illusion right through the Civil War, by the way, and still congratulate ourselves about it in books and articles. Imagine being proud of never having taken a stand on slavery! To talk of raising moral questions is to talk about human behavior; organized human behavior is politics, and Jesus talked about little else than human behavior.
Thus I have chosen to put a few hard questions before us, because to avoid hard questions in a time of crisis is to take refuge in the mindlessness of the bumper sticker, the endorphins of the war chant or the anti-war chant.
I repeat: It is our task to pray for all, to minister to those called to serve in the armed forces, to care for all those caught up in the war. It is also our task to be the sane and centered people who provide the calm in the body politic that allows it to ask the hard question, the question that ultimately asks how as a people, we may do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God -- and stick around for the answer.
Home Site Map Please direct any questions or comments to the webmaster@diobeth.org
