Scripture: Isaiah 5:1-7
As many of you know, the United Church of Christ held its national meeting, called General Synod, at the end of June in Hartford, Connecticut. This particular General Synod marked the 50th anniversary of the United Church of Christ, which was formed as a merger of other groups in 1957. The other groups have much longer histories, going back hundreds of years, but the United Church of Christ itself was officially formed fifty years ago and the denomination decided to have a grand celebration to mark the occasion. The Synod was several days longer than usual, one day completely filled with nationally known speakers and performers, most of whom were members of the UCC or had some specific relationship to the UCC. It was, I suppose, part party, part revival, part homecoming, part public witness, and part public relations.
In any case it was quite a spectacular event, lots going on, lots of people, among them Sojourners Archie Thornton, Millie Fife, Deborah Winslow, and me. I went in spite of the fact that there was this little voice in my head that was saying, “Doesn’t being on sabbatical mean having nothing to do with things that have the word church in them?” I actually had some personal reasons for going to Hartford as well, so I was able to overcome that voice fairly easily, and I’m glad I did. And there were some things that happened there and thoughts related to what happened there that I feel I need to bring back to Sojourners. And let me begin that process by describing something that happened the first day I was there.
The big public day was to be Saturday. That’s when Barak Obama and Bill Moyers would be speaking, along with dozens of other people at various places around the city. Friday was just sort of an arrival day when people were finding their hotel rooms and registering and getting settled. I had wanted to be there on Friday, just to hang out and hopefully run into some people from Illinois and other places who I hadn’t seen for a while. That was part of my private agenda for being there.
There was a time in the afternoon on Friday when the Synod was to be officially called to order. This took place, all the business meetings and the major speeches took place, in a large convention hall seating many thousands of people. I had gone in mostly just to find a place to sit down, and I was half paying attention to what was going on, looking at my packet of materials while various routine matters were taking place: declaring a quorum, passing the agenda and the standing rules, going over procedures, being welcomed by the mayor of Hartford and the governor of Connecticut. Meanwhile delegates were milling around on the floor of the convention and visitors like me were straggling in. Sort of a lazy time on Friday afternoon before things really got going.
Then the President of the United Church of Christ was introduced. His name is John Thomas. He explained that the statement he was about to read was not on the agenda of the synod. It was not to be voted on. No action was being asked from the delegates. It was simply a pastoral letter addressed both to the church and to the wider culture from a group called the collegium, the five people who head the various divisions of the denomination. He then simply read the letter, and I am going to read it to you now because I think it is a letter meant for the whole church, not just those who were in Hartford and I think it is a letter addressed to the church at worship, addressed to the church as Christians, not to Christians as citizens but Christians as Christians. I’ll say a little more after I read it, and as I read it, but here is what John Thomas read surrounded at the beginning by low level chaos.
It began with a scripture verse from the reading we heard a moment ago. “God expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry.” (Isaiah 5:7) Then it went on to say:
“The war in Iraq is now in its fifth year. Justified as a means to end oppression, this war has imposed a new oppression of terror on the people of Iraq. Justified as the only way to protect the world from weapons of mass destruction, this war has led to the massive destruction of communal life in Iraq. Justified as a means to end the rule of terror, this war has bred more terror. Every day we look for justice, but all we see is bloodshed. Every day we yearn for righteousness, but all we hear is a cry.
(By this time, as I recall the convention hall had become quite a bit quieter. The letter continued…)
Thousands of precious American lives have been lost; thousands more have been altered forever by profound injuries. We grieve each loss and embrace bereaved families with our prayers and our compassion. Tens of thousands more innocent Iraqi lives have been lost and are daily being offered on the altar of preemptive war and sectarian violence. They too are precious, and we weep for them. In our name human rights have been violated, abuse and torture sanctioned, civil liberties dismantled, Iraqi infrastructure and lives destroyed. Billions of dollars have been diverted from education, health care, and the needs of the poor in this land and around the world. Efforts to restrain the real sources of global terrorism have been ignored or subverted. Trust and respect for the United States throughout the world has been traded for self-serving political gain. Every day we look for justice but all we see is bloodshed. Every day we yearn for righteousness but all we hear is a cry.
We confess that too often the church has been little more than a silent witness to evil deeds. We have prayed without protest. We have recoiled from the horror this war has unleashed without resisting the arrogance and folly at its heart. We have been more afraid of conflict in our churches than outraged over the deceptions that have killed thousands. We have confused patriotism with self-interest. As citizens of this land we have been made complicit in the bloodshed and the cries. Lord, have mercy upon us.
In the midst of our lament we give thanks—for pastors and laity who have raised courageous voices against the violence and the deceit, for military personnel who have served with honor and integrity, for chaplains who have cared for soldiers and their families with compassion and courage, for veterans whose experience has led them to say “no more”, for humanitarian groups, including the Middle East Council of Churches, who have cared for the victims of violence and the growing tide of refugees, for the fragile Christian community in Iraq that continues to bear witness to the Gospel under intense pressure and fear, for public officials who have challenged this war, risking reputation and career. The Gospel witness has not been completely silenced, and for this we are grateful.
Today we call for an end to this war…
At this point some scattered applause broke out in the convention center, not thunderous applause but enough to cause John Thomas to pause in his reading. Before he could resume, the applause grew louder and then louder still until it filled the hall, and then people were standing, it seemed like everyone was standing, and the applause lasted for what seemed like a very long time, probably only several minutes, but a long time, no shouting, no signs, no unseemly displays, just prolonged applause, people standing there doing all that they could think of to do.
It was an unscripted moment, or several moments, in a weekend that of necessity had to be highly scripted but this was an unscripted moment that occurred not so much, I believe, because the statement called for an end to the war, though that was certainly part of it, but because of the whole statement, because it spoke to a heaviness of spirit that many people carry around with them these days. I am quite confident in saying that the statement struck such a chord not because it represented the political sentiments of so many, but because it touched the spiritual reality of so many. Let me finish the statement.
Today we call for an end to this war, an end to our reliance on violence as the first, rather than the last resort, an end to the arrogant unilateralism of pre-emptive war. Today we call for the humility and the courage to acknowledge failure and error, to accept the futility of our current path, and we cry out for the creativity to seek new paths of peacemaking in the Middle East, through regional engagement and true multinational policing. Today we call for acknowledgement of our responsibility for the destruction caused by sanctions and war, thereby we pray, beginning to rebuild trust in the Middle East and around the world. Today we call for repentance in our nation and for the recognition in our churches that security is found in submitting to Christ, not in dominating others.
To this end may we join protest to prayer, support ministries of compassion for the victims here and in the Middle East, cast off the fear that has made us accept the way of violence and return again to the way of Jesus. Thus may bloodshed end and cries be transformed to the harmonies of justice and the melodies of peace. For this we yearn, for this we pray, and toward this end we rededicate ourselves as children of a loving God who gives “light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace.”
I was among those standing and applauding this statement. To say that I agree with the statement is not quite the point. It was more that I was grateful for the statement in a much deeper sense than just agreeing with it. I was grateful that this celebration weekend began in this serious sort of way, acknowledging the war as a context of our church life, and the rest of our life for that matter, but acknowledging the war as the context of our church life and refusing to be blissfully oblivious. I was grateful that the leaders of the church spoke in this way. I felt they were speaking for me. And again it was not just because they were taking a position I agreed with.
Some would say that this was a political statement, not a religious one. Some would even say that the church gives up its spiritual calling when it ventures out into such areas as these. In contrast, this statement said to me that this is part of our spiritual calling as a church and as Christians, that it is not some kind of a political footnote, but is very much a part of the spiritual core of the church, that following Jesus or trying to make his spirit our own cannot be done in some spiritual arena where the war in Iraq is not acknowledged, that we cannot engage in deepening our spiritual lives, however we define that, while pretending the war does not affect our spiritual lives, that a pastoral letter is not all about consolation and comfort and the church’s pastoral role is not all about consolation and comfort but also speaks words of challenge and lament…for all these reasons I felt the pastoral letter from the leaders of the United Church of Christ spoke to me and for me. I was grateful for the letter on many levels.
And I bring the letter to you in that same spirit. In worship, because this matter like so many others is not a questionable add-on to our spiritual life, but in the center of it and is a pastoral concern, not in the sense that it comes from the pastor but in the sense that it is all about our spiritual lives, our spiritual well-being, our wholeness. I bring the pastoral letter back to the church because I believe it was addressed to the whole church and because I believe it is worth laying before us, not for now with any request for action but just as a pastoral concern, a spiritual concern that needs to be in the center of our worship circle.
I have just a few more things to say this morning, if you’ll bear with me. I’ll be brief but they’re of a somewhat different nature, and before I get to them, let’s stop for a moment and sing and listen to a second scripture reading.
Hymn: “Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us With Your Love”
Sermon Part II
Scripture: Matthew 5:43-48
I was standing and applauding along with literally thousands of other folks, happily joining in what I sensed to be a kind of spontaneous expression of appreciation for the statement, and as I say the applause went on for quite some time, and so I started to look around the convention hall, and I noticed—no surprise—not everyone was standing. It looked at first glance like everyone was, but in fact everyone wasn’t. If you looked more closely, there were some people standing politely but not joining in the applause, standing for whatever reason but not joining in the applause, and there were some scattered people in ones and twos and threes throughout the assembly hall who remained seated. It was pretty clear that most of these folks, who in this setting were a distinct minority, it was pretty clear that by remaining seated they were letting it be known that they did not share in the moment. They did not join in the call to end the war nor did the spirit of the statement speak to what was in their spirits. Even as I stood joining with the huge majority in the applause, I was aware that some among us were probably feeling stampeded, and certainly their voice was not being heard. That too is a matter of pastoral concern for me, for the church.
In all honesty, I can’t say that I have a lot of pastoral concern in my heart for the policy makers and architects of the war in Iraq. I have trouble seeing them acting and speaking out of anything I can identify as a Christian spirit. I hear Jesus telling me in Matthew to love your enemies, and I take him seriously, but I also know, as I often have cause to remember, that he does not tell us we should have no enemies, and indeed assumes that we do. Having the integrity to make enemies, as Christ did after all, may be part of Christ’s call. OK with all that.
But as I looked around the assembly hall at the people who were not responding as I was to the pastoral letter on the war, I did not see enemies. And I did not question their Christian spirit. And I did not see people whose faith I assumed to be less developed than mine, or less thoughtful than mine, or less right-thinking than mine, or less anything than mine. I did not see people who I assumed had nothing to say to me that I would benefit from hearing. I did not see the righteous all standing and the unrighteous all keeping their seats. Jesus points out that God makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, on the righteous and the unrighteous. Which I take to mean that God doesn’t want us to reduce each other to such categories and that God doesn’t see us that way. If God isn’t going to make any absolute separation between the just and the unjust by sending little localized storms on these people and those people so we can clearly tell who the unjust and the unrighteous are, then we had best not make any absolute separations based on where we stand on some particular issue.
Still our opinions and convictions on the war are deeply held and the matter is important. The pastoral letter confessed that among the church’s failings is the fact that “we have been more afraid of conflict in our churches than outraged over the deceptions that have killed thousands.” I agree. I agree that we need to confess that. I agree that we can’t fail to speak out or take positions because it will reveal deeply felt divisions among us. Still peace within the church is not an unworthy goal. And somehow those of us who feel called by our faith to oppose the war and those of us who feel called by our faith to support it and those of us who are not so clear what our faith calls us to do in such a situation also need to find a way to talk to one another not that asks us to care less deeply or that asks us to pretend that differences do not exist, but that is able somehow to transcend the positions we hold. That is a calling too, one which is often not easy, and which makes things more complicated, but that too is a calling and is not to be put aside or forgotten. Amen.
Jim Bundy
August 12, 2007