Sermons

May 27, 2007
A Peace Church

A Peace Church
a sermon by the Rev. Mark Worth

READINGS:
1. From Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace, Parallax Press, Berkeley, CA, 1987
There is a Zen story about a man who is riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Another man, standing alongside the road, yells at him, “Where are you going?” And the man on the horse yells back, “I don’t know, ask the horse!” I think that is our situation. We are riding many horses that we cannot control. The proliferation of armaments, for instance, is a horse. We have tried our best, but we cannot control these horses...
In Buddhism, the most important precept of all is to live in awareness, to know what is going on...
During the War in Vietnam we young Buddhists organized ourselves to help victims of the war rebuild villages that had been destroyed by the bombs. Many of us died during the service, not only because of the bombs and the bullets, but because of the people who suspected us of being on the other side. We were able to understand the suffering of both sides, the Communists and the anti-Communists. We tried to be open to both, to understand this side and to understand that side, to be one with them. That is why we did not take a side, even though the whole world took sides. We tried to tell people our perception of the situation: that we wanted to stop the fighting, but the bombs got so loud.... We wanted reconciliation, we did not want a victory. Working to help people in a circumstance like that is very dangerous, and many of us got killed...

2. From Jesus of Nazareth, in The Lost Gospel Q: The Original Sayings of Jesus, Mark Powelson, Ray Riegert and Marcus Borg, editors, Ulysses Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996. (“Q” is a hypothetical “lost gospel,” based on material that Luke and Matthew both drew from, but that they did not copy from Mark.)
Fortunate are you when people hate you, exclude you, abuse you and denounce you on my account. Celebrate when that day comes and dance for joy – your reward will be great in heaven. Remember that their ancestors treated the prophets this way.
Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who treat you badly.
When someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer them the other cheek, too. When someone takes your coat from you, let them have your shirt as well. Give to everyone who asks. And if someone robs you, don’t demand your property back. Treat people as you would like them to treat you.

THE SERMON
There was a Time magazine article a few years ago in which columnist Johanna McGreary referred to the architects of the Bush administration’s War in Iraq as “theologians,” suggesting that their foreign policy was based more on religious faith and less on clear military and political thinking. I happen to agree, although it is a little surprising to see it said in Time magazine. The theology of the Bush administration is, according to Unitarian Universalist theologian Rebecca Parker, built around the claim that violence is an adequate path to redemption. Leaders of the Religious Right expect the world to end in a great war between good and evil that culminates in a Battle of Armageddon, where the forces of evil will be slain, and righteousness will triumph. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell said that the Anti-Christ is alive today, and is a Jewish man probably living in Iraq. The Left Behind books and movies have proclaimed that a violent apocalypse is coming soon. President Bush seems to take this theology quite literally. In the face of these fundamentalist claims, how does our faith either contribute to or resist war?
We cannot deny the fact that war is a powerful method for finding meaning in the world. Through their training, and on the battlefield, soldiers forge an intense bond of friendship and comradeship. They are willing to die, if need be, for one another. And consider the touching scenes of military families saying goodbye to loved ones who are boarding planes headed for Iraq or Afghanistan. It generates a strong sense of community that makes our differences seem petty or unimportant. We remember how Democrats and Republicans in Congress set aside their differences to unite behind the president after the 9/11 attacks. We wanted to be united. We wanted, and hoped for, wise leadership. We love our country.
We have a great respect for the soldiers and sailors and the men and women of the National Guard and the Air Force who give of their time, their efforts, and offer their lives to serve their nation. Especially at times like this Memorial Day weekend, we remember the sacrifice made by the members of our armed forces and their families.
When lives are lost we all feel pain, but the pain is lessened at least a little with the satisfaction of knowing that death came about as a result of courage and generosity – notice how often we have heard the emotional intensity of the words, “He died in the line of duty, seeking to protect others.” It creates a sense of pride and satisfaction and accomplishment for soldiers and nations: the union Army saved the nation and ended slavery. We stopped Hitler and Mussolini and the Japanese. We won the Cold War against Communism. We liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. We stood up to the bullies. The glory of war sanctifies submission to a higher authority. War assures us that we did not live – and die – in vain.

The “high” of battle:
A couple of weeks ago I quoted from Chris Hedges, who recently published a book about fascism and the Christian Right. Hedges was a war correspondent for the New York Times for many years, and his previous book was titled, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. In that book he tells of his own seduction by the intensity and supreme sense of purpose found on the battlefield. He says that violence produces an adrenaline rush that overwhelms ordinary consciousness and sense experience, creating a high that has the qualities of ecstasy. But, like other addictions, the joy of battle splits ecstasy off from the realities of what actually happens to bodies, communities, land, and culture when war takes place. Underneath the valor, those who see war close up encounter a vast emptiness. The force of war’s meaning crumbles in its real presence.
War demands a very high price, both before and after the war. War depends on the sacrifice of life. During World War II General George S. Patton is said to have told his men, “You may be willing to die for your country, but nobody ever won a war by dying for his country. You win a war by making some other poor sonofabitch die for his country.”
After the Vietnam War , suicide among veterans claimed more American lives than the war itself. Almost 60,000 Americans (and millions of Vietnamese) died in that war – but our death toll doubles when you count the suicides among our veterans after the war. War also sacrifices the environment by poisoning soil and water, burning forests, destroying habitats, and disrupting agriculture. After the Kuwait/Persian Gulf War, there was a sharp rise in birth defects and cancer rates in southern Iraq. The lack of clean water caused by the targeted destruction of water systems, the embargo on chlorine, and the use of depleted uranium weaponry has led to widespread disease. The United Nations estimated that as a result, 500,000 Iraqi children died needlessly between 1991 and 2003.
In the end, war takes away the gift it gives. Its meaning can only be sustained if we deny, ignore, or forget the suffering of children, the devastated veterans and their families, decimated cultures, and damaged ecosystems. Hedges quotes J. Glenn Gray, a veteran of World War II: “The great god Mars tries to blind us when we enter his realm, and when we leave he gives us a generous cup of the waters of [forgetfulness] to drink.”

A peace church:
In the 2002 UUWorld, our denominational magazine, the Rev. John Buehrens wrote about the possibility that the Unitarian Universalist Association might declare itself to be a “peace church.” Unlike the Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren, we are not one of the historic peace churches. Those churches expect church members to refuse military service.
But we have some strong peace traditions within our heritage. The Rev. Aden Ballou, a 19th century Universalist minister, wrote a treatise called Christian Non-Resistance, that influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On the other hand, many Unitarians and Universalists have chosen to serve in the U.S. military. During the Civil War, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a birthright Unitarian Universalist (and a white man) led the Massachusetts 54th Volunteers, the first fighting black regiment in the Union Army. He died leading the charge against Fort Wagner in South Carolina.
Former U.S. President William Howard Taft served as moderator of the American Unitarian Association during World War I, and he pushed through a resolution demanding that all of our clergy support the war. Some pastors lost their positions, and Rev. John Haynes Holmes of New York resigned from the Unitarians, and took his church out of the A.U.A., rather than agree to the war resolution. Within my memory two Unitarian Universalists, both Republicans, have served as Secretary of Defense: Elliot Richardson and William Cohen.
I took a different path. I turned eighteen, and had to register for the military draft, at a time when the Vietnam War was intensifying, but opposition to the war was just beginning. On the Selective Service form there was a line that said something like, “sign here if you are a Conscientious Objector, and we will send you form such-and-such.” I signed, but they did not send me form such-and-such. Instead, they gave me a student deferment, which I thought was fine. It was 1966. I figured that by the time I graduated from college it would be 1970 and the war was bound to be over before then. I miscalculated, and so in my senior year of college I began again to pursue my conscientious objector status.
I got information in the library about the American Friends Service Committee, wrote to them, and they sent me valuable information about applying to be recognized as a Conscientious Objector. I also picked up a little book called, Quotations From Chairman Jesus. It listed, among other things, things Jesus and the early Christian saints had said about peace. For instance, St. Martin of Tours, who refused to serve in the Roman army, said, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.” And Jesus taught, “Put down your sword, for those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword.” I argued that Jesus and all the early Christians were pacifists, and that my Methodist faith taught me that I should turn the other cheek, love my enemy, and do good to those who hate me. I could not go half way around the world to kill someone I did not know and had no quarrel with.
My Selective Service Board granted my conscientious objector status. I served two years “alternate service” in Massachusetts in a hospital, rather than going to Vietnam. There, in Pittsfield, Mass., I encountered the Unitarian Universalists, who were running a Draft Counseling Center in the UU Church. I wanted to know, “Who are these people who care so much about peace?” And so I started attending the Unitarian Universalist Church.
Since 1961 the Unitarian Universalist General Assemblies have passed more than fifty official resolutions related to peace, covering topics such as disarmament and conscientious objection and the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. In recent decades our official pronouncements have been consistently opposed to war. At last year’s General Assembly in St. Louis, the delegates overwhelmingly adopted “peacemaking” as a topic for congregational study and action – a four year process that could culminate in 2010 with a vote on whether to declare the Unitarian Universalist Association an official “peace church.”
At the same time, we have members and ministers who serve in the military, and we continue to support them, their families, and all of our U.S. service men and women.

The effects of war:
When Rebecca Parker was a parish minister she learned that memory can be an important mode of resistance to war. The social concerns committee of her Methodist church in Seattle wanted to raise a discussion of nuclear stockpiles. One member of the committee wanted to place posters on the Seattle busses depicting the amount of nuclear weapons produced since World War II. Not everyone thought this was a good idea.
The topic came up again at a Women’s Bible study later in the week. Some of the women complained that the church was spending too much time on political issues. Why should we be raising questions about war? It just isn’t our place as a church to be discussing such things.
One woman moved the discussion in a different direction. “Just a minute,” she said. “How can you say we have no place having an opinion on this? Every one of us here knows that our men came home from World War II broken,” she said quietly. “We’ve spent our lives holding together the pieces that war broke. We did our best to take care of them as well as our children. And never speaking of it, always saying that it was a ‘good’ war.” There was quiet in the room as one by one the women silently nodded, remembering. After that, the women in the Bible class supported the poster project. The church printed the posters and filled the city’s busses with them.
Without memory of the real cost of war, our society can succumb to the false promises of war. War can seduce us. At the beginning of World War I, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Austrians, the Serbs, the British, all went off to war cheering. Flag waving parades filled the streets. They were happy to be going to war. And millions upon millions died in the hopeless horrors of the trenches, mustard gas, and machine gun fire. An entire generation of Europe’s young men were slaughtered. And the bitterness left over from World War I led Europe and the world into another horrible world war just a generation later.
During World War II in the South Pacific, Private First Class Robert Baum served as an aerial radio gunner with the U.S. Marine Corps. “It’s the fellows who have gone before us who make us willingly bear our burdens,” he wrote to his parents in April of 1943. “Dear God, spare our lives , for we are young and love life so much. This is just a short incident in a fellow’s life, I tell myself, and soon it will be behind me and I will have forgotten it, and settle down among you again... Remember me in your prayers, especially in the next few weeks. We have some messy action ahead of us.”
This was PFC Baum’s last letter. Shortly afterward he was reported missing in action, and like so many other courageous warriors on both sides of the slaughter, he never returned to his home. On this Memorial Day, such sacrifice shall not go unremembered.

MEDITATION/PRAYER
Let the hearts of those for whom this holiday is not just a diversion, but a painful memory, be comforted. May all who mourn be blessed.
Let us remember those dear ones who have died in wars caused by our human folly, those who have died serving their country in the futility of combat. We pray for peace for the soldiers who did not make the wars, but were caught up in them, and whose lives were consumed by them. Let strong trees grow above graves far away from home. Let the wind blow through their branches. The earth will swallow our tears while the dead sing, “No more, never again, remember me.”
We remember those who have loved their nation, their families, and their homes enough to lay down their lives, and we pray that they may rest in peace. We pray that we may finally learn to love one another.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Amen.