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| US soldier holding Iraqi child |
Ten years now—since an American administration lied through its shiny white teeth and led all of us blindly into a catastrophe beyond
imagining in Iraq. While it’s terribly hard to generalize, in
assessing ten years of chaos and war, there are lessons to learn. I dare say, for starters, that we’re more
fearful as a nation than we were ten years ago.
Xenophobia is rampant. Racism is
still an open wound in our body politic.
It’s hard to see how ten years of misadventure have made us safer and
wiser.
Last week, the military reported that—over ten years—at
least 70,000 soldiers have returned from battle diagnosed with post traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD). What becomes of
these women and men? How do our
communities absorb their anxieties, their pain, their trauma? Was last month’s horrific murder of 17
Afghanis—gunned down by a crazed sergeant in their sleep—an isolated
incident? Or was it a devastating
reminder of what war does to the human spirit?
I’m not sure we know.
In Christian scripture, we read a story of a deranged man,
tormented by a demon, roaming the countryside.
When Jesus asks, the demon says something like: “My name is War.” Or maybe: “My name is Violence.” It’s clear to scholars that Jesus is speaking
to the devastating consequences of organized violence. Imperial Roman violence. But the crazed man in the story represents so
many others—tormented by bloody nighttime raids, deadly drone attacks and brute
force in the name of our wars on terror.
“My name is War.”
Ten years later—ten years, thousands of lives, a shattered
economy--I wonder if American mayhem in Iraq
and Afghanistan has
something to do with grief and violence in the streets of Florida.
It seems to me, after all, that both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman
are victims of toxic fear and xenophobia.
George Zimmerman is like that crazed man in the gospel—wandering the
streets looking for trouble, frightened beyond reason by stereotype and
prejudice. And suddenly, terribly, Trayvon
Martin is shot dead: nothing but candy in his pockets. Once again, a young black kid is targeted
simply for the color of his skin. Race is lethal in America.
Just days after Trayvon was killed, the author James McBride
(The Color of Water) said that the sixteen-year-old “was another victim
of our culture of fear.” Himself a black
man, McBride called out the ubiquitous markers of that culture: gated
communities keeping strangers out; armored SUVs and Hummers on the roads; panic
buttons on our car keys; and hatemongering across the media. Fear, he said, draws its lifeblood from a
clearly feared ‘other.’ In our America, that
‘other’ is the person of color: the illegal immigrant, or the black man, or (in
this case) the young black kid wandering his neighborhood at dinnertime.
No matter that we’ve elected an African-American president,
says James McBride, we’ve got fear in our national DNA. After all, what makes Rush Limbaugh and Glen
Beck so disturbingly popular? They speak
directly to fear and angst and everything that’s slipping away. Fear sells.
And it killed Trayvon Martin.
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| Trayvon Martin |
I hear James McBride asking the same question Trayvon
Martin’s family is asking in Florida: What are we going to do? About all this fear? About all this violence? Where’s the moral compass? Where’s the beloved community? Where’s the conscience of America? Enough war!
Enough violence! Enough of racism
and xenophobia and pundits blaming immigrants for all our troubles! Isn’t it time somebody, somewhere, said
enough?
I believe, in the depths of my being, that the Christian
vocation is one of peacemaking. I guess
I believe it’s the human vocation. But
peacemaking—honest peacemaking—is difficult and costly. Tie-dye t-shirts and “Kum Bah Yah” are hardly
enough. Peacemakers have to address the
deep roots of American fear and American xenophobia. Peacemakers have to speak directly,
truthfully and lovingly to frightened young men like George Zimmerman—warriors wandering
the streets, looking for trouble, armed to the teeth. And peacemakers have to practice faithful resistance:
resisting the organized violence of empire, resisting the fearful politics of
the dominant culture, resisting despair on all fronts. It’s not easy. It takes the most profound courage and
maturity.
One of the most thrilling and inspiring lines in Christian
scripture is this: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” If Christian faith has any meaning anymore,
any relevance in the public square, this has to be our moment. We have to embrace perfect love. We have to proclaim perfect love. We have to risk everything for perfect love. Gandhi did.
Cesar Chavez did. Mother Teresa
did. Jesus did.
We can too.
Like these saints, we believe that there can be no fear, no
bigotry, no racism and no violence in love.
That’s our gospel. And like these
saints, we believe that love—and only love—can truly liberate the immense blessing
in our human diversity. War can’t. Fear won’t.
Violence never has. “There is no
fear in love,” scripture says, “but perfect love casts out fear.” That's our gospel.
Tonight I’m praying for those grieving families in Afghanistan and
the American family of a troubled sergeant as well. I imagine all of their lives have been
unimaginably shattered this spring. Lord,
have mercy. And tonight I’m praying for
the families of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman in Florida. Somehow, someway: may we find the courage and
compassion to bind these wounds.
Somehow, someway: may we find the grace to turn from all this violence,
to turn toward a future of peace.
Faith tells me, it’s not too late.
