Alongside
the Community Church of Durham
Sunday,
January 5, 2020
1.
Herod
lies. Simply and brazenly. He lies.
He pretends to be as devout and as spirited as these scholars from the
East. These scholars, these spiritual
masters, on pilgrimage. Who come to
Bethlehem with curiosity of spirit and hope in their hearts. Who come to Bethlehem to see and kneel and
surrender to mystery. Herod pretends to
be devout. But he’s most interested in
his own political survival. Herod claims
to want to worship the child king, the prince of peace. But that’s a ruse, right? He’s most concerned with eliminating any
rivals to his power, any rivals to his tight-fisted control in Roman Palestine.
Of
course, we’ve only read a piece of the story this morning. You remember the rest of it. When the scholars, the magi, the wise men
work out another route and return home without reporting back to Herod—he flies
into a rage and orders the pillaging of Judea and the awful killing of all boys
under the age of two in and around Bethlehem.
Herod lies. Pretends to be
devout. Claims to care for the common
good. But he lies. And Mary and Joseph secretly whisk Jesus out
of the country, into Egypt, to escape the madness and murderous rage of a
tyrant. It’s a complicated story, this
story Matthew tells of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. How the child king, how the prince of peace
is born into a world of rivalry and recklessness, drums beating for the next
war and innocent lives sacrificed for the insatiable appetites of old men. But so it is.
The
question for the church this morning—or at least one of the questions for us—is
this: Are we going to work out another route?
Are we going to find an alternative path through the madness and the
mayhem that Herod and his mates create in our own generation? Are we going to resist with love and organize
with energy and follow the prince of peace?
Herod would have us sit on our hands and mind our own business. Jesus would have us stand up bravely, stand
in the way when they come for our children, and resist Herod’s bloody warring
with all our strength and heart and spirit.
It requires some courage to defy Herod.
It requires courage, and a community of loving support and generous
communion. Are we going to work out
another route?
2.
So
when I go to holiday parties with a lot of people I don’t know, I tend to play
my professional affiliation rather loosely.
Because, frankly, when you tell a stranger on New Year’s Eve that you’re
a pastor or a minister, the conversation can kind go funny. If it goes anywhere at all. Tell a group of strangers with champagne in
hand that you’re a pastor—and they’re likely to shut down completely: as if an
alien from outer space just dropped in for the night. And heaven forbid there’s been any cussing
going around; because they get all red-faced and clammy. And then you’ve got to excuse yourself to the
hors d’oeuvres.
Or,
you might just as well get the wildest, weirdest, wackiest confession you ever
heard: several years ago, a guy on his fourth or fifth glass of champagne
pulled me aside and launched a description of an insider trading scheme that he
felt was eating away at his soul. This
is true! He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep
and couldn’t look his wife in the eye.
And he just had to get it off his chest.
On New Year’s Eve. Five minutes
to midnight. With me. I mean, what do you do with that? Five minutes to midnight!
So
often I say something like “I’m a life coach.”
Kind of works. But this year, I
wasn’t so circumspect. And standing in a
Boston living room, I told a group of happy fellows that I was indeed a pastor,
newly arrived in New England after a good run on the West Coast. Almost immediately, one of the men turned
solemn and pulled me off to the side. He
wanted to talk. He needed to talk. And it got very serious very quickly. No jokes, no giggling.
He
was a very large man, looked to be in great shape; and he told me he’d been a Navy
Seal and served a couple of tours in Iraq.
He told me he wanted to be a Christian, had always been a Christian, but
that what happened in Iraq messed with his faith: the things he’d seen there,
the things he’d done there, the violence and the hatred and the despair
everywhere he went. It was hard to
believe in anything anymore.
Now
my new friend had had a couple of drinks.
But I knew that look in his eye, and he was genuinely disturbed. Something in his heart had been broken,
pummeled even, in that war. “Religion,”
he said, “all this religion: it just gets people judging each other and hating
each other and destroying each other.”
And then he told me a couple of awful, sobering stories about things
he’d witnessed in the streets: bombs and gun fights and human cruelty. “I didn’t know who was on my side,” he
said. “And who was on their side. I wanted to go somewhere where I could help,
where I could make a difference. That’s
what we’re trained to do in the Navy.
But I didn’t know how to do that in Iraq. There was no way to do any good.”
I’ve
been reading lately about this whole notion of “moral injury”—the impacts on
our servicemen and servicewomen when they have to participate in wars and
actions that “transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” That’s the language used by the Department of
Veterans Affairs: when servicepeople are asked to “transgress deeply held moral
beliefs and expectations” they suffer “moral injury”—something very much like
or even related to PTSD.
That’s
what I was thinking as my friend in Boston told me these stories about street
fights and gruesome violence and wartime in Iraq. He was describing his own spiritual crisis,
his own existential crisis: the “moral injury” he suffered in Iraq and would be
dealing with for the rest of his life.
The look in his eye said to me that he wasn’t sure how to go
forward. This great big man looked
scared and broken. On New Year’s Eve.
3.
As
I’m watching this week’s news about the President’s decision to attack Iranian
leaders and assassinate Iranian generals, I’m reminded often of that strange
encounter on New Year’s Eve and the sad, disoriented look in the man’s eye. It’s all so easy for this President—or any
President, for that matter—to provoke another war on another continent. If it fits a political agenda, fleshes out a
campaign theme; if it distracts a country from an impeachment trial; it’s apparently
an easy thing for a President to recklessly flaunt American power and vindictiveness
and see if he can stir up some mayhem and destruction overseas. As Herod lied there and then, we’ve grown
accustomed to some terrible, malicious deception and lying here and now.
But
friends, let’s be wide awake this time.
Let’s be thoughtful and wise, and let our moral vision be 20/20 in 2020. Because we went down this road, something
very much like this road, just seventeen years ago. We were deceived and betrayed by another
administration back then, and we paid for it with so many lives (American
lives, Iraqi lives, Syrian lives, young lives) and the PTSD that so many
families there and here will bear for generations to come. We must not, and we will not, be deceived and
betrayed again. Not by this President. Not by any President.
This
Thursday, and every Thursday through the Season of Epiphany, I’ll be joining a
nationwide fast for peace. Fasting, as
you know, is a spiritual practice observed in religious traditions around the
world. Jewish prophets fasted and still
do. Muslim believers fast regularly
during Ramadan and on other significant occasions. Gandhi fasted in the movement to liberate
India from British rule; and King and so many others fasted for civil rights
and voting rights in the 60s. Fasting serves to focus our attention and pare away distractions in the good work, in
the loving work of healing the broken world and building a better one for our
children.
Fasting
is not our only calling, of course; but it’s a practice that tunes the heart, and
focuses the spirit on what’s most important and most dear to God. For Christians, I think, fasting joined with
prayer draws us into the urgency and blessing of Jesus’ beatitudes: “Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for justice,” he taught them, “for they will be
satisfied.” And “blessed are the
peacemakers,” he taught them, “for they will be called children of God.” In a world at war, Christians are called to
make peace. In a world on the brink of
madness and tyranny, Christians are called to hunger for justice and
righteousness. I intend to fast one day
a week during this Season; and I hope and pray this fasting will sharpen my
sense of God’s companionship, and will make me a bolder, wiser and more
selfless peacemaker. For me, that’s what
this whole Christian project is all about.
As
I fast this Thursday, I’ll remember 2003, and the build up to that last,
unimaginably misguided invasion of Iraq.
I’ll remember Colin Powell’s deceptive testimony to the United
Nations. Remember that? Weapons of Mass Destruction in Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq? I’ll remember the
truth—obvious to most of us, even then—that war in Iraq would do nothing but
incite terrorism, sow the seeds of violence and lawlessness, destroy hundreds
of thousands of Iraqi lives, and put American servicepeople in harm’s way. I organized a vigil during that particular
winter: seven or eight of us stood outside in public spaces every morning from
8 to 8:30, at rush hour, to resist the rush to war and call on leaders to act
wisely, with restraint and creativity in decision-making and peace-building.
4.
Looking
back at those months in January and February of 2003, I have to admit I’m a bit
embarrassed (if you can be a bit embarrassed) that all I did was vigil
quietly. During morning rush hour. Is that what discipleship amounts to? Is that the great alternative to Herod’s
madness? As great empires rush to war,
as my own democracy builds a deceptive case for war and targeted assassination
and invasion: Am I called only to silent witness, and an occasional letter to
my congressperson? Or is discipleship
more daring than that? Is Jesus creating
a community more defiant, more courageous, more determined to jam the gears of
the war machine and say NO to madness and murder and mayhem? I’ll be praying on these things as I fast
this week.
I
have to tell you, friends, I’m serious about my own commitment to nonviolence
and civil disobedience—as tools, as testimony, as discipleship practices in war
time. As I pray and fast through these
next several Thursdays, I’ll be thinking and discerning how I might respond to
this maddening and provocative American inciting of violence in the Middle
East. If the opportunity presents
itself, I will be open to civil disobedience myself, to a nonviolent and
compassionate action, with others committed to nonviolence and compassion. Even one that involves my arrest.
As
a disciple of Jesus and an admirer of folks like Martin King and Rosa Parks,
Mohandus Gandhi and the Berrigan Brothers, I see discipleship as a commitment
to putting my body where my beliefs are, as a disciplined commitment to
standing with the brave peacemakers and against the raging forces of hatred and
destruction. Jesus put his body in the
way. King put his body in the way. Gandhi put his body in the way. They did this with love, with kindness, and
with a kind of fierce commitment to the future of peace and justice in the
world. For all peoples. For black and white. For American and Iranian. For Jew and Muslim. For all peoples. That’s what being a Christian, a disciple of
the Baby Christ, means to me today.
Christian
faith responds with courage and creativity to new challenges in new
generations. Here at the Community
Church, we want to be the kind of church that responds bravely and boldly to
climate change, for example, and is not satisfied with old versions of
stewardship and earth care. We want to
love the earth with all our hearts, minds and souls; and we want our commitment
to the planet and the healing of the planet to reflect that kind of love.
In
the same way, let’s think and pray together about how it is that a
peace-loving, peace-making, peace-risking people resists violence and resists
war-making and resists deception in 2020 and beyond. I don’t know if any of you have experience
with the Quaker model of the Clearness Committee. It’s a practice in community where one member
brings a question or an issue or a matter of discernment—and invites a small circle
of friends to consider that matter in a faithful and comprehensive and
courageous way. I might just do that in
the days to come: invite a group of you to consider this question of resistance
and civil disobedience with me. Maybe
you raise questions I haven’t considered.
Maybe you invite alternatives I haven’t imagined yet. (Maybe you’ll say ‘you get arrested and
you lose your job, big guy’!) Or maybe your courage and support allow me to
take a step forward in my own faith and my own discipleship and witness. Watch for that invitation in the coming days
and weeks.
This
I already know. I’m honored to serve a
community where this kind of question, this kind of discernment, this kind of
resistance is even possible. It’s in
just this way that Jesus the Christ, the child king, the prince of peace…calls
us to new life, to fresh alternatives, to conscious and compassionate faith in
a world where the ‘fog of war’ sometimes swallows us whole. What we have together is a precious and holy
gift from God. And we simply must
treasure it and use it for the good. And
that, I think, that will be our new way home.
