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War - what Jesus wants
Sermon at the Remembrance Service, 14 November 2004
Once again our troops are at war. Last Thursday in Iraq the Black Watch, we are told, kept the two minutes' silence with a special poignancy as they thought of their recently lost friends and comrades, even as they had part of their minds on the need to move away as soon as possible in case a rocket or a bomb landed among them.
20 or 30 years ago Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday were widely neglected. The world wars seemed a long time ago. The Korean War also was well in the past. The Suez adventure, which happened when I myself was serving in the Royal Air Force, was a humiliation best forgotten. The American involvement in Vietnam brought to our living rooms the folly of that war, and the realities of war in general. As a nation we thought that war and its casualties were best forgotten.
Slowly but surely the tide has turned. History in our secondary schools concentrates now on the 20th century, on Hitler and the world wars. Students of English literature often concentrate on the war poets. Our TV screens frequently show documentaries about the wars. A documentary on Dunkirk, with many contributions from veterans, won this year's prize for factual films. The two minutes' silence on the 11th day of the 11th month has been reinstated, and as one newspaper headline put it this week, 'stopped the mighty roar of London's traffic,' as Her Majesty attended a great service in Westminster Abbey. We do not forget.
Unfortunately, the war our troops are now fighting has resulted in great division of opinion. One old soldier rang the BBC yesterday to say, with deep emotion in his voice, that he believed Britain and the USA were wrong to have attacked Iraq. He spoke of the suffering of so many children, and of our own troops killed and injured. On the other side we have seen a majority of the American people apparently quite happy with the way President Bush went to war. They call anyone who questions their views (and I quote) "antiwar," anti-American, anti-Semitic and pro-Saddam. I came across two poems written in 2002 by Americans favouring war. One begins:
Ours is the only nation on this earth
with might to smash every Al Qaeda cell
whose homicidal members measure worth
by deaths inflicted on the Infidel.
Go reprehend the British and the French
who left you to your native tyranny.
The other begins:
The time has come for thunderbolts
Of steel from the sky.
It is now right that murderers
Instead of children, die.
If only thunderbolts of steel from the sky could distinguish between murderers and innocent children! What makes some Christians here particularly sad is that a very large group of American Christians, called Fundamentalists or The Christian Right, seem to align themselves with those who call 'for thunderbolts of steel from the sky.' In a televised debate on CNN a week ago, Jerry Falwell the TV evangelist said President Bush should "blow (the terrorists) all away in the name of the Lord." To be fair, other American Christian leaders immediately took him to task for his un-christian words. What is the really Christian view? People are interested. They really want to know.
Clare Short was asked on Friday what figure from history she would choose to come back to be her mentor. I have never heard that Clare Short is a Christian, but she chose as her mentor, Jesus Christ. She said it would be very interesting if he were to come back and see what his followers are doing and saying in his name. Ms Short is a controversial figure, but I am with her there.
I used to be sent a regular e-mail with sermon illustrations and jokes fit for the pulpit. It came from an American pastor, and I enjoyed reading it. Then came September 11th. The pastor became ultra-patriotic, calling for retribution. A Canadian reader wrote to him suggesting that perhaps the words of Jesus about forgiveness and loving your enemies might be relevant. The pastor blasted him with scorn. How dare he suggest that the teaching of Jesus applied to this situation? I cancelled my subscription to his e-mails.
So what did Jesus say that could give us some guidance?
Here's his manifesto, the first teaching of his that St Luke reports:
The Lord's Spirit has come to me,
because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor.
The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners,
to give sight to the blind,
to free everyone who suffers, and to say
"This is the year the Lord has chosen."
God sent Jesus for the poor, the prisoners, the blind and everyone who suffers. If we want to follow him, we shall be active on behalf of these same groups of people. If that means resisting those who imprison others or cause suffering, that's part of the work of Jesus. I think that everything else that Jesus said needs to be read in the light of this manifesto.
And here's St Mark's first report of Jesus' teaching:
"The time has come. God's kingdom will soon be here. Turn back to God and believe the good news."
Different, but it fits together with what St Luke tells us. God's kingdom is when people let his plans be their plans, his priorities be their priorities. The call is to turn back to God and adopt the manifesto of Jesus.
So sitting back and letting evil get its own way is not what Jesus wants. The next question is "How should we set about dealing with evil?" Thunderbolts of steel from the sky? Well, perhaps sometimes. But here are some familiar words.
'You know that you have been taught, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you.'
That's hard. That's what the pastor I told you about couldn't stomach. But when we just hit back we are putting ourselves on the level of the evil one.
Then Jesus makes it even harder: 'You have heard people say, "Love your neighbours and hate your enemies." But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who ill-treats you.' Mrs Thatcher was not pleased when the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for Argentinians at the thanksgiving service at the end of the Falklands War; but he was only doing what Jesus told him to do, and those who follow Jesus have to put his commands even above the wishes of the Prime Minister. To love your enemy is to do your best to turn him into your friend. Of course, we might need to restrain a drunk friend by force from doing something stupid and harmful. Just so, this country had to restrain Hitler and his gang. We remember with gratitude the many who lost their lives in the process. But Jesus still says to us: "I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who ill-treats you."
And that is exactly how God treats us. One of the poems that our young people study at school is by Wilfred Owen and is called Strange Meeting. Owen tells of a dream of being in hell, and meeting an enemy soldier that he had bayoneted the day before. This is part of the poem:
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,-
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. ...
'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now....'
The dead man said, "I am the enemy you killed, my friend." It is just what Jesus could say to the human race. Humans like us put him to death for upsetting our comfortable selfish lives. "I am the enemy you killed - - - my friend." Even though we humans killed him, he still calls us his friends.
That attitude is the hope for Iraq. The British forces have a policy, we are told, of treating the Iraqis as friends. Many of them have responded with friendship in return.
The same attitude is the hope for Israel and its Arab neighbours. We see little of it at present, but it is the way forward, a better road map than any they have been offered.
The same attitude is the hope for us as individuals and for our society. As God insists on treating us as friends, in spite of everything we have done, so we can open up to him, throw away our hatred of him, or our indifference to him, and so enter into a new kind of peace, the kind that will extend even beyond death.
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Thursday 20th of November 2008
