“Ain’t Gonna Study War No More” – Nov 28, 2010

November 28, 2010
Scripture Lesson: Isaiah 2: 1-5
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

Sermon: Ain’t Gonna Study War No More
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday. I think more than any other holiday, Thanksgiving is the homecoming time, with it’s five day weekend. It’s the first year that I have a child living away, and my son was home for the holidays, as were Quentin’s daughters. And I remember the years that I was single and lived out of state and would come home for the holiday. Our passage from Isaiah this morning talks about a homecoming time also. He foresees a time when all the nations will recognize the holy mountain of God as their home. People from everywhere will stream up that mountain, seeking to learn the Lord’s ways and live them. It won’t be a case of just eating some good home cooking, reminiscing about old times, or even reverting back to old patterns of reacting with your family. Instead God will be arbitrator of all, and there will be no need for tools of war, for the strategy lessons of war. No one will need or want to rule over another as we all dwell in the same house, with the same loving God, with enough food and love and purpose for everyone. It is a beautiful vision, beating swords into plow shares, and spears into pruning hooks. The weapons of war become tools for sustenance and productivity.
Okay, a show of hands here. Who is against peace? Anybody? Come on now, get those hands up if you prefer that people not live in harmony, if you find great joy in conflict, especially if it leads to bloodshed and lost lives. No, nobody? I’m guessing this is not an uncommon church body, that we are not strange in our thinking as Christians or even as humans. I would gamble that former President Bush and our current President Obama were and are for peace, even as they sent troops and weapons of war to foreign lands. And if we talked to the people, even leaders, of Palestine and Israel, North and South Korea, China and Tibet, none would be against peace. And I would gamble that nearly all the people who make decisions to send troops and weapons do so in the belief that they are fighting for peace.
There is a website that I often use for my sermon research called “The Hardest Question.” For this passage on Isaiah, the hard question is “Is it better to preach on the promise of peace or to proclaim the reality of its long-standing absence.” In other words, do I take this time in the pulpit to urge you to just have faith and in due time, by and by, Isaiah’s vision will come to pass, or do I point out just how far off we are, maybe point some fingers, name the sins of our society that block such peace, and either judge or despair? The first is just too simplistic to me, too passive, and too future-oriented.
But the second option presented in the hardest question, pointing out how far we are from this vision of peace, also seems too simplistic as well as judgmental. I like to think of myself as a pacifist, and I am so very inspired by movements of non-violence and their leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. But I also believe that I would act out violently if someone was trying to hurt someone I love. There is this ideal, and there is this survival mechanism that seems hard-wired into us. And right now, the nations are not streaming together up the mountain to learn the way of the Lord, to learn to live in peace. Instead, there are nations that feel vulnerable or entitled, nations of people that feel they need and deserve more – more land or oil or work or freedom or power. Nations that are terribly afraid of losing what they do have and feel they must fight to keep it. How would they hear Isaiah’s message? How do we hear it? Is it possible to acknowledge the history of suffering between nations which continues today, and believe that the in-breaking of God’s divine peace to the world has already started? I believe that to leave out either pole minimizes or negates the core of Christianity, the belief that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection mean something.
You see, even with this survival mechanism hard-wired into us, we are offered the possibility of streaming up that mountain of God, a true option of making weapons of war into tools for sustenance and productivity. Because God didn’t leave us alone to figure it out. God took up humanity in the form of Jesus Christ and showed us how to do it, gave us a model for re-wiring the survival mechanism so that in does not lead to violence, and so that it extends our concern beyond our own bodies and families to the whole world family. Visions such as the one Isaiah prophesied were not just about hopes and dreams, but about present potential realities. And it was a reality that Jesus lived.
In my research this week, I consulted a book called The Politics of Jesus by John Yoder. It does not address this passage by Isaiah in particular, but does talk about Jesus’ teachings on war and violence. I found myself saying aloud and scribbling in the margins, “wow, wow.” It is difficult stuff, in some ways I didn’t quite grasp it, which always think should be the case when it comes to God’s will, because it is so much larger than our human limits can take in. He says that it is important as Christians to find meaning in our human history, because this shows our belief that God has been involved – has been active in our history. And the place we look for meaning is not in the victories of the mighty, but in the cross. He stresses obedience to God not as a matter of keeping the rules, but in our reflection of the character of the love of God. Our obedience to God is the type that completely trusts God.
I think I found myself wowed because this was not what I expected to find. I thought in a chapter called “The War of the Lamb,” there would be some fiery rhetoric about fighting against war, that there would be a promotion of activism. And I especially didn’t expect the focus to be on obedience and trust. I have always been skeptical about religious authorities promoting obedience and trust as these have been misused to exploit and oppress. But Yoder ties these values to God, not religion. Obey God, trust God. And obey God by reflecting God’s love in the way that Jesus did. Yoder says it is not our task to move society in the right direction, it is not to be more effective in determining causes of and solutions to problems. All of that, he says, provides us with the justification down the line for doing violence.
But neither does he promote passive waiting, though he does promote patience. He encourages action that reflects God’s love. He encourages action that trusts that God’s ultimate triumph comes through the resurrection and not through effective societal correction on our part. He asks the question as to whether it is appropriate for people seeking peace and justice in God’s name to appeal to public authority and civil society to enforce these standards. And if we see that it is not appropriate, is the only alternative to remain inwardly or heavenly-focused and ignore what is going on in our world? He says no, that rejecting both poles in their singularity, we can see what Isaiah sees – that God will mediate, God will judge, but it is our task to stream up that mountain.
Yoder’s is a scholarly work, with dense language and heady concepts. It is compelling in some ways, but I found myself struggling to get an image of what his ideas would look like. Then I read a story about Ruby Bridges. Does anyone know who she is? At the age of six, Ruby was one of the first African-American children to attend the New Orleans school that was court-ordered to integrate for the first time ever. Every school day, for months on end, Ruby was escorted by federal marshals through lines of angry people who insulted her, called her names, shouted racial slurs, and threatened her. White families withdrew their children from the school in protest, so during the day Ruby was pretty much alone with her teacher, then faced the same angry mob on the way out at the end of each day. Child psychologist Robert Coles wondered about how the experience was affecting Ruby and interviewed her. He witnessed an incident in which a woman spit at her, but missed, and Ruby just smiled at her. Likewise Ruby only smiled when a man shook his fist at her. She told the marshals that she prayed for these people, the ones in the mob that lined her path to school. She prayed for them each night before she went to bed. When Dr. Coles asked her why she would pray for people who were so mean to her, she said because her mama and her preacher and her church said she should pray for everyone, even people who do bad things. She said she learned in church that she doesn’t have to worry because God is watching over them, but that it was important for her to pray for and forgive the people who lashed out at her. Ruby told Dr. Coles that she knew God was very busy, and that the trouble they were having was pretty bad, but she trusted that God would notice, did notice, and there would come a day, there would come a day for peace.
I also got to watch a documentary film about a man named Desmond Doss. He was raised by a very faithful and spiritual mother who had a poster up of the ten commandments, with drawn depictions of each commandment. Desmond’s sister says that even before he could read, when he got up each morning he’d insist on going over to the poster to look at and touch it. Desmond himself says he was particularly captivated by the drawing of Cain slaying his brother Abel and the commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” He said it seemed that God was speaking directly to him in this, telling him that he truly loved God, he must never take life. Desmond was a young man when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declared war against Japan. Desmond was as eager to serve his country and God as any young man at that time, but made it clear that he would never carry a weapon. He wanted to sign up to be a medic.
The Army classified him as a, and wanted him to go to a work camp with other conscientious objectors, those who found it against their religious principles to defend the nation, to wear the uniform or salute the flag. Desmond protested, because he was eager to wear the uniform, salute the flag and defend the nation by protecting the lives of the soldiers. The Army relented and Desmond was integrated into regular Army units with the stipulation that he never had to carry a weapon. The other soldiers were pretty outraged and harassed him terribly. The couldn’t see what use he would be standing alongside them in battle without a weapon. The ridiculed him, threw things at him, even threatened him. He never seemed shaken by it, and continued his devotional practice and daily scripture reading no matter what they did to him. Various commanding officers threatened him with court martial for disobeying their orders to hold a gun, and tried to get him out on a section 8, mental health deferment. Desmond Doss protested each of these attempts through the proper channels, never lost his cool and ultimately prevailed in his determination to go into combat with his troops.
The story is incredible, and the documentary has soldier after soldier who served with Desmond recounting the horrors of battle, the things they did, the physical and emotional wounds they suffered, and how Desmond’s bravery and self-sacrifice and commitment to saving lives changed them even more than the wounds of war did. Ultimately he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military honor that could be given. In a touching scene, Desmond talks about how he was injured in a battle and was taken off the field, then later realized that his pocket bible had been dropped. He talks about how that bible had gotten him through everything so far, and how lost he would be without it. Finally, it was the thing that shook him. When his troops heard about it, they returned to the scene, still under some enemy fire, and retraced his movements as best they could until they retrieved it. Desmond didn’t have any interest in organizing war protests or peace movements. He didn’t want to preach about peace or get the media on board with his cause. He wanted only to be faithful to his God and to reflect God’s love in his actions.
So this is what it might look like to practice the politics of Jesus. Jesus who calls us to bear our crosses gives us a strategy of obedience to God’s love that is no strategy, a strategy that includes suffering, that includes being at the mercy of one’s neighbor, a strategy that abandons claims for self preservation and one’s own well-being for the sake of others – and not just others of our family circle. Christ’s kind of pacifism is not just a means to an end, it is the end itself.
This is has been a very moving and transformative experience for me, doing this reading and reflecting on Isaiah’s vision. I am sad because I realize how very far I am from reflecting God’s love so brightly as some of the people I met in my research, how taken in I have been by efforts to impose a particular agenda, whatever it may be. But it is a hope-filled sadness. For I have also discovered a yearning to be so faithful, to be obedient to God, to beat my personal swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. And I was reminded yet again that God is indeed trustworthy, that there will come a day, there will come a day for peace.
I will close with a poem written on 9/11/2001 by Judyth Hill, called Wage Peace:
Wage Peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists, and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud. Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup. Play music, memorize the words for thank you in 3 languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat. Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side. Wage peace.
Never has the word seemed so fresh and precious: Have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if armistice has already arrived. Celebrate today.
May it be so.