| BREAKING NEWS A March 23rd New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/international/middleeast/23cnd-hostages.html) reports the rescue of the remaining three Christian Peacemaking hostages, who had been seized at the same time as the late Tom Fox. Here's an excerpt from the article: Three Western peace workers who were held hostage in Iraq for four months were rescued in a military operation today, two weeks after their American colleague was killed in captivity. The three men -- James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both from Canada; and Norman Kember, 74, of Britain -- had been kidnapped last November along with the American man, Tom Fox, in Baghdad while working with the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams. Mr. Fox's body was found this month. He had apparently been tortured by his captors before being shot multiple times in the head and dumped on a trash heap next to a railway line in western Baghdad.... The men were freed by multinational forces in a military operation. The hostages were found when American-led forces raided a house in western Baghdad, acting on information from one of two detainees interrogated late Wednesday night, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American military, said at a news conference in Baghdad. The kidnappers were not in the house. The men were in "relatively good condition," he said. The fact that the remaining three hostages were freed as the result of a military operation raises again the complex question of whether, and to what extent, peacemaking may be accomplished through military force. Clearly, the action by the coalition partners' military unit, based on information obtained through interrogation of two recently captured insurgents, resulted in these men's rescue. We at TIW rejoice in this good news, and celebrate the courage of both the hostages and of the soldiers who rescued them. Both, in their own way, are seeking to bring peace to a troubled land. |
The Risk Of Being A Peacemaker
by Stephen P. McCutchan
THE WORLD
Several months ago, Quaker peace activist Tom Fox was taken hostage in Iraq, along with three of his companions from the Christian Peacemakers Teams. This past week his body was discovered in Baghdad. Evidence would suggest that Fox had been tortured and then executed by his captors. His choice to be in Iraq at this time, and the fact that he met death at the hands of the very people he wanted to help, raises some interesting questions with respect to our role as Christians. Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God" (Matthew 5:9). Was Tom Fox being faithful to his Lord Jesus Christ by going to Iraq? How does the fact that he was killed by some of the people he sought to help shape our understanding of peacemaking? Even more disturbing, are we being faithful when we avoid such risks?
Some writers, such as syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, want to call into question the legitimacy of Tom's actions. To quote Thomas, "the likelihood that the presence of Fox and his colleagues would change the attitude or behavior of their captors was zero to none.... Peace happens when evil is vanquished." Other Christians want to paint Fox as a contemporary Christian martyr. A spokesperson for the Christian Peacemakers Teams organization said that Fox had a "firm opposition to all oppression and the recognition of God in everyone." So is Thomas right, that you can only be a peacemaker if you have the "firepower" to vanquish evil? It would be interesting to see how he would apply such criteria to Jesus' actions. Or is Fox's organization right to send witnesses of peace into circumstances where they can be easily overwhelmed by the violence that is present?
Fox's courage, and his willingness to expose himself to great risk in living out his convictions, is inspiring to some and a challenge to all of us. Should more Christians be involved in overt peacemaking activities, even when (humanly speaking) there appears to be no likelihood of success? Should we only be involved in peacemaking when it is safe? Or does picking up our cross and following Jesus mean that we must be willing to suffer the same fate that Jesus did?
Has Christianity become such a comfortable religion in our culture that we have insulated ourselves from the experience of salvation that comes to people who are willing to risk all in faith? Are there times when, like Tom Fox, we have to challenge the powers of the world in the name of Christ who has called us to be peacemakers?
THE WORD
In order to allow the experience surrounding Tom Fox to enter into a dialogue with scripture, I would invite you to look at the role that the serpent plays in scripture. The serpent has a peculiar journey in scripture -- when most people think about the serpent in the Bible, they think of the Garden of Eden and the temptation of Eve that led to death. So keep in mind the symbol of the serpent as a source of temptation.
Let's move to Exodus 4:1-5 and God's call to Moses to return to Egypt from Midian. When Moses hesitated, God gave him the sign of the snake. Moses took his staff and threw it down and it became a snake -- but when he took it by the tail, it again became his staff. So now the snake also becomes a symbol of God's power over that which threatens us. Then in Exodus 7:8-13, the Pharaoh had his magicians perform the same trick of having the staff become a snake. So now we know that signs of God's power are not universally convincing. If you want to be skeptical, God will not force truth upon you.
Later, in our lectionary lesson (Numbers 21:4-9), when the children of Israel were given freedom and were traveling in the wilderness, the hardships of life became too much. They complained that their God and Moses had let them down. When they complained, the serpent again enters the story, only this time it is as a poisonous serpent that kills those it bites. So now the snake becomes a symbol of God's judgment against the faithlessness of God's people when the challenge of life threatened to defeat them. But when Moses intervened with God on their behalf, God had Moses make a bronze pole with an image of a serpent on it, which the people were told to gaze upon. The serpent, which was sent as judgment for their complaining, is now transformed by God into an instrument of life. It has a strong similarity to the medical symbol of the caduceus that reflects the thirst for healing.
Finally, in John 3:14, this symbol of a serpent was used to interpret the meaning of the cross. The cross was meant as a judgment by the state against those who violated its laws. It can also be seen as a judgment against humanity, who rejected God's Son. Yet, like the serpent in the Numbers passage, God transforms the cross into a means of salvation. Now the symbol of Satan is transformed into the savior of the world. The serpent that the Israelites thought was a condemnation for disobedience, is lifted up by God, not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
All of this may seem like a long way from the experience of Tom Fox as a peacemaker. Yet if you allow the symbol of the serpent to play in your imagination, I think you can see how these scriptures might provide the preacher some interesting ways to reflect on the whole issue of peacemaking in our troubled world. Many in our congregations struggle with the tension between the perspective of Cal Thomas and that embodied in the witness of Tom Fox. One does not need to make one evil and the other a saint to recognize that most of us struggle with what it means to be a witness for peace in our world. The serpent in the Garden of Eden offered the temptation to be like God by eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Trying to make peace by "vanquishing evil" through overwhelming military might is a version of playing God. The gospel testimony about Jesus' passion would suggest that he knew that temptation (Matthew 26:51-53), but chose to trust God (Matthew 26:39) in a situation that threatened to overwhelm him with violence. It also led to death -- but God, not death, has the final word.
The serpent incident before the Pharaoh reminds us that the religious signs of power are not always convincing to those who choose to resist God's commands. Therefore, Jesus chose to reject the route of overwhelming people with religious miracles as a means of pursuing his ministry (Matthew 5:4-7), and chose instead the role of a suffering servant. This flies in the face of the conventional wisdom of the world, but is central to our gospel.
The serpentine temptation with respect to war for the non-combatant is to yearn for the comforts of Egypt (Numbers 21:5), rather than to place oneself in harm's way. In defense we want to reject the witness of Fox and his companions as foolish. The Christian faith may not command us to seek out suffering, but we should at least recognize that faithfulness often requires of us to make sacrifice in obedience to God. While many of us would not choose to do what Tom Fox and the other members of the Christian Peacemaker Team did, the scriptures would suggest that we should feel the urgency of seeking out ways to be peacemakers and should honor the way that they have lived out their faith. If God is in Christ, reconciling the world to God's self and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19), then complaining about those who do witness on our behalf may create a poisonous atmosphere within the community of faith.
The Numbers passage suggests that God insisted on the people facing their fears if they were to be healed: "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Make a poisonous serpent and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live' " (Numbers 21:8). Part of the pastor's task is to help the congregants to look at their fears and allow the power of God to heal them.
One might think that we are stretching the symbolic nature of scripture too far if it were not for the passage in John where he used this same image for Jesus on the cross (John 3:14). We have so domesticated the symbol of the cross in our society, making it into a pretty piece of jewelry worn on our chest, that we forget the power of what it was in the time of Jesus. It did not begin as a sign of salvation but as the violent response of the world to the gracious love of God. Yet God didn't seek to punish the world for its cruel killing of his Son, but rather transformed the very sign of that rejection into a sign of redemption. Our hope is discovered by staring evil in the face and trusting God to enable us to overcome it. Salvation is found not in escaping the evil in us, but in allowing it to be transformed for good.
Why would God respond in this way? "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16) is perhaps one of the most famous passages in the Bible. Yet it rolls off our tongues too easily until someone like Tom Fox reminds us of the cost of faith. Is Cal Thomas right, Fox and his companions were futilely tilting at windmills? Or does the courage of their faith encourage us to be more faithful in our own peacemaking?
ANOTHER VIEW
by Carlos Wilton
"The Peacemaker" they called it -- the legendary .45 caliber revolver made by the Colt firearms company. Colt made over 370,000 of these six-shooters between 1873 and 1941, when America's entry into World War II dictated more urgent weapons-manufacturing priorities. In 1956, fueled by the popular demand for Wild-West-era guns inspired by television and movie westerns, Colt brought its signature handgun back into production, and is still making them (mostly for collectors nowadays).
Can any weapon be legitimately called a "Peacemaker"? Someone like Cal Thomas would see no contradiction in applying that title to a handgun. For, in the newspaper column Steve cites, Thomas maintains that "peace happens when evil is vanquished" -- presumably by force. Cal Thomas, it seems, has little patience for peacemakers such as the late Tom Fox, or for anyone else who would pursue peace through, well, peaceful means. (A hawk like Thomas would probably see no contradiction in the Vietnam-era general's infamous comment, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it.")
Writing in a March 13 special issue of Sojomail (the electronic newsletter of Washington, D.C.'s Sojourners Community), Doug Pritchard reflects on the unintended symbolism of how Tom Fox's body was transported back to the U.S. military's mortuary facility in Dover, Delaware:
"... his coffin was draped in a U.S. flag. This is unusual for a civilian, but Tom may not have been uncomfortable with this since he had always called his nation to live out the high ideals which it professed. Iraqi detainees who die in U.S custody are also transported to Dover for autopsies and forensics. On this plane, right beside Tom's coffin, was the coffin of an Iraqi detainee. So Tom accompanied an Iraqi detainee in death, just as he had done so often in life." (http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=060313)
Is force the only way to vanquish evil? The witness of Tom Fox's life (and death) -- as well as the lives and deaths of apostles of nonviolence like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. -- suggest otherwise. So would the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, for -- particularly in this season of Lent -- we remember how he humbly submitted to the cross. In the words of Isaiah, from one of the famous Servant Songs that the church has so often applied to Jesus:
"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth." (Isaiah 53:7)
Was Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross an act of peacemaking? Or was it an act of futility? What if Jesus had followed Cal Thomas' suggestion, and entered Jerusalem not on a donkey in a giddy procession of laughing children, but rather on a chariot at the head of an invading army? The world, and the church, would surely be very different today, if he had done so....
Who is the greater peacemaker: Tom Fox or Donald Rumsfeld? It may be instructive to ask a question like that in a sermon. For these are deep and complex questions -- questions that go to the very heart of our faith, and indeed, to the heart of our national debate on the Iraq War. A sermon that causes our people to raise and consider such questions in their minds -- even if it provides no easy answers -- can provide a real service.
This week's texts are difficult ones -- especially the Numbers text, which is an archaic example of what the anthropologists call "sympathetic magic" (holding up a symbol of the thing we most fear, as a magical totem to ward off evil). This passage would surely have been relegated to a dusty, out-of-the-way corner of the Hebrew Scriptures had John not recorded Jesus citing it, foreshadowing the cross. Does raising up the bloody, bruised body of the man who died for human sin somehow protect us from the ill effects of such sin? Surely there's more to the cross of Jesus than sympathetic magic. The strongest connection between the cross and Moses' serpent-on-a-stick may in fact be the simple fact that both are lifted up -- we should not make too much of the comparison.
Ultimately, the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice is a mystery. In the words of a modern Good Friday hymn of Scotland's Iona Community, our only possible response to that mystery is to
"Wonder and stare,
Fear and beware,
Heaven and Hell are close at hand.
God's living word,
Jesus the Lord,
Follows where faith and love demand."
ILLUSTRATIONS
Stories of some peacemakers who were willing to pay the price...
Jane Addams
(Laura) Jane Addams won worldwide recognition as a pioneer social worker, as a feminist, and as an internationalist. She was born in Cedarville, Illinois, in 1860. Because of a congenital spinal defect, Jane was not physically vigorous when young nor truly robust even later in life, but she became a graceful, attractive woman after her spinal difficulty was remedied by surgery.
Jane intended to become a doctor, but was forced to withdraw from her medical studies because of her poor health. During a tour to Europe, she visited Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London's East End. This visit helped to finalize in her mind the idea of opening a similar house in an underprivileged area of Chicago. In 1889 she and a friend, Ellen Starr, leased a large home built by Charles Hull at the corner of Halsted and Polk Streets, their purpose being "to provide a center for a higher civic and social life, to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago." By its second year of existence, Hull House hosted 2,000 people every week.
For her own aspiration to rid the world of war, Jane Addams created opportunities or seized those offered to her to advance the cause. In 1906 she gave a course of lectures at the University of Wisconsin summer session that she published the next year as a book, Newer Ideals of Peace. She spoke for peace in 1913 at a ceremony commemorating the building of the Peace Palace at The Hague, and during the next two years, as a lecturer sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, she spoke against America's entry into World War I. In January 1915, she became chairperson of the Women's Peace Party, and four months later the president of the International Congress of Women convened at The Hague. When this congress later founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Jane Addams served as its president until 1929, and as honorary president for the remainder of her life.
Publicly opposed to America's entry into the war, Addams was attacked in the press and expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution -- but she found an outlet for her humanitarian impulses as an assistant to Herbert Hoover in providing relief supplies of food to the women and children of the enemy nations, the story of which she told in her book Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922).
After sustaining a heart attack in 1926, Miss Addams never fully regained her health; she was being admitted to a Baltimore hospital on the very day, December 10, 1931, that the Nobel Peace Prize was being awarded to her in Oslo. She died in 1935.
Jim and Elisabeth Elliot
In January 1956, the world was shocked by the news that Auca Indians martyred Jim Elliot and four other American missionaries in the jungles of Ecuador. But even more shocking was the decision of Elisabeth Elliot, Jim's widow, to venture into Auca territory and live with the same Indians who killed her husband. With her three-year-old daughter and the sister of one of the murdered missionaries, Elisabeth Elliot courageously evangelized the Aucas, introducing her husband's slayers to Christ. She said, "The fact that Jesus Christ died for all makes me interested in the salvation of all, but the fact that Jim loved and died for the Aucas intensifies my love for them." This was a family that was truly willing to pay the price for bringing peace.
Anwar Sadat
On November 19, 1977, Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and spoke before the Knesset in Jerusalem. Sadat made the visit after receiving an invitation from Begin, and he sought a permanent peace settlement. (Much of the Arab world was outraged by the visit, due to their widespread view of Israel as a rogue state and a tyrannical symbol of imperialism.) In 1978, this resulted in the Camp David Peace Agreement, for which Sadat and Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the action was extremely unpopular in the Arab and Muslim world. At that time, Egypt was the most powerful of the Arab nations and an icon of Arab nationalism. Many hoped that Egypt would be able to extract concessions from Israel in regard to displaced Palestinians and others in the Arab world. By signing the peace accords, Sadat steered Egypt toward Israel and the United States, and left the other Arab nations hanging by themselves. This was seen as a betrayal of his predecessor Nasser's pan-Arabism, destroying visions of a united Arab front.
On October 6, 1981, Sadat was assassinated during a parade in Cairo by army members who were part of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization. They opposed Sadat's negotiations with Israel, as well as his use of force in a crackdown on Muslim organizations and other dissidents.
***
Sayings that remind us that peace is something that demands a price be paid...
Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.
-- Dorothy Thompson:
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.
-- the Dalai Lama
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.
-- the Dalai Lama
***
The Prince of Peace
The Prince of Peace His banner spreads,
His wayward folk to lead
From war's embattled hates and dreads,
Its bulwarked ire and greed.
O marshal us, the sons of sires
Who braved the cannon's roar,
To venture all that peace requires
As they dared death for war.
Lead on, O Christ! That haunting song
No centuries can dim,
Which long ago the heavenly throng
Sang over Bethlehem.
Cast down our rancor, fear, and pride,
Exalt goodwill again!
Our worship doth Thy name deride,
Bring we not peace to men.
Thy pardon, Lord, for war's dark shame,
Its death-strewn, bloody fields!
Yet thanks to Thee for souls aflame
Who dared with swords and shields;
O Christ, who died to give men life,
Bring that victorious hour,
When man shall use for peace, not strife,
His valor, skill, and power.
Cleanse all our hearts from our disgrace --
We love not world, but clan!
Make clear our eyes to see our race
One family of man.
Rend thou our little temple veils
That cloak the truth divine,
Until thy mighty word prevails,
That cries, "All souls are mine."
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
***
Snakes play a large role in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and films. In the first book (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone), Harry discovers he has the gift of "parseltongue" -- the ability to talk to snakes in hissing sounds the majority of witches and wizards cannot speak. Harry's fluency first became evident when he sympathizes with a boa constrictor caged at the zoo. As is typical of Harry throughout the series, he uses parseltongue to good ends; however, many at Hogwarts believe the ability to speak to snakes is a "dark art"; therefore Harry is ostracized in book two (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), because other students fear Harry's linguistic facility will be used malevolently. The Dark Lord Voldemort is also a parseltongue. The Hogwarts School house in which Voldemort was a student is Slytherin. Its very name suggests snake-like connections and qualities as sinister as that of the serpent in Genesis 3. In book four (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) we are introduced to Voldemort's pet snake Nagini. Finally, the Dark Mark that appears in the sky in book four and again in book six (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) appears in the sky as a skull with the slithering half-circle of a snake's tail attached to it.
***
American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's pre-World War II wake-up call to liberal Christians was the book Children of Light and Children of Darkness. In it Niebuhr warns American Christians that the so-called "children of light" want to believe in the progress of humanity and our ability to care for one another, live in peace, and continue to work for the betterment of all mankind. Niebuhr argues that this idea is more of a humanist than a Christian position, and he asserts that such a belief by Christian leaders is naÔve and dangerous, because the "children of darkness" have no such scruples.
This week's lectionary texts all support arguments about humanity as children of light and children of darkness, and the closer reality that each and every one of us possesses characteristics of both. The former slaves, hungry and afraid in the wilderness, do not offer a noble picture of God's chosen people. Nor do we receive a favorable opinion of humanity from the hedonism discussed in Ephesians or the self-loathing that comes from sin described in this week's Psalm. In these three texts, and in John 3:14-21, God comes to the rescue to save God's people. Christ, the light, enters our world of darkness in order to illuminate for us a better way. The dark shall not overcome it; but the darkness still has the power to use us when we ourselves refuse to recognize its irresistible power to pull us into acts of war, greed, hatred, spite, cruelty, and so on.
***
The nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine made a remarkably prescient statement about the cross, and its role in warding off violence. Heine was born a Jew, but developed a high appreciation for Christianity. In these powerful words, he pictures the cross of Jesus Christ as a magic talisman that keeps the dark forces of chaos at bay:
"Should ever that taming talisman break -- the Cross -- then will come roaring back the wild madness of the ancient warriors, with all their insane, Berserker rage, of whom our Nordic poets speak and sing. That talisman is now already crumbling, and the day is not far off when it shall break apart entirely. On that day, the old stone gods will rise from their long-forgotten wreckage and rub from their eyes the dust of a thousand years' sleep. At long last leaping to life, Thor with his giant hammer will crush the Gothic cathedrals. And laugh not at my forebodings, the advice of a dreamer.... For thought goes before deed as lightning before thunder. There will be played in Germany a play compared to which the French Revolution was but an innocent idyll."
If any poet's words can be called prophetic, these words of Heinrich Heine's fit the bill. Before Adolf Hitler had even been born, Heine shared a nightmare vision of what the Nazi terror would be like -- right down to Hitler's fascination with the old Norse and Germanic mythology.
***
Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
-- Julius Caesar
***
During the Brezhnev era at the height of the Cold War, Billy Graham visited Russia and met with government and church leaders. Conservatives back home reproached him for treating the Russians with such courtesy and respect. He should have taken a more prophetic role, they said, by condemning the abuses of human rights and religious liberty. One of his critics accused him of setting the church back 50 years. Graham listened, lowered his head, and replied, "I am deeply ashamed. I have been trying very hard to set the church back 2000 years!"
***
In his book The New American Militarism (Oxford University Press, 2005), Andrew Bacevich de-sacralizes our idolatrous infatuation with military might, but in a way that avoids the partisan cant of both the left and the right that belies so much discourse today. Bacevich's personal experiences and professional expertise lend his book an air of authenticity that I found compelling. A veteran of Vietnam and subsequently a career officer, a graduate of West Point and later Princeton where he earned a Ph.D. in history, director of Boston University's Center for International Relations, he describes himself as a cultural conservative who views mainstream liberalism with skepticism, but who also is a person whose "disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute." Finally, he identifies himself as a "conservative Catholic." Idolizing militarism, Bacevich insists, is far more complex, broader, and deeper than scapegoating either political party, accusing people of malicious intent or dishonorable motives, demonizing ideological fanatics as conspirators, or replacing a given administration. Not merely the state or the government, but society at large, is enthralled with all things military.
Our military idolatry, Bacevich believes, is now so comprehensive and beguiling that it "pervades our national consciousness and perverts our national policies." We have normalized war; romanticized military life that formally was deemed degrading and inhuman; measured our national greatness in terms of military superiority; and harbor naive, unlimited expectations about how waging war, long considered a tragic last resort that signaled failure, can further our national self-interests. Utilizing a "military metaphysic" to justify our misguided ambitions to re-create the world in our own image, with ideals that we imagine are universal, has taken about 30 years to emerge in its present form. It is this marriage between utopian ends and military means that Bacevich wants to annul.
How have we come to idolize military might with such uncritical devotion? He likens it to pollution: "the perhaps unintended, but foreseeable by-product of prior choices and decisions made without taking fully into account the full range of costs likely to be incurred" (p. 206). In successive chapters he analyzes six elements of this toxic condition that combined in an incremental and cumulative fashion.
After the humiliation of Vietnam, an "unmitigated disaster" in his view, the military set about to rehabilitate and reinvent itself, both in image and substance. With the all-volunteer force, we moved from a military comprised of citizen-soldiers that were broadly representative of all society to a professional warrior caste that by design isolated itself from broader society and that by default employed a disproportionate percentage of enlistees from the lowest socio-economic class. War-making was thus done for us, by a few of us, not by all of us. Second, the rise of the neo-conservative movement embraced American Exceptionalism as our national end and superior coercive force as the means to franchise it around the globe. Myth-making about warfare sentimentalized, sanitized, and fictionalized war. The film Top Gun is only one example of "a glittering new image of warfare." Fourth, without the wholehearted complicity of conservative evangelicalism, militarism would have been "inconceivable," a tragic irony when you consider that the most "Christian" nation on earth did far less to question this trend than many ostensibly "secular" nations. Fifth, during the years of nuclear proliferation and the fears of mutually assured destruction, a "priesthood" of elite defense analysts pushed for what became known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). RMA pushed the idea of "limited" and more humane war using game theory models and technological advances with euphemisms like "clean" and "smart" bombs. But here too our "exuberance created expectations that became increasingly uncoupled from reality," as the current Iraq debacle demonstrates. Finally, despite knowing full well that dependence upon Arab oil made us vulnerable to the geo-political maelstroms of that region, we have continued to treat the Persian Gulf as a cheap gas station. How to ensure our Arab oil supply, protect Saudi Arabia, and serve as Israel's most important protector has always constituted a squaring of the circle. Sordid and expedient self-interest, our "pursuit of happiness ever more expansively defined," was only later joined by more lofty rhetoric about exporting universal ideals like democracy and free markets, or, rather, the latter have only been a (misguided) means to secure the former.
-- Dan Clendenin, www.journeywithjesus.net for October 9, 2005 (http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20051003JJ.shtml)
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by Thom M. Shuman
Call To Worship
Leader: In this place, the community of faith is reminded of the promise:
People: God's love endures forever!
Leader: In spite of our impatient grumbling, despite our attraction to the shadows:
People: Christ's light shines in us!
Leader: When we think our hands our empty, when we have no music in our souls:
People: the Spirit fills us with glad songs, and creates us for good works!
Prayer Of The Day
You reach deep into your pockets stuffed with mercy and fill our empty souls;
refusing to be in the condemnation business,
you rebuild our shaky foundations with your everlasting love;
you hear our cries of loneliness and lament,
and reach down to lift us into your presence.
Good and Generous God, we give you thanks!
You save us by your grace,
so we may joyfully serve our sisters and brothers;
you slide over to make room for us at your Table;
you step into our shadowed lives
to take us by the hand and lead us into the light.
Healing Word: we give you thanks!
You calm our impatience,
so we may tell of God's presence in our midst;
you silence our grumbling,
to teach us joy's anthems;
you shower us with kindness,
so we may overflow with love.
Spirit of Obedience, we give you thanks.
God in Community, Holy in One,
we give you thanks for your steadfast love,
even as we pray as Jesus has taught us, saying,
Our Father . . .
Call To Reconciliation
By nature, we are impatient, irritated, grumbling, disobedient children, always demanding our way. But God, who is good and kind and gentle, comes to transform us, by grace, into the people we are meant to be. Let us open ourselves to the One who overflows with love for us, as we confess our sins to God.
(Unison) Prayer Of Confession
The Light of the world has come, Ceaseless Creator,
but we admit we love the shadows all around us.
For there, we can boast of our achievements,
rather than point to your grace;
there, we can grumble of our unhappiness with you,
instead of singing your praises;
there, we can give into our natural anger,
and not be touched by your call to be agents of peace and hope.
Forgive us, Eternal Love:
lead us from the shadows of sin into the light of your joy;
raise us up as your children, so we may kneel in service to others;
shower us with the grace, the hope, the peace
you have brought to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
(silent prayers may be offered)
Assurance Of Pardon
Leader: Let the community of faith say so:
People: God's love endures forever!
Leader: Let those gathered in grace say so:
People: God's love endures forever!
Leader: Let those gathered from all parts of the world say so:
People: God's love endures forever!
Leader: This is the good news for us:
God's love endures forever.
People: Thanks be to God. Amen.
Blessing
Leader: As you leave this place,
remember you are God's community in the world:
People: for God's love endures forever!
Leader: As you leave this place,
remember you are alive with Christ:
People: for Christ's light shines in the deepest shadows!
Leader: As you leave this place,
remember the gifts God offers to you:
People: for the Spirit fills us with good works to do,
and glad songs to sing to the world!
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Lifted up
Object: picture of a caduceus (the symbol of the medical profession)
Based on John 3:14-21
People who are doctors and nurses and medical professionals often have this sign on their diplomas and you can see it on the walls of clinics, hospitals, and medical offices. It is a sign of healing. It's got a fancy name. It's called a "caduceus" and it is a pole with two snakes wrapped around it. It's kind of funny looking in a way. But it means healing from sickness and relief from pain for many people.
There is a story about one of the first caduceus ever in the Old Testament. We read about it in today's first lesson (Numbers 21:4-9). In that reading we hear about God's people who are in the wilderness or desert. There is not much food or water in a desert. The people complained to God.
Have any of you been to the desert? (let them answer) What is it like? (let them answer) The desert also often has poisonous snakes. Have any of you ever seen a poisonous snake? (let them answer)
When God's people were in the wilderness, many of the people were bitten by poisonous snakes. God told Moses to take a pole and make a brass snake and put it on the pole and set it high so that everyone could see it. "Whenever someone is bitten by a poisonous snake," God said, "all they have to do is look up to the pole with the snake on it and they will be fine."
Many years later Jesus, God's own Son, was crucified on the cross. The cross doesn't save us from snakebite, but it saves us from our sins and from death itself. The cross does so much more than the brass caduceus of Moses. That is why we put our crosses high up so that everyone can see them. We know that the cross is a sign for us that God has saved us and that we shall live forever.
I'm glad to know Jesus and I really appreciate the fact that he went to the cross to die for you and for me. The cross is my sign of eternal life -- just like the caduceus is a sign of healing for the medical profession. The cross tells me that God loves me so much that he sent his only son to die for me -- and for you! (v. 16).
Dearest Jesus: Thank you for saving us and giving us the cross to look up to. Amen.
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The Immediate Word, March 26, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 S. Main St., Lima, Ohio 45804.
