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August 6, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: 2 Samuel
11:26—12:13a, Ephesians 4:1-6, John 6:24-35
Inspired in part by these writings listed at the end of the
sermon.
“Nonviolence:
Weapon That Heals, Bread That Endures”
At the end of this passage of judgment on
David, God invokes the life-giving, truth-revealing power of the sun. The sun is
not meant for death-dealing and illusion-spreading – especially the illusion of
invincibility for those with the biggest bombs and wickedest weapons. God knows
that our perversion of the sun releases a scourge as deadly to our world as the
scourge of David’s faithlessness is to his house. Is there a prophet in the
house? A “not-for-profit” prophet in the house of David? Or of any head of
state we know? A prophet who cannot be bossed or bought but speaks the truth
for God? Who holds the mirror of justice up before those of us so impressed by
our own righteousness?
We have to give David credit for allowing the
prophet Nathan to be heard in the first place – knowing that prophets are not
bound to tell us what we want to hear – what will serve out own very limited and
self-invested perspectives. Give David credit for hearing the gross injustice
in the story Nathan tells – of the rich man protecting his own abundance while
seizing the little the poor man has to his name. David sees the unfairness, the
failure of compassion and solidarity by the rich man, and the absence of any
accountability for what the rich man has done. David sees for himself the rich
man has taken the poor man’s very life -- and thereby deserves to give up his
own life if that will restore the life of the other.
What David does not see is himself in the mirror of Nathan’s words – which are
much more powerful weapons and cut much more deeply to the core of David’s being
than any sword could have done. David is the very rich man he so readily
sees as deserving of death. Why are those who have so much so unable to
see ourselves in true relation to those who have so little? To see that we
share one life? That we share what Ephesians here calls “one body and one
Spirit” – “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all?”
That when we hurt or destroy another, we hurt and destroy ourselves? That
we perpetuate cycles of violence and vengeance, rage and retribution? That
finally there is no choice for life, much less for love, than to find new ways
out of these same old dilemmas?
That is why we re-member and try to restore a
sense of wholeness and relationship out of our dismemberment and fragmentation.
It is less about the past and those who made their decisions and took their
actions then. It is more about the future, about the children, the Sadakos, all
over the world – and we who make our decisions and take our actions today. We
need a prophet in our house who holds up to us the 30,000 nuclear weapons around
the world today -- with 100,000 times the explosive power of those dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A prophet who holds up to us our addiction to weapons
not only of mass but of very personal destruction – some 639 million “small
arms” in the world today – and in our own hands and homes. What if “small arms”
meant only those arms of children – trying to hug us in spite of the weapons in
our hands?
No wonder five-star General Omar Bradley said as
early as 1948 -- “We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a
world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We
have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on
the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying
than we know about living.” In fact, we might add, we know more about killing
than about dying.
Writer Colman McCarthy actually teaches peacemaking wherever he can. He’s
formed a Center for Teaching Peace – pacifism, nonviolence, peaceful conflict
resolution – weapons that heal, bread that endures. He says students “are
looking for a world where it becomes a little easier to love and a lot harder to
hate – where learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our hearts, minds,
time, and money to a commitment that the force of love, the force of truth, the
force of justice, and the force of organized resistance to corrupt power are
seen as sane! – and the force of fists, guns, armies, and bombs insane.”
There’s been a poster around for years that calls for the day when every
children’s program has all the money it needs, and the military has to hold bake
sales to build more weapons! McCarthy says his students understand that
what they learn is what we choose to teach them – whether by direction or by
default to our culture’s rampant violence. One student wrote a whole
13-word paper – “Q. Why are we violent but not illiterate? A. Because we
are taught to read.”
Ephesians asks us to reflect upon “a life worthy
of the calling to which we have been called!” What really makes our lives and
life itself as the gift of God worth living? How do we want to be remembered
for decisions we make and actions we take? Are we caught up in some worldly
vision for what it means for us to be “successful?” Especially for some of us,
some few of us, to “make it” somehow? While so many others go without? Do we
become so preoccupied with “security” and with protecting/defending ourselves –
precisely because we know in our hearts how much we have to “lose” yet seem to
risk nothing – compared to so many with nothing to lose prepared to risk
everything? Are we afraid of naming and standing up for what we say we really
believe? Of being “faithful” to the ends of our lives – no matter what that may
cost us on the way?
In this gospel Jesus has just experienced how
those who associate him with meeting their worldly hungers want to make him a
king and give up their powers to him. Yet we know it has been a small boy in
the crowd with five loaves and two fish who started it all by risking what he
had for the good of all. Jesus says there is such a difference between the food
that perishes – along with all the other “stuff” of this world -- and the food
that endures. It is a quality of the life we seek not just for ourselves and
those closest to us – but the life that is so good for all as to be worthy of
calling “eternal life” – life that has no end of goodness! Jesus says the way
to that life lies in believing in him – not just saying but believing – and
acting upon our belief – to do the same works of nonviolent love – and even
greater works than he because we do them in his name! As one nonviolent
activist says, “The first thing to be disrupted by our commitment to nonviolence
will not be the system but our own lives.” The gift of our own lives.
It is said that those who believe in nonviolence
do not believe in use of force. Yes, they do. Yes, we can be nonviolent and
forceful as well. The force we believe in is moral force – force that heals and
endures – force coming from God the always Creator more than from us so often
destroyers. Gandhi calls nonviolence “the weapon of the strong.” King David
may have all the swords, but Nathan has the words – the words that reach more
deeply into David than any sword can go. Nathan’s words invite David to see
that before he needs to destroy anyone else he needs to transform himself – to
give up his righteous image of invincible self-satisfaction – unaccountable to
anyone else – and to take up the life in common with everyone else. That life
Ephesians calls “worthy” – “with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
If we were preaching in Japan this morning, I hope we would be confronting – in
the prophetic spirit of Nathan – the militarism of Japanese history as we do
that of our own. We could preach prophetic nonviolence to every nation on
earth! There is plenty of blame and guilt for us all – if that’s what we
think it’s about – which is, plenty of reason to forgive and to be forgiven by
all. Forgiveness is the only way anything new can happen. Otherwise,
we just raise the antes and compound the tragedies of the past.
Forgiveness alone offers hope of a new future – a future shaped by the “new
thing” God is doing even now. We can only confront decisions made and
actions taken by our governments in our names.
Each one of us in our own way this morning may hope to hear Nathan say, “You are
the one!” You are the one God is counting on to “get it” about the past
and to trade it in for a new future. God has done so much for us – as for
David, God has anointed, rescued, and given to us again and again! And
would have added more! There is so much to be so grateful for!
So much to see as the gift of God! If only we will face ourselves as we
are – in the image the prophet holds up to us. If only we will offer our
true and whole selves up to God to be made new by God.
As one poet, Sam Hamill, writes to another –
It’s been nearly forty years / since you
wrote that poem
about writing poems against / all those wars,
Harlan County
to Italy and Spain.
We’ve been at war ever since. / I too, born
in World War,
have lived and written against / that
particular stupidity
and pointless, hopeless pain / in my
agonizing days.
Has even a single life thereby / been saved?
Who can say?
Except that doing so saved mine.
Oh, I could tell you about saved lives. . . .
Yes, poetry saves lives. / All wars begin at
home
within the warring self. / No, our poems
cannot stop
a war, not this or any war, / but the one
that rages from
within which is the first / and only step.
It is
a scared trust, a duty, / the poet’s
avocation.
We write the poetry we must.
Sisters and brothers, let us write, let us live,
the poetry we must. Amen.
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“NO SORRY,”
Catherine Bowman
Do you have any scissors I could
borrow?
No, I’m sorry I don’t.
What about a knife? You got any
knives? A good paring knife would do or a simple butcher knife or maybe a
cleaver?
No, sorry, all I have is this old bread
knife my grandfather used to butter his bread with every morning.
Well then, how about a hand drill or
hammer, a bike chain, or some barbed wire? You got any rusty, razor-edged
barbed wire? You got a chain saw?
No, sorry I don’t.
Well then maybe you might have some
sticks?
I’m sorry, I don’t have any sticks.
How about some stones?
No, I don’t have any sticks or stones.
Well how about a stone tied to a
stick?
You mean a club?
Yeah, a club. You got a club?
No, sorry, I don’t have any clubs.
What about some fighting picks, war
axes, military forks, or tomahawks?
No, sorry, I don’t have any kind of war
fork, ax, or tomahawk.
What about a morning star?
A morning star?
Yeah, you know, those spiked ball and
chains they sell for riot control.
No, nothing like that. Sorry.
Now I know you said you don’t have a
knife except for that dull old thing your grandfather used to butter his
bread with every morning, and that he passed down to you, but I though maybe
you just might have an Australian dagger with a quartz blade and wood
handle, or a bone dagger, or a Bowie, you know it doesn’t hurt to ask? Or
perhaps one of those lethal multipurpose stilettos?
No, sorry.
Or maybe you have a simple blow pipe?
Or a complex airgun?
No, I don’t have a simple blow pipe or a
complex airgun.
Well then maybe you have a jungle
carbine, a Colt, a revolver, a Ruger, an axis bolt-action repeating rifle
with telescopic sight for sniping, a sawed-off shotgun? Or better yet a
gas-operated self-loading fully automatic assault weapon?
No, sorry I don’t.
How about a hand grenade?
No.
How about a tank?
No.
Shrapnel?
No.
Napalm?
No.
Napalm 2?
No, sorry, I don’t.
Then let me ask you this. Do you have
any intercontinental ballistic missiles? Or submarine-launched cruise
missiles? Or multiple independently targeted reentry missiles? Or terminally
guided anti-tank shells or projectiles? Do you have any fission bombs or
hydrogen bombs?
Let me ask you this. Do you have any
thermonuclear warheads? Got any electronic measures or electronic
counter-measures or electronic counter-counter-measures? Got any biological
weapons or germ warfare, preferably in aerosol form? Got any enhanced
tactical neutron lasers emitting massive doses of wholebody gamma radiation?
Wait a minute. Got any plutonium? Got any chemical agents, nerve agents,
blister agents, you know, like mustard gas, any choking agents or
incapacitating agents or toxin agents?
Well, I’m not sure. What do they look
like?
Liquid vapor powder colorless gas.
Invisible.
I’m not sure. What do they smell like?
They smell like fruit, garlic, fish or
soap, new-mown hay, apple blossoms, or like those little green peppers that
your grandfather probably would tend in his garden every morning after he
buttered his bread with that old bread knife that he passed down to you.
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from Kurt Vonnegut,
Slaughterhouse Five
Billy Pilgrim padded downstairs on his blue
and ivory feet . . . . He went into the living room, . . turned on the
television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards,
then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second
World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the
story went like this:
American planes, full of holes and
wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England.
Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked
bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did
the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew
up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a
German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors,
exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into
cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of
the planes. The containers were stored neatly in the racks. The Germans
below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes.
They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But
there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers
were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again,
made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base,
the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United
States of America, where factories were operating day and night, dismantling
the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly,
it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shopped to
specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the
ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their
uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy
Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating.
Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired
biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
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