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October 22, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Job 38:1, 34-41,
Mark 10:35-40, 45
“The Path from
My First Execution”
Bishop Beverly Shamana reminds us on this day
we observe Nevada’s first National Weekend of Faith in Action on the Death
Penalty -- “On this 50th anniversary year of the United Methodist
stance against the death penalty and retributive justice, the church is called
to take steps that recognize and work against the systems that perpetuate
legalized killing by the state.”
The United States stands nearly alone among
industrialized nations still executing citizens today. But the practice of
retributive justice – loosely called “an eye for an eye” – which Gandhi says
will only make the whole world blind! – is everywhere! Not only between nations
but among ethnic and religious groups within nations. Daily news seems filled
with nothing but stories of cycles of crime and punishment, violence and
vengeance. Is there a restorative alternative? Justice that does not punish
and avenge, but forgives and reconciles? How, where, among whom does it exist?
Jesus was briefly a prisoner of Death Row –
charged with capital crimes against the state and quickly, anonymously executed
– on one cross among three that particular day. Like our bulletin cover this
morning. The cross we elevate and revere today began as a simple cruel
instrument of torture, agony, humiliation, death – often rationalized as example
to keep others from following those crucified. Which the movement of God in the
resurrection of Jesus and the second coming of the Holy Spirit turned into
history’s most glorious irony! That so many even today confess to follow as
“Savior and Lord” a crucified one. The rack, the gallows, the gas chamber, the
chair, the firing squad, the lethal injection, -- you name it! – all follow from
the cross.
Paul says all who follow Jesus live, in effect,
on Death Row. Our baptisms pass us through death and put behind us the very
powers of death and of execution to intimidate us or control us. We belong
however we can be with those on death rows today. Every faith tradition opposes
the right and the need of the state and nation to kill in the name of justice.
Our “Social Principles” tell us: No one is beyond the power of Christ to
redeem, restore, transform – for God is not done with us yet! We cannot see
conversion or change in someone who’s dead! There are other ways to express
our outrage at murder, to isolate murderers, deter crime, offer rehabilitation.
We need a whole new system that covenants with and cares for and offers new life
– not only to offenders, but also to victims, to families of both, to
law-enforcement officials, and to the larger community.
I wonder if everyone can remember a “first execution” in our lives? A time
we became aware that someone for whatever reason was going to be killed at some
particular time and place by some particular means. It was going to be
done in our names, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
At age 8 or 9, I made a scrapbook of magazine and newspaper clippings about
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. I did not know all the details of their trial
for treason against the United States and their sentence to death in a gas
chamber. I only knew my worldview even at that time could not accept that
we as a people, through our government, were going to kill, to execute these
persons, if we had any choice not to do it. It horrified me that we knew
and set the exact time and place and manner of their deaths, then expected
ourselves to go on with our everyday lives until it happened. How could
that be? How could we do that?
How could we stop it? My parents (Today is my
mother’s 94th birthday!) say they helped me, at my request, to write
a letter to President Eisenhower, so he would know and would stop it. When
that mission failed, I am told I appealed to Oral Roberts instead. I had
heard his evangelism on the radio. He sent me a nice little cross to wear.
I showed my dear Uncle Bob the cross that meant I was a Christian! He told
me that was a very nice thing to be. Now I know it’s not.
A Christian is not a nice thing to be. It’s a
pain. It’s a sorrow and a struggle. It’s impossible! Who wants to stand for
hope in this world? Hope we will stop fighting and killing ourselves? Hope we
will let God’s goodness and grace redeem us, restore us, transform us? With all
the political and cultural odds against us? How “nice” is it to stand to stop
war and capital punishment? I never got over my horror at state-sanctioned
killing -- officially organized violence!
The killing of Jesus remains the “first execution” for all who would follow him.
Jesus’ death is no mere “atonement” to God for the sins of the world – though
Jesus seems always willing that his be the only such death for all! His death
is not fated or inevitable. Jesus chooses freely and fully to witness his
faith in God in such ways as lead him to die, not to kill. Some disciples
are willing to fight when he is arrested. He stops them. He says he
could summon legions of angels to keep him from death on the cross. He
does not. There is something about the Jesus we meet again and again in
such gospel moments as this who knows that killing just leads to more killing.
Only dying for him, for what he stands for and lives for and dies for himself –
only dying can break the cycles.
So many recent deaths come to mind. Amy Biehl
of southern California who died trying to help end apartheid in South Africa.
Her family attended the trial of her killers and publicly forgave them and asked
that they not be killed in return. Daniel Pearl, New York reporter, kidnapped
and murdered for religious reasons in Pakistan. His family set up a foundation
to build better communications among the religions of the world. Rachel Corrie
of the northwest whose family has shared her words with the world to build
awareness of her death defending Palestinian homes. Young Nicholas Green of
northern California whose family donated six vital organs to others when he was
killed in a robbery in Italy.
And of course the five Amish girl-children shot
down in their one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. Their parents announced
forgiveness of their murderer immediately. They reached out to the killer’s
family, inviting them to share family grief and memorial service and remain with
them in tight-knit community. Amish historical origins lie with Anabaptist
martyrs burned at the stake, beheaded and tortured by the state – because they
stood for individual freedom of decisions about religion. They learned to yield
their lives completely to God’s protection. They took their gospel naturally
and normatively.
And so writes an historian of the Amish –
“Retaliation and revenge are not part of their
vocabulary.
“As pragmatic as they are about other things,
the Amish don’t ask if forgiveness works; they simply seek to practice it as the
way of Jesus responding to adversaries, even enemies.
“Forgiveness is woven into the fabric of Amish
faith. That is why words of forgiveness were sent to the killer’s family before
the blood had dried on the schoolhouse floor. It was the natural thing to do,
the Amish way.
“Such courage to forgive has jolted the
watching world as much as the killing itself.” Such courage to forgive – even
as Jesus speaks from the cross – and wven as Jesus breathes upon us, his
survivors, the night of his resurrection!
Jesus gets to that place on the cross through moments like this. For the
third time with his closest followers he predicts his persecution, humiliation,
crucifixion, execution. Yet they, and we, persist in our inability and our
unwillingness to hear that our discipleship and our citizenship require anything
other of us than just being nice Christians who wear nice crosses and come to
nice churches and sing nice hymns and hear nice sermons. Why can’t the
world, and our life in it, just be nice? James and John do not seem to
hear Jesus at all! How nice it will be to have power to gain in this world --
spoils to divide, jobs to control, influence in high places, or even just the
right to rest from our labors!
But Jesus knows even now, among his best friends, the only ones he can hope will
carry on his life and his work in this world – Jesus knows even now, he is not
headed for glory but for shame. He is not to be seen as powerful but as
power-less. He is one who gives power away – who does not see his own
power to lord over others, but only sees the power of God to work through whom
and to share with others – so that we might become empowered to be more like
him.
And the power of God is this power God speaks to Job! Even with all Job --
whom God loves -- has suffered, God does not expect Job to be lost in self-pity
and preoccupied with thoughts of “niceness” in life. Rather God seems to
want Job, and us, to grasp just a glimpse, at least, of the power of God
available to us!
In the story of Job we respond with sheer awe
and wonder to such majesty of God’s powers. In the story of Jesus we imagine
all such powers of God may be concentrated in works of loving and caring,
forgiving and renewing, healing and reconciling, making justice and peace with
and for all of God’s peoples.
No matter how wrong we keep getting his words
and his actions, Jesus never gives up on us. He gently, patiently teaches
again: other rulers may lord themselves over the people, and the great ones may
be as tyrants. But it is not so among you. The greatest ones are as servants.
Those who would be first must be slaves of all. Jesus asks us to grow, to
change, to live, and to act from the inside out. To connect all the personal
chances we take on ourselves, and each other, with all the political choices we
make in the state and the world.
When we give the state power over just one life, as in capital punishment, how
does the state know when, and where, and how to stop? State power is just
as addictive as war. A close friend and national columnist from Chicago,
Bob Koehler, writes this week of the new study in the respected British medical
journal named The Lancet. It challenges all our “nice thoughts” about how
this war has been for Iraq.
Researchers risked their lives to visit 1,849 randomly selected households in
47areas throughout Iraq. They gathered verifiable information on household
members who died since January 2002. They compared the post-invasion and
pre-invasion death rates and extrapolated them for the whole country. They
estimate some 400,000 to 900,000 deaths beyond the pre-invasion rate, so they
settle on the likely figure of 650,000.
Bob Koehler’s point is even if Iraqi deaths are as low as the 30,000 to 50,000
cited by our government – who long ago acknowledged we are not committed to
counting any deaths other than “our own” deaths! – every one of those persons
has a name, an age, a family, a vocation, a story of their lives and a setting
of their deaths.
Our “Social Principles” say, “all human life is
sacred and created by God and therefore, we must see all human life as
significant and valuable.” The editor of The Lancet says in an editorial after
the study – in words that may inform our hearts on all state killings this day –
“The best we can hope from our terrible misadventure in Iraq is that a new
political and social movement will grow to overturn this politics of
humiliation. We are one human family. Let’s act like it.”
Can anyone say,
Amen?
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