Sermons

All Is Not Quiet on the Home Front

by the Reverend Chris Buice
Tennessee Valley UU Church
1/6/03

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A sermon can be foolishly spoken and wisely heard.” I believe there is a great deal of truth to that statement. In fact, there have been some Sundays when I have depended on it.

Of course, there are other times when a sermon is foolishly spoken and no amount of wise listening will compensate for the unfortunate experience. A few years ago I attended a memorial service for a teenage boy who had committed suicide. I had not known the young man. He was the brother of a member of my congregation in Spartanburg. The memorial service was held in a conservative Presbyterian Church. When the time came for the homily the minister stepped up to the pulpit and declared, “We are winners in Christ!” And the minister went on to attempt to do something I had never seen before. He attempted to preach an “upbeat funeral sermon”, a kind of Norman Vincent Peale and the power of positive thinking sermon. A teenage had committed suicide. His parents were present. His family was present. His friends were present. And we were all being asked to “look at the positive.” I found the whole experience very superficial and more than a little disturbing. I left the church angry. I told someone, “Now I know why Jesus turned over tables in the temple.”

I think that minister got it all wrong. When we go to a memorial service we do not feel like winners. We feel like losers. Regardless of one’s theology concerning the here and now or the hereafter, the memorial service is a time to acknowledge a real loss. It is a painful time of letting go especially if we are saying goodbye to someone who is young. The power of positive thinking is a superficial salve in this situation. It is not the balm of Gilead that can make the wounded whole.

Most of us go to the church hoping to find wisdom but sometimes we find foolishness and false comfort. And as your minister I feel the need to make a confession (not only for myself but also for all ministers.) Many of us who make the decision to go into ministry do so because we are naïve and arrogant. We are sure we can do it better than all the others can. But time usually proves us wrong. At some point we find ourselves saying something stupid simply because we are expected to have something meaningful to say on all occasions. Hubris becomes humility.

Of course, ministers are not the only people who can speak foolishly. A number of years ago medial mogul Ted Turner made a foolish comment about Christianity that my father the Episcopalian minister wisely heard. Turner said, “Christianity is a religion for losers.” Many Christian ministers were up in arms about the comment. They were furious. They protested. They wrote angry letters to the editor. They threatened to boycott the Turner network. The responses were in most cases predictable knee jerk reactions. However, my father surprised me by having a different kind of response. Being a Christian minister my father was in a position to take offense but he did not. I asked him what he thought about Turner’s comment that, “Christianity is a religion for losers.” My dad said, “He’s right you know,” and he went on to explain what he meant even though he did not have to. Our family had recently experienced the loss of my brother Bill who died in a car accident. The loss was fresh in all our minds. My father understood that no one gets through this life without experiencing some serious losses. And one of the roles of religion is help us as we deal with our losses. So whether we are Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or humanist or some other faith, we can say in all honesty, “our religion is for losers.”

The poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “To live in this world you must be able to do three things; To love what is mortal; To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

No one gets through this life without letting go. No one gets through this life without being a loser. Of course, in America we like to be winners. We don’t want to be losers. We don’t want to be losers in our sports. We don’t want to be losers in our work. We don’t want to be losers in our politics. We don’t want to be losers in our dating relationships. We don’t want to be losers in times of war or in times of peace.

And now is a time of war. The war with Iraq is brought to us on the home front 24 hours a day by the media on the networks and cable and radio and the Internet. War is here whether we like it or not and war is always a time of serious losses. It is symptomatic of war that the people of the world tend to dwell on different kinds of losses. Many people in the West get their news from CNN, Fox Network, the BBC or the other major networks that tend to focus on the losses among the American and British troops. In the rest of the world, in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America the people are paying attention to the coverage of the Al Jazeera network based in Qatar that tends to focus on the loss of innocent Iraqi civilians. Each network is paying attention to part of the picture. No one seems to want to focus on the Whole Picture.

The religious leaders of the world are often like the networks. They give us partial coverage of the war. They focus on part of the picture and ignore everything outside their particular frame. Too often religious leaders are willing and even eager to take sides in a violent conflict based on their partial picture of events. Mullahs declare holy war. Ministers intone pious patriotic platitudes like “God bless America” and “God bless our troops.” Over and over again the name of God is evoked on both sides to justify violence against God’s children. However, the decision to go to war is a human choice not a divine mandate. And when we as individuals support a war we should be willing to take personal responsibility for our choices and not shift the blame to God or anyone else.

When both Muslims and Christians were killing each other in Serbia an archbishop declared at some risk to himself, “Violence in the name of God is violence against God. Violence in the name of any religion is violence against all religions.” Many of us agree with the archbishop. Many of us are sick of seeing theology used in the service of death and we long for theology to be used in the service of life. We are tired of the rhetoric of holy war and long for the blessings of a holy peace.

Sometimes religion makes us merciless instead of more merciful. Sometimes it makes us more self-righteous than self-aware. That is why the Sufi Muslims say that many times the thickest barrier between human beings and God is the worship of the worshipper, devotion of the devout and the wisdom of the wise. Too often religion is what separates human beings from the divine and from each other. Too often the power of the pulpit is the power to polarize. When the Reverend Franklin Graham calls Islam a wicked religion; when the Reverend Jerry Falwell calls Muhammad a terrorist; when Osama Bin Laden urges a holy war against all American men women and children; when a secular tyrant like Sadaam Hussein starts talking about God and jihad it is a foolishness that is not easily cured by the wisdom of the listener.

The waters of religion grow murky when they are mingled with the bitterness of the human spirit. In the 19th century the Reverend Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister from the liberal Christian tradition, said something about the religion of Jesus which I think may be true for all life affirming religions. He said that the religion of Jesus has come down to us through the ages like a stream that has been too often been polluted by the dogmas, doctrines and practices of the church. He argued that the goal of spiritual living should be to discover and protect the pure stream that gives life.

Perhaps, it is also true that at the heart of Judaism, Islam and other life affirming religions there is a clear stream that has flowed down to us through time that too often has become contaminated not only by dogma but by our own bitterness, resentment, and fear. The stream is tainted by our ethnic animosities, homophobia, misogyny, greed, ambition and narrow concerns. Sometimes the water is toxic and the best advice you can give someone going to church or a mosque or a temple is the same advice you would give someone traveling south of the border. Enjoy your visit but don’t drink the water. Don’t internalize the toxic spirit. Don’t drink from the stream that gives death not life.

I believe that people of all faiths are thirsty for the pure stream. And so we should ask ourselves the question, how are we to clear the waters that have become so murky? Well, I would argue that if we want to purify the stream and renew the life of the spirit then we are going to have to be willing to be losers. We are going to have to be willing to lose some of our grudges, to lose some of our bitterness and resentment, to lose some of those narrow ambitions that cut us off from the larger life of God and humanity. There are some things we should not be afraid to lose. For the wisdom of many traditions teaches, “It is by losing our life that we find it. It is by letting go that we gain.” If we do our job right then we will be able to say without embarrassment or loss of self-esteem, “Our religion is for losers.”

The theologian Albert Schweitzer once spoke of the one area of life where he felt the Christian church had failed miserably. He said, "The greatest failure of the Christian church was its failure to put an end to war.” And I would add that this is the greatest failure of Judaism and Islam and every other religion on earth. Of course, some theologians see it differently. Some theologians will always try to put a positive spin on war. Some preachers will try to apply the power of positive thinking to the subject. There are propaganda creators who are paid good money to give a more upbeat interpretation of war than the one given by Albert Schweitzer. However, from a spiritual perspective war is always a failure. War reflects a total breakdown in religion not its fulfillment. There are no holy wars. From a spiritual perspective, when war breaks out we are all losers.

Much of the popular piety reflected in patriotic sermons, billboards, songs and bumpers stickers seems like a strange effort to give an upbeat sermon at a funeral for a teenager or as is the case in most wars a funeral for hundreds and possibly thousands of teenagers. The pious rhetoric seems like a strange effort to apply the power of positive thinking where it can never apply. To those who lose loved ones in this war these sermons will seem badly done or foolishly spoken without even the remotest possibility of being wisely heard.

For after the last ticker tape parade is over, after the last politician’s speech has been given, after the last candle light vigil, after the last political rally, after the last peace protest, after the last patriotic ballad, after the last anti-war song, after all this … the losses will still be there. The losses will still be felt for many years to come. The holidays will be different this year for many families. The holidays will be different whether that holiday is Hanukkah, Christmas, the season of Ramadan, a Hopi celebration or some other holy day. This year there will be an empty place at the table and an empty space in many hearts. Nothing is going to change that fact. No simplistic funeral homily is going to be able to paper over this wound or cover up the pain of this loss.

The prophet Jeremiah once denounced the false prophets of his day by saying words that I believe offer challenge to people today. The words of the prophet offer challenge to all of us whether we are people who support this war or people who oppose it. Jeremiah said of the false prophets, “They dress the wounds of my people as though it were no serious. ‘Peace, peace,” they say, when there is no peace.”

So let me attempt to end this sermon with my best effort to avoid the temptations of false prophecy and the errors foolish speaking … for there is no peace. There is no peace in the world. There is no peace in this community. There is no peace in my heart. There is no peace no matter how much we might wish it otherwise. The wounds that have been suffered and will be suffered are serious. The losses are real. Military victory or defeat will not bring back a single life that has been lost in this war. The truth is there is no peace. The truth is we are all losers.

And yet perhaps there is still a dim kind of hope to be found in the midst of all this loss. Perhaps there is a chance, however small, that as we wander through the desert of war we may encounter a pure stream; a stream that can flow through many different religious traditions; a stream that gives life and not death; a stream that can wash away the dirt and the filth that infects the wounds of all people; a stream that can renew, restore and sustain us; a stream that can flow in and around us and give us the hope to say, “Peace, peace,” and there will be peace.

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