Sermons

In Time of War

And so the war begins, a war many of us have feared, resisted, and protested for months.

When I heard the news I felt immense grief and a strange relief.

Grief for all the death and suffering of war, for the innocents who will die, for the soldiers on both sides who will be killed or maimed physically or emotionally, for the failure of all of us around the world who worked so hard for peace.

And a relief that took me by surprise-that having struggled for months to stop this war against all odds I could now, for a few days anyway, just read the papers and listen to the radio and watch CNN like everybody else, a spectator to events now far beyond my influence, let alone my control.

Not that the news media convey any meaningful account of what's going on. They're "imbedded" in the military in more ways than one. To anyone who remembers the constant and chronically inflated "body counts" of enemy casualties in the Vietnam war, the general silence on estimated Iraqi deaths, military or civilian, is breathtaking.

As I told the congregation last Sunday, I seriously contemplated joining in nonviolent civil disobedience upon the commencement of hostilities. But as I planned the service for the night war began, I realized I could not responsibly delegate leading that service to anyone. However passionate my opposition to this war, I could not risk being in jail at that moment. My place was and is here, with you. As I continue my public witness against this war, civil disobedience may yet play a part, but not today.

Preaching on Buddhism last Sunday, I shared Thich Nhat Hanh's suggestion that we make a sign asking "Are you sure?" and hang it where we can't miss it. As I try to make sense of this war and what it portends, I feel I need that sign more than ever.

And so I say again and again, whatever your view on this war or on any issue, you are welcome here-welcome to think for yourself, to speak your mind, to join this endless exploration and sacred conversation in which no one holds a superior claim upon truth.

At our service Thursday night I was struck that for every statement of sorrow and anger and fear, I heard another of uncertainty and confusion. In wartime, uncertainty and confusion become our daily rations. We don't know what's happening, and we don't where it will lead.

We know that notwithstanding the customary patriotic proclamations of unity, we are deeply divided by this war-divided as a nation and divided within our own hearts and minds.

The New York Times reports that after the president's address Thursday night, only 62 percent of our adult population favored military action, a strikingly low level of support for a policy the president had vigorously advocated for months and to which he had just committed the lives of America's sons and daughters. Nearly the same majority thought the onset of hostilities actually increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. A Gallup poll captured the swirl of emotions Americans felt on hearing the news: 83 percent reported feeling confident; 65 percent felt proud; 63 percent felt sad; 56 percent worried; and 34 percent afraid.

Of course we're conflicted and confused.

Saddam Hussein is a ruthless despot who brutalizes his own people. But what chance does the United States have to impose democracy by force on a country that has never known it?

Weapons of mass destruction should be eliminated, but the United States possesses more of them than the rest of the world combined.

September 11 proved our vulnerability to terrorism. But will attacking Iraq make another 9/11 more likely?

The United Nations has been loathe to intervene even to prevent a human rights catastrophe. But what future has the UN when the world's only superpower flouts its will?

War is horrific. But will war today prevent worse war tomorrow?

These are the uncomfortable moral and practical equations we calculate and recalculate day by day, sometimes moment by moment.

In Friday's Boston Globe, enumerating the abuses perpetrated by Saddam Hussein, Scot Lehigh calculates: "Horrible as war is, gut-wrenching as it is to contemplate the death of US soldiers or Iraqi civilians, some things are worse than war-and Saddam Hussein's hideous regime is one of them."

But I calculate there's another thing worse than war, and that is war after war after war-war unending until the end of time.

War begets war. Study any war in history and you will trace its origins to another war before it. Every war sows the seeds of the next.

A young German soldier named Adolph Hitler staggers home from the trenches of Flanders smoldering with betrayed nationalism. The Taliban learn to fight with American weapons against the Soviet invaders. To harass our enemies the Iranians, the United States munificently supports Saddam Hussein in his bloody battles against them. The deployment in Muslim Saudi Arabia of infidel US troops in the first Gulf War triggers Osama bin Laden's violent jihad against America.

War takes the law of unintended consequences and multiplies it exponentially and lethally.

War breeds war because war demands a war culture. Most people want to live in peace. Ratcheting up and sustaining a martial spirit require a sophisticated campaign of distortion and fear. But even after the war ends, the distortion and fear remain, like buried warheads leaching their toxins into the groundwater.

Trying to end war with war is like trying to clean an oil stain with a rag filthy with oil.

Poets, as Laura Bush discovered, can be dangerous truth-tellers. Australian Judith Wright touches the truth of war in ten brief lines:

The will to power destroys the power to will.
The weapon made, we cannot help but use it;
it drags us with its own momentum still.
The power to kill compounds the need to kill.
Grown out of hand the heart cannot refuse it;
the will to power undoes the power to will.
Though as we strike we cry, "I did not choose it,"
it drags us with its own momentum still.
In the one stroke we win the world and lose it.
The will to power destroys the power to will.

In the same Boston Globe in which Scot Lehigh pronounced this war "humane and just," I found these headlines: "Saudi linked to Al Qaeda wanted by FBI." "Court-martial opposed in friendly-fire deaths." "2 helicopters reported missing in Chechnya." "Explosion kills man, wounds 13 in Sidon." "Paris rail station yields ricin traces." "Palestinian forces kill Hamas activist." "1,000 arrested in crackdown in Serbia." "South Korea puts military on alert after start of war." "[Ivory Coast] Rebels shun Cabinet meeting." "Protests target US in Cairo." "Targeted strike rekindles assassination debate." "Pakistan: Huge protests against US eyed."

On the road of war, peace shimmers on the horizon but remains always, always out of reach.

Mahatma Gandhi understood this. "I object to violence," he said, "because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

A. J. Muste understood this. "There is no way to peace," he said. "Peace is the way."

Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this. He said, "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. . . . Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. . . . Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Violence has become our global addiction. The only way to break an addiction is to quit.

Violence is always a failure of creativity, a failure to imagine other solutions. We are becoming more and more creative-not yet creative enough, still we begin to glimpse more and more the potential of nonviolence.

A few weeks ago in San Francisco, Dr. Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, now eighty years old, was honored for a lifetime of service in the cause of peace.

What he had to say was surprising, even stunning.

"I'm so honored to be here," he said. "I'm so honored to be alive at such a miraculous time in history. Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war."

We are waging peace, Muller said. It's hard and constant work and we must not let up. It's never happened before--never in human history--waging peace through a global conversation-not before WWI or WWII, not before Vietnam or Korea, this is a stunning new era of global listening, speaking, and responsibility.

"This," he said, "is a miracle. This is what "waging peace looks like."

No matter what happens, Muller insisted, history will record that the 21st century began with the world in dialogue looking deeply and profoundly as a global community at the legitimacy of war.

Dr. Muller is surely as deeply disappointed as any of us that the United States chose to launch its attack rather than face defeat in the Security Council. But from the wisdom of his age and experience, Muller sees what's truly amazing: not that we are at war-war is a commonplace of human history-but that we are finally talking about war in a new way, more critical, better informed, using global communications technologies to challenge the mythology of war more quickly, accurately, and profoundly than ever before.

"Are you sure?" the insistent sign demands.

No. I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything.

That's what faith is for. I have faith in the inherent goodness of people and the matchless power of love.

Am I afraid? Yeah, I'm afraid.

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön tells a story about fear.

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn't want to do it, but her teacher insisted.

The young warrior stood on one side, fear on the other. The warrior felt very small. Fear looked huge and wrathful. Both had their weapons.

The young warrior prostrated herself three times before fear and asked, "May I have permission to do battle with you?"

Fear said, "Thank you for showing me such respect that you ask permission."

The young warrior said, "How can I defeat you?"

Fear replied, "My weapons are that I talk fast and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don't do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don't do what I say, I have no power."

And so the young warrior learned how to defeat fear.

William Stafford teaches much the same lesson in his poem "For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid," and I leave you with his words:

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

Amen.

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