December
2007
Advent: A Pilgrimage of Peace
A sermon preached on December 2, the First Sunday of Advent, 2007, by Rev. George Regas
As we begin today the season of Advent, I want to frame this four week pilgrimage to Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus with two biblical proclamations: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4) “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven
and on earth peace among all people.’” (Luke 2:4)
A four week pilgrimage of peace. That would be a wonderful Advent.
George Clooney relates a dinner conversation he had with his aunt, singer Rosemary Clooney. “She said she was a better singer when she got older.” And George said, “Why are you a better singer now? You can’t hold the notes like you used to. And you can’t hit the high notes like you used to.” And Rosemary Clooney said, “I don’t have to prove I can sing anymore.” (L.A. Times, 9/30/07)
And there is some of that story in this preacher, as I proclaim God’s urgent call to us to be deeply committed peacemakers in this war fractious world. I no longer have to prove I’m committed to peace. The greatness of All Saints Church is found in your deep commitment over the decades to be on the front lines pursuing peaceful resolutions for conflicts around the world.
I have gathered my remarks this morning around four concerns:
1. Alan Greenspan, in his just published memoir, writes: The Iraq War is largely about oil.” What are the implications of that statement?
2. There is such a horrendous cost for the Iraq War; how do we live with the words of the prophet Isaiah and the challenges of Jesus, the peacemaker, as we fight for oil?
3. If humankind is ever to live in peace, the religions of the world must be true to their core mandates for peace; but with millennia of religious wars, is that really possible?
4. A final word to the All Saints Community: are you willing once again to give great leadership to the reawakening of a national peace movement, where religious faith is one of the primary imperatives?
I.
Alan Greenspan should know. He says it was oil all along. He is the former head of the Federal Reserve Board. In his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventure in a New World, he writes these words: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq War is largely about oil.” Greenspan even advised President Bush that, “Taking Saddam Hussein out was essential to protect our oil surplus.”
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves and it is estimated that Iraq may have an additional 220 to 300 million barrels of undiscovered oil. If these figures are anywhere near the mark, the U.S. forces are sitting on one-forth of this world’s oil reserves.
The financial value of this Iraq is incalculable and the political value would be overwhelming. Who gets the oil? One of the benchmarks the U.S. has set for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law written by the U.S. for the Iraqi congress. The law cedes nearly all the oil to the control of Western countries.
So it becomes clearer why so many power brokers all determined to keep the American troops in Iraq for many years to come.
All the arguments about when the troops and how many come home miss the point. The way the U.S. maintains power over Iraqi oil is by establishing permanent bases in Iraq. Five self sufficient super bases are in various stages of completion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently indicated that 40,000 troops will remain in Iraq at these bases for many years. President Bush speaks of the Korean model for the future of Iraq.
Behind all the lies and distortions, the U.S. invaded Iraq for the oil. The code word for this: “our vital national interests.” Companies will need military protection. Remember Clinton, Obama and Edwards have not said they will bring all of the troops home by the end of the first term, 2013.
Tragically, it looks like Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of oil wealth.
We must get the truth out, or this great country is going to die of too many lies.
Withdrawal from Iraq is not an option to those who have planned the Iraq War as an essential part of the American empire. We are so powerful that no other nation, friend or foe, can ever rival us. The real goal of our foreign policy, according to the neo-cons in the Bush Administration, is to establish the Pax Americana. This pugnacious assertion of the New American Empire has long been in the works. The overt theme is unilateralism – but it is ultimately a story of domination. The material is there to read. It is a tragic read.
II.
What is the cost of all this? The media indicate that the military “surge” is working: fewer American deaths – thank God for that, less conflict among Shia and Sunni, and some of the Iraqi refugees are returning home. The Democrats are even saying Bush’s war is no longer a central election issue.
Those running for the Republican Presidential nomination are even saying we can have a victory in Iraq and secure our “vital national interests.” They have even managed to turn the escalation of a failed war into a “surge,” as if it were a current of electricity through a wire, instead of blood spurting from the ruptured vein of a soldier (Bill Moyers).
God have mercy on us.
There is such a horrendous cost for this war to secure our “national interests.” I can’t imagine how we deal with Jesus, the peacemaker, at whose birth the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to all people” – and support a war for oil.
Yes, our dominant position is clear. As Dr. Kissinger says, “industrial nations cannot accept radical forces dominating a region on which their economies depend.” (Washington Post) Do you really think we would invade Iraq if their major export was broccoli?
The spin doctors want you and me to remember that those terrorists, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the jihadists, or whoever – are trying to destroy our way of life.
Many so-called political realists are now saying the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success. We are securing our “vital national interest.”
God, have mercy on us.
Is that your opinion? Look with me at the cost of securing our vital national interests.
• $2 trillion over 10 years, including $700 billion for interest, since the Iraq War is fought on borrowed money;
• 1.2 million Iraqis dead and tens of thousands wounded, over half of these children;
• 4 million Iraqi refugees, disproportionately children;
• Families destroyed and social networks ripped apart;
• 4,000 American soldiers dead and 45,000 wounded.
But the real cost of the Iraq War is yet to be defined. The impact of the first Gulf War, a four day ground war, is revealing. Of those veterans, more than one out of every four has been granted a service-connected disability. What does this portend for the almost 1.5 million veterans of this war, many of whom have served multiple deployments in a conflict approaching its five-year anniversary?
To say this horrific cost is worth it, for we are responding to the terrorists and are securing our vital national interest, is obscene.
Oh, the physical destruction of Iraq – the cradle of civilization – and the suffering of millions. It overwhelms us. But there is also the death of the spirit and the erosion of conscience in this land of ours. Something has happened to America because of Iraq, and our basic decency as a people can no longer be taken for granted.
Hold this in mind as we walk toward that Bethlehem stable where we celebrate the birth of one we call the Prince of Peace.
III.
We are searching for an interfaith peace initiative.
Ed Bacon and I have been working on a project called the Abrahamic Faith Peace Initiative. If humankind is ever to live in peace, the religions of the world must be true to their core mandates for peace with justice.
Religion’s link to violence over the centuries is indeed an embarrassment. Strong religious beliefs often underpin state violence.
And yet, adherents of the Abrahamic Faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – all claim that their religions are religions of peace. However, each of these faiths has recently blessed war. Sixty-nine percent of evangelicals supported President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in March, 2003. But what if the adherents of each faith could understand that peacemaking is not simply one option but is, in fact, a central mandate from the heart of faith that cannot be ignored?
We have a distinguished group of 30 working with us, composed equally of Jews, Christians and Muslims. What a great day it would be if those who persisted in justifying war on religious grounds became embattled minorities within these three faith traditions!
Judaism teaches that all are created in God’s image, so Jews strive to recognize God’s presence in every human face. To take one life is to diminish God’s presence in the world. The Rabbis elaborating on this point have said, “When one destroys a single individual, it is as if that person destroyed the whole world.” (Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 4:5)
Judaism doesn’t support the ethic of pacifism. However, reliance on armies and solving problems through aggression is denounced as it was by the prophets. And modern war, with its horrific collateral damage, is incompatible with the best of Jewish thought.
Peace in Islam does not mean the absence of war, but the absence of oppression, corruption, injustice and tyranny. Islam considers that real peace can only be attained when justice prevails.
The Qur’an is a living document with broad strokes of moral and ethical guidelines. The Qur’an invites contextual interpretation. However, the Muslim literalists and sectarians attempt to block this. Eighty percent of Muslims are illiterate. This hampers interpretation of the sacred texts.
Most Islamic scholars say it is impossible to justify modern warfare because of collateral damage. Total, unrestricted conflict is completely un- Islamic. A recent letter to Christians from 138 Islamic scholars says: “Our very souls are at stake if we fail to sincerely make every effort to make peace.”
Jesus of Nazareth was a radically inclusive and resolute peacemaker and reconciler. He called his followers to be peacemakers and reconcilers in his name. Peacemaking and justice lie at the very core of Jesus’ preaching ministry. Nonviolence is the holy path that humankind is called to follow. All those coming after Jesus and seeking to live faithfully are called to live in this new way of reconciling love. Unfortunately, this type of Christianity is practiced in very few places throughout the world. James Robinson, New Testament scholar at Claremont Graduate University, writes: “The hardest saying of Jesus is: ‘Why do you call me master, master, and do not what I say?’” (Jesus According to the Earliest Witness, p. 143).
At the very heart of the Sermon on the Mount, a collection of sayings that are the central expression of Jesus’ vision, lies this remarkable teaching: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)
Jesus’ own death reveals a God whose response to violence is love and nonviolence. Jesus refused to retaliate. He loved even those who killed him. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”
How can we live closely to the spirit of Jesus and the horror of war, and not discern that religious principles are inseparable from political stances? Gary Dorrien, a social ethics professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, says, “You can’t take the Sermon on the Mount seriously and not be involved in peace movements.” Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, flips the reigning social order on its head and tells the crowds that the meek and those who work for peace -rather than the powerful and violent – are truly blessed by God.
Surely, these words of Jesus shout to our America: what does it profit a nation if it gains the whole world for democracy and loses its own soul? God have mercy on us for what the Iraq war is doing to the soul of our nation; for in many ways, just as the road bombs in Iraq are tragically destroying our soldiers, in many ways the Iraq war is inflicting its dehumanizing shrapnel into our hearts.
IV.
I don’t have a plan today to place before you. That is your task. However, I’m convinced God is calling the All Saints Community to give great leadership to the reawakening of a national peace movement. That is no easy task.
You know, all too often, the greatest obstacle to peace is the peace movement itself.
Factions arise.
Fences are erected.
Jealousies mount.
Dogmatic certainties and absolutism reign.
And the cause all of us believe in is lost in the shattered fragments of what once was a clear and compelling vision.
Bill Moyers is a friend to many of us. Moyers says that, as a Baptist, he knows about all of this divisive stuff. One of his favorite stories is about a fellow who was about to jump off a bridge.
Then another fellow ran up to him, crying, “Stop, Stop, Don’t do it!”
The man on the bridge looks down and asks, “Why not?”
“Well, there is much to live for.”
“What for?”
“Well, your faith. Your religion. Are you religious?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too. Christian or Muslim?”
“Christian.”
“Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
“Protestant.”
“Me, too. Are you Baptist or Presbyterian?”
“Baptist.”
“Me, too. Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or Reformed Baptist Church of God?”
“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”
“Me, too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God Reformation of
1879, or Reform Baptist Church of God Reformation of 1917?”
“1917.”
Whereupon, the second fellow turned red in the face and yelled, “Die you heretic scum,” and pushed him off the bridge.
Doesn’t that sound a little like the peace movement?
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
What a great day it would be if the world religions could come together and declare that, in spite of our histories of blessing war and conflicts, we stand together saying every person is sacred and precious to God. We will not condone war ever again.
Are President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with the remaining neo-con advisors, pushing us toward war with Iran? Much of the talk is very similar to what we heard before our shock and awe attack on Iraq.
The anti-war voice is faint. I am deeply disappointed that faith communities across the country have been so silent and uninvolved. The pro- peace presence in Washington’s political establishment is thin. And now a majority of Americans have bought the Bush propaganda and favor a pre-emptive air strike on Iran.
We can change that. It is possible to radicalize the establishment – you and I being part of that – and take middle America and give their good will and desire to build a world of peace clearer focus, deeper spiritual roots and more effective power.
Down deep, America is searching its conscience; churches, synagogues, mosques and temples are struggling for their souls, for the integrity of their message and the courage of their convictions. We must not back away from this challenge.
When history is written 200 or 300 years from now and people ask, “When did that creative change take place when the nations of the world buried the instruments of war and slaughter and turned their resources to mending the world and sharing the earth’s richness with all her children?” maybe they will say, “It was when so much of the world was involved in the cataclysmic brutality of war at the beginning of the 21st Century and people of many faiths across the globe stood up and said with their lives:
“Religious Communities must stop blessing war and violence.”
That is my deepest hope and prayer today.
Amen.