November 5, 2006 Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost,
All Saints Day Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 119:1-8; Mark 12:28-34
Every year on All Saints Day Sunday we sing “For All the Saints.” We
sing it in part because of what it means to us and in part because it reminds us of
those who have gone before us for whom it had great meaning. I just was with my
father in Florida this week who is 87 and has had a recent brush with death. I
found out that “For All the Saints” is a hymn he would like sung at his funeral. It
seems important to me that we sing it today, and yet it seems equally important
that I apologize to those of you who will find that its words contradict your ideas
of what Christ is all about.
The challenge to many of us comes from the war imagery. Here are some
of the lines we will sing:
Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might:
Thou, Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight…
O may thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold…
And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long.
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Many people have no problem with this imagery. They interpret the life
and teachings of Jesus as approving war and killing for a just cause. Jesus himself
said that he came to bring a sword, after all. (Mathew 10:34)
Others of us interpret things differently. An Orthodox monk from
California has written poetically about what it means that Jesus brought a sword.
The monk observes that Jesus
Forgave everyone—even His own murderers,
Therefore did He come bringing peace.
And yet this noncontention is in contention with the
contention of this world:
Therefore did He come, bringing His peace with a sword.
(Christ the Eternal Tao, p158)
In this kind of interpretation the sword of Christ is a sword that sheds no
blood but its own, a sword of nonviolence that does violence only to violence by
cutting it off, a sword of unconditional, universal love that takes the sins of the
world upon itself and forgives everyone everything and so eliminates all enemies
by befriending them.
I am sure that there are others who ignore this sword altogether—it is easy
to skip because only Mathew includes it. I am sure some can envision no sense in
which Jesus brings conflict into our lives. As much as I wish I could think that
way, I cannot reconcile it with scripture, history or experience. If I could see a
conflict-free way of Christ maybe I could be free of “For All the Saints” and “the
well-fought fight.”
But I see that Christ’s “non-contention is in contention with the contention
of this world.” I see that the cause of establishing God’s realm of justice and
mercy and peace puts us in constant conflict with a world full of injustice, cruelty
and violence. I see no way out of that conflict—to walk away from it is to walk
away from the way of Jesus Christ. Fear of suffering or desire for an easy life may
make us want to walk away, but Christ calls us to have courage and to sacrifice
our self for the sake of God’s realm. He promises that this will turn out to be a
better way for us even though we suffer. It looks foolish and weak, but turns out
to be wise and full of the power of resurrection light.
The questions remains whether to read the words of “For All the Saints” as
celebrating our violent militaristic wars or rather as strictly metaphorical language
that describes our nonviolent force of love striving to transform forces that are not
loving.
This summer Senator John McCain was working to tighten the rules on
America’s use of “aggressive interrogation techniques”—which is a sanitized way
of saying America’s use of the same kind of torture that the civilized world
condemned in the Nazis and Kmer Rouge and others. McCain was not going as
far as some to hold America to its highest ideals, but he was trying to put
moderation in our current Administration’s policies.
Louis P. Sheldon responded to McCain’s effort in the Los Angeles Times
(September 19th). Sheldon is the Chair of the Traditional Values Coalition. He
said that working to restrict America’s use of torture “very definitely is going to
put a chilling effect on the tremendous strides (Senator McCain) has made in the
conservative evangelical community.”
I quote that to give voice to one stream of Christianity that has no problem
with Christians killing and even torturing our enemies. But it is very important to
note that Mr. Sheldon said “ the conservative evangelical community.” A recent
New York Times poll showed that the evangelical Christian community is evenly
divided in how they will vote this Tuesday. Half of them will vote Republican and
half Democrat, and for many of these, the war in Iraq is the deciding factor. Some
evangelical Christians are proponents of nonviolence, and some who would call
themselves liberal or progressive nonevangelicals believe that Christian violence
can be justified
It may seem to us that the acceptance of violence is the traditional Christian
stance, but in fact absolute nonviolence is the older, more orthodox stream of
Christian thought, and it has the teachings of Jesus on its side. The early church
condemned war or any form of human killing for hundreds of years. Roman
soldiers who converted to Christianity were advised either to resign from the
military or to refuse to kill, even if they would be killed as punishment. The
church was unanimous on this, at a time when it was unanimous about almost
nothing else.
During that period the earliest Christian monks went out to the deserts of
Egypt and the Middle East. Many stories have been handed down about their
refusal to harm or judge or punish others, even in revenge. Once a hermit caught
someone robbing his cell, and he cried out to other monks who happened to be
nearby and they grabbed the robber and took him to be put in jail. Later that night
they were horrified at what they had done in anger, and they snuck into the jail and
set the robber free.
Once Abbot Moses was called to come sit with the other elders to judge a
monk who committed a serious fault. Abbot Moses refused at first, but the other
elders insisted. So he took a very old basket full of holes and filled it with sand
and carried it on his back to the assembly. The elders asked him, “What are you
doing?” Abbot Moses replied, “My sins are running out behind me, and I do not
see them, and I come to judge the sins of another!” When the elders heard this
they were humbled, and they forgave their brother’s fault.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers waged an inner war with their own false
selves and demons. They were increasingly and painfully aware of their own
faults and how difficult it was, what a struggle, what a fight it was to overcome
them. It taught them humility and it gave them compassion and a militantly
nonjudgmental attitude toward others.
Sixteen hundred years later the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
prescribed another Christian way of looking at the world that arrived at the same
place. He said, “If we could read the secret history or our ‘enemies’ we should
find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Some may argue against the practicality of such extreme compassion and
lovingkindness. They may say, “Yes, but in the face of a Nazi holocaust or
Cambodian killing fields or a September 11th, we must compromise our ideals and
resort to violence.” Some may say that the ability of nonviolence to save the
world is just an ancient Christian myth. But those wise early Christians felt that
the usefulness of violence touted by empire after passing empire was the myth,
and the power of Christ-like nonviolence was the eternal truth.
A Desert Father named Abbot Pastor said, “Malice will never drive out
malice. But if people do evil to you, you should do good to them, so that by your
good work you may destroy their malice.”
Almost two thousand years later another profoundly wise Christian said
something similar—and he proved the power of its truth by what he accomplished.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Returning violence for violence multiples 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.”
Those are the words we should have ringing in our ears as we sing “For All
the Saints.” Only nonviolence can put an end to violence. Only love can drive out
hate. The people who live by those principles are the people we should be
thinking of as we sing. We should think of people like the many Civil Rights
soldiers, faithful, true and bold who nobly fought the well-fought fight of old, who
took Christ as their captain, commanding nonviolence and love. We should think
of the team of people Eleanor Zue is traveling with to Israel and Palestine later
today, whose five practices in their war against war are cultivating compassion,
developing a fair witness, respecting themselves and others, listening with the
heart and speaking from the heart. Eleanor’s group follows principles such as,
“Every form of violence comes from an unhealed wound,” (Gene Knudsen
Hoffman) and “In resolving conflict, focus on the problem—not the person.
Reach toward unconditional love for the person.”
Let us remember these practices and words, and let us remember those who
are willing to risk their lives to fulfill them. “And when the strife is fierce, the
warfare long” in our lives let these things be the “distant triumph song” that we
hear. In our struggles, if we call to mind these Christ-like ideals and bold lives,
we may find that our “hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.”
Let us pray in silence, reflecting on any conflict or struggle that has been
troubling us recently, and asking the Holy Spirit to guide and empower us to
respond by the ideals of Christ’s love…
Amen
Postscript:
On All Saints Day Sunday we remember past saints who have died, some
of whom died fighting in wars. It is important to remember the teaching of the
Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest proponent of nonviolence in modern history.
Gandhi said that when confronting evil, the worst thing is not when we respond
with violence—it is when we do not respond at all. He said that if we are not
prepared to practice nonviolence, it is better to respond courageously with
whatever means we can than to let the evil go unchallenged. We can honor those
Christians who fought and sacrificed their lives—we can honor them for their
courage and their belief in a just cause even as we try to become more faithful to
Christ’s ideal of nonviolence and love.
Sermon 11/05/2006