peace – Page 4 – Dan Harper

Athena

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading is an Orphic Hymn to the ancient Greek goddess Athena:

“Only-begotten, noble race of Zeus, blessed and fierce, who joyest in caves to rove: O warlike Pallas, whose illustrious kind, ineffable, and effable we find: magnanimous and famed, the rocky height, and groves, and shady mountains thee delight: in arms rejoicing, who with furies dire and wild the souls of mortals dost inspire. Gymnastic virgin of terrific mind, dire Gorgon’s bane, unmarried, blessed, kind: mother of arts, impetuous; understood as fury by the bad, but wisdom by the good. Female and male, the arts of war are thine, O much-formed, Drakaina, inspired divine: over the Phlegraion Gigantes, roused to ire, thy coursers driving with destructive dire. Tritogeneia, of splendid mien, purger of evils, all-victorious queen. Hear me, O Goddess, when to thee I pray, with supplicating voice both night and day, and in my latest hour give peace and health, propitious times, and necessary wealth, and ever present be thy votaries aid, O much implored, art’s parent, [bright]-eyed maid.”

[#32, The Hymns of Orpheus. Translated by Thomas Taylor (1792). Modern edition: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.]

The second reading is from Pseudo-Apollodorus, a Greek mythographer of the second century of the common era. It tells the story of how the ancient Greek city of Attika came to choose Athena as their special goddess:

“Kekrops, a son of the soil, with a body compounded of man and serpent, was the first king of Attika… In his time, they say, the gods resolved to take possession of cities in which each of them should receive his own peculiar worship. So Poseidon was the first that came to Attika, and with a blow of his trident on the middle of the acropolis, he produced a sea which they now call Erekhtheis. After him came Athena, and, having called on Kekrops to witness her act of taking possession, she planted an olive tree, which is still shown in the Pandrosion. But when the two strove for possession of the country, Zeus parted them and appointed arbiters, not, as some have affirmed, Kekrops and Kranaus, nor yet Erysikhthon, but the twelve gods [and goddesses]. And in accordance with their verdict the country was adjudged to Athena, because Kekrops bore witness that she had been the first to plant the olive. Athena, therefore, called the city Athens after herself, and Poseidon in hot anger flooded the Thriasian plain and laid Attika under the sea.”

[Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.1, trans. Frazer.]

Sermon

This is the second of a short series of sermons on Greek goddesses. This morning I would like to speak about Athena, goddess of wisdom and of war; but before I do so, let me remind you why I think it is a good idea to preach about Greek goddesses in a Unitarian Universalist church.

Beginning in the 1970’s, we Unitarian Universalists began to realize that, when it comes to religion, women were often “overlooked and undervalued.” We actively worked to root out sexism from our shared faith. In the 1980’s, we rewrote our principles and purposes using gender-neutral language, and in the 1990’s, under the influence of ecofeminism, we added a principle about our commitment to respect the interdependent web of all life. In 1993, we published a new hymnal that included feminist hymns and songs. And many of our congregations were very active in addressing sexism at the local level. Over the past thirty or forty years, we have changed our selves and our attitudes, and have done away with a significant amount of sexism within Unitarian Universalism.

But of course the surrounding culture is still dominated by the idea of a male father god, and it is very hard for any of us to escape this idea. It is easiest to see the effects of the surrounding culture on our children: like it or not, they do learn the idea that God is a white man with a white beard sitting on a cloud somewhere up in the sky, and it can b e hard to talk t hem out of that idea. Thus we find ourselves devoting a significant amount of time in our Sunday school presenting the children with alternative ideas about God;– last year in the Sunday school, we spent much of the year with the children’s book “Hide and Seek with God,” a book which presents alternative God-images from the Christian tradition and from other world religions. This is the kind of thing we do so that our children can get past the idea that God is an old white man with a white beard sitting on a cloud.

Of course, as much as we don’t want to admit it, we adults are also influenced by the surrounding culture. Sometimes we catch ourselves making the assumption that the dominant male images of God are in fact the only images of God. For example, I have noticed that when people talk about the pro-atheism books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the discussions of these books tend to assume that God is singular, all-powerful, all-knowing; in other words, assume that God is the typical patriarchal male God of traditional Christianity. Both the atheists and the supporters of God weaken their arguments when they ignore the fact that there is more than one god-image out there.

In spite of recent scholarship which has uncovered female god-images in the Bible, and in other world religions, too many of us adults cleave to the old god-image of a white man with a beard sitting on a cloud somewhere up in the sky. Yes, even we Unitarian Universalists fall into this trap. We forget that Unitarian minister Theodore Parker was addressing his liberal Christian prayers to father God and mother God back in the 1850’s; and we Unitarian Universalists often forget that god-images can be either male or female, or gender-neutral, or differently gendered, or that gender does not even apply to the divine.

To keep myself from falling into the trap of thinking that the divine must be male, I like to spend some time thinking about the goddesses, like the Greek goddesses, who are a part of our Western culture. It’s not that I’m going to worship or believe in these goddesses; but remembering that our Western culture has lots of female god-images helps keep me from falling into the cultural trap of assuming that all god-images must be male. It’s a way of examining and challenging my unconscious assumptions.

Now you know why I’m preaching a series of sermons on Greek goddesses. Now let me turn our attention to Athena, a goddess who challenges many of our assumptions.

…

And to begin to tell you how Athena can challenge our assumptions, I should begin by telling you the story of Black Athena. Back in 1987, a scholar named Martin Bernal published a book titled Black Athena. In this book, Bernal stated his belief that the roots of Greek culture — and therefore the roots of all the Western European culture that sprang from it — the roots of ancient Greek culture lay in Africa. On the face of it, this is not a particularly remarkable thing to say. All the cultures of the ancient Near East, all the gods and goddesses of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world, seem to have been interrelated. Certainly the African culture of Egypt is an older culture than ancient Greek culture. So to say that the Egyptians had tremendous influence on the later cultures of ancient Greece should not be very controversial.

And the ancient Greeks knew that Athena herself had a connection to Africa. Plato, in his dialogue the Timaeus, tells us that in Egypt, there is a city called Saïs, and the citizens of that city have a guardian goddess: “The citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athena…” [Timaeus 21e, trans. Jowett]. Thus Plato said that the Greek goddess Athena was somehow related to the Egyptian goddess Neith. It was an obvious connection to make: both Athena and Neith were goddesses of war and goddesses of weaving, and they shared other characteristics as well.

But when Martin Bernal wrote his book Black Athena he created a storm of controversy. One of the things that made his book controversial was Bernal’s image of a dark-skinned Athena. In our world, which is so conscious of skin color and race, it was shocked some white people, and some people of color, to think that the goddess Athena might have been black,– when for all these years most of us in the Western world have thought of Athena as being white.

We sometimes try to erect hard-and-fast boundaries in realms where there are no hard-and-fast boundaries. Racial and cultural boundaries appear to have been more permeable in the ancient Near East than we may want to believe. Ancient Near East gods and goddesses moved from one culture to another, and from one religion to another. Indeed, when I hear Wisdom revered in the Bible as a female figure of goddess-like importance, as in the responsive reading this morning, I wonder what other goddesses she was related to, and even if she was perhaps related to Athena, who was also a goddess of wisdom.

I imagine there was a web of cultural connections throughout the ancient Near East: connections between various goddesses and gods; connections between the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa; connections between peoples of all different skin colors from black to white to various shades of brown. In our minds, we have divided the world into distinct continents, and people into distinct races, but some of the divisions that we make are too arbitrary.

I started out saying that Athena might help us to be aware that the divine might just as well be female as male, or have no gender at all. The image of an African Athena can help us be aware that the divine might have black, brown, or white skin color, or be utterly beyond human racial categories. So this is another way in which thinking about Athena helps us to challenge our assumptions about our god-images.

One of the things that has bothered me about Athena is that she is both the goddess of wisdom, and the goddess of war. Since I think of war as a kind of madness, it seemed to me that Athena was combining two contradictory elements within her. How could she embody both war and wisdom?

The poet Robert Graves gives us a clue as to how this might be so. Graves says that although she is indeed the goddess of war, Athena “gets no pleasure from battle, as [the god] Ares and [the goddess] Eris do, but rather from settling disputes, and upholding the law by pacific means.” [The Greek Myths]

What particularly interests me is that Athena does not reject violence altogether. But when she does go to war it is for good reason; and should she decide to go to war, she uses her wisdom to develop adequate strategy and tactics, so that she never loses a battle. Ares, the male god of war, likes violence for the sake of violence, and he is often defeated because of his inability to plan out his strategy and tactics. [Graves, Greek Myths, 25.a] By contrast, Athena does not like to go to war, but she will do so if justice requires her to do so. Athena’s attitude towards war has helped to challenge my assumptions about peacemaking.

Last June, Rev. William Schulz gave a talk on his Unitarian Universalist theology of peacemaking. Schulz, a Unitarian Universalist minister, was president of Amnesty International from 1993 to 2006. Schulz said that in his years at Amnesty International, he “was exposed on a daily basis to the most sordid and gratuitous violence.” He saw, over and over again, and sometimes first-hand, the results of torture and government-sanctioned violence. In the face of such acts of violence, he felt that he could not uphold the ideal of complete and utter pacifism. He said he could not believe in what he called the impossible ideal of complete pacifism; instead, he believed that sometimes true justice requires military intervention.

As an example, Schulz said that if the United States military had enforced a no-fly zone over Darfur over the past three or four years — and such enforcement would include the possibility of shooting down aircraft which violated the no-fly zone — then much of the genocide now going on in Darfur could have been avoided. For that reason, Schulz does not support the way the war in Iraq has been handled because he believes that the Iraq war has so over-extended the United States military that we have been unable to respond to other, more urgent, humanitarian situations such as the genocide in Darfur.

William Schulz might get along quite well with Athena. Like Athena, he believes that any use of violence has to be guided by justice. Like Athena, he also believes that any use of violence has to be guided by long-range strategy and tactics, so that one’s military forces don’t become overextended. When I say that Schulz would get along well with Athena, I don’t mean that literally of course; to the best of my knowledge, Schulz is a humanist, and I don’t believe he is a goddess-worshipper. But like Athena, Schulz challenges us to move beyond the traditional Western Christian notions of religious pacifism, to go beyond the old Christian teachings on “just war theory.” Both Athena and William Schulz value practical wisdom over abstract adherence to principles, and they challenge us to consider the possibility of a theology of peacemaking that allows for limited use of violence in order to prevent more violence.

Athena has led us quite far afield, hasn’t she? First she challenged us to rethink our religious images of race and gender. Then she challenged us to rethink our religious notions of pacifism and peacemaking. Where will she lead us next?

In the second reading this morning, we heard how both Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Athena tried to take possession of the city of Athens. Poseidon laid claim to Athens by striking his trident on the ground, which opened up a well filled with sea-water; but this salty water was not of much use to the Athenian citizens. Then Athena came along and planted an olive tree; this tree produced food, cooking oil, and wood for the Athenians. Presumably, no one living in Athens had ever seen an olive tree before, because cultivated olives are not native to Greece. Not surprisingly, the Athenian citizens said that Athena had made the best claim to their city, and she became their ruling goddess. This is why we call the city Athens even today; it is the city named after Athena.

In the past few months, I have found reason to think about this story of how Athena gave the olive tree to Athens. On January 19, the New York Times ran a story titled “A New Global Oil Quandary,” the opening paragraph of which read: “Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop [of cooking oil]. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material. This is the other oil shock.”

You see, for much of the world, particularly the developing world, cooking oil represents an important source of calories. Even if you grow your own food you almost have to go out and buy cooking oil because it is hard to make it on your own. Right now, the price of cooking oil is rising very rapidly around the world. All food prices are rising rapidly; in the past year, the worldwide price of food has risen more than fifty percent. In some places, people are spending more than eighty percent of their income on food. Food riots have been taking place from Mexico City to Haiti to Indonesia. Military analysts tell us that the rising price of food is contributing to global insecurity.

When we first hear the story of how Athena gave the olive tree to the people of Athens, it sounds — quaint. How nice! the people get a tree from Athena, and they make her the goddess of the city. But in a world with shortages of cooking oil, suddenly the story doesn’t sound so quaint. The gift of a tree that provides both food and cooking oil is a gift of survival, a gift that prevents starvation. In the modern world, such a gift could prevent wars and violence. We are already seeing violence and instability resulting from rising food prices; whereas access to reasonably-priced food and cooking oil would tend to lead to a peaceful world.

The story of Athena and the olive tree challenges us to think about the relationship between food and war and peace. No wonder those ancient Athenians prayed to the goddess Athena: they were praying for food security, which meant that they were also praying for peace. Athena challenges us to understand the relationship between food and security; she challenges us to consider food supply in any theology of peacemaking.

These old stories about the goddess Athena challenge our religious ideas of race, gender, war and peace, and food security. And these various issues seem to me to be interconnected, that they are woven together in the larger religious issue of peacemaking. True peacemaking requires us to have the wisdom to understand the underlying causes of violence; as much as I might prefer the complete pacifism of Jesus of Nazareth, true peacemaking in today’s world may well require us to have enough wisdom to know when it is appropriate to use limited military force in order to prevent further violence.

Memorial Day

Readings

The first reading this morning is by Dana Greeley, who was my Unitarian Universalist minister when I was in my teens and twenties. Lest you think this is a commentary on the current political situation, I must tell you that this was written thirty-two years ago:

“War is insanity in this day and age. It is total destructiveness; it is total immorality; it is total waste. The end of war should be our goal today. Negotiation should be our commitment. We ourselves ought to be both wiser and more ethical than our fathers, but we are not….

“I covet for America not the fear of the nations but a stronger moral leadership, and not the hatred but the respect of humanity. You may disagree with me, of course; but I make a plea, as strongly as I can, both for the strengthening of the United Nations and for the abolition of war.

“How can we broaden and deepen our own lives? How can we make ourselves more world-oriented, and make the life of our church and our community broader and deeper and more world-oriented? We are the citizens of America! We are America itself, and if we are giving and forgiving and magnanimous and resolute and peaceful, America will be giving and forgiving and magnanimous and resolute and peaceful.

“If we can overcome anger and violence, America will overcome anger and violence. If we can believe and demonstrate that love is better than hate, America will do away with hatred and with arrogance and fear. If we can be persuaded that right makes might more than might makes right, then America will rely less on its… weapons, and even alter its policies. Do we believe in truth and goodwill and the oneness of humanity more than we believe in falsehood and retaliation and war?…”

The second reading this morning is a poem by Thomas Hardy titled “The Son’s Portrait.” It should be noted that to an Englishman like Hardy, a “lumber-shop” does not sell wood, a “lumber-shop” sells junk, or more politely, antiques:

I walked the streets of a market town,
    And came to a lumber-shop,
Which I had known ere I met the frown
        Of fate and fortune,
    And habit led me to stop.

In burrowing mid this chattel and that,
    High, low, or edgewise thrown,
I lit upon something lying flat —
        A fly-specked portrait,
    Framed. ‘Twas my dead son’s own.

“That photo? . . . A lady — I know not whence —
    Sold it me, Ma’am, one day,
With more. You can have it for eighteen-pence:
        The picture’s nothing;
    It’s but for the frame you pay.”

He had given it her in their heyday shine,
    When she wedded him, long her wooer:
And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
        And fell there fighting;
    And she took a new bridegroom to her.

I bought the gift she had held so light,
    And buried it — as ’twere he. —
Well, well! Such things are trifling, quite,
        But when one’s lonely
    How cruel they can be!

Sermon

Tomorrow is Memorial Day; or, to use the original name, Decoration Day. It began as a day to remember the Union soldiers who had died during the Civil War, who had died to end the horrendous institution of slavery. And it is instructive for us today to recall how, exactly, Memorial Day began.

According to David Blight, a professor of history and black studies at Yale University, Memorial Day was first celebrated in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. The city of Charleston had been evacuated, and the only non-combatants remaining in the city were African Americans who could not get out. The last months of the Civil War saw Charleston bombarded by Union gunboats; and the Confederate Army had established a prison camp on the site of a race course. Two hundred and fifty-seven Union soldiers died in that prison camp, and their bodies were unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave as the Confederate army retreated.

In April, 1865, the African Americans remaining in Charleston decided that those dead Union soldiers deserved a proper burial. And so they worked to create a proper gravesite for the Union dead buried in that mass grave. African American carpenters built a good, solid fence around the new grave yard. African American laborers worked to convert the old race course into a restful and beautiful place. At last, they disinterred the bodies of the dead Union soldiers, and placed them respectfully into individual graves.

By the end of April, the work was done. To officially open the new grave yard, the African American community organized a parade. Some ten thousand people showed up to march in that parade, beginning with African American schoolchildren who were finally being taught in free school, and ordinary adult African American citizens. White Americans were also invited to join the parade; invitations were extended to some nearby Union regiments, and to a number of white abolitionists. All these people gathered in the new graveyard. They listened to preachers. They honored the dead. They sang songs like “America the Beautiful,” and “John Brown’s Body,” and old spirituals. And at last they settled down to picnic lunches, while they watched the Union regiments drilling in what used to be the infield of the old race course.

That’s how the very first Memorial Day was celebrated. Professor David Blight says, “This was the first Memorial Day. Black Charlestonians had given birth to an American tradition. By their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of roses and lilacs and marching feet on their former masters’ race course, they had created the Independence Day of the Second American Revolution.” [Commonplace, vol. 1, no. 4, July, 2001; American Antiquarian Society/ Florida State University History Department.]

I tell you this story by way of introducing the idea that Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, is more than just a long weekend to begin the official summer season, more than just a convenient excuse for a three-day weekend. And I tell you this story by way of demonstrating to you that Memorial Day celebrations should not be ceded to the self-proclaimed patriots who glorify war. Memorial Day is a day to show respect for those who have died in battle; it is a day to show proper respect for graves and gravesites. Memorial Day is not a military holiday; it is a day organized by ordinary citizens. So it is that Memorial Day has become more than a military holiday; it has become a day to remember and to honor all our dead.

Our society has a tendency to gloss over unpleasant details. We are relentlessly optimistic. It is good to be optimistic, but it is not so good to be relentlessly optimistic to the point where we rewrite history to take out all the unpleasant parts. Our society calls the Second World War the “Good War,” optimistically glossing over the bad bits like all the ordinary citizens who were killed and wounded. Our society mentions the First World War, conveniently forgetting that while it was called “The War To End All Wars,” it was really only the beginning of a century of wars. We think back with a certain fondness to the good old Civil War, passing lightly over the unpleasant fact that while the Civil War ended chattel slavery, it did not end the oppression and exploitation of African Americans. In other words, we have a tendency to conveniently forget unpleasant facts.

We’re not unlike the unnamed war widow in the poem by Thomas Hardy. She had had a long engagement with a young man; at last they wed;

    “And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
        And fell there fighting;
    And she took a new bridegroom to her.”

That war widow found a new husband, which is understandable. Perhaps it wasn’t understandable to the young man’s mother, but we can understand the need to get on with life. But when that war widow sold off her husbands’ photograph, it sounds as if she was trying to forget inconvenient facts. Yes, we can understand the impulse that made her sell the photograph. It can sometimes seem easier to push the dead out of our memories, to get rid of everything that reminds us of them, so that we don’t have to think about anyone who has died. In particular, we don’t want to have to think about anyone who has died in a war. If we have to remember those who died in war, then we might also have to remember that we bear at least some responsibility for all the wars our country wages. It’s easier to just sell off the old photographs, so that we don’t have to remember. And yet, when we hear about the war widow who did just that, in Thomas Hardy’s poem, I don’t feel comfortable with the idea. It sounds a little bit cold-blooded. I would have liked it better if she had tucked the photograph up in the attic, or at least respectfully burned it.

On the other hand, what are we to make of the narrator of the poem, the woman who is the mother of the young man who died in the front-trench-lines? She buys the portrait of her dead son, and that we can fully understand; I know I would want to rescue it from a junk shop myself. But then to bury the portrait; that seems to place an undue importance on an unimportant thing. I don’t feel comfortable with that idea, either.

Too often, our celebrations of Memorial Day go to one or the other of these extremes. At one extreme, many people completely ignore the true meaning of Memorial Day. Of course celebration and picnicking ought to be a part of any observance of Memorial Day. Back in May, 1865, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, observed the very first Memorial Day with celebration and picnicking. They celebrated the end of war, and more than that they celebrated the freedom of African Americans. They had picnics, too. But they didn’t ignore the deeper meaning of the day; rather, they balanced the celebration and the picnicking with a consciousness of the importance of the holiday.

At the other extreme, we find a small number of people who use Memorial Day to glorify war, glorify militarism, and gloss over the unpleasant realities of past and present wars. It should be clear that these people pervert the meaning of Memorial Day as much as the people who completely ignore the deeper meaning of the day. Memorial Day isn’t a day to glorify war, it is a day to recognize and honor those persons who died in war; originally, it was a day to honor gravesites, and to remember and honor the individuals who have died.

I want to propose a middle ground between these two extremes. Memorial Day isn’t just a frivolous holiday, a day to go on vacation and spend money; and Memorial Day isn’t a day to glorify war. It’s a day to honor the dead. We honor those who died in military service, but Memorial Day has grown larger than that. It’s a day to honor the sacrifices of those who fought and worked for the greater good.

That should not be a controversial proposal to adopt, though it will be a difficult proposal to adopt. We face so much pressure to think of Memorial Day merely as nothing more than the holiday which is the official start of summertime, that it will take some effort to remember to set aside time to honor our dead. All of us here are honoring the true intent of Memorial Day, because by coming here to church we are treating Memorial Day as more than just another three day weekend.

And I would like to propose that one way we can honor our dead, in this age of increasing intensity in warfare, is to commit ourselves to putting an end to war. In our first reading this morning, Dana Greeley wrote, “War is insanity in this day and age. It is total destructiveness; it is total immorality; it is total waste. The end of war should be our goal today.” Perhaps the best way to honor our dead soldiers is to end warfare altogether.

For at least a couple of thousand years, people have argued about whether we should expend our efforts trying to end war completely; or whether we should accept that war is inevitable, and that we should instead work to place acceptable limits on war. Followers of Jesus of Nazareth, followers of Gotama Buddha, followers of those religious prophets who proclaim that our highest moral purpose should be love of our fellow human beings — many of these people have maintained that we must put an end to war. But other high-minded people have taken the pragmatic view that we have not yet ended war, we are not likely to end war, and therefore we have to work within those realistic limits.

The crucial point that Dana Greeley made back in 1975 was that the stakes are now so high that we must end war, not only for moral reasons, but for pragmatic reasons. In the days of the Civil War, you could argue that there was no other option but to go to war; if we wanted to move our country beyond our dependence on slavery, war seemed inevitable. The costs of the Civil War, the bloodiest war our country has ever fought in, the costs were very high indeed. But today, war has become incredibly more costly, incredibly more destructive. The invention of atomic bombs and missiles which can carry those bombs to any point on the globe now mean that one war could conceivably end all or most human life on Earth. Even without atomic weaponry, the wars of the past three decades or so have involved a huge loss of life among non-combatants; the careful limitations on war that the pragmatists had worked so hard to implement are no longer being observed. Technology has also led to the development of additional weapons of mass destruction — the chemical weapons which were used in the First World War, the new biological and radioactive weapons of mass destruction — and these weapons of mass destruction also upset the pragmatists’ careful limitations on war. In today’s world, the costs of war have gotten so high that I believe we can no longer consider war to be an acceptable answer.

I’m sure some of you will disagree with my views. Further, I’m quite aware that I don’t have the final answer to the problem of warfare. But this I believe:– that as the technology of war has evolved, so we must evolve our moral beings. We are awed by all the high technology our country has been able to use to prosecute the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should be awed far more by our growing ability to negotiate non-military solutions to world conflicts. Rather than expending so much time and money on improving our military technology, the more important task is to continue to improve our moral beings, with the goal of evolving so far that we no longer need to use our military technology.

Therefore, I believe that a proper observance of Memorial Day would have us going back to the original observance of Memorial Day, back in 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. Let us recall what about that original observance of Memorial Day we should continue in our own observances.

The African American originators of Memorial Day had a parade with military regiments — but in that parade, the military regiments were outnumbered by the ordinary citizens. Such a parade represents our ideals of the democracy for which all our wars have been fought. In a democracy, we honor the ordinary citizen above all; just as we honor the rule of law above military might. And such a parade would also represent our religious ideals. In our religious tradition, we honor the inherent worth and dignity of each person more than we honor the mass mind of the military regiment; and we honor the forces of love and respect which bind us together more than we honor military might.

Those originators of Memorial Day spent time honoring their dead. We should continue to do this today. We can honor those who die in military service, even if we happen to disagree with the principles of the war in which they were killed. And we can honor those people who may have fought for truth and justice using non-violent means, people like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Ghandi. We can honor all our dead on Memorial Day, reflecting on how that which was good in them can live on in us.

Those originators of Memorial Day spent part of their day listening to preaching and political speeches. I believe that we should continue this part of the original Memorial Day. The art of public speaking, and the art of listening to public speaking, are necessary for democracy. Democracy does not proceed by having one person, or small group of persons, imposing their will on everyone else. Democracy thrives when we can debate, openly and in public and face-to-face, the crucial issues of our day. Democracy thrives when we can listen to others and learn their wants and needs, when we can see them as people just like ourselves. Whereas sitting in front of the television set, conducting opinion polls, and expensive advertisements tear at the fabric of democracy. And from a religious point of view, we consider the art of speaking and of listening to be necessary to the practice of our religion. Our religion does not proceed by having one person, or small group of persons, imposing their will on everyone else. Our religion thrives when we can talk openly and in person about the most important moral and ethical and religious issues. Our religion thrives when we listen to one another and learn to love one another as we love ourselves. In our religious tradition, sermons are the center of our worship services, because we believe so strongly in the power of the word to change us for the better.

And finally, those originators of Memorial Day, back in 1865, ended with a picnic. We should continue that tradition today. After we honor our dead, we should celebrate life. After we listen to formal speeches and sermons, we should indulge in the joy of casual conversation over a shared meal. That first Memorial Day was a time to honor the dead, but it was also a time to celebrate the return of peace. At last, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, no longer lived in fear of war and violence and destruction. They recognized that it was a time of celebration.

As it was at that first Memorial Day picnic, so may it be today. Even though we remain entangled in a war that is seemingly without end, we work towards ending warfare. We can celebrate democracy, even as we commit ourselves to re-energizing our democratic principles and practices. We can celebrate our hard-won freedoms, even as we commit ourselves to ongoing improvement of our moral beings that will allow us to build an even better world in the years to come.

Fourth Anniversary

Readings

The first reading this morning comes from the Christian scriptures, Matthew 5.38-48. Jesus said:

“‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

“‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'”

So said Jesus of Nazareth, according to the Christian scriptures.

The second reading this morning comes from the Hebrew scriptures, Psalm 34.14

“Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.”

Sermon

This morning, I had planned to preach the last in a series of sermons on Chinese religion and philosophy. But I changed my mind, and decided to preach a sermon titled “Fourth Anniversary.”

We Unitarian Universalists are both Christian and not-Christian; I like to say we are “post-Christian.” I like being a post-Christian. As a post-Christian, I can hold on to the best of the Christian tradition; and through the use of reason I can reject the parts of the Christian tradition that are obviously wrong-headed.

It’s just after the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and I find myself holding on to the best of the Christian tradition. And I believe the best of the Christian tradition can be found in what is popularly known as the “Sermon on the Mount.” This is a sermon that was supposed to have been preached by the great rabbi and spiritual leader Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus and his disciples were going through the countryside in the land of Judea. Rumors began to spread through the countryside that a great and good and wise man was preaching with such authority and such deep humanity, that he was said to be the Messiah, the Chosen One who would lead the Jewish people into righteousness and freedom. Thousands of people flocked to hear this great man preach. His disciples found him a hill on which he stood while the people gathered around him. And there he preached a sermon that contained the core of his beliefs.

In that sermon, Jesus of Nazareth preached: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” [5.14-16]

And then he also preached what we heard in the first reading this morning:

“‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your [God] in heaven; for [God] makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly [God] is perfect.'”

Taken as a whole, the Sermon on the Mount comprises what is arguably the highest and best statement of Christian ethics. On this fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I would like us to reflect on the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” To help explain what he meant by this, he offered a dramatic example of how we are to live this out in our own lives, saying:

“‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also….” [5.39-40]

That, my friends, is an utterly ridiculous statement. If anyone strikes us on the right cheek, there is no way that we are going to just stand there and offer our left cheek also; we would either call the cops, sue the jerk who hit us, call the domestic abuse hotline, or simply walk away. But to just stand there, waiting to be hit on the other cheek — we are not going to do that, it is asking to be hurt.

Or take a more extreme example. When the fanatics hijacked those jets and flew them into the World Trade Center towers, our natural impulse was to strike back, to invade Afghanistan. Of course we invaded Afghanistan. We sought justice. We sought justice for the hundreds of people who died in terror on those jetliners. We sought justice for the thousands who died in the twin towers: the people who burned to death, the people who jumped to their deaths rather than be burned. Of course we invaded Afghanistan to hunt down terrorists; we could not sit passively waiting for the terrorists to strike again.

The Christian tradition tells us that some wars can be just wars. Thomas of Aquinas, one of the greatest Christian thinkers, said, “In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged.” We fulfilled the first criterion, because our sovereign powers, the President and Congress, approved the invasion of Afghanistan. Thomas Aquinas continued, “Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says: ‘A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs….'” Clearly, we had been wronged; clearly we fulfilled this second criterion as well. Thomas Aquinas says we must meet yet a third criterion for a just war: “Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. Hence Augustine says: ‘True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good.'” And when we invaded Afghanistan, we assuredly felt that our object was to secure the peace, to punish evildoers, and to uplift the good.

And then we took another short step; on March 20, 2003, we invaded Iraq. That was but a short step further along the same path. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t the invasion of Iraq justifiable? Can the invasion of Iraq be justified religiously as a just war?

Most Christian religious leaders and thinkers did not believe that the invasion of Iraq was justifiable. A typical example: on March 9, 2003, former president Jimmy Carter, a Christian and a deep thinker in his own right, said:

“As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. This is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders, with the most notable exception of a few spokesmen of the Southern Baptist Convention who are greatly influenced by their commitment to Israel based on eschatological, or final days, theology.”

Jimmy Carter, who has studied Christian just war theory and who has updated that theory to account for the way the world works today, had an updated list of criteria for a just war. But he said that the 2003 invasion of Iraq failed all his criteria for what constitutes a just war. And he asserted that most Christian religious leaders and thinkers agreed with him.

Perhaps some of you believed then, and believe now, that the invasion of Iraq was justified. And I know that you can make sound arguments that invading Iraq was politically justifiable, that it was a pragmatic act. Our president has made exactly such arguments. Many of our Congressional leaders made exactly such arguments as Congress voted overwhelmingly to invade Iraq; and while some of those Congressional leaders have since changed their minds, it does not seem to me that they changed their minds on the basis of religious conviction. Politically, the invasion of Iraq seems to have been justifiable.

I readily admit that I am not competent to argue whether the invasion of Iraq was politically justifiable. I am not a politician, and I know I am somewhat naive when it comes to politics. But to anyone within the Christian tradition — even to those of us who are post-Christians — the invasion of Iraq was not religiously justifiable. To Christians and to post-Christians, the invasion of Iraq must be considered immoral and wrong.

These are harsh words. To say that the invasion of Iraq was immoral and wrong, is to accuse our elected leaders of being immoral. And because we live in a democracy, this means that the entire electorate has allowed immorality to rule our foreign policy. We have allowed the United States to become an immoral nation. Even more harshly, those of us in this room who can legally vote, or who participate in the political process in any other way, have aided and abetted an immoral war.

These are harsh words, because if we acknowledge that we ourselves have aided and abetted an immoral war; we have aided and abetted immorality. This fact rose up into my consciousness as the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq approached — the fact that I myself was in some small sense participating in an immoral war.

A week an a half ago — on Friday, March 16 — there was a Christian Peace Witness for Iraq down in Washington, D.C. To mark the fourth anniversary of the immoral invasion of Iraq, scores of Christian religious leaders planned to commit civil disobedience in front of the White House. They planned to trespass on White House grounds and commit the radical act of praying for peace. Thousands of other Christians were going to light candles and surround the White House with light, surround the White House with prayers for peace.

I called up my friend Elizabeth — she’s a Quaker and a pacifist who lives in Washington — and asked here if she was going to participate in this Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. Yes, she said. I said the whole thing seems hopeless, and that praying for peace seemed hopelessly impractical. Well, said Elizabeth, we can’t do anything else, but at least we can pray. So I told Elizabeth that if she’d put me up for the night, I’d come down and pray for peace in front of the White House while other ministers and clergypeople got arrested for praying.

A week ago Friday, at about eleven o’clock, there I stood in front of the White House in the freezing cold, snow on the ground, along with two or three thousand other people. The organizers announced that the people who were going to commit civil disobedience should get ready. Beside me, one man said to another, “OK, Rev., guess this is it. You’ve got my cell phone number?” The other man, presumably a minister, was an older African American man whom I guessed to be about 70 — and I give that description of him so you realize that this wasn’t the stereotypical crowd of young white hippie peaceniks. The minister nodded and said, “Yes, I’ve got it, and I’ll call you when it’s time to bail me out.”

What a ridiculous thing for a seventy year old minister to do: to stand in front of the White House on a freezing cold night, and get arrested for praying for peace. I almost decided to join that 70-something minister right then and there. What a silly thing to do, to get arrested like that. It’s as silly as turning your left cheek should someone strike you on your right cheek. It’s standing there in silent witness to immorality and violence: not turning away, not striking back, not seeking legal redress, but standing there as if to say: “What you are doing is wrong, is immoral.”

When we are told to turn the other cheek, it’s usually put in such a way that it means we are supposed to be meek and mild and to accept whatever crap is dished out to us. That’s not what it means to turn the other cheek. To turn the other cheek is to stand up in the face of immorality, to stand up against that which is wrong, to stand up in witness that there is a better way to live. Therefore, I do not recommend to you turn the other cheek. If you stand there in the face of immorality and violence, chances are that you’ll just get hit on the other cheek; or maybe you’ll get arrested for praying. Better to put up with immorality. Don’t turn the other cheek.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others….” I have told you not to turn the other cheek. Maybe if we just ignore the war in Iraq, it will go away. Or maybe you agree with the political expediency of the war in Iraq, and you think we should continue to fight it with increased troop levels.

On the other hand, we cannot justify the war in Iraq on religious grounds. So it is I tell you that we must somehow figure out how to let our lights shine: that is, we must somehow figure out how to proclaim the immorality of this war; we must somehow figure out how to ask forgiveness for our own complicity in the prosecution of this war; we must let the light of love shine in the darkness of violence. May our very being, the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts, become prayers for peace.