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Peacemaking In A Violent World – Doing My Part Rev. Dr. George F. Regas, Rector Emeritus Thank you, Sister Mary. I’m so grateful for your generous introduction, but it does remind me of a story. One day, a speaker was introduced to his audience with these words: "Listen to this man. He is a most gifted person, which is evidenced by the fact that he made a million dollars in California oil. So listen to him." The speaker responded with thanks, but he was somewhat confused and embarrassed. Many items were essentially there, but a little misinterpreted. He said:
I am George Regas – and I don’t know much about the making of a million dollars – but I do know a little about doing my part in the ministry of peacemaking. It is a great privilege to be part of this important symposium. I know many of you because we’ve been at the task of peacemaking for a long, long time. I’ve looked forward to today with great anticipation. Almost everyone knows that I preached a sermon at All Saints Church in Pasadena on the Sunday before the election of our President in 2004 titled, “If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush.” That sermon got us into trouble with the tax collectors. In it, I took great care to say I did not want to tell people how to vote, but I was challenging them to go into the voting booth on election Tuesday taking with them all they knew about Jesus, the peacemaker. Ed McCaffery, dean of USC School of Law and an expert on taxation, has said the IRS is wrong in their interpretation of my sermon as one instructing church members how to vote. He saw “nothing wrong with the letter or the spirit” of my October 31, 2004 sermon. Were the IRS to disappear from the face of the earth, it would still be wrong for religious institutions to endorse candidates. There are theological, constitutional and practical reasons for this. Good people of profound faith were for George Bush and good people of profound faith were for John Kerry. For many their vote was deeply rooted in their faith commitment. It is foolish to speak and act as if God is in the pocket of the Democratic or Republican parties. No one from the IRS attended my sermon, to my knowledge. There were newspaper reports the next days that described my sermon “a blazing indictment of the Bush administration’s polities on Iraq.” The news reports said I had also been critical of the Administration’s drive to cut taxes that benefited the rich which I described as “inimical to the values of Jesus.” Based on this, the IRS made a subjective determination that the sermon implicitly opposed one candidate and endorsed another. During my 28 years, nearly 3 decades, as Rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena, I often preached sermons that touched upon what some would characterize as “political” issues. So many of the political issues that we confront today coincide with core religious beliefs: health care, marriage and family, immigration, national security and war - to name a few! It seems to me that fundamental moral issues are indisputably the province of religious pulpits. An effective preacher is one with the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other. My successor, Ed Bacon, has continued this tradition of proclaiming a theologically and biblically based commitment to peace and justice. An IRS investigation will not diminish the prophetic ministry of All Saints Church. Peace, alleviation of poverty, sexual justice and care of the environment are core values of that congregation. If we were to allow the IRS to silence us, we would lose our integrity and the very soul of our ministry. I am confident All Saints Church will not allow this to happen. After responding to several IRS requests for extensive information, Rector Ed Bacon received two summons mid-September – one called for a lengthy list of documents and the other required his appearance at an IRS hearing October 11. After much study, legal discussions and prayerful deliberations, the Vestry of All Saints Church voted unanimously to challenge legally, and in a court of law, the right of the IRS to proceed with summonses served on All Saints Church. All Saints’ legal counsel, Marc Owens, of a distinguished Washington law firm, informed the IRS: “We believe the only way to challenge the IRS’s actions in this case is through a summons enforcement proceeding in federal court, and therefore the Church respectfully declines to respond to the summons. Rev. Bacon will not appear to testify on October 11.” All Saints Church took this position because they had fully respected the IRS regulations against campaign intervention by unwaveringly adhering to the guidelines against endorsing political candidates. However, they were defending the religious responsibility to criticize public policy that violates the sacredness of all life. Our case just hangs mid-air and we await the next action. There is a story about a preacher trying to get serious with her congregation and speak about the imminence of death and its power over us. Her opening sentence was that "in 100 years, every member of this church will be dead." And with that, a man in the fourth row began to laugh. Now there is nothing in the world more upsetting and disconcerting to a preacher than to have someone miss the mood and intent. So she thought the brother had misheard her and she said again, "I'm here to say that within the next 100 years, every member of this church will be dead." At that, the man laughed again. The preacher began to get a little angry, so she turned to the laughing man and said, "You think that's funny?" "Yes, I do." "Why do you think it’s funny?" "Because I don't belong to this church!" I'm here today to say the Church I want to belong to is one that has given primacy to the peacemaking ministry, that is willing to take risks for the sake of Jesus, The Peacemaker. I believe passionately that the Christian Church must be in the vanguard of the peacemakers in this broken and war torn world. To be the world's primary peacemakers – that's the bold mission for the church in the 21st Century. Religious communities must stop blessing war and violence. Followers of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, must be first and foremost peace advocates, always protesting the misuse of military power to settle political problems and challenging our blindness to the poverty and despair that make for revolution. Although I'm sure some will call me naïve, I believe this is the truest reality in the universe: mercy brings mercy and revenge brings revenge. Tragically, the world refuses to learn this truth after so many bitter experiences in every part of the world. Gandhi was right. "If we all live by an eye for an eye – the whole world will be blind." In his last Sunday morning sermon before his death, preached at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. declared: "I believe today there is a need for all people of good will to come to a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'We ain't gonna study war no more.' This is the challenge facing modern men and women." ICUJP is sponsoring a major peace jubilee on April 15 and 16 when we hope people from every faith tradition will come together and say: In the name of God, end the U.S. involvement in the Iraq War and bring the troops home now. I had all this in my mind and heart when I preached the sermon under question, “Jesus confronts both Senator Kerry and President Bush.” I had Jesus say “I will tell you what I think of your war – the sin at the heart of this war against Iraq is your belief that an American life is of more value than an Iraqi life, that an American child is more precious than an Iraqi baby.” Jesus continues: “Mr President, your doctrine of pre-emptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster.” The IRS does not appear to understand that believing Christians, believing Muslims, believing Jews are presented with a peacemaking mandate and that seeking reconciliation and renouncing the unlimited violence inherent in an unending war on terror is not just one option among many. So there is no hyperbole in All Saints’ assertion that the issue for the parish at this time is indeed the free exercise of religion that is supposed to be guaranteed by the First Amendment. Many people around this Nation share this peacemaking imperative. One wonderful benefit of this tax controversy is the way so many Interfaith partners have rallied around All Saints Church. Many Jewish, Muslim and other faith leaders have joined All Saints as “solidarity members.” This beautiful action of our friends visibly spells out the classic message that an injury to one is an injury to all. People all across this nation are signifying to us that they completely grasp the stakes involved when a free pulpit in America is challenged by the enormous power of the federal government. There is a story about a minister who wanted to teach his congregation one of the great lessons of scripture. So he placed a lion and a lamb in a cage just outside the entrance of his church. And they lived there together – the lion and the lamb. And people from miles around came to see this unusual phenomenon. Finally, the Governor of the state was intrigued when he heard of this remarkable feat, and he sent a delegation to see how the minister pulled off such a trick. "Oh, it is no trick at all," said the clergyperson. "All you have to do is put in a fresh lamb from time to time." "Preacher, in the real world, lions and lambs do not live together peacefully." How often that statement has been thrown at me. Woody Allen says, "The lion and the lamb lie down together, but the lamb won't get much sleep." That's the rub. I've spent most of my Priesthood of 50 years trying to face up to the truth of this real world of brutality, fear, suspicion and the need for security with all its complexity – and yet not lose hope, not give up the dream of that world where nation will not lift up sword against nation nor learn war any more. It has been a ministry searching for what is real and authentic, and attempting to explode the myths and illusions that have taken us to the rim of disaster. Many would say I belong to the establishment as the Rector of that large church in Pasadena. So be it. But my hope has always been to radicalize the establishment – myself being one of them – and to take middle America and give their goodwill and desire to build a world of peace clearer focus and more effective power. Although I want to share with you today some strong convictions about war and peace, some strong opinions about mixing politics and religion – I certainly don’t want to act as though I have the last word on the subject. There is a wonderful story warning us against pretentiously giving the last word on any subject. One night at sea, the ship's captain saw what looked like the lights of another ship heading toward him. He had his signal person blink to the other ship. "Change your course 10 degrees south." The reply came back, "Change your course 10 degrees north." The ship's captain answered, "I am a captain. Change your course south." To which the reply was, "Well, I am a seaman first class. Change your course north." This infuriated the captain, so he signaled back, "Dammit, I say change your course south. I'm on a battleship!" To which the reply came back, "And I say change your course north. I'm in a lighthouse." With that caution, I proceed. I. All of what I have said is a very substantial prologue to some very specific concerns about peacemaking. My first concern. Central to my faith is the strong belief that the mixing of politics and religion is a holy task. Some people would say I was very political in my ministry over my 28 years at All Saints Church. But all life is political. Jesus sent his apostles out to heal the sick – and caring for the sick is one of my primary responsibilities as a priest. Today just saying the words health care plunges us into a political maelstrom. In the midst of all that, I have tried to remember that I had been ordained as a priest to speak truth to power. I’m a firm believer in the separation of church and state; however, the separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. America’s social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics – a dependence the founders of the nation recognized. I stand firmly for mixing religion and politics for this is a holy task. However, politicalization of religion as we see in some evangelical fundamentalist churches today, unequivocally endorsing one candidate is very unhealthy. It is possible and necessary to express one’s faith and convictions about public policy while still respecting the pluralism of American democracy. Rather than suggesting that we not talk about God and politics, I say progressives should be arguing – on moral and religious grounds – that all Americans should have economic security, health care and education opportunities. True religious faith results in a compassionate concern for those on the margins of society. So joining our deep religious faith to the politics of ending poverty and social despair is a holy task. George W. Bush is the most overtly religious person in the Presidency. He was saved from his excessive drinking by the ministry of Billy Graham and calls himself a born-again Christian. It is said that President Bush doesn’t give a speech without placing himself under the protection and guidance of God. Jesus is his favorite philosopher because Jesus changed George Bush’s life. President Bush has often justified the war in Iraq by asserting America has been the instrument of God’s will. President Bush has said that God told him to strike at Al Qaeda and at Saddam Hussein, and frequently says, “God’s hand directs the affairs of this nation.” That kind of talk, echoed so much by the Religious Right, distorts authentic religion, in my opinion. And yet today’s political progressives are still reluctant to say their religious and moral values help shape their political views and their positions on state and national policies. For many political progressives, faith and religion are private and have no implications for political life. Where would America be today if Martin Luther King, Jr. had kept his faith to himself? When I say mixing politics and religions is a holy task, I am not referring to the particular religiosity of a candidate or even how devout they may be. That is less important than how their religious and moral commitments and values shape their political vision and their policy commitments. During the days of the Watergate scandal, President Nixon spoke again and again about personal morality. The President’s men tried to uncover the immoral behavior of congressional people on Nixon’s enemy list. They wanted to know how much they drank and with whom they slept. What distorted virtue and integrity! Those sleeping in proper beds would almost destroy a system of government. Vietnam, Watergate, the Contra scandal – maybe all those predominate actors in those sordid stories of American political life slept in the right beds. But their concepts of morality and virtue were grossly warped. They focused on personal morality and ignored those corporate evils that hurt, rob, oppress and kill human beings. Poverty is a religious issue. The gap between rich and poor is greater than it has been in 50 years. The poor are getting poorer, the health care crisis is getting worse, the income of the typical household is stagnating, the average weekly wages have fallen, and the safety net for the unemployed and the casualties of the American system has been seriously eviscerated. And in the midst of all that, President Bush asks and gets income tax reductions where 50% of the tax savings goes to the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans averaging $1,200,000 a year in income. And now, many in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seek to make these tax breaks permanent. All of that would break Jesus’ heart. For one ordained in the Christian church to preach God’s word, my challenge to all of this is not class warfare. It is at the very heart of the Jewish, Islamic, Christian faith. However, prophetic religion has lost its voice in America. The Religious Right has drowned everyone else out. Now the faith of Jesus has come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war, and pro-American. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned into the guardian of privilege instead of a champion of the dispossessed.” Nothing is more abhorrent to the God of the Abrahamic Faiths than trampling the poor. Some smirk when they say, “it’s the economy stupid.” But I continue to say poverty must be central to every political campaign. And the failure of political leaders to help uplift those in poverty here and around the world will be judged a moral failure. Franklin D. Roosevelt was hardly a saint, but his grasp of government seems now diametrically opposed to the vision of our present leadership in the White House. In Roosevelt’s second inaugural in 1937, he said: “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is also bad economics… The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.” Yes, poverty is a religious issue. How we deal with the obscene gap between the rich and poor, how we deal with the increasing powers of corporations, how we collaborate with the impoverished nations of the world in their efforts to be free and healthy and equal players in the global markets – these are profoundly religious issues. II This leads to my second concern. Any religious institution that seeks integrity must preserve the freedom of the pulpit. There are some who fear that my sermon before the 2004 Presidential election was a violation of the tax code. However, there are many more who fear this was in fact the government’s effort to silence the Church’s sharp judgments against the Bush war in Iraq. To give up the right to speak truth to power would be a loss of integrity. Several months before I was to retire as Rector of All Saints, a friend suggested that I use for the text of my final sermon the closing words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!” Well this person didn’t know much about my work. I had the freest pulpit in the world. As one called by God to lead the people, I demanded a free pulpit if I were to do the work faithfully. Then I tried to keep it free by using it as a place God’s truth is proclaimed. Over my 28 years as the preacher and leader at All Saints Church in Pasadena, I tried to interpret some of the bruising social issues of the day with my heart and mind shaped by the biblical story. And that pulpit was free to do just that. Free because I demanded it as an essential part of my ministry and then I used it. I’m so glad I didn’t have to wait 25 years to say the Vietnam War was wrong, terribly wrong, as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara did a decade ago. He writes that his loyalty to President Johnson kept him silent when he knew the war was a tragic blunder, a failed policy. From that war came 58,000 Americans dead and three million Vietnamese dead, from a war he concluded in 1968 was tragically ill conceived. But he remained silent. As a preacher, I came to my people with a conscience shaped by newspaper reports of that deadly carnage, and also the Bible to proclaim God’s vision for peace. In McNamara’s book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, there is not one reference to the ethical anguish of the war. The horrendous errors of the war were not errors of values and intentions, according to McNamara, but errors of strategy and miscalculations. Yet my pulpit was free and we said the war was grossly immoral…free to say the carnage in Vietnam was a sin against God and the human family; it was an immoral, tragic misadventure for America, and we knew we must use all the resources of that parish to stop that slaughter. III My third concern is to take a deeper, more critical look at Iraq. The Iraq War is unjust, immoral, and illegal. It violates the deepest moral teachings of every major religion throughout the world. We have gone to war against Iraq with all its terror to make America safer – and the world weeps. When President Bush led us into war, he said he would do all in his power to protect innocent people. Yes, yes – we must have that as our goal – but it is simply impossible. We know that modern war is total war. This is the reason Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict 16 call the war on Iraq immoral and unjust. This is why it is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders outside of the evangelical fundamentalists that this is not a just war. Yes, President Bush had the Religious Right blessing his desires for war. However, from every direction strong messages were being sent to President Bush that this pre-emptive war against Iraq does not have the support of churches and mosques throughout America. This war is not a just and moral war. Our God does not bless this war! In World War I, 5% of the casualties and deaths were civilians; in World War II it was 50%; in the Vietnam war is was 90%; and no one today dares to say the civilian casualties will be less than 75%. Now a scientific medical study indicates the Iraq War has killed at least 650,000 Iraqis. Oh, the horror of that. No matter what President Bush says about trying to protect innocent people, I want to proclaim as loudly as I can that war with the face it wears today is sin itself, I want us now to move to an even deeper level. At the grave, we are all equal, and the suffering of one is not more important that the suffering of another. This reality is tragically missing from the American psyche. I can hardly bear looking at those pictures of the women and children in Iraq caught between the deadly fire of the American soldiers and Iraqi Insurgents. We have simply destroyed that country, the cradle of civilization. Very clearly, modern war is total war. With the lethality of modern weapons, there can be no discrimination between combatants and civilians. Looking at all of that, I think Jesus would bless Howard Zinn when he says: “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” Oh the horror of war that kills the children and their mothers. I hate war for that. Four years ago my daughter, Michelle, died suddenly and unexpectedly. The pain of that is beyond description. Her death made no sense. My heart has been numb, my days bleak, the reality of that loss excruciating. But I think of all those children in Iraq killed as a result of our war, and 50% of Iraq are children. I think of the children across the globe every day that die of malnutrition and hunger, the death of one child every three seconds – and my heart can hardly bear it. At the grave we are all equal. How such suffering and loss must break the heart of God – for no one, no one deserves it, I hope you grasp this: The evil at the heart of this war against Iraq is the sin American exceptionalism, the belief than an American life is of more value than an Iraqi life, that an American child is more precious than an Iraqi baby. Therefore, a reaffirmation of our common humanity and our equality in joy and in pain must be given primacy if there is ever to be peace. More and more people in the United States are grasping this reality, and they are saying a loud NO to President Bush’s surge proposal, his plan to escalate the war in Iraq by sending 21,500 more troops into that killing field. They are saying end American’s role in that war NOW. Bring the troops home, and rebuild Iraq – a country we have destroyed. IV A fourth concern. Look at God’s deep commitment to life. I read the other day about a wonderful teaching by the Hasidic Rabbi Menachem Mendel, who said that only God had the right to command us to destroy another person. However, if even the smallest angel comes forth to counter such an order, we must obey the angel. God always sides with life – always provides a way out for those with a discerning spirit, a way to choose life over death. The big lie back of all killing – whether street gang murders, deaths in Israel or Lebanon, war in Iraq or Iran, exterminations at Buchenwald, prisoners on death row or the highly efficient deaths from nuclear bombs – the big lie back of them all is that the victim deserves to die. But to people of conscience, to people rooted in the moral values of our Jewish, Islamic, Christian heritage, all life is precious. We know that when life is cheap anywhere it becomes cheap everywhere. I want no allegiance less embracing than the whole human family; and I know that in the nuclear age, the smallest unit of survival is the whole world. I lament, I cry out in anguish for the death and suffering in Israel and Lebanon and Gaza, in Iraq and Iran, in Darfur. Yes, yes at the grave we are all equal, and the suffering of one is not more important than the suffering of another. We mourn the death of those 3,000 people killed on 9-11-01. But we also mourn the death, devastation and loss of so many in other parts of the world. They are part of God’s precious human family. It is troublesome that we in America could get so caught up in our own tragedy of September 11 without ever noticing the deaths of millions of children every year from poverty and destitution. We find our unity as together we try to heal some of that pain – for no one, no one deserves it. This reaffirmation of the sacredness of all life, our common humanity and our equality in joy and in pain must be given primacy if there is ever to be peace. A story is told of President Lincoln following the Battle of Shiloh. He was approached by the frantic brother and sister of General Lew Wallace. They had heard the General had been killed in the Battle of Shiloh, but President Lincoln assured them he had not. He was alive. It was not their Lew Wallace who had been killed. The people sighed with relief. But the President responded with the compassion that had so marked and distinguished his life, "Oh, but it was somebody's Lew Wallace!" To be connected to the tragedy of war with all its brutality is to share in the anguish of God. V A fifth and final concern. This is the central proclamation of the Bible: God is love. God loves us just as we are; therefore, we reach out in love to treat others as God has treated us, and that means action. Genuine love isn’t a feeling, isn’t mystical, isn’t romantic – though all of those characteristics may be present. Love is action. It is an act of will far more than an act of the heart. And when it is both – that’s glorious. If God’s inclusive love is to make a difference, we need to get away from the abstractions and look at the real people who cry out for our love. Albert Camus addressed a Roman Catholic order one day and said: “What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest person…that they should get away from abstractions and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.” Over the years, these words of Camus have rung in my ears and challenged my soul. So much misery has gone on in this country and around the world because Christian churches have allowed abstractions to be placed before us instead of the anguishing cries of human beings loved by God, especially those in Iraq. I proclaim to you this gospel of love and peace, and now the living Christ calls you and me to continue to share that love in the moral wastelands and on the death slopes of our world. At the end of World War II, a couple of GIs were helping some Italians rebuild a small village church destroyed by artillery fire. In the rubble, they discovered a statue of Christ. It was unharmed except its outstretched hands were gone. “Father, shall we discard the statue?” The soldiers asked the priest. “No,” he said, “Let’s place it inside the church door for all to see who enter and leave. It will remind us that Jesus has no other hands than ours.” Down deep, deep in my soul, I think I hear God speaking. Will you help me? I need you. I need you to be my hands of peace and love and grace in this war fractured and bleeding world. I need you to transform the hatred and fear and suspicions of the world – so we can all live as sisters and brothers. You are the only hands I have. Will you help me? Be my hands of love and peace. What a privilege. What a privilege. Amen. |