Sermons

Preacher: Rev. Charles J. Stephens

Announcement: The good news is that yesterday in Geneva the United States and Russia agreed on an outline for the identification and seizure of Syrian chemical weapons and said Syria must turn over an accounting of its arsenal within a week.

The agreement will be backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution that could allow for sanctions or other consequences if Syria fails to comply.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said that the first international inspection of Syrian chemical weapons would take place by November, with destruction to begin next year.

“Providing this effort is fully implemented, it can end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people, but also to their neighbors, to the region,” and the rest of the world, he said.

OPENING WORDS from Robert Lowell 1965

We were founded on a Declaration, on the Constitution, on principles and we’ve always had the ideal of “saving the world.” And that comes close to perhaps destroying the world…We might blow up Cuba to save ourselves and then the whole world would blow up. Yet it would come in the guise of an idealistic stroke…yes, I suppose this is apocalyptic to put it this way, but it is the Ahab story of having to murder evil; and then you may murder all the good with it if it gets desperate enough to struggle.”

First Reading: The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy

“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

“But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

“I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although

“He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.

“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.”

Second Reading: from Aldous Huxley in a speech delivered at the Albert Hall, London in 1936

I speak to you tonight as a man of letters—a man whose profession it is to deal with words.  Words, you will say, words—what have words to do with peace?  The answer is that they have a great deal to do, not only with peace, but with everything else.  Words are the instruments of thought; they form the channel along which thought flows; they are the molds in which thought is shaped.  If we wish to think correctly it is essential that we should use the appropriate words…Now, it seems to me, that where peace and war are concerned, most people use the wrong words.  They use words which do not describe the facts of the contemporary situation.  Indeed they use words which actually conceal those facts.  The result is that they see reality through a distorting medium.  Often they don’t see it at all…

Let me give you a concrete example: In a recent speech the Archbishop of Canterbury made the following remark—“The use of force, of the sword, by the State is the ministry of God for the protection of the people.”  Consider this sentence carefully.  The two key words in it are “force” and “sword.”  Of these, the first is an empty abstraction, having as it stands no definite meaning of any kind.  The second is a picturesque anachronism.  The sword—it is a fine word.  It suggests chivalry; it calls up visions of knights in shining armour.  All very nice and cultured and reassuring.

But let us translate the Archbishop’s vague, misleading verbiage into words which express the concrete facts of contemporary reality.  “The use of force by the state, that is to say the use of fire bombs, mustard gas and high explosives dropped by aeroplanes upon defenceless civil populations, is the ministry of God for the protection of the people.”  Put in these words it doesn’t sound so good.  We begin to have certain doubts about “the ministry of God for the protection of the people’…
Sermon: Peace, War and Atonement
Yesterday was the Jewish observance of Yom Kippur. In Hebrew, Yom means “day” and Kippur comes from a root that means “to atone” that is to make amends for a sin or fault. Yom Kippur came to mean the “day of atonement” a high holy day within the Jewish tradition set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt.
Yom Kippur comes during the autumn of the year when leaves are beginning to turn colors and fall from the branches. The origins are obscure but it was probably an early holy day begun as an appeasement to the rain god.  We in Maine certainly have not had a problem with rain this year, but we can easily see the devastation out West caused by drought enhanced forest fires. Because of the dryness these fires have burned hundreds of thousands of acres.

One of the rituals on Yom Kippur during biblical times was to set aside a goat and then to send this sacrificial goat out into the wilderness, symbolically taking with it all the sins of the people. It is from this practice that we get the term Scapegoat.

This week, several people commented to me, that either I was brave or foolish to preach about issues of war and peace in reference to what has happened, is happening and may yet happen in Syria.  Most likely I fall in the foolish category rather than anything else.  I speak on this issue, NOT because I have some wise answer to what should be done.

Rather, it is just that the more I have read about the massive killing that has and continues to go on in Syria the worse I feel. Like you, I have heard others talking about what should or shouldn’t be done to Syria after the use of chemical weapons, including President Obama and after it all, I still feel confused.

Going back 2 1/2 years, I was really surprised when the Syrian people, inspired by the Arab Spring, started protesting against their super authoritarian president. Bashar Hafez al-Assad was so firmly and autocratically in control of Syria that, to me, it seemed like a suicide mission. I certainly wasn’t surprised when Assad unleashed violent attempts to crush the rebellion. In the last 2 1/2 years, millions of Syrians have become refugees and the U.N. has estimated that over 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting. Most of us know very little about Syria. And we know little definitively about the different groups that make up the Syrian rebel forces. Some of them are affiliated with Al-Qaida, others are strong Islamists but not connected with  Al-Qaida, while others are more secular oriented.

It seems to be a given that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. What then do you think we should do if the Syrians don’t comply with the recent agreement on chemical weapons? Should our ships and planes be poised and ready to attack Assad, his forces and his airports? Getting rid of the chemical weapons would be a major accomplishment, but it leaves Assad in control as a violent and ruthless ruler. He seems to be willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power.

There can be no doubt that the use of chemical weapons is horrible and is condemned by almost all countries. What are we to think? What are we to do? Should we make threats to President Assad (and leaders like him) that we will use military force to get him to stop killing thousands upon thousands of his citizens and displacing millions upon millions of his people?

You heard me read Aldous Huxley’s speech about the importance of using appropriate words when talking about war and peace. He calls for people to use words that clearly describe the facts rather than using words to conceal those facts. Huxley referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remark, “The use of force, of the sword, by the State, is the ministry of God for the protection of the people.” Huxley went on to say that the word force is an empty abstraction and that the word sword was a picturesque anachronism. Huxley translated what he believed the Archbishop was really saying, “The use of force by the state, that is to say the use of firebombs, mustard gas, and high explosives dropped by aeroplanes upon defenceless civil populations, is the ministry of God for the protection of the people.” Put that way it no longer sound as picturesque or innocent.

During my lifetime, I have heard a great deal of misleading language in reference to war. As a child, I bought into it. I remember watching countless war movies during the 1950s and playing games with my childhood friends, pretending that we were valiant soldiers fighting and dying to save the world. Later during the Vietnam War one of those friends was killed in Vietnam, as were tens of thousands of other American troops as well as hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and what for?

Glamorizing and sanitizing war has happened down through the ages. Thucydides, who wrote about the Peloponnesian war during the 5th century B.C.E, said that then too, words were used to alter their meaning. “Reckless audacity was termed courageous loyalty to party; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice, moderation, a cover for spinelessness and ability to understand all sides, total inertia.”

I look back and it seems that our country has been continuously fighting a war with some country or other during my entire lifetime. I went to college when we were fighting in Vietnam to save the world from communism. Mary McCarthy wrote about Vietnam in 1967, quoting a colonel saying, “We sterilize the area prior to the insertion of the Revolutionary Development team.” Talk about using words to alter their meaning. Did sterilize mean the Agent Orange or the thorough bombing of the area?

During the debate about what to do concerning Syria, or any other country for that matter, I feel like I fall into the categories listed by Thucydides. Am I showing prudent hesitation or specious cowardice when it comes to a reaction to Assad’s use of chemical weapons?  Are my thoughts of moderation just a cover for a more basic spinelessness?  After all, over 100,000 Syrians have already died violent deaths fighting against Assad’s rule. Does my tendency to try to understand all sides lead me to total inertia?

Lessons from history keep filling my mind. I remember taking my eldest daughter, Heather, a young teenager at the time, to Washington D.C. to protest our country going to war with Iraq under President George Herbert Walker Bush. After 9-11 I went back to Washington D.C. with my young teenage son, Bronson, to protest our country going to war with Iraq under President George Walker Bush. A war started over the mistaken idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the misleading idea that Iraq had something to do with 9-11.

But there are other lessons from history. President Bill Clinton leading our country to intervene militarily to stop the atrocities in the Bosnian War. And we remember that in 1994 we as a country did nothing during the Rwandan Genocide when the Hutus killed 500,000 – 1,000,000 Tutsis.

There are no easy answers that I can accept when it comes to the question about what military actions should be taken in the name of justice and peace.  I am far from consistent when it comes to such difficult areas.  So, I take some comfort in Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

All the time I have been involved in the debate over war and peace issues, I have been an admirer of Mohandas Gandhi. He believed strongly in Ahimsa, a word derived from Sanskrit meaning not to cause injury – to do no harm. Ahimsa is a major virtue in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. It comes from the premise that all beings have a spark of the divine and thus to hurt another is to hurt oneself.

My father-in-law Bronson Clark was so inspired by this concept as a college student and he held so deeply to passivism that he ended up being sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to serve in World War II.  He told the judge at his trial that he would not kill for his   country but that he would gladly die for it as part of Gandhi’s non-violent army.

Even though I admired my father-in-law and his position so much that we named our son Bronson after him, I cannot sincerely claim the position of passivism. Yet, I am close.

I firmly believe that there are so many other options that could be tried before the use of violence. These options could prove far more effective in the long term than war. I believe our leaders don’t try diplomacy early enough, hard enough or long enough. We and other countries slip so easily into war, what Robert Jay Lifton points out comes from an antique civilization led by warriors and shaped by more than 14,000 wars against often illusory enemies” (In A Dark Time, p.2)

As UUs, we look to all wisdom traditions for insight and inspiration. We look to the religious roots of Ahimsa, and Jewish Yom Kippur calling people to pray, repent and give to charity as a means of Atonement. What do we as Unitarian Universalists find in our Principles that can guide us concerning the option of military intervention? Like Ahimsa we affirm and promote the interconnected web of existence of which we are a part. Based on our Universalist and Unitarian heritage we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.  We have no guarantee that the diplomatic solution to rid Syria of chemical weapons will work. But what could happen with military intervention could well be far worse. And whether it works or not, additional exhaustive diplomatic efforts need to be made in an effort to stop the appalling violence that continues to be going on in Syria.  We cannot remain silent or inactive in the light of the continuing slaughter going on through “conventional” military means.  But I think what we as a country need to do is invest as much in nonviolent diplomatic negotiations as we do in military armaments and preparedness.

It is said that ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to violence and violence leads to war.

In closing, let us contemplate what Joseph Bruchac, says from his Abenaki Indian perspective. “The path of war is one of the most perilous roads for a human being to travel.

Even the one who goes to battle for a good cause – even when that righteous warrior’s aim

is the slaying of monsters – will pay a heavy price.”

CLOSING WORDS:

May Peace dwell with our hearts,
And understanding in our minds;
May courage steel our wills, and
Love of truth forever guide us.

Arthur Foote II