September
23, 2001
I
Timothy 2:1-8
Luke 16:1-13
Twelve days ago ...twelve days ago. Any one of you could finish
the sentence. And while the details you select may be different,
the story is known by all of us alike.
Twelve
days ago, planes crashed into strong, well-constructed structures,
and the force and fire imploded buildings and lives in an instant.
Twelve
days ago, people kissed goodbye for a day's work or a brief parting
at an airport. Their lips touched for the last time without their
even knowing it.
Twelve
days ago, the illusion of insulation from the world's ailments and
safety within our own boundaries was blown to smithereens, shattered
along with these thousands of sacred lives of men and women, youth
and children, people just like you and me.
Twelve
days ago, a group of men who themselves once were someone's child
deliberately crashed planes in order to deliberately end lives.
Now,
a mere twelve days later, already we must begin to determine our
response to these staggering and repulsive events. Thursday night,
many of us watched the President's address and began to consider
the long road our nation faces in defense of liberty and justice
for all. As the President said, the course of action is not yet
clear. But certainly military involvement seems likely. The stakes
are up for all of us.
There
are people here who are of draft age and families with loved ones
of or close to that age. We are facing in "the enemy"
a mindset and world view that we cannot begin to grasp and to which
we hardly know how to respond. The stakes are up for all of us.
The
"rules of war" as we know them do not apply in this kind
of terror. Terrorists toy with our peace of mind and wreak havoc
with our emotional sense of safety and confidence. The stakes are
up.
And
in the midst of this present danger come the words from Scripture
to us today. And oh, what words they are. The apostle Paul writes
to Timothy, "I urge that prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings
be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions....This
is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires
everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth."
I
urge you that prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made
for everyone, kings, those in high positions...everyone. Certainly,
we should pray for our own president; we've been doing that. But
what about the leaders of the enemy?
Pray for the terrorists? Pray
for the enemy? It is a slap in the face. It is an offense to those
who have lost the ones they came home to each night. It is scandalous.
It is, nevertheless, for better or for worse, also the Gospel.
Pray
for those who persecute you, love your enemy. Do not return evil
for evil. Jesus taught it. We say it. Now, the stakes are up. How
do we live it? How on earth
do we live as Jesus' disciples, trying to love an enemy who can
commit such ruthless acts of cowardice? How dare it even be suggested?
And
perhaps more importantly, why should it be suggested? Why, in this
horrendous situation, should we use any of our precious energy even
thinking about the enemy, other than to catch and destroy him? Why
especially, should we entertain the concept of loving the enemy?
Martin
Luther King Jr. in a speech entitled "Loving your Enemies"
says this: "I think the first reason we should love our enemies,
and I think this was at the very center of Jesus' thinking is this:
that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil
in the universe. Somewhere, somebody must have a little sense, and
that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can
cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil." (Delivered
by Dr. King at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama
17 November 1957. All future references to Dr. King's words are
to this same address).
By no means should we confuse love with liking. By no means
should we assume love implies agreement on any count or even the
ability to trust. Each of these can be absent and still love can
be the operative foundation of our actions.
This
love of enemy is not a feeling; nor is it based upon the worthiness
of the enemy. It is, rather, a spiritual command, a responsibility
we have to our God, regardless of the nature and action of the enemy.
The
seed of that love is our recognition of our own sinful nature, our
own capacity to do evil. Dr. King, in his speech, said that self-awareness
is the first step in developing the ability to love one's enemy.
There are no completely good people, and no one is completely evil.
The
beginning of love, then, is to recognize my sin and to desire to
see the goodness in my enemy, no matter how remote or undeveloped
or eclipsed from view that goodness may be. It is hard to face our
own evil and our enemy's goodness.
There
are times in human history that test this theology severely. Hitler's
reign of Terror, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Timothy McVeigh, and now,
Bin Laden and the Al Qaida.
There
are degrees of evil, to be sure. And in the face of such severe
evil acts as we now witness, it seems almost impossible to search
for good in the evil ones and almost irrelevant to focus on our
own sin.
Yet,
over and over, our Scripture compels us to do so. In today's Gospel
we heard the parable of the shrewd manager. It is a parable about
facing our own wrong actions. It is a confusing text to many because
it is unclear by the end of the story who is the pure protagonist
and who is the clear antagonist. The owner of the property could
be seen as the enemy, the powerful land owner who can dismiss a
servant at will. The servant can be seen as a louse. He squanders
the owner's resources...scattering them carelessly. We can easily
vilify this servant, not only because he is careless, but also because
he is immoral, cheating the master by reducing the bills of his
debtors. Even the debtors become suspect, as they collude with the
manager to their own gain.
Yet,
just as we imagine the master is about to lay the servant low with
even more severe punishment, he praises the servant for being so
shrewd. No one in the parable is completely pure.
Yet,
the moral is that even in the shrewd moves of the servant, mercy
is obtained. It is not always clean and clear, this path to the
right thing. By the end of the story, everyone is tainted.
Is
it not true of humanity as a whole? While there are, to be sure,
severely differentiated degrees and kinds of evil, yet still, any
starting point for peace and justice must assume some capacity for
good in the enemy and some capacity for sin in our own lives.
These
two coordinates of awareness—the awareness of good in evil
and evil in good—become the crossroads at which we can meet
the enemy and hope for love to conquer hate. It is in this intersection
where negotiations for real justice and liberty always begin and
end.
But
this is no simple task, no simple conflict in which we are presently
engaged. Those who stand on the other side of the divide hold a
position which makes dialogue with us highly unlikely, in part because
they seem not to see the sin within them or the goodness within
us at all. But we cannot exchange our Gospel for this same blindness.
We must continue to confess our sins and look for God's light, even
in them. This is the better path. We know that justice and liberty
begin with these teachings of Jesus.
The
defense of this justice and liberty may require war of our nation.
Already in this conflict there have been acts of courage and love
in which people have given their lives to protect and save others.
And we are likely to see much more sacrifice of this kind in the
months ahead.
If
we go to war, there will be men and women—perhaps even in
this room today-- who, moved by love and the desire for justice,
will lay their own lives on the line for principles we each hold
dear. They will need to be prepared even to kill the enemy for the
sake of love and justice in this world. We will ask them to do this
as a nation.
But
never ever is this a reality to be desired. The inability of humanity
to resolve our deep rifts without resorting to violence is the greatest
tragedy of our existence on this earth. If
both sides were able to enact love, deeply and powerfully, then
the horrible pain of war would become entirely unnecessary.
Now,
more than ever, we need to return to Godly love. We need to become
students of love's ways. We need to seek wisdom, even as we seek
to respond to the events of twelve days ago.
If
every decision from this day forward could be made from the vulnerable
cross love of Jesus, a love like the best kind of mother love, a
love that holds every young man and woman who will die in battle,
both on our side and on the side of the enemy, in the deepest caverns
of the heart, then perhaps, perhaps we could find a way to live
and create liberty and justice for all that did not rely on a foundation
of power and war.
We
know that every decision will not be made from this vulnerable cross
love of Jesus. We know that the world is sick and filled with hatred.
But
you and I must know, too, that we have a responsibility as Christians
to do something more than just lament this fact. Somehow, we the
Church must find ways to witness in tangible form to the hope for
God's reign of love that is within us.
If
we are to take risks, if we are to risk our sons and daughters,
let it be for love. Let
it be with a mother's heart of grief that the Church responds, not
falling prey to our understandable impulses for vengeance. For vengeance,
in the end destroys the avenger.
Dr.
King said that many people dismiss Jesus' words about loving the
enemy as the impossible ideas of an impractical idealist. But, Dr.
King said, "Far from being an impractical idealist, Jesus has
become the practical realist. The words of this text glitter in
our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction
of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for
the survival of our civilization."
You
and I have committed ourselves to obey Jesus Christ. What now does
he require of us? The Church has a part to play in our nation. The
love of God is stronger than the evil at hand. And we must make
it known.
© 2001 The Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley
Preached at St.
James' Episcopal Church, Jackson, Mississippi
1 Timothy 2:1-7
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions,
and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are
in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life
in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in
the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and
to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there
is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself
human, who gave himself a ransom for all--this was attested at the
right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I
am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles
in faith and truth. (NRSV)
Luke 16:1-13
Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had
a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering
his property. So he summoned him and said to him, 'What is this
that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management,
because you cannot be my manager any longer.' Then the manager said
to himself, 'What will I do, now that my master is taking the position
away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to
beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager,
people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's
debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my
master?' He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to
him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then
he asked another, 'And how much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred
containers of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it
eighty.' And his master commended the dishonest manager because
he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd
in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.
And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest
wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal
homes. "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in
much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also
in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth,
who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been
faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is
your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either
hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise
the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." (NRSV)
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