Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Few cartoons have run longer or been more influential in U.S. culture, than “Popeye” and his nemesis, “Bluto.” In a typical segment, Bluto kidnaps a screaming and kicking Olive Oyl, Popeye’s girlfriend. When Popeye attempts to rescue her, the massive Bluto beats Popeye to a pulp, while Olive Oyl helplessly wrings her hands. At the last moment, as Bluto is attempting to ravage Olive Oyl, a can of spinach pops from Popeye’s pocket and spills into his mouth. Transformed by this infusion of power, Popeye easily demolishes the villain, and rescues his beloved.

The format never varies: Neither Popeye nor Bluto ever gains any insight to the causes or outcomes of their conflict. Violence does not teach Bluto to honor Olive Oyl, and being beat to a pulp does not teach Popeye to swallow his spinach before the fight.

Walter Wink says that the structure of this combat myth is relentlessly repeated in different media but it’s always the same myth, namely, the myth of “redemptive violence”:[2]

In the myth of redemptive violence, the world is created and maintained through justified violence overcoming the forces of chaos. And from movies, to cartoons, to novels, the same theme in endless variations is played out.

But the only thing wrong with that kind of thinking is, it’s wrong! As Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has written:

“If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and the only thing necessary were to separate them from us, and to destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

n How much easier it was to support the good guy Osama bin Laden, when he was fighting the evil communists for us in the 1980s in Afghanistan, and how easy for Americans even to give him money and munitions!

n Or how much easier it was to support the good guy Saddam Hussein when he was fighting the evil Iranians who had overthrown the American supported shah of Iran, and how easy it was for us even to give Hussein weapons and munitions in that fight!

n Now how much easier it is to ask the good guys who were former communist bad guys (though the same people) of Russia to help us against the now bad guy but former good guy terrorist Osama bin Laden!

n And how much easier it is to kill the bad guy who was the former good guy Saddam Hussein.

n Not to mention the bad guy Chinese during the Korean War, who are now our good guy business partners, and buying our treasury notes and financing the bankruptcy that this administration is orchestrating for America.

It’s Popeye and Bluto all over again in various remakes. Were we to take our magic spinach before hand, we would realize this basic presupposition of humans learning to get along together:

By giving legitimacy to violence – and believe me, bombing and killing and occupying the people of another nation is violence! – by giving legitimacy to violence, we make violence seem like an acceptable means of responding to conflict.

We view the victims of our violence as somehow different than we are. They are “others,” and we find ways of diminishing their value and worth, their religion and culture, their heritage and pathways, while presuming the significant exceptionalism of our “American way of life.” Doing that supports our sense of superiority, and dehumanizes and devalues other cultures.

But, I have a question for us: What if bringing peace to our nation is not about ending the war in Iraq? What if peace is not really about the terrible travesty perpetrated by America on Iraq? What if finding peace – please listen closely – what if realizing peace is really about violence – but not over there, but in here…violence between others and us?

Someone’s written, “Violence isn’t only killing. It’s violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because of fear. Violence isn’t only organized butchery in the name of God and country, violence begins within.”

And the illusion of our species, and of every government since people first tried to live together in community, is that we can somehow use violence to force peace. But the reality is: Violent people cannot bring peace, until we have peace within.

And the perennial question, which the Passover event of Judaism – which begins tomorrow at sundown – the question that event always poses for us is whether we are willing to go forward in the search for peace – the Promised Land – or whether we will instead choose to return to the violence of slavery in Egypt. Let me explain:

Now if you were raised in Sunday School or Sabbath School, as I know many of us were, the ancient story of the freeing of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, and their subsequent journey to the Promised Land, was a central part of the Judeo-Christian biblical curriculum. There are even African American songs that came out of their 250 years of slavery in America, which voice the deep pain of enslaved peoples. Those are based on the exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt’s land. They were hymns of the spirit, which we recognize by calling them “spirituals.” They still resonate with enslaved peoples around the world.

It’s another way of saying that faith is always about freedom…about not only physical freedom but also spiritual freedom. That hate is self-destructive. That fear is self-defeating. And that violence is a tool of both hate and fear.

In this ancient biblical, and mythical story, the children of Israel – whom modern Jews identify as their forbearers – with a generous helping of intervention from the Almighty, are marching from being slaves in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. After many years of toil and travail, they come to the border of the Promised Land.

Guess what? They discover it is not going to be easy to enter the Promised Land. And the children of Israel begin to deal with the reality that every promise holds: Things may not come out the way we hoped. But their choices are as ours when speaking of freedom: Go back to Egypt and to slavery…or else take the risk of the promise to be free – to work for peace.

During the Vietnam War, I was serving as editor of the Oklahoma Methodist newspaper. One issue, I wrote an editorial in support of Vietnam Moratorium Day. My new bishop called me into his office the Monday after the paper had come out on Friday, and fired me. He proposed to send me to a tiny church in the teeny tiny town of Catoosa, which I had never been to and still haven’t.

My response was not only “No,” but “Hell, no!” I believe in hindsight, he was more upset with my saying, “Hell,” than saying, “No.”

Nonetheless, I suddenly realized I had crossed over into freedom land, or what some would call “being without a job.” So I went about producing a symposium on the Vietnam War. I only lost $9,000 in doing so. It was the best $9,000 I never had.

One of the speakers was the Chaplain at Yale University, William Sloane Coffin, who went on to become minister of Riverside Church in Manhattan. In the book of the addresses, which were published the following year, Bill’s sermon has these words: “Democracy does not guarantee a good life. It guarantees that a nation gets what it deserves.” [3]

Let me repeat that and as I do, realize that I am speaking about us, and our nation: “Democracy does not guarantee a good life. It guarantees that a nation gets what it deserves.”

He goes on to say that when this nation had its birth of freedom, now more than 230 years ago, it also turned out a generation of statesmen including Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and the Adams. Why is that kind of leadership not present today? Because, the reality is that what is honored in this country, will be cultivated in this country.

Statesmanship is not about spin…it’s not about focus groups…it’s not about donors and fundraising. It’s about honoring not only our freedom, but also the freedom of others to choose their own way.

And that is first and foremost a “spiritual matter.” As Dr. Coffin stated, “Most Americans aren’t spiritually free. They don’t think freely; they don’t act freely; they never anticipate that they’re going to be free spiritually.” In other words, freedom is little more than a slogan, which makes it all right to hate and perhaps kill Iraqis who have less freedom than we do.

The call to violence, whether in our lives, our nation, or the world, is in biblical terms, a call to return to Egypt and to slavery. The call to violence is never the response of faith, but an admission of failure to negotiate, to compromise, to consider the concerns of others as equal to ours. So how do we refuse to practice violence and to support nonviolence?

First, don’t hate: Nonviolent peace includes an inner dimension – the refusal to allow our minds to be manipulated, and our hearts to be controlled. Put another way, we refuse to hate those who are supposed to be our enemies. Please let me repeat that: We refuse to hate those who are supposed to be our enemies. As Muhammad Ali said in 1967, when they tried to force him to fight in Vietnam, “I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger.” At 25 and in his prime, he was stripped of his championship belt and his license to box, and sentenced to five years in prison. The sentence was not overturned until three years later, by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court. He refused to hate.

Second, tell the truth: George Orwell, the author of the incredibly prescient novel 1984, said, "At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." At the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., these words of Jesus are inscribed in stone: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” And the truth is that the war in Iraq was built on a falsehood. It was a stupendous mistake, a brutal act of barbaric militarism, and an evil enterprise whose costs we, and the world will be paying for, for generations to come. That’s the truth, and we should not hesitate to say it. So-called “victory” and “winning the war” are the delusions of fear-driven minds, whose greed has brought this nation to the brink of economic disaster, and whose adventurism have vitiated our once proud and strong volunteer military.

Third, take a pledge of nonviolence: Gandhi said, “If we really want to cultivate nonviolence, we should take a pledge that, come what may, we will not give way to anger, or order about members of our household, or lord it over those we work with.” We can thus utilize, what he calls, “trifling little occasions in everyday life to cultivate nonviolence in our own person and teach it to our children.”

So three things: One, don’t hate; two, tell the truth; three, pledge to be nonviolent.

My sister, Grace, who teaches 8^th grade English in Guthrie, OK, inquired by e-mail to weeks ago about my being arrested in Washington, D.C., on March 16^th, for demonstrating for peace in front of the White House. Rather than explain, I sent her a copy of my March 18^th sermon that explained what happened (copies of which are available in back). She later wrote back and said that the quote from Ken Butigan was the most awesome quote she had ever experienced. It helped her as never before to understand what nonviolence really is. Here’s the quote:

“When you face an enemy or someone who wants to do you harm, look and act towards them as if you love them more than any person in the world.”

I talked to her this week and we reminisced about it. She told me that she had shown her class the film, War, with Kevin Costner. In the discussion sessions that followed, she said she told them about what her brother had done in D.C. And she read to them the quotation I cited above.

Now these are 13-year-old kids, 51% of whom are on the free lunch program because of coming from poverty. Many are being raised by single parent mothers. Many are being raised by someone other than their parents. Many are not strangers to violence.

She asked , “What do you say when someone says to you, ‘Shut up!’” Without exception they replied, “You shut up!” or worse. She then asked them, “What if someone hits you, what do you do?” They all responded with variations of “I would hit them right back, but harder.”

They then discussed what happens when they do that? And they all agreed that it only got worse. She confirmed it by telling them that she had read dozens of write-ups on kids through the years who had been suspended from school for fighting. Every single time it was for pure stupidity, she said.

“But,” she asked them, “what if when they say, ‘Shut up!’ we responded as if the person that said that was the person we loved most? How different would the outcome be?” She was stunned when they were totally quiet.

So I ask the same question of us, as a nation and a people: How different would the world be if we loved our enemies, if we did good to those who hate us, if we blessed those who curse us, and prayed for those who abuse us?

Ken Boulding said, “The stick, the carrot, and the hug may all be necessary, but the greatest of these is the hug.” We can try force, we can try bribery, but love and acceptance are the greatest options of all.

On this Sunday before Passover, Shalom. Salaam Aleikum. Amen. And blessed be.

[1] Given April 01, 2007, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, Ft. Myers, Florida, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1901 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, pp. 18f.

[3] What’s a nice church like you doing in a place like this? p. 40f. (Word Books: Waco) 1972, compiled by Wayne Robinson.