Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Religion in society

  • Cast Off Tyranny

    The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Parish of Concord, Massachusetts, at 10:00 a.m. The sermon text below is a reading text; the actual sermon contained a good deal of improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon and meditation/prayer copyright (c) 2010 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    “When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

    “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

    (from the Declaration of Independence)

    The second reading this morning is an excerpt from the Election Day Sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Samuel West of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, to the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, in May of 1776.

    “The most perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary, to the law of nature and reason, he becomes the slave of base passions and vile lusts; he introduces confusion and disorder into society, and bring misery and destruction upon himself. This, therefore, cannot be called a state of freedom, but a state of the vilest slavery and the most dreadful bondage. The servants of sin and corruption are subjected to the worst kind of tyranny in the universe. Hence we conclude that where licentiousness begins, liberty ends….” (Complete text of West’s Election Day sermon.)

    Meditation/Prayer

    Let us join our hearts together in a time of meditation and prayer.

    On this two hundred and thirty fourth anniversary of the declaration of independence, let us first think of all those who have fought for the existence and betterment of this country of ours. We think of the American servicemen and servicewomen who have done their duty by fighting this country’s wars and battles, from the Minutemen and militia of April 19, 1775, up to those who are serving now in Iraq and Afghanistan. We give thanks for all those who have fought within and outside this country’s borders.

    We think of the many others who have fought to protect the American ideals of justice and freedom: the abolitionists who faced scorn and violence to fight against the evil of slavery; the women who faced ridicule and disbelief to fight for the right to vote and later for broader women’s rights; the Civil Rights workers who faced violence and death to fight for the rights of African Americans; those who have fought for gay and lesbian rights, for the rights of immigrants, for the rights of many different ethnic groups — we give thanks all those who have struggled for freedom and justice within this country. And we pledge ourselves to continue our fights for social justice.

    We give thanks for the rich natural resources with which our country has been blessed, from purple mountains’ majesties to fields of waving grain. In light of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we pledge ourselves to use our natural resources wisely and well.

    From these broad concerns, we turn our thoughts to more personal and immediate concerns….

    Hymn — “Chester”

    A word about this hymn: This is an old Revolutionary era hymn, which we sing as a sort of historical reenactment, to better understand the Revolutionary mindset. Those of you with an interest in theology will note that the deity to which Billings refers in this hymn is a far from orthodox Christian God, and must surely have been considered rankest heresy by the English church and government whom Billings and other New Englanders were then fighting.

    PDF of musical score for “Chester”.

    Sermon — “Cast Off Tyranny”

    Today is Independence Day, the fourth of July, the day on which, more than two centuries ago, the United States of America declared that it was independent of England’s tyranny. Imagine the excitement as word spread through British North America: we had declared ourselves a new country! Everyone knew there were still battles to be fought, and the war for American independence dragged on for years after the Declaration of Independence, until 1783. Nevertheless, imagine what people felt in 1776! People were excited, no doubt about it — excited to cast off the tyrannical colonial rule of King George — excited to begin a grand experiment in democracy.

    The second hymn we sang is one product of the excitement of the Revolutionary era. Published just two years after the Declaration of Independence, the words were written by the William Billings, the first really noteworthy American composer.1 He lived in Boston, right in the middle of one of the hotbeds of Revolutionary-era cultural and political ferment. “Let tyrants shake their iron rod, / And Slav’ry clank her galling chains, / We fear them not, we trust in God, / New England’s God forever reigns.” I suppose New England’s God differs radically from Old England’s God; I imagine a sturdy figure wearing a tri-con hat, carrying a Brown Bess musket, and bestowing the blessings of lobster and cod; a deity beneath whose stern eye the God of Old England would tremble and quake. Under the protection of New England’s God, the progress of the war would be swift: “When God inspir’d us for the fight, / Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc’d, / Their ships were Shatter’d in our sight, / Or swiftly driven from our Coast.”

    During the Revolutionary era, the people of New England mingled their religion with their revolution. It didn’t matter what sect or denomination to which you belonged, you found a way to put revolution in your religion. The religious revolutions of both Unitarianism and Universalism began at the same time as the American political revolution. Before 1775, King’s Chapel in Boston belonged to the Church of England, but after their Tory minister fled Boston, the patriots who were left in the congregation rewrote their Book of Common Prayer to remove all references to the Trinity, and in 1785 they became the first overtly Unitarian congregation in North America. In 1774, Caleb Rich had organized the first Universalist congregation in Warwick, in the hills of central Massachusetts; and when the message reached their remote village, early in the morning of April 19, 1775, that His Majesty’s troops were marching on Concord, Rich took up his musket and marched as quickly as he could here to this town; he had such a long way to come that he arrived on April 20, the day after the battle, but he proceeded on to Boston and served for eight months with the Continental Army.2 So you see, not only did the Revolutionary era witness the beginnings of organized Unitarianism and Universalism in New England, but those early Unitarians and Universalists were right in the thick of the Revolutionary War.

    The ideal of liberty, the ideal of freedom from tyranny, was a broad ideal in those days, and for a time in the 1770s and 1780s, I think some people felt that ideal would be broadly applied. But over time, that early ideal changed shape, and turned into something a little bit different. I’d like to tell you about that change with you by telling you the stories of two liberal ministers: Rev. Dr. Samuel West of Dartmouth, Massachusetts; and Rev. Ezra Ripley, who served this Concord congregation.

     

    I’ll start with the story of Samuel West’s career as a revolutionary minister.3 Samuel West was ordained by and installed as minister in the congregation in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in 1761. By 1765, he was active in the Revolutionary cause, along with his Harvard classmates John Adams and John Hancock. Because Dartmouth was a provincial town far from Boston, West could never be as active a revolutionary as Adams or Hancock, but he managed to participate in a good deal of the excitement.

    When fighting broke out in 1775, West was one of the delegates to the Provincial Congress which met in Concord; so he was here in Concord, in this very spot, in the old meetinghouse, in early April of 1775. Then he became a military chaplain at the Battle of Bunker Hill. His most dramatic moment as a military chaplain came when he assisted General George Washington by deciphering a letter written in code by Frederick Church, an American officer who was suspected of being a spy; West was able to confirm that Church was indeed a spy.

    West was so much in the middle of the revolution that Massachusetts invited him to give the Election Day sermon in May, 1776, a sermon which was widely reprinted. West argued that, on the one hand, the colonies of British North America must break away from the British Empire, because the Empire’s rule was no longer just. At the same time, West argued that breaking away from the British Empire did not mean doing away with all government and descending into anarchy. He did not believe in radical individualism, and his real point was that liberty must be a communal affair.

    In 1779-1780, West was a delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention. Then again in 1788, West was a delegate to the Massachusetts convention that ratified the United States Constitution. In fact, at a crucial moment West managed to convince his old friend and classmate John Hancock to shake off an attack of gout and return to the convention to address the delegates. Hancock wrapped himself up in his flannels, addressed the delegates, and tipped the scales in favor of ratification.

    So you see that West was right in the thick of the Revolution here in Massachusetts. When the excitement was over, and he went back to the sleepy town of Dartmouth, West did not give up his revolutionary ideals. A few old church records from that era, presumably written by West himself, still remain, and one notation in those old records is of particular interest. It reads: “1785, Apr. 10, Venture, a negro man was baptised and admitted to full communion. This was the slave who purchased his freedom of Deacon John Chaffee in 1770.” West and the deacons of his congregation lived out their ideals of true liberty by accepting this African American man into full church membership. And their ideal of true liberty was one in which the liberty of the individual was effected through communal endeavor. It was not enough that Massachusetts abolished slavery and gave individual African American their liberty — true liberty meant that African Americans and European Americans must be together in an integrated society.

    So it was that in 1778 Samuel West anticipated the process of racial integration that would finally take place more than a hundred years later, during the Civil Rights era of the mid-twentieth century. So it was that Samuel West lived out his revolutionary ideals, not just in the political sphere, but also in the religious sphere. I believe this was typical of his generation of revolutionary clergy. I suspect that additional research would show us that other liberal congregations admitted African Americans into church membership in that brief period of Revolutionary fervor during which individual liberty and the liberty of the communal congregation were understood as being bound up together.4 Thus we find the same understanding of liberty pervading both Samuel West’s religious ideals and his political ideals.

     

    Now let me tell you the story of Rev. Ezra Ripley.5 Ripley was born in 1751, so he was twenty-one years younger than West; he belonged to the generation after West’s Revolutionary generation.

    To tell you this story, I first have to go back to Rev. William Emerson, who was the minister here in Concord in 1775. Like West, Emerson became a military chaplain; he went off to Fort Ticonderoga, where he became ill, and died on the journey home. He left behind a widow, Phebe Bliss Emerson, who had been the daughter of the previous minister, Daniel Bliss. When Ezra Ripley came to Concord, he courted and then married Phebe Emerson, and she thus was part of the immediate family of three successive Concord ministers. Although the records of those days tend to pass over the accomplishments of women, I cannot help but think that Phebe Bliss Emerson Ripley had far more influence on congregational affairs than she has been given credit for; therefore, although this story is ostensibly about Ezra Ripley, I suspect that Phebe Ripley played a bigger role than may be found in the historical record.

    When Ezra Ripley came to Concord, he came to a congregation that was largely organized along the old Calvinist lines. Among other things, that meant that in order to become a member of the church, you had to publicly confess your sins to the rest of the congregation. And you couldn’t participate in the Lord’s Supper unless you were a full member of the church. Furthermore, if parents wanted to have Ripley baptize their children, they had to publicly accept the church covenant.

    Over time, Ezra Ripley managed to liberalize these strict old Calvinist requirements. Parents could get their children baptized by simply affirming Christianity and saying they would raise their children in that faith. The requirements for membership were also greatly reduced. Instead requiring a public confession of sins, and public assent to the Westminster Catechism, by 1795 prospective members could simply go to Ezra Ripley, offer “credible evidence of sincerity” and make some profession of faith, and he would make sure they became members.

    These reforms were entirely in keeping with Ripley’s liberal Arminian theology — we might call it a sort of proto-Unitarian theology — a theology very similar to Samuel West’s beliefs. Both Ripley and West rejected the old Calvinist notion that only a small group of the elect, a group whose members were ordained before the beginning of time, would ever reach heaven, and reach it through no efforts of their own. Instead, Ripley and West believed that we have moral free will, that we are responsible for our own destinies.

    Ezra Ripley went further than West, however. By getting rid of the public confession of sins, Ripley transformed church membership from a communal decision, to a personal decision made in private with just the minister and the prospective member. This was in keeping with a trend in American culture towards increasing individualism, and away from communalism. I would put it this way: Samuel West and liberal ministers like him were quite clear in their minds that religion was a communal endeavor; Ripley moved religion towards being a personal, individual endeavor.

    The next and fateful step in this process was taken by Phebe Emerson Ripley’s grandson, and Ezra Ripley’s step-grandson, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was Waldo Emerson who turned religion into a personal matter that was between an individual and the Oversoul. Waldo Emerson encouraged each individual to become self-reliant, and break away from the strictures of society that might restrict the utter liberty of the individual. Waldo Emerson’s disciple Henry David Thoreau went still further: Thoreau rejected all institutional connections, and severed his own connection to this congregation. Why should he be restricted by anything but his own intuitions of religious truth?

     

    Of course I agree with this religious evolution. If I had to stand up in front of a congregation and confess my sins in order to become a member of that congregation, I would not do it. And my understanding of liberty is similar to that of Emerson and Thoreau: liberty is personal liberty, the liberty to say and believe and do what I please, without being hampered by social strictures.

    Yet we lost something when we evolved away from West’s ideal of communal liberty. Yes, Waldo Emerson and those like him who advocated individual liberty of course opposed slavery; but they did not want to integrate African Americans into their own congregations, as did Samuel West. Yes, Henry David Thoreau was an abolitionist and a conductor on the Underground Railroad; but his rejection of communal institutions like this church meant that he never had to come to terms with what it might mean to live day after day with people who were quite different from himself. Liberty was a personal affair for Emerson and Thoreau and their followers; it was not a communal affair; and for them, the only purpose and role of government was to stay out of the way of the individual’s personal liberty. In all this, I think Emerson and Thoreau went to far in the direction of individual self-reliance; and since their day, we have gone still farther in that direction, until we have come to a place of extreme individualism.

    Not that we can or should go back to Samuel West’s old ideals of communal liberty. Samuel West believed that churches should be supported by taxes; he believed in a God that I cannot possibly believe in; he did not believe that women were the equals of men. There was no mythical past in which everything was perfect. Samuel West did the best he could when faced with the problems of his time. Ezra Ripley did the best he could when faced with the problems of his times. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau did the best they could in their time. Each generation is called to address to the special problems of its time, and to do its best.

    Our generation has its own problems to face. Our generation must revisit what liberty means to us. We need to move beyond the idea that liberty is the inalienable right to express our extreme individualism by sitting at home and enjoying our leisure time by watching television, playing video games, and reading our friends’ Facebook feeds. That kind of liberty is no liberty at all; as Samuel West might have put it, “This… cannot be called a state of freedom, but a state of the vilest slavery and the most dreadful bondage.”

    In fact, this kind of individualism is no longer a form of liberty; it has become a new tyranny. In our generation, liberty must take on a new form. We are coming to understand that our American ideal of liberty, our constantly evolving ideal of American liberty, must become an ideal of communal liberty. In these days, our safety and happiness, our life and liberty, depend on our working together for the common good. If we’re going to solve the problem of global climate change, and the related problem of global overpopulation — problems which have both a religious and political dimension — we shall have to put aisde our extreme individualism, and work together for the common good. If we are to finally achieve racial harmony in this country, we shall have to put aside that extreme individualism we have clung to for so long, and we shall ahve to work together for the common good.

    We hold this to be self evident: all persons are created equal; all person are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and to secure these rights, we join together to institute a common government, in which we all work together for the common good.

    Notes to the sermon:

    1 For a brief account of the importance of Billings to the development of American music, see Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture by Stephen Marini (University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 78 ff. (online preview available on Google Books).
    2 For Caleb Rich, see: The Larger Hope vol. 1, Russell Miller; Stephen Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England, pp. 72 ff.
    3 The details of Samuel West’s life come from an essay on West I am currently preparing for possible publication.
    4 Mark Morrison-Reed makes this point in the manuscript of his forthcoming book on African American Unitarians and Universalists, now being prepared for publication by Skinner House Books.
    5 For the account of Ripley’s life, I draw upon new research: “‘Doctor Ripley’s Church’: Congregational Life in Concord, Massachusetts, 1778-1841,” The Journal of Unitarian Universalist History XXXIII (2009-2010), pp. 1-37 (available online here).

  • The Last True Story

    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 improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2009 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning comes from The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, a book by John Crawford which tells the story of his tour of duty in Iraq. I thought is was important for us to hear the words of an Iraq veteran this Memorial Day. This is from the end of the book:

    It was raining the day I stepped off the plane and into a chilly Georgia morning. The line of soldiers, heads down, struggled underneath the weight of their gear across the tarmac and into the long, low building full of Red Cross coffee and doughnuts. Along the way a general stood shaking hands and exchanging salutes with returning soldiers. Next to him, a young lieutenant shivered as he held an umbrella out at arm’s length over the general. Neither had combat patches on their uniforms, and I splashed by without saluting or shaking hands.

    The first time I had been at the airport, there had been banners and flags, family members waving fervently at the departing plane. This time the weather, I guess, had kept them home, and the gray sky was the only real witness to our return. Clouds or no, the “freedom bird” had landed and our war was over; we were home.

    That night, in the same dilapidated World War II barracks that we had deployed from an eternity before, I didn’t sleep. I thought it was because of the Christmas-morning-like tremble in the air. In reality, I had become addicted to Valium in Baghdad and was going through withdrawal. Sitting alone on my bunk in the darkness, I felt a wave of nausea approaching. That sick feeling hasn’t entirely gone away yet….

    While many in my platoon had relatively easy transitions, within days, I found myself kept from homelessness only by the hospitality of a friend with a sofa. It was like being at a party and going to the restroom for fifteen months and then trying to rejoin the conversation. Everyone and everything had changed without asking me first.

    …to be continued…

    The second reading this morning is a continuation of the first reading.

    I took solace in becoming the kind of self-deprecating drunk who shows up at parties naked and wonders why everyone reacts the way they do. The sequence of events that followed culminated in my waking up on the dingy bathroom floor of an even dingier one-bedroom apartment devoid of furniture, except for a couch pulled from a Dumpster early one rainy morning before the garbage man could claim it. In that bathroom, fighting off sickness from the year’s excess, with my dog eyeing me and wondering if a coup d’état would be necessary to ensure his continued food supply, I did some soul-searching.

    I didn’t find a whole lot. I don’t have nightmares, or see faces. When there is a flash outside my window at night I know it’s just lightning and not a flare or explosion. I can even drive without cringing at the slightest pile of rubble along the roadside in anticipation of an ear-rending explosion and shrapnel tearing through my flesh. I rarely get into fights with people who I imagine are “eyeballing me.” I actually adjusted quite well.

    It certainly could have been worse. One of my buddies got locked up in an institution by the police for being a danger to himself. Another woke up in the hospital with no memory of the beating he received from police — not for being a danger to himself, but to everyone else. One guy got a brain infection and wakes up every morning expecting to be in Iraq. Two more are in Afghanistan, having re-upped rather than deal with being at home. Five more went back to Baghdad as private security guards. Their consensus on how it is a second time around: still hot and nasty….

    War stories end when the battle is over or when the soldier comes home. In real life, there are no moments amid smoldering hilltops for tranquil introspection. When the war is over, you pick up your gear, walk down the hill and back into the world.

    Sermon

    The readings this morning came from a book written by a John Crawford about what it was like for him to return from serving in the Iraq War. They paint a pretty bleak picture of what it’s like to be a returning veteran. But I’d like to add something else that Crawford says. Near the beginning of the book, he writes:

    “As much as I feel like this book is the story of innocence not lost but stolen, of lies and blackness … I should also share a few words from my father, from a phone conversation we had about halfway through my time in Iraq. He said to me, ‘Son, of all the things I wanted to see you achieve, a combat infantry badge was the last. It is also the one I am most proud of you for.’”

    This is Memorial Day weekend, and Memorial Day is an appropriate time to reflect on what our veterans go through; it is an appropriate time to remember that we should take pride in our American servicemen and servicewomen; it is an appropriate time to reflect on the moral issues that go along with war, moral issues that reflect, not on individual veterans, but on all of us who are part of American society.

     

    On this Memorial Day in the year 2009, what is uppermost in our minds is the fact that the war in Iraq has been going on for more than five years now. When we are in the middle of such a war, a war that threatens to drag on for quite a while longer, it’s easy to forget the origins of Memorial Day.

    Historian David Blight tells us that 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 Confederate Army had established a prison camp on the site of a race course. 257 Union soldiers died in that prison camp, and were dumped into a mass grave.

    In April, 1865, the African American community of Charleston decided to create a proper gravesite for the Union dead buried in that mass grave. They disinterred the bodies, and reinterred them in individual graves, and African American carpenters built a fence around the new grave yard.

    To officially open the new grave yard, the African American community organized a parade of some ten thousand people, including African American schoolchildren and ordinary African American citizens. White Americans were represented by some nearby Union regiments, and some white abolitionists. All these people gathered in the new graveyard. They listened to preachers, they sang songs like “America the Beautiful” and “John Brown’s Body” and old spirituals. And at last they settled down to picnics, and to watching the Union regiments marching about.

    This was the first Memorial Day: a day to commemorate those who had died in the war, to honor those who had fought in the war, to reflect on the meaning of the Civil War, and to reflect on the end of the war. These are still the purposes of Memorial Day today: to commemorate those who died in war, to honor the veterans, to reflect on what wars mean for us, and to think about the end of the present war and the eventual end of all wars. That first Memorial Day was celebrated in that newly-built cemetery; and it is still a tradition in many families to go to the cemetery on Memorial Day, and tend to the graves of family members who have died.

    I’d like to reflect on some of these points with you this morning. I’d like to begin by thinking about how we might best honor our veterans. I’d like to reflect on the meaning of war, particularly what the current war means for us. Finally, I’d like to commemorate those who have died in war.

     

    1. How might we best honor our returning veterans? This is a question that the United States has struggled with again and again. Sometime we give our returning veterans parades and hero’s welcomes; just as often, we have seemingly forgotten our returning veterans. Or, as we heard in the readings this morning, the welcome given to returning veterans is not much of a welcome.

    There’s an underlying problem here. When we send soldiers off to war, we have trained them to do a very specific task, which is to wage war. When soldiers return home again, we have to think about how to help them make that transition. It take months to train a soldier to go to war; we should expect that it might take months to train a soldier to stop being a soldier. It isn’t enough to greet a returning soldier with a salute and a handshake from a general without a combat badge. Nor can we try to make this the sole responsibility of the military; in a democratic society, it is the responsibility of all of us.

    We all know that our democratic society has to take the responsibility for making sure all returning vets get integrated back into society. There are veterans who become non-functional, and we have to take care of them: either by helping them become functional once again; or if that is impossible, then we have to adequately care for them. When we hear that a disproportionate number of homeless people are veterans, we know that we have not done a good job of caring for our non-functional veterans.

    Then there are the veterans who are basically functional, although they may need several months of transition time. For these men and women, society has to make sure that their transition goes smoothly. John Crawford’s transition did not go smoothly, and he says that at one point the only thing that kept him from homelessness was the kindness of a friend. This represents a failure by society — by us — to take care of returning veterans who will go on to lead fully functional lives.

    And there are the veterans who made it through the war basically intact, and who have an easy transition back into civilian life. Even with these men and women, we can’t abdicate all responsibility. When these veterans come back to civilian life, they need society’s help — they need our help — as they reclaim old jobs or find new jobs. This may be a difficult task for us in the current economic climate.

    I’d have to say that our society does not do a particularly good job at supporting returning veterans. We don’t necessarily do a bad job, but there’s no real enthusiasm for it. I think part of the problems is that less than one percent of the population is on active military duty during this current war; there are so few returning veterans as a percentage of the overall society that it is easy to forget them or ignore them. And so as a society we don’t make the effort to re-integrate returning veterans into society. In fact, the taxpayers demand that we don’t spend enough money on returning veterans: there is never enough money for the part of the military budget that deals with returning vets.

    Morally, this is selfish and wrong. If we’re going to have a war, we have to clean up after that war. This means in part that we have to take care of returning soldiers. This has to be figured into the true costs of every war. The politicians must be forced to figure this cost in, and we as voters and taxpayers have to hold military and political leaders accountable to this.

     

    2. Those are some thoughts about how we might honor returning veterans. Next I’d like to reflect for a moment on the meaning of war, particularly on the meaning of the current war.

    One of the central aspects of war that we tend to ignore in our society is that every war requires some kind of atonement. Even a war that is completely justifiable on moral grounds would require atonement for the very simple reason that any war involves killing, and killing always requires atonement. Since war is a society-wide phenomenon, the killing that takes place during war must be atoned for by everyone in society. This is part of the purpose of Memorial Day, in my opinion. That very first Memorial Day was to remember the Civil War, which was fought for the morally justifiable purpose of ending slavery; nevertheless, even after the Civil War, those African American citizens of Charleston atoned for all the killing that went on by building a suitable cemetery for the war dead. This is one reason we visit graves and cemeteries and memorials on Memorial Day.

    Obviously, we visit graves and cemeteries and memorials to say goodbye to those who died in war. We have all seen those images of Vietnam veterans at the Vietnam veterans memorial in Washington, D.C., with tears in their eyes as they see the name of a friend who died in that war. This is one way we atone for the killing that goes on during war: we remember it, and we grieve over it. This is a very traditional part of Memorial Day, and this should continue.

    But that is not enough. Somehow we have to atone for all the evils of war — not just the killing, but the waste, and the disruption, and the tears in the fabric of society, and the weakening of the moral fabric of society, all of which are results of war. And it is we, you and I, who have to do this, because the evils of war have been done in our name and for our sakes. Even if we didn’t agree with the war, even if we voted against the politicians who supported the war, even if we actively opposed the war (as I did), we do live in a democracy, and in a democracy we are all responsible for public policy.

    So how can we atone for all the evils of war? — which, by the way, sounds like a pretty big job. Basically we atone for war by continuing to work towards making our society the kind of society in which war is no longer necessary. And since we live in a democracy, we will find different ways to do this work. Since so many wars are rooted in fights over resources, some of us might find ways for us to use fewer resources as a society. Since so many wars are rooted in hatred of Otherness, some of us might work to increase understanding across religious, ethnic, racial, and other boundaries. In this congregation, many of us are artists of one kind or another, and the artists among us might make paintings and poems and sculptures and plays and music that leads us towards a future that does not require war. I’m a minister, and one of the things I try to do is to popularize the teachings of Jesus and of Buddha, both of whom taught that violence is unnecessary. In short, reducing the likelihood that we will wage war in the future is the best way to atone for waging war in the present.

    There is one kind of atonement that all of us should do; we should all grieve the loss of life. In the case of the Iraq War, we should especially grieve the loss of our own American servicemen and servicewomen, because they are closest to us; but we should also grieve all loss of life that occurs during this war, for we are in some sense responsible for it. We Americans don’t like the thought that maybe we should feel a little guilt, but we have to feel at least a little guilty that we’re alive while other people died in a war fought by our country. This is another purpose of Memorial Day: to grieve the deaths of all those who die in the course of war.

     

    3. And perhaps the best way to grieve is to commemorate those who have died. The way we do this is to remember all the people who have died, in all the military actions our country as gotten involved in. That means remembering even the small military actions that resulted in loss of life. That makes a fairly substantial list. In my lifetime alone, I remember the war that spread from Vietnam into Cambodia and Laos; the Cold War; the invasion of Grenada; the military action in Panama; the Persian Gulf War; the military action in Somalia; the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head; I’m sure there were some that I’ve forgotten.

    When we start remembering all the military actions America has been involved in, we are doing two things. First, it helps us to remember that lots of low-level American servicemen and servicewomen have died in the service of this country; and that reminds us that there are plenty of returned veterans, American servicemen and servicewomen who didn’t die, to whom we owe ongoing support. Second, remembering this long list of military actions by our country makes us reflect on the morality of our use of military force. From a moral point of view, this long list makes me think that maybe we could have gotten away with fewer wars. Maybe we could devoted more of our resources, and more of our attention, to humanitarian aid, to supporting United Nations peacekeeping missions, and so on. Helping other nations in peaceful ways is morally better than being involved in war.

    I’d like to end by reflecting on the possibility that we could someday end war. At this point in history, we may not have a choice: we can no longer afford to carry on long, drawn-out wars. We are going to have a hard enough time paying the cost of re-integrating so many returning veterans, and providing them with sufficient services to make sure they have the support they deserve. The current war, a horrendously expensive war, is dragging down our economy by putting our country further into debt, which makes it less attractive to buy Treasury bonds. We are going to be paying the price of this war for years to come through our taxes, and I don’t see how we are going to be able to afford another war any time soon. That’s the price we pay in money, but there’s another price we pay, and that’s the moral price.

    In our culture, it’s not very popular to say this. Americans like to think that we are always in the right, which means that there is no moral price to anything. So now I get to be the cranky preacher who says: sorry, but there is a moral price. If we don’t find ways to atone for the killing that has been going on in our names, then we will pay the moral price for this war in guilt and shame, and guilt and shame take a long time to finally do away with. Perhaps it is impossible to end all war; human beings are by no means perfect beings, and we are going to continue to get ourselves into situations where we have to go to war. But war has become a luxury that we can no longer afford to indulge so frequently. We need to continue to work towards making our society less dependent on waging war. Since our current war is, at root, a fight over oil resources, some of us will find ways for us to use fewer resources as a society. Since many wars are rooted in hatred of Otherness, some of us will work to increase understanding across religious, ethnic, racial, and other boundaries. The artists among us will make paintings and poems and sculptures and plays and music that leads us towards less dependence on war.

    So on this Memorial Day, we will look forward to reducing our society’s reliance on war. And we will also do all the things that those citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, did on the very first Memorial Day. We will have parades. We will commemorate the dead. Some of us will go to tend graves. Some of us will have picnics. We will all pause for at least a moment to remember Memorial Day, and then pause for another moment to look forward to the day when we will reduce our reliance on war — or even end war altogether.

  • Just Wars, Unjust Wars

    This sermon was a revised version of a sermon first preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford from March 25, 2007. Because Dan was ill, Karen Andersen delivered this sermon. Sermon copyright (c) 2009 Daniel Harper.

    Sermon

    This morning, I had planned to preach a sermon titled “Emperor as God.” But a couple of things got in the way of that plan. First of all, my mother-in-law, Betty Steinfeld, whom I loved dearly, died a week ago today. Second of all, I somehow managed to a nasty gastro-intestinal virus early in the week. Between those two things, and some other things going on, I’m afraid I didn’t have the energy to write a whole new sermon — instead I rewrote a sermon from March 25, 2007. Indeed, I’m ill enough that I have asked our worship associate Karen Andersen to preach this sermon for me.

    …

    We Unitarian Universalists are both Christian and not-Christian; some people call us “post-Christian.” Although “post-Christian” can be meant as an insult, 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 sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Today is also Palm Sunday, that day when Jesus of Nazareth went to Jerusalem, and challenged the ethics of the regional political and religious leaders. Today, 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, long before he went into Jerusalem. 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.”

    And then he also preached this:

    “‘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 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. Many of our political leaders made exactly such arguments as Congress voted overwhelmingly to invade Iraq; and while some of those political 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.

    …

    So how can we make amends for this invasion of Iraq? Let me tell you how one man did so.

    Two years ago, on Friday, March 16, 2007, 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. Now I wasn’t going to commit civil disobedience, but I did want to be there as a witness.

    And 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.” At that moment, I sure wished I was the one who was going to get arrested.

    …

    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. Trust Barack Obama and the new batch of political leaders — they’ll get us out of Iraq, and you and I don’t have to do anything. 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.

    But I have to tell you, we cannot justify the war in Iraq on religious grounds. I have to 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. Making such a proclamation will come at a price — like that man in Washington, D.C., we might wind up getting arrested; or look what happened to Jesus of Nazareth after he went to Jerusalem and began protesting the immoralities of his day. There will be a price, but 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.