Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Religion in society

  • Dads to the rescue

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading comes from the Torah, the book of Genesis, chapter 22, verses 1-8:

    ‘After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.’

    The second reading is an excerpt from a long poem titled “Seed Catalog” by poet Robert Kroetsch:

    My father was mad at the badger: the badger was digging holes in the potato patch, threatening man and beast with broken limbs (I quote). My father took the double-barreled shotgun out into the potato patch and waited.

    Every time the badger stood up, it looked like a little man, come out of the ground. Why, my father asked himself — Why would so fine a fellow live below the ground? Just for the cool of the roots? The solace of dark tunnels? The blood of gophers?

    My father couldn’t shoot the badger. He uncocked the shotgun, came back into the house in time for breakfast. The badger dug another hole. My father got mad again. They carried on like that all summer.

    Love is an amplification
    by doing/ over and over.

    Love is a standing up
    to the loaded gun.

    Love is a burrowing.

    One morning my father actually shot at the badger. He killed a magpie that was pecking away at a horse turd about fifty feet beyond and to the right of the spot where the badger had been standing.

    A week later my father told the story again. In that version he intended to hit the magpie. Magpies, he explained, are a nuisance. They eat robin’s eggs. They’re harder to kill than snakes, jumping around the way they do, nothing but feathers.

    Just call me sure-shot,
    my father added.

    SERMON — “Dads to the Rescue”

    Our Western cultural tradition has at least two ways of talking about fathers, and these two ways are represented by our two readings this morning. One way of talking about fathers is dramatic, big, astounding, and — a little bit crazy. The other way of talking about fathers is muted, down-to-earth, not very exciting, and a lot more realistic. Both these views of fathers have religious implications, but I hope to show that for our religious community, the second way of talking about fathers is probably going to be more productive for us.

    Our Western religious traditions paint an ambiguous picture of fatherhood. Within the Christian tradition, Jesus of Nazareth tells us to think of God as an ideal father, fair and loving; but Jesus also tells his followers to abandon their human fathers to follow only their heavenly father. Within the pagan traditions as I have experienced them, men and maleness and fathers are respected, but the emphasis has been on the Goddess and motherhood, and sometimes fatherhood is pushed off to the side. In our own congregation, we see a higher attendance on the Sunday of Mother’s Day than we do on the Sunday of Father’s Day. Not that anyone is bad-mouthing fathers in any of these situations — but it does seem to me that we don’t quite know what to make of fathers; or what to make of men when you come right down to it.

    These ambiguous feelings towards fathers get summed up in the rather peculiar story of the time when God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. What a dramatic story it is!– Abraham has Isaac all ready to kill on the scrificial altar, and at the last minute God steps in and says to Abaraham, No you don’t really have to kill your son, this was just a test of your loyalty to me, and you passed the test. From a modern point of view, of course our first response to God’s request is something along these lines: You say you want Abraham to sacrifice his son, but then it’s just a loyalty test? –what, are you crazy?! And then we stop ourselves and realize that perhaps Abraham felt that his relationship to God was like a father-son relationship, and what do you do when your father asks you to do something crazy? Loyalty to something big and abstract can be tricky indeed.

    I’m afraid, however, that that takes me right back to my initial reaction: You want Abraham to sacrifice his son? –God, are you crazy?! Yet somehow I do admire Abraham for upholding his loyalty to God, there’s a little piece of me that admires Abraham for having the confidence in his God to know that somehow things will turn out all right. But then I think, How can God ask this of Abraham? –how can God ask this man to kill his son? Why does God need to test his children in this way?

    If you want to engage in pop psychology, perhaps you could say that this story points up just how complicated the relationships between fathers and their children can be. It may be that this story, like so many of the old, old myths that have come down to us, carries in it a grain of truth; perhaps the grain of an uncomfortable truth: parents do test their children; parents are not as simple as the sentiments on greeting cards.

    But there’s another way of perceiving fathers that’s not so flashy, yet it really is just as pervasive in Western culture. This other way of perceiving fathers is low-key, down-to-earth, and probably closer to reality. We can see this second way of perceiving fathers at work in the second reading, the poem about the father and the badger.

    The poem starts off with a kind of cliche: father heading off to kill a marauding animal. But then he can’t stand to kill the badger. Finally, he shoots at the badger, but he still can’t stand to kill it, so he almost deliberately misses, and to his surprise he kills a magpie. In the end, though, he has to tell the story so that he meant to kill the magpie — in the end, it seems as though the father in the poem has to live up to what men in our culture are supposed to do and be.

    Actually, I prefer to think that the father in the poem knows perfectly well what he’s done. He felt he should shoot at the badger, but he didn’t want to hit the badger; in that sense, his aim was perfect, perfect because he missed the badger. Now by chance, he happened to hit a magpie, but that doesn’t make his aim any less perfect, so when he says, “Just call me sure-shot,” he’s only telling the truth.

    And this portrait of a father is far closer to reality;– at least far closer to the real world as I’ve experienced it. Fathers, like all human beings, are complex, fallible, wonderful beings, mixtures of good and less-good motivations, complex mixtures of highest ideals and random happenings. Waht we see in this anecdote is that the poet’s father influences him so very strongly, strongly enough that he writes a poem about it, through a series of small actions. For, as the poet says, “Love is an amplification/ by doing over and over.”

    There is a theological point in all this. But it’s not the stereotypical kind of theological point. We get no insights into deep metaphysics; we get no revelations into the ultimate nature of God or the universe; we do not receive ultimate instruction in the meaning of life. Rather, this raises a theological point in my favorite area of theology, ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is the study of how congregations work in real life, and also of the ideals to which congregations should aspire. I happen to be particularly fascinated by ecclesiology because it is a study of how human beings can be in practical community together while trying to uphold our highest ideals; and therefore I believe ecclesiology has implications for the wider society, as we try to figure out how to live out our highest ideals without making an utter mess out of life.

    So let’s get back to fathers, and from there we’ll see how fathers fit into ecclesiology.

    Fathers can have a huge influence in the lives of their children. Indeed, any man, even men like me without any children of my own, can have an influence in the lives of the young people in their immediately surrounding community. The real problem is that too many men choose not to influence the lives of young people. I see this in congregational life all too often: usually, only a few men step forward to teach Sunday school. One of the things I like about our congregation is that half our Sunday school teachers this year were men.

    One of the primary purposes of human life is to raise up the next generation. While parents have special responsibilities, we’re all charged with that task. In our Western culture, women have been pretty good at nurturing young people; but it does seem to me that we men don’t have such a well-defined role. Maybe it’s the influence of stories like God and Abraham and Isaac — who wants to be that kind of father-figure? I’d rather be like the father who doesn’t shoot at the badger, even if I wish he didn’t brag about killing the magpie.

    Recently I’ve been looking around, and it seems to me that there are large numbers of young men who are adrift in the world, young men in their teens and early twenties. They’re just floating along, nobody has taught them how to use a compass, in fact nobody has so much as given them a compass, so they’re directionless; so they live their lives with no other purpose than playing video games, or getting drunk, or some other essentially pointless task. Some of these young men founder: they join gangs and get killed, or they wind up killing someone else; or they drift from job to job and never really get anywhere. If these young men were literally adrift — if they were literally drifting in small boats on the ocean — the Coast Guard would come out and rescue them. But no one is coming to rescue these young men.

    I don’t know about the other men here this morning, but I know I did my share of drifting when I was in my teens. But mostly, I was fortunate in having a father and lots of other men around me who took me seriously, and helped give me direction. Mostly, they helped give me direction by showing me how to work. You may want to tell me that there are better ways to give a young man direction than by just showing him how to work, and you’re probably right; but at least knowing how to work kept me from sliding into too many video games, or too much drink, or something equally pointless and time-wasting, like joining a gang.

    I’d like to think it would be better if my religion could have given me some direction, but just as Western religion is a little too ambiguous on what it means to be a father, it’s a little too ambiguous on what it means to be a man. Jesus is a fine role model in a limited way, but nothing in our religious tradition religion tells us whether or not Jesus had children, and if he did what kind of father he was; nothing in our religious tradition tells us what Jesus was like when he was working in his father’s carpentry shop, whether he was good with the tools or not; nothing in our religious tradition tells us if Jesus was married, and if he was what kind of marriage he had and how he treated his spouse. It’s very fine that we are told how Jesus preached and taught; but preaching and teaching about religion is the center of most men’s lives. Sure, we are concerned about the ultimate questions in life, and we appreciate Jesus’s responses to those questions. But as a man, I would feel better about Western religion if Jesus could be a role model for the concerns that I face every day.

    I do a little better with Moses, although his marriage doesn’t seem to have been anything particularly good. Moses as a role model is more helpful to me, on a day-to-day basis, than Jesus. But even Moses isn’t quite good enough. I look for good male role models, and I just don’t seem to find them in the religious scriptures of our Western tradition.

    Where I have found good male role models has been in local congregations. One of the things I liked about going to church when I was in my teens was that there were plenty of men who took me seriously. I remember lots of men who would speak to me, not as an equal, maybe, but as someone worthy of respect; for example, when we were ushering together, one man once told me why he still thought of himself as a Universalist, fifteen years after the merger with the Unitarians; that he would talk to me about serious topics, treating me as full human being, meant a lot to me. Other men talked to me about their careers, even about their disappointments. And the men at church held me to high standards, mostly by the examples they set with their own lives. By taking me seriously, they showed me that I too could follow their example and become a man who lived a life worth living, that I could accomplish something, that I could learn the self-control to become one of them.

    Our religious scriptures tend towards the dramatic exciting stories that don’t seem to apply to daily life; but our congregations can be places where men can learn practical living from each other by example. And one of the things we can learn from each other, here in our congregations, is how to reach out to and mentor younger men out in the wider world: fathers with young sons can learn this from older men who have been through it already; and the rest of us can learn how to reach out to young men in the workplace or in the community, to nephews and other relations.

    Our congregation should be a place where we figure out how to lives the best life possible, where we figure out how to become the best human beings we can become. Our own congregation is, in large part, that kind of place. And we have to figure out how to reach out to each other; how to extend that helping hand to someone else if that’s called for; or how to be a role model, when that’s called for. That’s true for all of us, men and women, of all ages. Our congregation is supposed to be a place where you can come if you’re feeling adrift, and where someone will at least hand you a metaphorical compass so you know what direction you’re headed in.

    And I want to propose this as a good religious model for fatherhood: that a father is someone who can help us find direction when we’re feeling a little adrift. In extreme cases, a father can be like the Coast Guard coming in to rescue someone from a life raft after the ship went down, to rescue and get that person back to shore.

    I also want to suggest that father-figures don’t have to be your actual father. As we know from the story of Abraham and Isaac, sometimes fathers can do some pretty stupid things. Sometimes you need a father-figure to rescue you from your actual father. That’s an extreme situation, but I also want to suggest that it doesn’t hurt for young men to have more than one father-figure in their lives. All fathers are going to be limited, fallible human beings, just like the father in the poem who misses the badger and hits the magpie, and later claims he meant to hit the magpie when we know he meant no such thing. So it’s not a bad idea for young men to have lots of men whom they can turn to if need be. We also know from the example of the Coast Guard that when they take on a rescue at sea, they don’t send in just one person, they send in a rescue team. Rather than just having one dad come to the rescue, we want to have multiple dads who are able to come to the rescue, if need be.

    I keep telling you why this congregation is important, and here I am, giving you another reason why we need to have a strong, healthy congregation. But I feel an especial urgency about this reason. Young people are not treated well by our culture; too many young people lack meaning and direction in their lives; too many young people are allowed to go adrift. I can see this happening around me; and at the same time, I know from my own observation and from sociological studies that congregations like ours are quite good at providing support and direction for young people. Thus, there is a moral urgency to this task of keeping our congregation strong and healthy, so that we can support young people. We can make a difference in this area by committing ourselves to a steady course of small actions; for, as the poet says, “Love is an amplification/ by doing over and over.”

    So this is yet another sermon where I exhort you to live up to our highest religious ideals; to live up, not to the dramatic stories in religious scriptures, but to live up to the ideals of a supportive, mentoring community. But of all the sermons I’ve preached this year, I think perhaps I feel most strongly about this topic: we need to look after our children and teens and young adults; in extreme instances, we need to be in a position to rescue young people who are adrift. And as this is my last sermon for you until August, that means you get to chew on this topic all summer long….

  • Remembering at Memorial Day

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is a poem by the English poet Seigfried Sassoon, who fought in the trenches in the First World War. The poem is titled, “Suicide in the Trenches”:

    I knew a simple soldier boy
    Who grinned at life in empty joy,
    Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
    And whistled early with the lark.

    In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
    With crumps and lice and lack of run,
    He put a bullet through his brain.
    No one spoke of him again….

    The second reading was a poem by Elizabeth Bishop titled “One Art.” Unfortunately, copyright laws do not permit us to reproduce complete poems that are still protected under copyright.

    SERMON — “Remembering”

    Religions are pretty good at remembering. You might say that the central act of religion is to keep memories alive. In the Western tradition, Christianity has, for the past two thousand years, managed to keep the memory of a certain rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus; and for perhaps three thousand years Judaism has managed to keep alive the memory of the exodus from Egypt, when Moses led his people out of bondage and into the Promised Land. In Persia, the Parsees or Zoroastrians have kept alive the memory of the prophet Zarathustra for three thousand years. In India and the Far East, Buddhists have kept alive the memory of Siddhartha Gotama for some twenty-five hundred years. So religions are adept at keeping ancient memories alive.

    Religions are also good at helping us keep more recent memories alive. I don’t mean just remembering our own narrow religious tradition, or the ways we remember the tiny little histories of our local congregations. I’m thinking more of the ways in which our religious communities help us to remember our own lives; to remember what is past and done but still lives on in our hearts.

    We keep alive the memories of people whom we loved, whom we still love, but who are now dead; or who have otherwise passed out of our lives. I will say from my own experience that such memories are rarely without pain: it is only human to feel pain when you remember someone who has died. Our religious communities can give us a way to deal with that pain, perhaps even to make sense out of that pain. Most obviously, when someone dies, you hold a memorial service for that person. I know when my mother died several years ago, her memorial service helped me to deal with the pain and the grief. Not that such a religious service lessens the pain and the grief, but we human beings seem to welcome such ritual actions. Belonging to a religious community doesn’t necessarily lessen the pain and the grief either. But there is something about being part of a group of people who are willing to talk about death and pain and loss, especially where some or most of the people in that group have gone through their own pain and grief and loss. Being part of such a group helps you make sense out of death; not because the tenets of that religious community can adequately explain death; but because you are with a group of people who are willing to face death together.

    One result of all this is that the buildings which house religious communities can wind up holding lots of memories. This church building in which we sit this morning has seen four memorial services in the past year, and hundreds of others in the 168 years during which it has stood here. These walls hold so many memories. In fact, these walls quite literally hold memories: the Tiffany mosaic behind me was given in 1911 as a memorial to Judge and Mrs. Oliver Prescott, by their three children, Oliver Prescott, Jr., Mrs. Frederick Stetson and Miss Mary R. Prescott. On the back wall of this room is a memorial, where families have put up plaques with the names of members and friends of this church who have died. We are literally and metaphorically the repository of memories; the memories of the generations.

    I cannot help but add that one of the best reasons for supporting this church is to keep it as a repository for such memories. Obviously, a church building is far more than a repository of memories; it is first and foremost a home for a living community. But the members of that living community have their memories, and there is almost nowhere else in our society where we have a physical space where we can remember; the only other place I can think of would be cemeteries, but cemeteries lack the vitality that churches get from also housing a living community. In churches memories can remain as living memories; churches look backwards in memory, but also forwards to the next generations; and of course churches remain above concerned with the present.

    I’ll say something else about this church. Here in this place, we make an effort to come face-to-face with the truth, even if that truth is less than comfortable. When it comes to memories, we remember, yes; but we don’t feel we have to sugar-coat our memories. Thus when we look back at our Christian heritage, we remember what is good about that heritage; but we also try to look unflinchingly on what it less than good about that heritage; we are willing to acknowledge that our Christian heritage has some unsavory episodes in its long history. This same attitude guides us when we look back at the past of our own church: we remember what is good about our church’s past, but we acknowledge that both good and bad things have happened here. And if you choose to do so, this church will support you if you choose to apply this same attitude when you look back at your own past: because we know that no human being is wholly good, we know that it’s acceptable to remember both the good and the bad things about the dead. In our faith tradition, we try to remain open to the whole truth of the world around us.

    By remaining open in this way to the whole of truth, by accepting the wholeness of our memories, we are performing something of a counter-cultural act. One of the things I’ve noticed is that the society around us sometimes tries to mold the past into a more comfortable image. I see this tendency in people’s personal lives; when, for example, people blame a personal weakness on their parents instead of taking personal responsibility for their own actions. Or when, for example, rather than apologizing and saying “I’m sorry,” we see people hiding behind lawyers and law suits. We see this tendency at a national level as well; when, for example, any critical statement about United States foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle East is said to be unpatriotic and even treasonous. And we see this in our own religious institutions; when, for example, people refuse to acknowledge past problems and misdeeds in religious institutions, preferring instead to remain silent or to deny that anything bad ever happens in a church.

    Our society seems to encourage an attitude of refusing to accept responsiblity for oneself; and I see this in part as a failure of memory. When I carefully search my own memory of my own actions, I find many examples of times when I was less than a good person; and I find that the society around me offers me too many ways to excuse myself. When I look back at the history of my beloved Unitarian Universalist religion, I find instances of racially segregated churches, instances of sexism, instances of misconduct on the part of ministers, and — my personal pet peeve — instances of bias on the basis of socio-economic status. And when I look back at the history of my country, a country in which I have pride, a country which I love, I find less-than-savory episodes: I could start with killing native Americans, work my way up through the slavery of Africans, and so on up to the present day. All these things represent in part a failure of memory: if you forget that 95% of the Indians in New England died within 20 years of the arrival of European settlers, you can forget about any possible problem.

    I don’t mean to imply that we each have to take all the burdens of the world on our shoulders; nor do I mean to imply that any one person has to bear the full burden of responsibility for, let us say, slavery. Nor am I saying that I want you to go out and remember only the worst things about yourself, or to remember only the worst things about someone you love who is now dead. But what I am saying is that we need to remember as honestly as we possibly can.

    The first reading this morning gives an example of what I mean. The poet Siegfried Sassoon served with the English military in the trench warfare in the First World War, and he writes of a young soldier who, while initially carefree, gets worn down by the trench warfare and commits suicide. Sassoon writes: “He put a bullet through his brain. / No one spoke of him again.” That, my friends, is a failure of memory.

    Which brings us to our second reading, the poem by Elizabeth Bishop, which says:

    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
    Then practice losing farther, faster:
    places, names, and where it was you meant
    to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

    None of these will bring disaster. And what Elizabeth Bishop is telling us is quite simple: you can’t cling tightly to everything. Indeed, in this life of ours, we had better master the art of losing, for there is much to lose, as Elizabeth Bishop says at the end of the poem:

    –Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
    I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
    the art of losing’s not too hard to master
    though it may look like (Say it!) like disaster.

    The art of remembering is an art of holding on; and it has to be coupled with the art of losing, or the art of letting go. We need them both. We need to be able to hold on to memories; but at times in our lives, we need to be able to let go again.

    There is a difference between the failure of memory, of which I spoke a moment ago, and the art of letting go. The failure of memory in the way I’m talking about it is really a refusal to remember things correctly; it’s an attempt to create a past that never was.

    The trick is to learn how to balance the art of remembering, of holding on; over against the art of losing, or of letting go. You can watch this happen inside yourself when someone you love dies. Elizabeth Bishop tells us that even when you lose someone you love, “the art of losing’s not to hard to master”; for when someone you love dies, you may feel at first as if you can’t possibly let go, and yet somehow you do, for you don’t really have a choice. And when you love is dying, or has just died, it surely does feel like disaster. And then you have to be careful to find the right balance: by not succumbing to that sense of disaster on the one hand, and by continuing to remember on the other hand.

    I started out by saying that religions are pretty good at remembering, and I said that perhaps the central act of religion is keeping memory alive. A religious community gives each person in that community a context in which to hold memories; and a healthy religious community gives each person in that community assistance in letting go of memories when the time is right. To say this is merely to affirm a great human truth. When we human beings lose some person, or even some thing like an ideal or a place, when we lose that which we care for deeply, we are struck with grief. Yet we manage to move on, we manage to keep on living; and that means that some measure of grief has to slip away. Being part of a religious community is a way to help that very human process move forward in its course; because a religious community has seen this process happen over and over again, always with starkly individual differences, but always in the same grand human pattern.

    And a religious community can help us keep that balance between holding on and letting go. The reason we want to keep that balance is so that we can move forward in our lives — so that we can move forward together in our communal life as a church, as a community, and a country. We don’t want to get stuck. When someone you love dies, it’s easy to get stuck in grieving; and while perhaps we never stop grieving, we must also find a way to live out our lives, to live out what was best in the life of whomever it was who died. I’d say that’s the truest expression of grief.

    So, too we must keep the balance between remembering, and letting go; so that we might move forward in our communal life, in our political life. On Memorial Day, we remember all those who died in military service of our great country; we remember them, and we recall the ideals they fought and died for. And by remembering, we can commit ourselves to work for the highest of those ideals — some of the old ideals may no longer apply in today’s world, and those we can let go of — but we remember the highest ideals.

    In the Unitarian Universalist church of my childhood, I learned early on what those highest ideals were, and I learned them as religious ideals. Those ideals were, and are:– the ideal of humankind learning to live together as one interconnected, interdependent community;– the ideal of each and every human being having a voice in how he or she is governed;– the ideal of a world where a person’s essential humanity means more than their race or creed or national origin.

    Our religion exists in part to keep those highest ideals of humanity alive. Our liberal faith has long upheld the ideal of democratic process, and the ideal that all persons are important and of worth, and most importantly the ideal that each and every human being is worthy of respect, and of love. We have not always lived up to our ideals, both in our own religious community, and in our lives in the wider world. But we hold on to those ideals, and we remain open to new and deeper understandings of those ideals. And on this Memorial Day, we commit ourselves once again to a world where all persons shall be known as our brothers and sisters.

    May it be so.

  • All Kinds of Patriots

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2005 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The reading, a poem about the horrors of war, is not included here due to copyright restrictions.

    Sermon

    Today is the Sunday closest to November 11, Veteran’s Day, the holiday when we honor all those men and women who served in the armed forces of this country; November 11 is also Armistice Day, the day when we commemorate the signing of the 1918 armistice which put an end to “the war to end all wars.” But war is one of those topics we Unitarian Universalists struggle with. Some of us oppose all war; others of us believe war is sometimes necessary. So on this weekend when we honor veterans and commemorate the end to World War I, let’s explore what, if anything, we hold in common about war and warfare. Not that we’ll come up with a final answer this morning, but it’s the beginning of a conversation, the beginning of an exploration.

    As Unitarian Universalists, we are firmly within the tradition of Western religion, and while individually we may find inspiration in other, non-Western, religious traditions, we are nonetheless each embedded in a society with deep roots in the Jewish and Christian religions. Thus it is that when a man like Martin Luther King asked us to consider who was our neighbor, we know he meant to refer to the teachings of Jesus, who is reported to have said, treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated. Thus it is that we are all familiar with the teachings of the book of Exodus, which tells the story of how Moses led his people out of slavery and into the freedom of the desert; and the story tells how in the desert God appears to Moses and gives Moses a series of moral precepts, or commandments, including the commandment, “You shall not murder” [NRSV]; or, as this commandment is more familiarly (though perhaps less accurately) translated, “Thou shalt not kill.” [KJV] Therefore, as people of the Western religious tradition, we have gut-level knowledge of these two ethical teachings: treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated, and thou shall not kill.

    Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the High Middle Ages and who was one of the greatest philosophers of the Western tradition, realized that these two moral precepts seemed to indicate that all war must be immoral. But in his book the Summa Theologica, he argued that in fact some wars can be considered just wars. And Thomas Aquinas offers three criteria to help us judge whether a given war is actually a just war or not. Let’s look at those three classic criteria for determining if a war is just.

    For one of his three criteria, Thomas Aquinas writes that a just war must have a just cause:

    “…[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, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.’ “

    In the ongoing discussion about the Iraq war, we have been hearing both pro-war and anti-war people repeatedly referring to this criterion. But this is a criterion we religious liberals are wary of using. As Universalists we are certain that love that will transform the world, not violence or vengeance. Therefore, while we might be able to condone warfare as a short-term necessity, it seems difficult for us to justify it in terms of vengeance or punishment.

    Another criterion for just war, according to Thomas Aquinas, goes like this:

    “…[I]t is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil…. For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): ‘The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.’ “

    Again, this criterion for war remains current, and we’ve heard supporters and opponents of the Iraq war using it. We religious liberals like to use this criterion. With our strong emphasis on the dictates of conscience, we spend a lot of time thinking about intentions, and we well know that the best actions can be sullied by wicked intentions. But we are most likely to use this criterion at a personal level, for those who serve or have served in the armed forces: if your overall intention is honorable and good, by the dictates of your conscience, then your own military service is justified and justifiable. But while necessary on a personal level, this criterion does not seem to us to be a sufficient reason for going to war.

    Which brings us to Thomas Aquinas’s third criterion for a just war, which requires:

    “…the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior…. And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers… so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies….”

    As religious liberals, this particular criterion for just war is most problematic for us. Thomas Aquinas assumes here that society is based upon a hierarchy and authority that begins with God, who is the ruler of us all. From God, power flows down to ecclesiastical and governmental authorities, who rule masses of people, and finally trickles down to individuals. We religious liberals have a different vision of society that begins with the connections that bind us each to each; these connections lead us to develop covenants, explicit statements of how we are bound together, and the promises we make to each other; and ends with the possibility that any or all of us can have direct experience of the transcending mystery of the universe, from which experience we might be able to draw new moral and ethical insights to share with all those to whom we are connected, and with whom we are bound together by covenant. Therefore, we find that we religious liberals cannot really use this criterion to determine whether a war is just.

    Indeed, we are not entirely comfortable with any of these three classic criteria for what constitutes a just war. As Unitarian Universalists, we have two ultimate authorities: first, our individual consciences; second, the communities to which we are bound by covenant. So our determination of a just war is made not because someone in authority over us says that a given war is just, nor because we wish to punish someone else; and while we require good intentions, good intentions alone are not enough of a reason to go to war. Rather, we look to our individual consciences, and to our abiding understanding of the transforming power of love.

    Because we recognize the authority of individual conscience, we are going to find Unitarian Universalists with a wide range of understandings about what constitutes a just war. Among our ranks, we have many veterans who have served in the armed forces and who are proud of what they have accomplished through their service. We also have conscientious objectors who have refused to serve in the military on moral and religious grounds, and who are proud of their adherence to principle. I have talked with both veterans and conscientious objectors who say that their Unitarian Universalist faith gave them strength as they lived out their very different choices.

    Therefore, as a religious lbieral I don’t think it’s possible to describe a war as just, any more than I can describe a war as purple, or fuzzy. If I describe a war as just, what do I say to the conscientious objector who feels all wars are unjust? If I describe a war as unjust, what do I say to the veteran who served honorably in that war? As a religious liberal, I find that I am not inclined to make some straightforward, abstract judgment about whether a given war is just or unjust. There is no easy determination; which is so often the case for us religious liberals — there’s no one easy answer.

    Wars are big, messy. A soldier has a very different experience of war than does a child. As we heard in today’s reading, a child in Belfast in 1940 could be fascinated by the pieces of shrapnel she found; she must have had a very different experience from the pilot of the plane that dropped the bombs on Belfast. It’s impossible to reduce war’s bigness and messiness to the point where we can all them unequivocally just or unequivocally unjust. There are moral consequences of going to war; or of not going to war; and whatever action we take, we are bound to face up to those moral consequences. Any action we take is going to have good consequences and bad consequences. We make the best choices we can, but we can never make perfect choices, and so we often have to deal with the unintended consequences of our choices; and we have to deal with the consequences of the choices made by people we are in relationship to.

    Nor can we pass off blame for unintended consequences onto someone else, but because of our understanding of relationships and of covenant we should not do that. I have opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning, and it would be easy for me to say that, because of my opposition, I am not responsible for what happened in Abu Ghraib prison; but I have to accept responsibility for what happened there, because of my deep connections to this country. It’s easier to say, “Don’t blame me, I voted for John Kerry,” or to say, “People who oppose the war are destroying this country.” It’s easier to point your finger at someone else and say, “I didn’t do it — it’s them.” But if we’re going to get serious about the transforming power of love, we cannot divide the world up into “us” and “them.”

    In our Western religious tradition, Jesus of Nazareth remains one of our most influential teachers and prophets. Jesus offered some cogent advice for healing human relationships. He said, treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated. Herein lies the true core of our Western tradition. Treat your neighbor as yourself; and remember that every other person is, in some sense, your neighbor. When war happens, it gets in the way of us treating others as neighbors; and therefore we do all we can to bring war to a close and to achieve a just and lasting peace.

    In the love for all human beings, therein lies healing for us all. In that direction lies the path to a just and lasting peace. We come to this place of sanctuary each week in order draw strength in these troubled times. May we use our strength to go out and heal the world, one human relationship at a time.