Through the deafening blast of bombs exploding, buildings crumbling; in the din of sirens blaring; with the endless chatter of news commentators creating a fog of disembodied facts; we wonder, “Is there a voice we can count on?”
There is one voice that is steady, constant, and clear. This is the voice of God, who says, “You are not alone. Do not fear, for I am your refuge and strength. Do not be afraid.”
War with Iraq began on Wednesday with a sudden strike against Iraqi command and control. Our ground forces -- mechanized infantry, armor, marines and special forces are in Iraq and are headed for strategic spots.
We have seen the awesome power and precision of our technology. There is a surge of optimism for a short, relatively painless war. But history tells us that this kind of optimism is both common and naive. We have taken our first casualties. President Bush bluntly warns us against euphoria. Who know what the next few weeks may bring?
There is an old Chinese curse which says, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, these are interesting times. Let us pray that they don’t get even more interesting. But even in such times, we can walk with a measure of confidence. We don’t know what the future holds. But we do know the One who holds the future. The reason we can have confidence - despite the upheaval - is that God is at work. Our center is stable - rock solid. Psalm 46 says, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. The holy dwelling of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She will not be moved.”
God says that we can have confidence in the face of war and political upheaval around the world. “The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered,” the psalmist writes. But God is still at work to make peace and to enforce it. “Come, behold the works of the Lord, who has wrought desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariots with fire.”
We are not to be afraid of “the Big Collapse.” Because God is in charge.
Jesus gives us the same command in His teaching about the end times as recorded in Matthew 24:6-8. Jesus says, “And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not frightened. For those things must take place. But that is not the end. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of the birth pangs.”
Do you hear what Jesus commands? He commands us not to be frightened. For God is working His purpose out in history and we belong to Him. We are in His hands.
With this confidence, we have the freedom to love - even to love our enemies. We need to pray for the innocents of all nations - and even for the guilty - those who are suffering and will suffer. I ache for the injured and the families that will suffer loss and grief. I also ache for the young American soldiers I saw on T.V. before the war began - cheering at the prospect of war like they were going into a football game. I hurt for what they have learned in the past few days and what they will learn.
Please be in prayer for our military men and women. Ryan Taylor, Jami Evan’s fiancee, is in Kandahar, Afghanistan; Jeff Krone is in the Persian Gulf, serving on the U.S.S. Constellation; Andy Krone is a Marine, deployed to Kuwait; Ryan Thordsen, son of Scott and Melinda Baumgard is with the 101st Airborne deployed to Kuwait; Todd Belie is with the army in Korea.
This is not a faraway event for us. It is personal.
It is also not a new event in history. We are fighting over one of the oldest battlegrounds in the world. Modern Bagdad is only a hundred or so miles from ancient Babylon which was the site of the Tower of Babel.
You may remember pictures of the great Ziggarut of Ur from the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein parked some of his war planes next to the remains of this great tower to keep them safe. That was fine because he also couldn’t move them.
The model for this architectural treasure is found in the Book of Genesis. In Genesis, after the flood of Noah, the human population begins to increase. The people gather at Babel to build a tower to reach up to heaven. Their stated goal is to keep humanity unified -- to avoid being scattered over the earth.
In Genesis God sees what is happening and declares: “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” And the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city.” The very thing which the people were trying to avoid is what happens.
God says, “Nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.”
Some take this to mean that God stops the project because He fears for His own position. But that Tower was not going to reach heaven.
The problem isn’t one of human potential but of human sin. When God says that nothing will be impossible for the people of earth working together, He is not talking about achievement. He is talking about evil.
God had told the survivors of the flood -- Noah and his family -- to spread out and fill the earth. But now Noah’s descendants build this tower to keep from being scattered. The tower was an act of disobedience to God. So God restrains the evil by dividing humanity into nations -- and by allowing those nations to act as a brake and a balance on one another.
Over and over again -- in both the Old and New Testaments, we see that God uses one nation as a tool to bring His judgement on another. The fact that the world is divided into different nations - far from being a mistake - is a gift of God in the midst of our present human condition.
For imagine what it would be like to have one nation in the whole earth. A brutal, despotic tyrant would come to power and there would be no way to get him out. The world would be under the control of that tyrant and his successors without hope.
People who say that war never solved anything haven’t read history. Remember that it was not the Germans who threw Hitler out of power, but the allies. Communism didn’t collapse because the leaders suddenly got a conscience. Communism collapsed because it couldn’t compete. It was not the Ugandans who forced Idi Amin and his cohorts into exile, but the Tanzanians. It is not out of love that Saddam Hussein left Kuwait in ‘92.
Nations are not God’s ideal. They are God’s accommodation to the consequences of giving us free will. Ephesians says that God’s ideal is the unity of humankind in Jesus Christ. But, given the reality of sin in the world, nations are a gift. They are a restraint upon the level of evil any government -- any international thug -- may practice and expect to remain in power.
I read recently that the tiny independent state of Monaco in the south of France has seventy men in the armed forces - and seventy eight in the National Orchestra. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Perhaps if we were protected on all sides by a more powerful, and totally friendly country - and if no other peoples looked to the United States as a beacon of hope for liberation - then we could live without weapons. But that’s a choice we don’t have. We live in a big, dangerous, fallen world.
I am not a pacifist. There are situations where a Christian is confronted by the choice of violence or non-violence. There are personal situations that might require the protection of your family, your self, your friend. My response is on the side of action. I am like the Quaker who walked into his house to find a man robbing the place. The Quaker picked up a shotgun from behind the door and said, “Friend, I would do thee no harm for this whole world. But thee art standing where I am about to shoot.”
Now Paul writes in Romans 12:18, “As far as it depends on you, live peacefully with all.” But what does that mean in practice? What do we do when it doesn’t depend on us? There are choices that are personal and there are choices that are less personal -- like a war which the government is waging in our name -- a war in which the government may call us or our sons to fight.
I suspect that this congregation is of different minds about this present war. I understand. I have hopes. I also have concerns about our ultimate results of the choice we have made. I am personally of different minds at different times of the day.
Let me share with you some of the questions I wrestle with. They may help you in your wrestling as well.
Jesus told the story about how a Samaritan came upon a man who had been beaten by robbers and ministered to him in a very special and loving way.
However, Jesus did not reveal to us what this same Samaritan would have done if he had come upon a man who was being beaten by robbers. Would he have waited until the man was thoroughly beaten and hopefully alive, or would he have intervened in the struggle with protective violence?
Or, at another level, suppose the Samaritan comes back along the road a week after helping the wounded man -- only to find another victim at the same spot. And suppose the same thing happened a week later. How many times would the Samaritan have to come across beaten and robbed people at that same spot on the road before he took steps to change the fundamental situation on that part of the road -- making the state put up lights and a guard post for example.
In the same way, when are we called to do more than care for the wounded. When are we called to help prevent the wounding? And when does our failure to act increase the violence?
A German pastor named Dietrich Bonhoffer was faced with this hard decision. Was it worse for him to take part in an attempt to kill Adolf Hitler. Or was it worse to allow Hitler to live -- and to cause the death of millions of persons?
As Christians we can be faced with the same decision. There times when we have to decide if a failure to act is more destructive than action? There are times when we can’t fix the balance between the present and the potential. But there are other times when we can.
Those are some of the issues I wrestle with. You may have others. I invite you to share them with me.
But wherever we come down -- on war in general or this present war in particular -- let us guard our hearts and minds against hatred. Let us guard against triumphalism.
In the early 1800's, a Frenchman named Alexis de’Tocqueville toured the young United States and wrote the classic book, Democracy in America.
De’Tocqueville wrote these insightful words that we will do well to take to heart in these days of national power: “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her democratic congress and her matchless constitution, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the genius of her greatness and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Underline those words and commit them to memory.
National pride can come from national might. Arrogance can flow from pride. We are not immune. And we can become what we are fighting against.
Let us also guard our hearts and minds against the certainty that we fully know God’s will and are performing it. God has His own purposes and we do well to approach those purposes with humility.
Remember the eloquent words of Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address. The nation is in the midst of the Civil War. Brother is fighting brother. And Lincoln, above all the theologians of the war, recognized that he was an actor in a larger drama and that the drama is God’s.
Lincoln said to the American people: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that his mighty scourge of war speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still must be said ‘the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Psalm 122 says that we are to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Let us indeed pray for the peace of Jerusalem - and the peace of Baghdad, Kuwait, London,. New York, Washington, Seoul, Kabul -- and yes, even Paris. Above all, let us pray for ourselves that despite the heightened excitement of living in interesting times - that Jesus Christ - the Prince of the world’s peace and the Prince of our peace - may reign in our hearts.
Prayer -