Isaiah 2: 1-5 & Matthew 7: 15-20
29th June 2014/
Third Sunday after Pentecost/
Sacrament of Baptism
One hundred years ago yesterday
Archduke Franz Ferdinand (b.1863), heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, and his wife, Sophie (b.1868), Duchess of Hohenberg, were both
assassinated by Gavrilo Princip (1884-1918) in Sarajevo: 28 June
1914. It was also their wedding anniversary. In just over a month, Europe was thrown into
the cataclysm that was the Great War, otherwise known as the First World
War.
The centenary won’t be marked in the
United States the way it is throughout Europe, particularly in the United
Kingdom. (The United States didn’t enter
the war until 1917.) WWI is often in the
shadow of the Second World War, in terms of scale and significance, as least
for Americans. (There’s still no
national memorial on the National Mall to honor the Americans who served and
died in WWI.) And, yet, as historians look back from the present vantage point
it becomes clear that WWII was in many respects an extension of WWI. Indeed, for the United States, Europe, and
the Middle East, much of the twentieth century and now the twenty-first century
has been spent addressing the residual geo-political and ideological conflicts
left unresolved or caused by the Great War.
It is striking that Iraq, whose borders were created by the League of
Nations in 1920, is daily disintegrating into three provinces (Shia, Sunni,
Kurd), to basically what the region looked like prior to the Treaty of
Versailles in 1919.[1]
Thousands of volumes have been
written on the origins of the Great War. Military and political historians are
still trying to figure out how one gunshot in Sarajevo hurled Europe into the
abyss—leading to 10 million military personnel and 7 million civilian
deaths—devastating lands, peoples, cultures, destroying the youth of an entire
generation. In 1920 there were 525,000 war widows in Germany, 200,000 in Italy,
600,000 in France, 240,000 in Britain, and millions of orphans.[2] It’s inconceivable that so-called “civilized”
nations could allow themselves to engage in this gross, collective act of
self-annihilation.
What makes this war even more
scandalous is the fact that the overwhelming majority of the people in the
nations/empires at war—Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany,
Austro-Hungary, Russia (and later, the United States)—were Christian. Japan and the
Ottoman Empire and India were, of course, non-Christian states. Nevertheless,
they were all, together, deeply influenced by centuries of Christian thought
and practice, Christians now ripping themselves to shreds. This is an aspect of the war often overlooked
by historians.[3]
Remembering the faith dimension is
critical as we begin to commemorate the First World War and hear more about the
war, especially for Christians. In many ways, World War I was, and remains, a
scathing indictment of Christianity. Or,
better said, an indictment of large portions of the Church, on both sides of the conflict, with both clergy and laity
who thought they were being faithful Christians, fighting to save “Christian
civilization,” slaughtering millions to do so, all in the name of God.
How did “Christian” Europe allow
this to happen? Was there something within Christianity at the time that helped
fan the flames of destruction and war?
Is it still within Christianity, latent, in shadow? Probably.
The critical question is how exactly
do adherents who claim to follow Jesus—the Prince of Peace, the one who said
before he was arrested and eventually executed, “Peter, put away your sword”
(Matthew 26:52)—become the Church militant?
For
God, Country and King.
This was the banner cry heard in the High Streets of Britain and in trenches of
the Somme. One can read these same words today on countless war memorials all
over the United Kingdom, in churches and in village squares in the most remote
corners of the British Isles. Belief in
God and patriotism were inseparable. Every nation made a similar claim: God is with us. Dieu est de notre côté. Gott
ist mit uns.[4]
Churches—on all sides—supported the war.
It’s telling that on the eve of war,
1 August, as a vast crowd gathered on Alexanderplatz in Berlin, people started
to spontaneously sing, not Deutschland
über alles (Germany over all), as one would expect, but the Lutheran
chorale Gott, tief im Herzen (God,
deep in my heart). On Sunday, 2 August,
the court chaplain conducted an open-air service in Koningplatz to celebrate
the declaration of war with France. Then on 4 August, Kaiser Wilhelm II made a
famous speech in Berlin, which was really more like a sermon. “German faith and
German piety,” he said, “are ultimately bound up with German
civilization.” The sermon/speech was
written by the prominent Lutheran theologian and church historian Adolf von
Harnack (1851-1930), a towering figure in the history of Christian thought, who
left his imprint on generations of pastors and theologians in Germany, Britain,
and the United States.
Across the English Channel, the
Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram (1858-1946), preached in 1915 that
Britons “are banded in a great crusade” and are therefore called, “…to kill
Germans; to kill them, not for the sake of killing, but to save the world; to
kill the good as well as the bad, to kill the young as well as the old…to kill
them lest the civilization of the world be killed.” While this is an extreme example, similarly
passionate appeals were heard from many pulpits in Europe and the United States
throughout the war. Not all, certainly, but many. Which God/god was being served in these
statements/sermons/actions?
The difficult truth is that after
the war Christendom was in ruins (which was probably a good thing). WWI spawned a religious and cultural
revolution within Christianity that continues to do this day.[5]
Religion, per se, is not the problem (although it, too, is not always
innocent). There’s a place for nationalism and patriotism. Still, Christians
have to be suspicious of these two seductive –isms. The real threat occurs when nationalism and
patriotism—deities that have an enormous sway over our emotions, thoughts, and
actions—harness the benevolent power of faith to serve its own ends, often with
ghastly results. Religions of compassion
become grotesque. Consider the aims of the radical Islamist group ISIS/ISIL now
devastating Iraq.
If the ghosts of Verdun and the
Marne, Gallipoli and Ypres could have their say today they might warn us: Beware the bizarre alchemy of Christianity
and patriotism. The macabre marriage of nationalism and
religion often yields a deadly poison. Its toxin permeated most of the 20th
century and it’s still with us today. It
never ends well.
All of this is in sharp contrast to
God’s vision for humanity found in the Bible.
Sure, there are depictions of wars and invasions and the slaughter of
innocents in the Bible. This cannot be denied.
But the broad, over-arching vision found in the Bible points us to a
“still more excellent way” (1 Cor: 12:31).
We have these stirring words of Isaiah:
“They shall beat the swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall
they learn war any more” (Is. 2:4). The
instruments of war and destruction, mutual annihilation, need to be transformed
into agricultural tools, tools used for farming, for cultivating and yielding
life, producing food that will feed people, food that allows people to live
together in peace. This is God’s vision for the world. This is what we’re called to strive
for. But if we can’t do it, if we can’t get
there, if we can’t or won’t work for peace then we should step aside and not get
in the way of what God intends for the people.
For, consider how many times the Church and so-called “Christian nations”
have obstructed that God’s vision.
Consider how much damage has been done in the name of the Lord.
John Keegan (1934-2012), the highly
regarded war historian, defined war as “deliberate cruelty.”[6]
“Deliberate cruelty is one of the three
characteristics that compose what…Keegan calls the ‘inhuman face of war.’”[7]
Not accidental. It requires will. Volition. Human choice. We don’t go to war by
accident.
How do we square all of this with
Jesus’ own teachings? “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree
bear good fruit.” Jesus’ followers will be known “by their fruits” (Matthew
7:20). Jesus is pretty clear here. “By our fruits we will be known, making
impossible any attempt to separate the content of…Christian belief from how we
must live.”[8]
Action must flow from belief; belief must inform action. The nineteenth century
certainly produced a lot of bad fruit; perhaps the entire tree was bad. Christianity
couldn’t stop the tragic wars of the twentieth century. There’s a real
disconnect here between faith and practice. Can you feel the tension here?
War has been described “as a failure
of imagination.” Psychologist James Hillman (1926-2011) suggests that our failure to
understand war may be “because our imaginations are impaired and our modes of
comprehension need a paradigm shift.”[9]
Perhaps it’s not war that we fail to understand, but the human heart. The great
American philosopher and psychologist Williams James (1842-1910) called for the
“moral equivalent of war.” In other words, what if we use all the "creative" energy that goes into planning for war and executing war and apply it to
God’s Kingdom effort? What if our imaginations could be fired by love and we
had schools that trained us in the art of peace? Consider what could be
accomplished with sanctified imaginations!
What are you yielding? What’s the
tree of your faith producing? Are we sowing seeds of destruction or the things
that make for peace? (Luke 19:10).
Now, this might seem like an odd
sermon to hear on a morning when we will celebrate the sacrament of baptism. But it’s directly related. This sacrament
affirms that we are first—above all else—children of God, followers of
Christ. Baptism reminds us that we must
not take lightly our identity in
Christ. Baptism means that we are
engrafted into the life of Christ, joined to his body, participating in his way
of love and justice and peace. Baptism means more than belonging to the Church;
it means, foremost, that we belong to him.
It means that we are bathed in God’s grace. And when we know this, really know this—or
remember it again and again, because we all have terrible memories—the more our
lives will reflect his love and justice and peace. We owe it Christ to know who
we are, to remember whose we are. We owe this to Christ—and we owe it to
everyone baptized, we owe it to the wider world. We owe it to Serena Capri who
will be baptized this morning and we owe it to all the children of the world.
For what kind of world will Serena receive from us? What will be our yield? What kind of world
are we giving to our children? What kind
of lives are we giving to the world? Are they lives of peace and justice,
rooted and grounded in God’s love?
[2]Cited in Stéphane
Audoi-Rouseau and Annette Becker, 14-18:
Understanding the Great War, trans. Catherine Temerson (New York: Hill and
Wang, 2002), 210-211.
[3]Two recent
works—Jonathan H. Ebel’s Faith in theFaith: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (Princeton
University Press, 2010) & Philip Jenkins’ The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade
(HarperOne, 2014)—are significant exceptions.
[4]Audoi-Rouzeau and
Becker, 115.
[5] See Jenkins, 217ff.
[6] John Keegan, The Second World War (Penguin, 2004).
[7] Cited in James Hillman,
A Terrible Love of War (Penguin,
2005), 51.
[8] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos,
2006), 91.
[9] Hillman, 5.
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