Covenant for Building a
Safer World through Non-Violence and Generosity © Happy April Fools Day… we celebrated last year, when it wasn’t April 1st, so I some of you may have fully expected a fools day celebration this morning when April 1st falls on a Sunday, but alas, I didn’t think it would work as well if you were to expect it… nor are we celebrating Palm Sunday, or even, as I have at least once done, Psalm Sunday. Rather, this morning is my seventh and penultimate sermon on the Spiritual Covenant with America by the Network of Spiritual Progressives. The simple version of the seventh covenant goes like this: Foreign policy and homeland security transformation: We will build a safer world and promote a rational approach to immigration through a strategy of non-violence and generosity that eliminates poverty both in the U.S. and in every other country. The well-being of Americans depends on the well-being of every other person on the planet and of the planet itself. Talk about a foolish notion – eliminating poverty and violence in both the U.S. and in every other country. You’d have to be a fool to talk of eliminating poverty and violence in this world. But I think that’s what religion calls us to do – think big, think foolish, act from our largest sense of self. I think I’ll get my personal story out of the way first. You see there was a time in my life when nonviolence was all theory to me… when I had no practical experience with violence, and so when people who disagreed with my theories told me I was a fool, or naïve, I knew on some level that it was true – though I also knew that fact didn’t negate my argument. However, today, I speak for nonviolence, not as a naïve theorist, but as an experienced survivor. Not a survivor of war, but a more contained and personal kind of violence – though I suspect war is very personal – what I mean, is that the violence done to me felt isolated and singular at the time, even though I know the statistics to be otherwise. But I wasn’t in an army with others struggling with similar violence, I was alone, soundly sleeping in my own bed, when attacked by a stranger with a knife. And I survived. I’m here to tell the story. And to tell you that when I speak of nonviolent action, I hold no naïve assumptions about the world and how everyone can be convinced to play nice. I know what torture and demise awaits any of us in this world, given the circumstances. I might not have survived that attack and that knowledge, that brink with extinction, informs my discussion this morning –inhabits every pore of my being – is quite central to my understanding of violence and suffering in this world. Not only am I acquainted first hand with the tortures one human being can inflict on another, I am also quite convinced that the ability to torture and be tortured is largely circumstantial – the world can turn us into torturers if we allow it. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning explores that reality, as he lays out his theory for helping avoid that fate. I spoke to the Coming of Age students – our middle schoolers in the church who are engaged in a year long study of themselves, their place in the world, and their deeply held beliefs. They will be presenting their faith statements in church the end of May. I urge you not to miss that service – it is always very touching. They invite me to lunch with them during this year of study, and ask me questions about my own faith as they’re getting ready to write their own statements. One thing I told them this year is that, for me, it’s generally more interesting what someone believes about human nature, than whether or not they believe in God. God can refer lot of different things – some of which I believe in deeply and think is important, and some of which I reject entirely and find confuse me. But humanity – well, human beings I undeniably meet every day. I am one, and I meet them, and what I believe about them effects how I interact with them and how I treat myself. Since theology informs how I live in this world, the question of human nature has become central to my theology. I don’t believe that human nature is basically good – the traditional liberal religious viewpoint, nor do I believe that human nature is inherently corrupt – the conservative orthodox, Calvinist position. Rather, I’m convinced that we are born quite neutral. That the lens of good and evil is simply a construct we use to understand the world, but not something inherent in it, or in our natures. And because our actions are quite independent of any moral certainty – we are capable of just about anything. There is no other conclusion I can come to to explain the rise of Nazism that imprisoned Frankl and created the Holocaust, or the genocide in Darfur today. And because I believe we are capable of just about anything, I think we need to be very careful about what we choose to do. What is naïve is to think that violence will ever accomplish peace. We know it doesn’t. Writes the Network of Spiritual Progressives,"5,000 years of war-making has not worked to bring peace and security but only, century after century, increased the numbers of people killed in wars. Wars have undermined the internal life of America and increased our propensity to rely on violence as a solution to otherwise frustrating problems." (NSP) Wars have undermined the internal life of America – resources spent to kill people or to train people to kill people are resources not spent on helping educate people or provide health care. And wars have increased our propensity to rely on violence as a solution – so many inside and outside of this country were asking the White House to use some diplomacy and work with other countries through the United Nations or direct talks before initiating this war in Iraq – but I fear it was easier to begin a war than to seek a more creative solution to our frustrating problems. Evangelical Christian preacher, Jim Wallis, metaphorically compares terrorists to mosquitoes. We can kill them, but we won’t get them all. There will be a never ending supply until we drain the swamps where they breed. Killing active terrorists won’t do anything to stop the growth of more to take their place. Terrorists breed in the swamps of poverty and injustice and the only way to stop terrorism is to drain the swamps of injustice, violence, and poverty. Hence, the focus of Rabbi Lerner, on generosity and nonviolence in order to build a safer world. Writes Lerner, "We will harness American generosity to heal the pain caused by hatred, poverty, hunger, inadequate health care, inadequate education, and the manipulation of the global economy…" Harnessing American generosity to heal the world – what a tall order, but not unheard of in history. I think this is what John F. Kennedy had in mind when he launched the Peace Corps in 1960 at a speech at the University of Michigan. It’s what I had in mind when I joined the Peace Corps in 1987. The simple goals of helping developing countries meet their needs for trained personnel, promoting a better understanding of Americans abroad, and helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans – these simple goals, I think, do work to promote peace, though it’s not enough. I think the fact that so many people have served in the Peace Corps means that people are longing to help heal that pain – looking for ways to harness that American generosity for healing. American culture may seem to promote selfishness and that me-first attitude, but we are far more complex, far more generous and many of us are looking for ways to make a difference not just in our own lives, but in the world. I think of the physicists and scientists gathered in the desert, in Los Alamos, in the 40s toward the end of WWII, working frantically to create a weapon that would put an end to the war in Europe and hopefully an end to all wars. Timebends by Arthur Miller is one of my favorite books ever – I took it into the Peace Corps with me, and the pages have holes in them from some kind of Honduran insect who apparently shared my taste in books. In telling his own story, he speaks of interviewing Oppenheimer and others about that time. Writes Miller: "Talking with these scientists, I entered a dark and unknown land ruled by the cruel tyrant Irony; having set free the most awesome forces of nature, they now found themselves imprisoned in narrow contradictions, chiefly that basic decisions were not theirs to make but were left to the politicians whose minds and motives were too often petty and unwise. The great good science was doing in medicine had justified it as a lifesaving art, but it could extinguish all life. To which side of this equation did an inventing physicist connect himself?" The great need of these scientists to give of their knowledge, skill and expertise to work on a common project to meet a shared goal which was global in scope and, they suspected, might just change the world. It did change the world. And we’re still grappling with the consequences. What if we were to gather all our best people again – with another such shared goal. "Wars have undermined the internal life of America and increased our propensity to rely on violence as a solution to otherwise frustrating problems." Ask these people to sacrifice as our scientists once did – move to some place in the wild where they could work together on a project designed to save the world – to solve the violence in Darfur and the Middle East and everywhere– what if we were to fund this project as the physicists had been funded. I know there would be people who would give of their lives to accomplish this goal – we could harness that American generosity to heal the pain of the world. Rabbi Lerner suggests a Global Marshall Plan – something like the European Recovery Program initiated by the United States to help reconstruct Europe after WW II, though perhaps something more like the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.. but initiated by the United States, because that’s who we are, whose resources we can promise to the world. That’s the generosity part of this proposal. The non-violence part of this proposal is not passive as the term sadly sounds in English – it’s non-violent resistance as a strategy and a means. I like the term soul-force. It doesn’t prevent violence, unfortunately, but like a generous Global Marshall Plan, promises only what we can deliver – that our resistance will be non-violent. Not that our non-violent resistors won’t die, only that they won’t kill. It’s the form of resistance that gained independence for India in 1947, and passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 in this country banning discrimination. Not that there wasn’t great violence in those major movements, but the beauty and effectiveness and power of those liberation movements was in the moral victory won by the non-violent resistors and the ability they had to convince so many others through the integrity and discipline of their fight. Understanding ahimsa or the principles of non-violence and non-violent resistance is only a very, very first beginning. It is a practice that takes years of training. We have to practice it in our private lives and practice it in our shared lives. We have to make mistakes in our practice, and learn from our mistakes. Working together for a shared goal can give us strength and courage. I wish you all could have been in Grand Rapids with those of us who attended the Heartland District meeting of Unitarian Universalists this weekend – it was an inspiring collection of individuals working together for a shared goal of sharing and living the good news of our faith. I feel stronger from that gathering. Because I believe we human beings are capable of just about anything, I think we need to be very careful about what we choose to do. We can have more options to choose from when we tend to our own development, whether it be through Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, or Gandhi’s Hindu practice, or Martin Luther King Jr.s’ Christian love so big as to change both oppressed and oppressor. This project of the transformation of foreign policy and homeland security– building a safer world through generosity and non-violence – may very well sound foolish on this first day in April. "Blessed is he who considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble" it says in psalm 41. Or perhaps we are celebrating Palm Sunday as the triumph and victory of a people, the non-violent expression of their freedom or longing for freedom, as the story says they welcomed Jesus carpeting his path with palms and waving them as he passed. You’d have to be a fool to talk of eliminating poverty and violence in this world. A fool like Jesus, or Gandhi, or Martin Luther King or Rabbi Michael Lerner or Jim Wallis or so many, many others… so many of us. Play the fool today, and happy April.
Sermons copyright 2007, all rights reserved. Unitarian Universalist
Church of Greater Lansing |
