"The Battle for Peace"

Psalm 120 and Matthew 5:1-12

February 27, 2011 + Eighth Sunday after Epiphany

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

I am going to describe an historical situation and then ask you the place where it happened. I will take a few liberties in my description, but nearly everything is accurate.

A particular land had been controlled for centuries by various colonial powers. The native population had learned to adapt to this shifting control. They lived in scattered villages and supported themselves by simple agriculture. What they could not produce themselves, they traded for. While these people shared some common ethnic, cultural and religious traits with one another, they never had much sense of a national identity.

Then something changed. New immigrants came to the land and, as the years passed, they arrived in ever increasing numbers. These new people shared a common ethnic, cultural and religious identity quite different from the native inhabitants. For a while these new immigrants did not seem to be a problem. There was enough land to share and, besides, the immigrants paid for the land they settled. But as more time passed and more immigrants arrived, the native people grew more and more uneasy and resentful. Fights broke out and there was bloodshed on both sides. Both the native people and the immigrants blamed each other for these conflicts. Neither group really understood the other and, frankly, didn’t see why they should.

The immigrants who came to the land were fleeing from persecution and oppression. As time went on they wanted to establish their own government and be able to live in safety and security. The native people believed they were being marginalized in their own land. They didn’t want to adapt to the culture and religion of the immigrants and live under their political control. Eventually warfare broke out as the immigrants waged a war for their independence. They fought against the native people and those supporting them. The immigrants won the war and established a new nation.

In the following years there were additional wars and conflicts attempting to return the land to what it had been before the immigrants arrived and their new nation had been created, but all these attempts were unsuccessful. The native people were forced into sullen submission, though from time to time some of them mounted acts of terrorism against the immigrants. This terrorism was met with powerful military suppression and the native people were subjected to greater and greater control. Many of the natives became poverty stricken in the land where they once had been able to support themselves and their families. Their resentment and bitterness continues to this day.

Now I pose my question: what place and historical situation am I describing? Was I describing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for control of the Holy Land? What I described seems to fit – for the most part – with that continuing bitter conflict. Actually, I was describing the struggle between the European immigrants and native peoples for control of the American continent and the establishment of the United States in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Winners of such conflicts write the history and so I suspect that most of us did not learn in school what Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story” of what happened in colonial America.

Believe me, I don’t take any pleasure in telling you my version of early American history. Some of my own ancestors came to this land fleeing from religious and political oppression. They wanted to create a new and better and safer place for themselves and their children. They had little patience with or sympathy for the Native Americans whom they regarded as an inconvenient and sometimes dangerous obstacle to be controlled or destroyed. And that is what happened. Though we may romantically use Native American names for various places; though we may use them for symbols or mascots of sports teams; though we may place their images on money and monuments; there is no question that we all but destroyed them. Now, in one of those ironic reversals of which history is filled, Native Americans have established casinos on the land that was left to them and are proceeding to re-claim some of the wealth that was stolen from them!

Why do I tell you this? Simply to remind us that as Americans we don’t come to today’s Middle Eastern conflicts with clean hands and a pure conscience. We have no business self-righteously telling the peoples of that region what they ought to do. We certainly have no business, no God-given right, to attempt (foolishly and futilely) to attempt to build nations with military might. We who have supported the corrupt dictators that are now being overthrown all across the Arab world have no right to take pride in what is happening. We can only hope and pray that the millions of people now claiming freedom will not hold us accountable for the dictatorships they have endured for so long. We, who have preached and practiced war and military might for so long must learn a new humility and a new restraint. If we are wise we will peacefully –  support the popular governments that are emerging out of the greater popular upheaval in our lifetime.

I don’t want to pretend that all of this will be easy or pleasant. We are already paying the price for our past folly at the gas pump. We may be in for a very bumpy ride before all of this sorts itself out. We probably will not appreciate the Islamic nature of some of the republics that will emerge, but that will be the responsibility of the people who are creating them.

What is not acceptable is for our country to return to the folly and futility of using our military might to establish some sort of temporary stability. With the help and guidance of other nations the most we might hope to do is establish some sort of international police force to prevent the kind of civilian slaughter that is now going on in Libya. What we cannot and must not do is go it alone. Those days are over. We have bankrupted our country over wars that never end. We have sent thousands of our young men and women to die in places they should never have been. It is time and past time to turn from waging war to the battle for peace.

Will we be able to do this? I hope so but it will not be easy. We have created a culture that has become accustomed to war. I feel exactly like the Psalmist in our scripture lesson today:

“Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace; but when I speak,. They are for war.” Psalm 120: 6-7.

As difficult as it may be we must be voices for peace. As Christians we must be those blessed peacemakers Jesus called us to be. Yes, we may be reviled, ridiculed and even persecuted but the hand of history and God are on our side.

In our Pilgrim Hymnal there is a hymn by American poet James Russell Lowell reminding his generation and ours that moments come to every man, woman, and nation to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side. Yes, that choice to be on the side of truth may cost us something, perhaps cost us a great deal, but Lowell’s words still ring true more than one hundred years later:

“Though the cause of evil prosper,

Yet ‘tis truth alone is strong,

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow

Keeping watch above his own.”

With that promise, that presence, and that power we will win the battle for peace. Amen.