Student Sermon...

Last spring I composed this sermon for a class in Homiletics. It isn't perfect, there was some good feedback on things I could improve, but I thought I'd post it, in hopes that someone read it and comment on it here. The proposed audience was those at my seminary, though I suspect it applies to your church or social group as well.

So, without further ado:

Eyes Right
HM - 4002 Introduction To Preaching, Sermon #2

Our reading this morning is one of the most violent, most cruel passages in the Hebrew Bible.

It's an odd passage, in that it was not in the King James Version of the Bible-- it was only discovered in the 1940s, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

Perhaps some copyist accidentally deleted it, or perhaps some ancient scholars decided it was too violent. Whatever the reason, we now have it in modern translations and it fits with today's sermon.

It is from the Book Of First Samuel, Chapter 10 verse 27 following

Now NA-hash, king of the AM-mo-nites, had been grievously oppressing the GAD-ites and the REU-ben-ites.

He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer.

No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye NA-hash, king of the AM-mon-ites, had not gouged out.

That's all I'm going to read. You get the idea.

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Eyes Right

I'm very sorry to have selected such a cruel reading for today. But when I red it, I saw us. I saw myself. I saw a message that needs saying.

There are several ways to use this reading. The blind leading the blind might have worked--- but the people of GAD and REUBEN aren't completely blind.

I could have talked about the way that people have blinded themselves with sorrow, or with love, or with drugs-- that might have been an interesting angle--- but they would be situations where individuals blind themselves, rather than having blindness inflicted on them.

In the reading, the Gadites and Reubenites lost a battle against NA-hash, and chose a life of semi-blindness over the alternative, which probably would have been death.

So, I am thinking of a situation where a nation loses a battle, and chooses blindness. Can you imagine what I'm thinking of?
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Sadly, you are right.

Let's take a straw poll... How many of you have thought about this statement today: "our nation is at war"? ...
How many of you have made the war an important part of your day?

"America At War" is the headline... or was four years ago.

The United States of America is at war, in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Forgive me, I'm going to use a popular shorthand, and I'm going to call the USA "America"-- as millions of us Americans do.

Sadly, these are real wars. Real people are fighting them. Real people are going half way around the globe, serving, and either returning or dying... and WE put them there.

Do you notice?

Every morning, as you shower and load your iPod with the day's music, a completely invisible part of our nation awakes to war. The war is the first thing on their minds, and every night, as they try to sleep, the war is the last.

But for us here at our seminary, where is the war? Like the tribes of Reuben and Gad, we have lost our vision in that eye. We don't see the war, we don't taste the war, we don't pay the bills of the war.

Indeed, I lament our current situation. I lament my own blindness, I lament our school's blindness, I lament our community's blindness.

Laments are important, but eventually weeping must change to resolve.

So I think the answer lies in this morning's reading.
Or maybe it lies in your heart.

Here's how I see it.

Plenty of people will tell you that we need to OPPOSE this war.
I'm here to tell you that we need to BECOME A PART of this war.

Let me repeat this point.

Plenty of people will tell you that we need to oppose this war.
I'm here to tell you that we need to become a part of this war.

And opposing something isn't the same as being a part of it.
I'm not going to say if the war is right or wrong. I'm saying it's ours.
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Now there are three foolish things in how the American public engages with the war, and there are three remedies.
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Let's go back to the reading to help frame this.

The reading described a time when Israel had no single leader. Instead each tribe lived for itself.

The story involves the tribes of Gad and Reuben. Most of the twelve tribes of Israel were west of the Jordan River, but Gad and Reuben were out there, EAST of it, in what is now the Kingdom of Jordan.

Now [NA-hash], the king of the [AM-mon-Ites] had defeated the two tribes, probably in battle, nobody knows whose fault it was... nobody knows if the tribes attacked NA-hash or if NA-hash attacked them first, but we do know that NA-hash won.

Now King NA-hash just wants peace, and he wants the income from the farms. To get the income, NA-hash wants the Reubenites and Gadites to be passive vassals.

To make sure they don't rise up and object, he has them all blinded in the right eyes. This is actually better than earlier battles, when victors simply killed all the losers-- you can read about the battle of Jericho, if you want a real bloodbath. So we could say that NA-hash is a compassionate innovator.

Think about it for a moment. If you hold your sword in your right hand, and you don't have a right eye, can you see to fight? Nope. You will be blindsided.

You can't do anything but submit to those in power. Sure you can still plow fields, you can still milk cows... but you have been effectively passified.

I'm sure you are all wondering about how the story turns out... do the good guys win?

Not really. The other tribes of Nation of Israel come to help. In the end there are tens of thousands of bodies rotting on the face of the earth. And after a generation or two, they have another war, and more are killed.

YOU KNOW THE OLD SAYING: There are only three types of people in a war: The living, the injured and the dead.

OK, enough physical violence for one morning. End of lament.

Let's talk about the three foolish things I mentioned.

The first one is obvious. It is the myth of separation. People talk about this being a "red state war" or a "blue state war". People claim that because they elected a Congresswoman or Congressman or Senator who voted in the minority on some authorization bill once upon a time...
That this somehow makes it somebody else's war. It is foolish. The war in Iraq and in Afghanistan is everyone's war.

I'll bet you've figured out what the second one is... It is that we are blinded. Some of you will assign blame for the blindness, but I don't want to go there.

Suffice it to say that somehow, and I don't care about why, we have been blinded, become passified milkers of cows, passified plowers of fields unable to raise an effective sword, or even an effective pen. Our number has been are disconnected. We don't see the soldiers. We don't see the families. We don't see the coffins, or injured, or abandoned.

The third foolishness is that we think we are doing something.

Sorry to seem so down, but protests come and go... vigils burn lots of candles, contributing in their own small way, to global warming.

Do you think that last week's protest rallies changed the course of history?

Sad to say, I doubt it.

But that's not true of all the protests. Let's think of why some are different.

In the summer of 2005, a mother named Cindy Sheehan and members of the "Gold Star Families for Peace"-- they are families of those who had died in the war-- began a protest.

The protest, outside President Bush's ranch in Texas, was effective because the people protesting weren't Berkeley college students-- they were people involved in the war.

They were worthy of attention because it was, and still is, their war.

Without participation we are powerless. If we don't make the war our war, we can neither support it nor oppose it.

I don't care if you think the war is a crime, or if you think declaring war was right. I just want you to turn your remaining good eye and see the situation for what it is. I want our whole nation to do that.

For the past four years we have been dis-involved... intentionally.
- We pay no taxes for the war,
- We attend no funerals, and see no caskets,
- We knit no woolen caps for the sailors.

That's a story worth remembering. It was a big thing in WWII... my Grandmother and all of the ladies of South Orange, New Jersey did that... They would each spend four hours a day knitting... they get together weekly, turning in knit woolen hats for the war effort.

To knit a cap for a merchant seaman on a freighter going across the North Atlantic was to have a personal interest in the cargo.

And when you had knit the cap as an act of love, that sailor was your cargo.

Each Nazi torpedo was aimed at you.

You know, this war has been sold to us as free, fought by volunteers-- volunteers who see signing up as a way out of poverty, or gangs or dead-end living.

Volunteers who bought the dream of civics class,

Volunteers who answered GOD'S call to defend the country.

Whatever the reason, we sold it to them. WE, our government, our nation.

These wonderful volunteers keep our war out of our sight, out of our mind.
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They say that if there were a draft, if it were our brothers, and perhaps our sisters, in a literal sense, who were fighting in the desert, our vision would be restored.
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I think it's time we hear the words "One Nation" and understand that it really is "Indivisible"... and start thinking of those being killed or injured as OUR brothers and sisters.

Only by opening OUR eyes and embracing OUR responsibility can we BE a part of the solution.
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And I'm proposing three remedies.
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To me they don't involve forming committees or public policy study groups. They don't involve pointing fingers and assigning blame.

The solution is in the word "Indivisible." The solution is in becoming one nation again.

The solution is to re-engage, with voice, hands and hearts with those who are part of the war.

The men and women fighting under the American flag in Iraq and Afghanistan have the same blood types as we do. Their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children cry in the same way we do. The broke and broken soldiers worry about the rent, and face fear just like us too.

To be engaged with them, they get our respect, our support, our love and prayers.

Our principles speak of worth and dignity.

How might we show them that they have worth? Perhaps by insisting that persons in harms way be well paid, be well cared for if injured and that they have guaranteed, professional emotional support after return to the routine of life.

Ya know, they did their duty for us. We need to show them that they are worth-ful. This is going to cost us money. It should. The Veterans Administration hospitals should provide the best care, not the worst care in the nation, and
Playing economic politics with those who are disabled is simply unconscionable.

It's time we taxed ourselves to pay for this war.
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But the men and women fighting under the American flag in Iraq and Afghanistan need more than the promise of care when they return. They also need support.

Our hymnal speaks of mutual support-- we need one another.

Here's where America is divided. In conservative circles it is seen as a religious duty to support our troops.

The men and women fighting under the American flag in Iraq and Afghanistan can have all their support from conservative Christian groups, OR they can have support from all of our nation. Which should they have?

How might we show support for those in uniform?

Now being in the US Army in Baghdad is very different from being a kid at sleep-away summer camp, but a friend who is just back from there reports that "Care Package Day" was always special for his unit. School kids, church groups sent a taste of home, and for an hour or two, it was like they were family.

But back home, there are fewer care packages. Their families are often strapped for cash, strapped for time, struggling for resources. Do we contribute to relief organizations? Do we know how to offer personal help?

This needs work... we need to better learn how to support our troops... our web of mutuality needs to include them.

But beyond support, the awareness of love is the greatest gift.

Our Judeo-Christian tradition speaks of LOVE

And this is most important, the men and women fighting under the American flag in Iraq and Afghanistan need to know that they are loved.

They certainly have heard the stories of LIBERALS spitting on soldiers returning from Viet Nam. I know, none of you actually spat. But that's word on the street.

They have been prepared to be hated. Can we change their perceptions?

They already have prayers from those who believe in vengeance, why can't they have love and prayers from those who know that God is Love? Why can't they know that the entire nation sees them as worthy and loved?

AND How could we express love? I have a few ideas...

If each day we here at the seminary stopped our routine. If, for the duration of the war, we stood for one minute, our thoughts and love inclined to them, how could we stay blind?

What if, for the duration of the war, we honored the dead of the week in our chapel service, as if they were our fellow students, how could our hearts not go out to the families and those they loved?

These are both wonderful practices (if I do say so myself), but they don't invite the rest of the community to see... to fight their blindness.

What about if we erected public prayer stations, so that as we walk to classes we could pause along le Conte, or Ridge Road. For the duration of the war, we might pause to pray for, or simply remember people in the many different groups involved in the war: Army soldiers, Navy Sailors, Marines, members of the Air Force, Families, Contractors, affected civilians, families of the dead, the injured. If we could erect simple wooden signs-- each with a name of a group on it-- as public prayer stations, placed around the GTU like stations of the cross. Then every day we could draw our hearts to the many facets, the many human faces, the scope and scale of this war, would that be love?

Would these things involve us in the war?

Would being involved like this teach us, as individuals, help us grow in understanding? Would it get us away from the variety of opinions we hold AND INTO a different place, a place INDIVISIBLE?

In spite of the way this war has been orchestrated,
and blinded as we are, can we learn new ways to see?

Can we learn new ways to go beyond milking cows and become a nation again?

Could this restore our nation's ability to see the war? Could our actions spark others to put up prayer stations across the country. Could they give focus and help the general public becomes aware, aware of the many human dimensions of the conflict?

I don't know, but I can't see another way to do it. And I don't see anybody trying.

Only with our respect,

Only with our support,

Only with our love and prayers... do we have a chance to influence the future.---- Though we may only see the problem with one good eye, the answer has to be with us.

This must become our war.