IN PRAISE OF NAìVETE
2 Samuel 11:1-15, Acts 7:54-60
Jeff VamosThen he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he said this, he died. --Acts 7:60
When I thought about what I would say in today's sermon, I felt as if I wrote this sermon headed to the end of a plank--or that I would be by the end of it.
Engaging in the task of preaching, I find I encounter two seemingly competing fears: the first has to do with the conflict between our desire to love the people we're called to serve and serve with, and not offend them. And on the other hand, the other fear is that, in our effort to preach the gospel, we will fail to offend the people we love and serve with. Because the gospel, if we really are preaching it, will offend us all; it's an equal opportunity offender. If I've tamed it to the extent that it doesn't offend me, I'm not really receiving the gospel. So, I confess my fear today: that I will offend some of you; and that with what I will say I will fail to offend you.
So. With that bit of preamble, do I have your attention? (I have to resort to these tricks to keep you awake on these summer Sundays.)
Because today's sermon is about politics--the tragic politics of the Middle East, whose pain seems so obvious right now, as we read of the carnage happening there in Israel and in Lebanon. This is a sermon preached in the spirit of the great theologian Karl Barth, who said we ought to do theology with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
So, in talking about the Middle East, the extremely complex politics of the Middle East (about which I claim no expertise; the more I study these politics, the more impressed by just how incredibly complex they are)--in talking about all this, I want to put forth two simple propositions. We're going to try to keep things simple this morning. These propositions are about the attempt, in the midst of this complexity, to find a simple moral principle that might guide us as Christians as to how to respond. To find a simple compass point. They are propositions that have to do with this question: how does one respond to violence and the evil of violence? Is it possible to redeem violence when it happens? 9/11 was of course the biggest test case for us here in the U.S. But the Middle East brings together peoples who have suffered violence; people to whom quite a lot of bad things have happened. And people who in turn are committing violence. Rockets are falling on Haifa. Laser guided bombs are destroying the infrastructure of Lebanon. How do we respond? How do we think about this question of violence?
The first approach is this--it's a response seems encoded in our social DNA. It is the notion that we can redeem violence--when something bad happens--with more violence. When we encounter evil, we can kill it.
I call it the "RAID" philosophy.
You remember...the bug spray? Remember the advertising phrase? "RAID KILLS BUGS DEAD." That is perhaps the most famous advertising slogan ever written. Did you know that it was written by one of the Beat Poets in the 50s? It was written by Lew Welsh, who was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. See--a little trivia to impress your friends with this morning. But...have you ever used Raid? My experience with it is that it does work--it kills the bugs. For a time. But I find that usually, they just come back, and stronger than before. And then it takes more Raid to get rid of them. And so on.
We can redeem violence with violence; when we encounter evil, we can kill it. Walter Wink, the theologian and biblical scholar, calls this the myth of redemptive violence. He points out that in the Old Testament, God is seen to use violence in the end--to balance the scales of justice, when the people doing evil now will receive their just punishment. It is the idea that it is only violence that can redeem us from violence...the attempt to find a big enough can of Raid. But the problem is, experience shows us, the headlines today seem to bear witness to the fact that it does not do so; it only comes back stronger. Violence as a response to evil usually compounds the problem.
In this story that we heard this morning about David and Bathsheba, perhaps one of the best-known stories in scripture, we see this--the idea that trying to redeem evil with more evil only compounds the problem. There's David. It's a hot night; he's cooling himself on the roof of the palace. And there he sees a woman. Bathsheba, taking a bath. Naked. A beautiful woman. Then comes desire. He's a king, after all, and he's used to getting what he wants. We can imagine perhaps that he does so using some form of violence--violating Bathsheba, a married woman; he orders her to come to the palace; he has relations with her. And she gets pregnant. (You see--more melodrama. Those of you not doing Year of the Bible don't know what you're missing).
And, instead of repenting of what he's done, he tries to cover his tracks. Only problem is Uriah, her husband, is a righteous man. He's so righteous, he gets in the way of David's plan to cover up his deed. He tries to get Uriah, who's been off to war, to sleep with Bathsheba. But Uriah's in battle mode; he won't go in to his wife. Finally, David resorts to killing Uriah. He tries to redeem violence with more violence. It doesn't work out well for David...although...well, you have to read past what we read today to the end of the story.
Using violence to redeem violence, evil to fight evil...only compounds the problem.
Jesus responds to this archetypal human strategy--to kill violence with violence--throughout the gospels. In Mark he asks the question, "Can Satan cast out Satan?"1 Can evil eradicate evil? No. It can't. He challenges the standard means for dealing with violence--"you've heard it said: an eye for an eye;" no, that's not the ethic I call you to, he says. As Gandhi has well pointed out, all that does is make us all blind.
Christians have affirmed that the use of violence, given the fallen state of human kind, is at times a necessary evil--a necessary evil to preserve human life. We cannot be so naive as to say that ridding ourselves of violence will be possible for human beings. And we must say that there are circumstances where using violence is ethically permissible, as a last resort. But we can never say that violence will get us to where we want to go. We can never affirm that. Ultimately, violence is not the way.
Here is the question of our era...I think history will prove that this is the critical question for our generation: will we ever be able to get rid of the violence of terrorism simply with violence? I believe that it is terribly na•ve to think so. Even if Israel found a can of Raid that would eradicate every Hezbollah fighter, every bunker, every bomb in southern Lebanon, all they would be leaving is one big recruiting poster for more to take their place. And more will come--and those more scarred by hatred and suffering, more bent on violence than the ones before. All violence does is compound itself.
I took this quote from a poster outside the office of Rich Richards, our new Youth Director, this quote from the musician Michael Franti, which I think is so on the mark: All violence does is create "another child who believes that violence is the only way to change the world."
One might say that the policy that led us to war in Iraq--the belief that we can institute the ideals of democracy and freedom using the method of violence, at the point of a gun--also turned out to be hopelessly naive.
We cannot eradicate violence with violence. We cannot institute goodness with evil.
This is nothing new. This is nothing complex, this principle. It's at the heart of our tradition. We teach it to two-year-olds. Don't hit. If you hit, say you're sorry. And when you get hit, don't hit back. It seems so simple that Christians should practice as their founding principle that violence is not the way; but we forget.
One other tragic consequence of this myth--that we need to avenge evil using the means of evil--is that we have to take sides. We become locked in a culture of death, in which people cannot be brothers and sisters, cannot acknowledge their common humanity. Instead, they are locked into being victim and enemy; oppressed and oppressor. We have become, in many ways, a culture of victimization. And in such a culture, when we take sides, each side thinks of themselves as the victim! Both claim to the oppressed! "Look at what they have done to us!" And the righteousness of my side is justified by my victimization.
So--I too want to take sides. I want to take a position with regard to the complexity of Middle East politics. Here it is.
Let me say that I am for Israel. I want to proudly claim that I am a Zionist Christian (and not a Christian Zionist--if you know the nomenclature, you know there is a vast difference...I'd invite you to study that difference). What I mean by that...as a Zionist Christian...I laud the vision of a nation for the Jewish people, rooted in the justice of the prophets, which has become a partially realized in the parched land of the ancient Patriarchs. I believe there needs to be safe and secure Israel in that land, within internationally recognized borders, seeking to live in peace with its neighbors, including its Arab neighbors. I believe in that dream, and that it is possible.
Let me say that I am for the Palestinians, people who also dream of a nation for themselves; people who have seen their territory, their homes, their land taken from them in what is often seen by both Palestinians and Israelis as a tragic zero-sum game: the establishment of my nation precludes the establishment of yours. I also believe that we don't realize that the dealings of the West with much of the Arab world has been a history of broken promises, a history guided by the narrow self-interest of great powers that have treated the Arab people in many ways as pawns. When the international community declared the need of a homeland for the Jewish people, it also declared the need of a national state for the Palestinian people.2 In the complexity that surrounds this issue, I believe that the reason this has not become a reality does not lie only with the Palestinian and Arab people. It lies with us; with the world, and with our country, for not ensuring that this becomes a reality.
So, I am for Israel. I am for the Palestinian, and Arab, people. But most of all, I am for the peace that comes from Jesus Christ, a peace altogether different from the peace of Rome; the peace purchased with at the point of a sword; a peace borne of violence. A peace that takes the side of every people.
Can we apply that to foreign policy?
You will say I'm naive to think so. But someone has to be the voice that asks: Is there not another way than the way of violence?
What is the alternative to the myth of redemptive violence? Here it is. Here's point number two. Ready?
Forgiveness. Repentance.
I know: you think I'm naive. But it is the gospel.
The story of the stoning of Stephen in the book of Acts is not one we read very often--but I believe it's one of the most important stories in the scriptures. It's the essential picture of what the gospel means. It's a story about someone who's being victimized. Stephen is speaking truth of the gospel--speaking truth to power, to the religious power structure. And people were enraged to hear it--the good news of Jesus Christ; the people stop their ears, and gnash their teeth. And they stone him.
Notice that he doesn't look at the people who are persecuting him, doing violence to him. He doesn't curse them. He's not a victim. He's looking up to heaven. His eyes are on the God of love and forgiveness who has claimed him, who has put the gospel into his heart. The last thing he says before he dies is: Do not hold this sin against them. The very last thing he says as people are killing him is a word of forgiveness!
Is it naive to think it's possible to forgive?
It is our highest calling as Christians. It's the heart of the thing. As Christians, we need to know that we're forgiven; we need to know that God redeems the evil in our lives through the power of forgiveness. We need to know how deeply and fully God loves each and every one of us. We need to live out of that awareness of the heart-shattering love and forgiveness that God has for each of us. And we need to live in that freedom that enables us to forgive each other, and to help others find forgiveness. That's our job. To be naive enough to think that that's possible. To be forgiven our debts, as we forgive our debtors. To find forgiveness, and to forgive.
Is it naive? Is it naive to think that people can listen to and forgive one another for the evil they do to one another?
Is it naive to think that the only way we're going to drain the swamp that creates terrorism is not just to kill "terrorists," whoever they might seem to be; but to help people find a way out of poverty and toward dignity and self-determination?
Is it naive to say that violence is not the way, that the only way Palestinians and Israelis are going to live together is to find some way to acknowledge and repent of the violence they have done to each other, to listen to one another, and the legitimate claims of each people to a share of the land?
Where is the voice that is crying out that our war on terrorism is not a military campaign; it is a moral campaign, and it will not ultimately be won with weapons, but with values; it will be won with the heroism of moral conscience? Where is the voice that says the war on terrorism is a campaign for the hearts and minds of the world, to convince them with deeds and not guns that America's values, which are rooted in Christian values, are what will ultimately root out the hatred in the hearts of those who seem to oppose us?
Where are the Saint Stephens of the world, looking to the heavens of God's everlasting love and forgiveness, who can look with compassion even on those who would do violence against us?
Is that it naive to think this is possible. Well faith is naive. To believe a Nazarene rose from the dead is naive. But that's the faith we proclaim. A naive faith that, through Jesus Christ, peace is possible. I believe. Do you?
Amen.
1Mark 3:23 and parallel passages.
2 On 29 November 1947 the United Nations the UN passed the Partition Plan for Palestine (UN General Assembly Resolution 181), calling for the creation of both a Palestinian and Jewish state, living side by side.
July 30, 2006
e-mail