Rev. Michael Phillips’ Sermon – February 8, 2004

And Gideon said to him, ”Pray Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Behold, my clan is among the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” And the Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, to strike the Midianites everyone.”

Listen to the following quotations from an ancient source of sacred writing. The list is fairly long, but all the quotations are from the same text. I am hoping that the number of quotations will help to make my point. See if you can identify the source - I will reveal it at the end. To keep it anonymous, whenever the text uses a specific name for God, I will insert the generic word “God.”

“Rise up, God …surely you will strike all my enemies across the face, you will break the teeth of the wicked. Deliverance belongs to God.”

“For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, and evil cannot dwell with you. Braggarts cannot stand in your sight; you hate all those who work wickedness. You destroy those who speak lies; the bloodthirsty and deceitful you abhor.”

Another:

“God sits in judgment every day. If they will not repent, God will whet his sword; he will bend his bow and make it ready. He has prepared his weapons of death; he makes his arrows shafts of fire. Look at those who are in labor with wickedness, who conceive evil, and give birth to a lie. Their malice turns back on their own head, their violence falls on their own scalp.”

Have you figured it out yet? Do you think it might be from a text of ancient war songs to Mars, the Roman god of war? Maybe it’s from a Viking text to Thor? Or maybe from an Islamic source? Do you think maybe these texts motivated Al-Qaeda in their attacks on the United States? Listen to this next one.

The wicked arrogantly persecute the poor. The wicked are so proud that they care not for God; their only thought is “God does not matter.” Their ways are devious at all times. They say in their heart, ”No harm shall happen to me ever.” Their mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and oppression; under their tongue are mischief and wrong. In secret places they murder the innocent; they spy out the helpless. They lie in wait to seize upon the lowly. They say in their heart, “God has forgotten, he hides his face, he will never notice.” Rise up, O God, lift your hand. Do not forget the afflicted. Break the power of the wicked and evil. God is King for ever and ever. The ungodly shall perish from his land.

Do not let my treacherous foes rejoice over me. For they do not plan for peace, but invent deceitful schemes against the quiet in the land. You saw it, O God, do not be silent. Awake and arise to my cause! To my defense, my God.”

Have you figured it out? Do you think you have a good idea who might be using these texts to justify all sorts of violence? Just a few more…

You tyrant, you plot ruin; your tongue is like a sharpened razor, you worker of deception. You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth. You love all words that hurt, you deceitful tongue. O that God would demolish you utterly, topple you, and snatch you from your dwelling, and root you out of the land of the living!

You devise evil in your hearts, and your hands deal out violence in the land. The wicked are perverse from the womb; liars who go astray from their birth. They are as venomous as a serpent; they are like the deaf adder which stops its ears. O God, break their teeth in their mouth; pull the fangs from the young lions. The righteous will be glad when they see the vengeance; they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.

God shall crush the heads of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of those who go on still in their wickedness. May your foot be dipped in blood, the tongues of your dogs in the blood of your enemies.

Do you have it yet? Just a few more.

Though the wicked grow like weeds, and all the workers of iniquity flourish; they flourish only to be destroyed forever. For lo, your enemies, O God, your enemies shall perish.

And the last one:

The wicked speak to me with a lying tongue; they fight against me without a cause.

Let their days be few, and let another take their office. Let their children be fatherless, and their wives become widows. Let their children be waifs and beggars; let them be driven from the ruins of their homes. Let the creditor seize everything they have, and let strangers plunder their gains. Let there be no one to show them kindness, and none to pity their fatherless children.

What comes out so clearly in all of these quotations is the intense hatred directed toward the wicked and the desire for violent consequences, for vengeance. The other common thread is that those consequences are to be delivered by God.

I can see how these texts could have fueled the awful events of 9/11. The sense of unfaithfulness we display as seen by the Islamic world of the Mideast, puts us in the category of “wicked” quoted so frequently in the texts. There is our obsession with sex, and drinking and violence; the murders that occur on our streets every night and every day, and splashed across our movie screens. The Islamic world sees the racism we preserve, overtly or more subtly. They see the growing prison population which is overwhelmingly Black, Hispanic, and Muslim, and they wonder what sort of God these Christians follow. They see the West as filled with the arrogant wealthy, who steal the natural resources from the rest of the world, and in a world that has no effective international legal system, they perceive that their only alternative is mass violence; violence as revenge; in the name of God.

The trouble is, I have not quoted from Islamic texts. Every quotation I read earlier is taken from the Book of Psalms in our very own Bible. The vengeance and desire for violent consequences are part of our tradition. And don’t tell me, “Well the Book of Psalms is the Old Testament, and with the coming of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, we as Christians have moved beyond that kind of thinking and that kind of theology.” Please, Christian Europe has a history of one war after another; one act of violence followed another, one holy elimination of “wickedness” after another. As a civilization we have lived fully into these quotations from the Book of Psalms.

In times past, I have commented from this pulpit on our nation’s actions on the geopolitical stage, especially its military engagements. I am not a politician, nor a political commentator. I’m a theologian, and as such am concerned with power. One of the areas theologians consider is the relationship between the divine power of God, and the various manifestations of earthly powers.

I am not naïve enough to stand up here and declare that every war in every situation is wrong or contrary to the will of God. There is genuine evil. The human heart can be dark and base. At times, whole nations can fall under the spell of a demonic spirit. The defeat of Nazism was, in this theologian’s opinion, a holy act. There are times and situations where an effective military can be equated with salvation. Nevertheless, I am cautious about the statement the angel makes to Gideon, “Behold, God is with you, and you shall smite the Midians, (or maybe the Koreans, or the Russians, or Vietnamese, or Iraqis,) everyone.”

My point here is caution. We humans must always wield power with caution, but especially when we call upon the power and the backing of God. In all humility, we must be completely and constantly ready to reflect and examine our motives and intentions. The men and women of the military have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It is a document that carries with it many of the values we attribute to our God: freedom, human dignity, human rights, deliverance from oppression, and more. Our fellow citizens who have willingly put on the uniform of the US military have a solemn and potentially holy task to perform. Some of our members have worn that uniform and served, some even in combat. Their dedication and commitment is a solemn and public trust. They must not be used, or misused, by our political leaders for the advancement of private gain or personal agenda. I am not making any accusations. I don’t think we know enough at this point to make accusations. Nor am I preaching partisan politics from the pulpit. Please don’t misinterpret what I am saying. I am simply stating as a theologian, a cautionary word about the use of worldly power, in the name of God.

Speaking as a theologian, to consciously and intentionally endanger the lives and safety of our military personnel for private gain is morally corrupt. Whether you are a president, or a member of Congress, or a Prime Minister, or a dictator, or king, or queen, or any other head of state, wielding earth powers, it is morally corrupt.

Sadly, our tradition has far too many citations of God being on our side, and our side alone. Our tradition has far too many references of God’s power claiming victory on the field of battle against “evil” when in reality the victory was simply over a political enemy of Judah. It is far too easy to pick up any one of these citations and use it for our own end. I am greatly encouraged by the news this week of our President’s willingness to engage an independent investigation into the use of earthly powers. I pray for all those who seek the truth, and who live by it.

But the politicians in Washington will never hear this sermon. It will have no effect on the national stage. However, we don’t have to be world leaders to misuse the authority of God, to claim God’s backing and support for our private agendas. We don’t have to be world leaders to turn those who differ from us into “the wicked,” and justify violence against them as a holy cause. There is evil. It must be responded to. We cannot sit idly by and let the darkness prevail. At the same time, we cannot preempt God for our private causes.

For the past few years, our Vestry has begun to train itself in the discipline of discernment. It is not an exact science, but it is a start. At the heart of discernment is an openness to God’s Spirit. We train to empty ourselves, our thoughts, our wishes, our causes, our agendas, and in that emptiness, invite God’s Spirit to fill us, to speak to us. We prepare ourselves to hear things from that Spirit we would rather not hear. We prepare ourselves to be surprised, and to open to conversion. Our desire is for the Spirit of God to speak for herself.

It takes time and cannot be rushed, to let the busy noises and voices play themselves out. It requires a posture of invitation without barriers or roadblocks to let the Spirit be who the Spirit is. And because we do not, and cannot control the Spirit of God, when we speak from discernment, we do so cautiously and humbly.

It is in this process of letting go, and living in the emptiness that follows, that we have our best chance, and really our only chance, of being faithful. Without engaging that process, the Spirit’s voice will never be heard above our own. It is this sense of honesty and humility that I pray for everyone in positions of leadership, from George Bush to Osama Bin Laden, and everyone in between. As a Christian theologian I proclaim the ultimate display of God’s power – a righteous man dying unjustly on a cross. In that sacrifice and offering, he will be raised by God, and live a new and abundant life. There is a logic to the Christian faith that does not make sense. It is only when we empty ourselves that we are filled, and fulfilled.

I pray that same spirit of sacrifice and offering be embraced by the leaders of this troubled and all too vengeful world. I pray for that spirit of sacrifice and offering to be embraced by the leaders of business, and education, and the leaders of the Church. I pray not that God be on our side, but that we be on God’s. I pray for the peace of God that passes understanding.

Amen.

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