Courage and honour...
but glory?
A sermon for the day...
Today we remember the landings in Gallipoli. The day has become a day of remembrance
for all Australian service people.
Remembering makes it a sobering day:
At Ballarat, for example, there is an avenue of
remembrance.. About every ten yards, on both sides of
the road, for more than 10 kilometres there is a tree
planted for a dead soldier in the first war. That is
the loss of life only for that one area of Australia.....
And for each person there was a family left bereaved.
Many thousands of others came back pursued by the war
with illness and nightmare horror for the rest of
their lives. And all this is for just one war. Anzac
Day is a sober day.
Anzac Day is a difficult day for the
church. The subject of peace and war is full of
contradiction and pain. It contains complexities
which seem insoluble, and fears which almost
overwhelm us. In a recent discussion I saw an old
woman with a life time in the peace movement heatedly
arguing with an WW II digger, who I think felt
betrayed and unappreciated, if not unfairly condemned
by her work for peace. Their argument was the Uniting
Church in microcosm:
In the church we have serving
military personnel who are Christians. We have
chaplains to the military. Our membership ranges from
these people, through people who would support and if
need be fight in war as a last resort, to people who
are whole heartedly pacifist and run a register of
conscientious objectors in the Uniting Church. We
have returned personnel for whom overseas service was
the experience of a lifetime, others who will say
nothing even after 50 years, and still others who
have not, and never will be, fully recovered in body
or mind. We have church members who were raped and
interned, and who survived concentration camps on a
par or worse than Changi or the Burma Railway. Some
of our members work in the armaments industry while
others in own their family are committed pacifists.
And very many have lost a son or daughter or spouse,
in war.
How do we, as Christians, respond to
the Anzac Tradition. How do we relate to issues of
Peace and war when there are such deep memories of
pain and loss among us, and such diversity of
experience and belief? How do we live in a world
where children grow up in fear of the bomb, and even
five and ten year olds openly, and often bitterly,
speak of a future, if we can call it that!, which
could, and they feel, probably will, include a
nuclear war?
I believe that we must begin by
refusing ever to make light of war, or to glorify it.
We must reject utterly any definition of heroism
which would support more war. We have people in our
community who have suffered at the hands of the
soldiers and brutes in a hundred different wars, and
men and women haunted by the things they saw and did.
We cannot pretend to know their pain. Let us not ever
add to it by glorifying war.
Secondly we must get beyond notions
of crusades and so-called godly wars, once propagated
by churchmen who were more interested in justifying,
or forced to justify the desires of politicians and
Kings and Queens. We must hear again the tradition of
the Faith. The true and earliest tradition of the
church is one of peace. The great vision for the
world is that of Micah... that people shall wage war
no more, and that each shall sit beneath their own
vine and fig tree. That means that there will be a
justice abroad which means all have enough.
In fact, if we talk of the Christian
attitude on war we are already beginning to miss the
point. There is no entry under War in the Dictionary
of Christian Ethics, the listing is Peace and
War. War is always ultimately a failure to live
rightly before God. The tradition of the church is
summed up in a statement of the Amsterdam Assembly of
the World Council of Churches:
War as a method of
settling disputes is incompatible with the teaching
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The word is incompatible; in
the earliest church you could not be a Christian and
a soldier. The two were seen as incompatible. How
could you have both Jesus and the emperor as Lord.
War was seen as a contradiction of the message of
love and peace. Jesus had said, "Love your
enemies." From the beginning for Christian
theologians, was has been essentially un-holy, and
participation in war... problematical.
The reality, of course, was that wars
came, and Christians were involved. The church
developed a theology of The Just War. This was never
intended to affirm that war was alright, or to
glorify war in any way. It was meant to be a guide to
those situations where the evil of war could be
tolerated, or might have to be accepted, in
preference to some greater evil or injustice
happening. In other words, some oppression or
inhumanity might be so great and horrific that war
was preferable.
And so, in 1939 a Christian may have
seen the advance of Hitler across Europe and felt
that in the eyes of God, the greater evil was to
allow it to continue, and that war was a lesser evil-
but still an evil. And I have the greatest of
admiration for the courage of those who went to war
on such a basis, and respect their ideals and aim.
It is from this point that we must
approach Anzac Day. People made decisions which cost
them their lives, very often. They understood they
were fighting for the freedom of their country, and
indeed, the world's freedom. They sometimes suffered
utter horrors, and our freedom today is partly their
legacy. So let us never in the name of peace decry
their ideals and sacrifice.
But, let us never hide or lessen the
horror of war. War, and the glorification of war
remains always in contradiction of the gospel.
Claiming to be fighting a just war is never an excuse
for Mei Lai and the other massacres of Vietnam, or
the Allied firebombing of Dresden, or for rape, or
looting.
And today, as Christians, we must
face other new issues. War has changed since the
church expounded the idea of a just war. Modern
warfare has become "demonically dangerous"
to quote one theologian. The first atomic explosion
"cut history in two like a knife" according to
another writer. (HN Wiemen) And the Just War may be
on the other side of the resulting abyss.
How can a nuclear war which blots out
everything be said to be righting wrongs and avoiding
a greater evil? How can we distinguish between
civilian and military targets in modern warfare? Are
there even answers to such questions? The marriage of
modern technology to human hatreds means that the
word 'war' does not mean the same thing as it
meant for the Anzacs of 1915 or even of 1939. The
costs and dangers have increased astronomically. The
Gulf War could have escalated to wipe out the world
in a few days.
So how do we live as Christians in
this new world, on this Anzac Day? Firstly we must
say to the former soldiers, "Our cry for peace
is never criticism of your sacrifice! And we are am
grateful for what you did for us." But we must
see that perhaps the very survival of the world, and
our children involves different issues to decades
past. It's not a question of what should or should
not have happened in 1939 or at some other time. It's
a question of now. With the greatest respect, I do
not think that having offered one's life in a war
fifty years ago necessarily qualifies a person to
have some greater authority on the issues of peace
and war today. Listening to some members of the RSL,
this sometimes seems to be their attitude. Fighting
for the freedom of the following generations means
fighting for a freedom that allows that generations
to make its own way!
And now, and this is the second point,
we must cry out for justice and peace, AND work for
it! I believe that to work for justice and peace is
the calling of the church. We are the body of Christ
in the world- called to be Christ to the world until
his return. We are to be peace makers.
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How on earth can we work for peace
when so much depends on the Presidents Clinton and
Yeltsin, and the military industrial complex, and so
on? What can we do against the demonic powers of
militarism? We are but a few unimportant people?
We can do a number of important
things.
1. WE CAN PRAY. And we need to.
Because it is not just individual people involved in
Bosnia or Palestine-- it is centuries old hatred
which has grown into demonic power with a life of its
own. How often do we seriously pray for real peace:
not peace imposed by the threats of great powers, but
peace based on justice for all, where all have
opportunity and may thrive.
2. WE CAN ASK QUESTIONS AND WRITE
LETTERS. Questions like "how come when it took a
few short weeks to get into Kuwait, the Muslim people
of Bosnia and Serbia suffered rape and murder by the
thousand for many months? How come the world will not
risk intervention when "ethnic cleansing"
which is not qualitatively different from Hitler's
attempted genocide of the Jews is there for us all to
see on our TV screens?" The answer of course is
oil. The Presidents and the Prime Ministers go to the
Kuwaits and not to the Bosnias because of oil, and
because we let them. Maybe because we too, are more
concerned about oil than human rights! Or because
maybe we don't care enough, or have given up.
We know well that a small vocal
minority can achieve amazing results- especially if
there is some innate justice in their calls. Any of
us could write a letter calling for increased
diplomatic pressure over Serbia and Bosnia. It would
cost less than ten dollars to put it through the
parish photocopier, and send it to our ten SA
senators and our local member. How many of us have
done it?
If that's too far away, how many of
us have written complaining of our military aid and
training which is allegedly used in the Philippines
in a reign of terror against civilians which is often
worse than when Marcos was President? Have we even
bothered to read the articles in New Times from our
Uniting Church pilgrims to the Philippines?
Politicians listen to letters. What
would happen for peace and justice if just two people
in each parish in Australia wrote a letter? I suspect
that many of our politicians would wish to act
differently, but cannot because we never write to
back them up and demand any different approach. We
present them with no evidence that there are
Australians who are prepared to pay for a country
which lives more justly.
We're not stupid. We can see the
inconsistencies in foreign policy and various wars.
Make the government explain-- let us protest. Our
soldiers died for this kind of freedom- will we not
use it?
3. WE CAN LIVE JUSTLY.
The aggression used in war is the
same basic aggression
and the greed which fuels war is the same greed
and the hatred which sustains war is the same hatred
and greed and aggression and as we feel ourselves
here and now in our peaceful country. Where our greed
causes injustice to others, whether they be next door
or in a neighbouring country, and where we hate our
neighbour and are spiteful and petty instead of
seeking reconciliation, and where we are aggressive
and violent and oppressive in our families...
just so we exonerate, support and
perpetuate the greed and hatred and oppression and
aggression of war. If war is to stop, the ways of war
must stop in the lives of ordinary people. If we are
to reject wars we must reject warring ways.
Peace is a hard thing to attain. And
indeed, war may need to be faced. But if we will not
follow the Ten Commandments and cease to covet;
if we will not love our neighbours,
much less our enemies;
if we will not seek to have justice
roll down like waters, and speak out for the orphan
and widow...
if we will not bear the cost of all
that here and now, how can we expect our leaders whom
we elect, and our negotiators, and the Corporations
to act for justice and peace? And how can we expect
other countries to act for peace?
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The best vision of the Anzacs, and
all the people we remember this day, was for peace.
They fought at their best, so that others might not
suffer, and to spare others from such war. Perhaps
our best Christian response is to go beyond the
military parades of the day, by working for justice
and peace, so that their lives and their sacrifices
will not have been wasted. Amen
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