Rollins Chapel
Dartmouth College
January 18, 2007
Richard R. Crocker, College Chaplain
- Jeremiah 1:4-10
- I Corinthians 13:1-13
- Luke 4:21-30
- Mathew 5:9
Blessed/happy are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children
of God.
I have had several things in my mind this week as I have thought about this
text, and what I would say to you today. The first of course is the text
itself: Blessed/happy are the peacemakers. You may be relieved to know that we
have only one more beatitude left after this one - but it's a humdinger. But
there is also the lectionary text for this Sunday - the story in Luke about
what happened after Jesus first spoke in the synagogue in his home town -and
since I am preaching this Sunday in a local church, I have been thinking of it
too. And then of course there have been the events of the Martin Luther King
week - especially the controversy among some over inviting Harry Belafonte to
give the keynote address. And also there president's announcement and defense
of his decision to commit more troops to our military actions in Iraq.
As I said, I have been thinking a lot, but, as you expect, I will be very
brief in what I say to you. Peacemaking is the theme. Jesus said peacemakers
are happy or blessed because they will be known as God's children. Yet
the common experience of peacemakers is that they are called communists,
cowards, fags, traitors, troublemakers, and any number of obscenities. That is
what happened to Martin Luther King. It's what happened to Harry Belafonte (if
you don't believe me, just read the D and the blogs it references). And of
course that's what happened to Jesus.
I notice, of course, that Jesus' promise is framed in the future tense. They
"will be" called children of God. Will be. Much later. At the time,
they are often reviled.
President Bush is of course banking on that. He has told us that he is sure
that he is right, and that future generations will thank him for what he is
doing. So said Richard Nixon, so said Lyndon Johnson - so said Winston
Churchill, so said FDR. It's hard to know at the time, isn't it?
I think about Jesus going back home to Nazareth and preaching in his
hometown synagogue. His fame had spread. Home town folks heard that their boy
had been healing people and performing miracles. So of course they expected a
good show when he came back home. He started of well enough, preaching from a
prophecy promising release of the captives, good news to the poor. But then he
refused - or was unable - to perform any miracles. Indeed, he told them
that Elijah didn't perform miracles in Israel, but at the home of a foreigner.
And Elisha did not cleanse an Israeli leper, but a Syrian. And the people were
so inflamed that they wanted to throw him over a cliff. Saying that God does
not always favor US was dangerous then, and it's dangerous now.
I know the feeling. When I was a student, from a very small town in Alabama,
I returned home from my fancy northern college during the Vietnam War and went
to my local draft board, where I had decided to register as a conscientious
objector. It was a small county. I and my family were fairly well known. I had
carefully thought about my position, had read all the literature, and knew all
the rules. I knew my rights; I knew the procedures. I walked into the local
draft board and told the lady who had been doing that job since before World
War II that I wanted to apply for conscientious objector status, and that I
would like the forms, please. Her jaw dropped to the floor. She said they had
never had anybody apply for conscientious objector status before, and that she
didn't have any forms. Then she asked me if my daddy knew I was doing this.
The, when I persisted in asking her to get the forms so I could complete them,
she told me that she would do it, but if she lived, she would make sure I was
declared 1-A and eligible for service in Vietnam immediately. She ended by
telling me to go home and pray about it. I did, and I decided I would go to
divinity school.
I have never known if what I did was an act of courage or an act of
cowardice.
The reason I tell you this story is simply to affirm that even when we think
we are trying to stand for peace, we incur wrath and anger and sometimes
violence. We are accused of being troublemakers or traitors. Standing for
peace, as Harry Belafonte and Martin King and Henry David Thoreau and Emma
Willard and do many others have discovered, may even get you jailed - or
killed.
It's kind of puzzling, isn't it, that Christians can talk so much about
peace, but be so often supportive of war. Harry Belafonte, who was a close
friend of Martin Luther King's, stated that Dr. King once told him: "I'd
rather have 500 ex-convicts in our movement than 15000 Baptist ministers."
I had never heard that Dr. King quotation. I can only guess what Dr. King, the
apostle of non-violence, meant by it. I think it means that ex-convicts are
likely to be actors, while ministers are only talkers.- that ex-convicts know a
certain reality of the world that ministers do not. Maybe. But maybe Dr. King
means that convicts know more about what it means to suffer than ministers do.
-that convicts have nothing to lose and are more honest than ministers are. I
don't know. But I find myself challenged and indicted by that statement.
Actually there are two contrasting strains of Christian theology in the
world today. One of them (called the post-millennial) sees the
possibility and duty that Christians can contribute to a better world, where
peace and justice come to prevail. The other, with many adherents in our own
country, sees the world as hopeless. Peace is an illusion. The world will get
worse and worse until Jesus returns to earth. The only thing we can do,
according to this view (called the premillennial), is to try to restrain evil.
It makes a difference which we believe.
There was an article in yesterday's New York Times, written by an economist,
who calculates the present cost of the Iraq war as 1.2 trillion dollars. The
administration, at the beginning of this venture, projected a total cost of $50
billion. Lawrence Lindsay, a White House advisor, was fired after he said
publicly that the war would cost $200 billion. Both estimates, according to
David Leonhardt, the economist who wrote this article, are tragically low. Mr.
Leonhardt's point is to ask his readers to think about what else could be done
with $1.2 trillion - a figure beyond most of our imaginations. Here is his
list. He says we could do all of this for $1.2 trillion:
- provide universal health care for a decade
- double our support of medical research
- immunize all of the world's children
- provide universal preschool for 3-4 year olds in the US
- reconstruct New Orleans
- implement all of the 9/11 security measures
- support a peace-keeping force in Darfur
- upgrade military forces in Afghanistan
We could do - not one of these, but all of them. So he says. But we have
believed that those things are impossible, while we have believed that the Iraq
war is a necessity.
It makes a difference what we believe. I believe that we are here, not to
make war, but peace. It is hard, but not impossible. It requires courage,
because there is no passion as deadly as the passion for war. BUT IT CAN
PREVAIL. It must prevail. It will prevail. And I believe that those who work to
make it prevail will be called the children of God. Amen.
copyright©2007
Richard R. Crocker
David Leonhardt,
New York Times, January 17, 2007, page c-1. You can read Mr. Leonhardt's
rationale and method for arriving at his figures.
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