9/11

Matthew 5:44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Parent in heaven; for God makes Gods’ sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Loving (and the word here is agape) your enemies is the means by which we change the world. Loving does not meaning capitulating to those who practice evil, in the example of Jesus it means directly opposing them nonviolently. So that they may turn from their violence and oppression.

When President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize he sought to justify violence.

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”….. “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

The president’s recognition of history is an interpretation of history, not a fact but a faith statement about his belief in the necessity and righteousness of violence. No one knows whether non-violence would have stopped Hitler’s armies. We do know that

“The Danish and Norwegian resistance to Hitler used direct action such as sabotage of rail lines and factory equipment. Their most important methods involved withholding support from the Nazis -- defiance by teachers, strikes by workers, public boycotts. By the end of the war, Nazi leaders were cabling Berlin to urge that the Germans withdraw -- the costs of staying outweighed the benefits! While thousands of protesters were killed and many more were imprisoned, the casualties were far fewer than would have been caused by armed resistance.” (Glen Gersmehl)

In 1989-90 alone, fourteen nations underwent nonviolent revolutions, all of them successful except China. These revolutions involved 1.7 billion people. If we total all the nonviolent movements of the twentieth century, the figure comes to 3.4 billion people, and again, most were successful. And yet there are people who still insist that nonviolence doesn't work! Gene Sharp has itemized 98 different types of nonviolent actions that are a part of the historical record, yet our history books seldom mention any of them, so preoccupied are they with power politics."(Walter Wink)

Often we resort to violence because we have devised no alternatives. If the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail.

“The 2003 US federal budget again provides over 200 times as much money to military options and resources as it does to all our nonviolent responses to conflict combined, from US contributions to peacekeeping operations or State Dept. conflict resolution efforts to US Institute of Peace research and training programs. Even if you add all the money the US spends to address the roots of conflict and violence in the world – programs like the Peace Corps and development aid – nonviolent methods don’t receive even two percent of the money spent on military options! Contrary to popular belief about the extravagance of US foreign aid, the US trails every industrialized nation in the world in per capita spending to address the root causes of violence and conflict in the world such as hunger and extreme poverty!” (Glen Gersmehl)

In calling on us to love our enemies Jesus was showing us an alternative to the endless cycle of violence. To choose that path is just as much an act of faith as is believing that the use of violence will end the use of violence.


“It cannot be stressed too much: love of enemies has, for our time, become the litmus test of authentic Christian faith. Commitment to justice, liberation, or the overthrow of oppression is not enough, for all too often the means used have brought in their wake new injustices and oppressions. Love of enemies is the recognition that the enemy, too, is a child of God. The enemy too believes he or she is in the right, and fears us because we represent a threat against his or her values, lifestyle, or affluence. When we demonize our enemies, calling them names and identifying them with absolute evil, we deny that they have that of God within them that makes transformation possible. Instead, we play God. We write them out of the Book of Life. We conclude that our enemy has drifted beyond the redemptive hand of God.

I submit that the ultimate religious question today is no longer the Reformation's 'How can I find a gracious God?' It is instead, 'How can I find God in my enemy?' What guilt was for Luther, the enemy has become for us: the goad that can drive us to God. What has formerly been a purely private affair--justification by faith through grace--has now, in our age, grown to embrace the world. As John Stoner comments, we can no more save ourselves from our enemies than we can save ourselves from sin, but God's amazing grace offers to save us from both. There is, in fact, no other way to God for our time but through the enemy, for loving the enemy has become the key both to human survival in the age of terror and to personal transformation. Either we find the God who causes the sun to rise on evil and on the good, or we may have no more sunrises.” (Wink)


On this anniversary of a terrible act of violence, let us as a people of faith proclaim the hard truth of love as the path out of the cycle of hate, fear and violence.

Rich