Finding Our Song

Anton DeWet

Joshua 11:16-20 [a video clip from a seminar by Walter Brueggeman was played as introduction]

Last Sunday we saw how the Moses generation handed the baton over to the Joshua generation. Moses leads Israel out of the place of slavery, Namely Egypt, but dies in the wilderness within sight of the Promised Land, after a 40 year trek.

The Joshua generation enters the land, kills off all of the leaders and many of the people of that land and settles it. This is a story of the ultimate violence of ethnic cleansing if ever there was one. It is also part of the history of the Old Testament which is usually used to justify acts of organized violence such as war by both Jews and Christians alike.

If we could express our relationship with God as a song, then Jesus came upon the scene singing a new song.

It is quite easy to follow his song and see how it changed the way people thought about God. The problem is that most people think his song stopped somewhere between Golgotha and Emmaus. That the only thing we need to do is to figure out what he said and meant and perpetuate that without any consideration for our changed lives, our changes worldviews, our changed science, and our changed moral and ethical conditions.

Someone said that if the Joshua generation’s actions in Canaan were justified by the Old Testament interpreters as God’s instructions to them to commit ethnic cleansing then surely Jesus’ instructions to us was to commit ethnic loving.

Can we imagine Jesus justifying the ethnic cleansing of Canaan in the light of what he taught—“…love your enemies, forgive those who sin against you…turn the other cheek…walk the second mile…”?

I grew up in a land that claimed to be a Christian state. We had prayer in the schools; our parliament was always opened with religious (exclusively Christian) services. We were one of the countries with the strictest morality laws in the world. You were fined heavily if you were caught with pornography in your possession. All other non-Christian religions were regarded as evil and Jews were deemed to be heading for hell. Offensive books were regularly banned for their so-called vulgarity, including some great literary works.

Yet, at its core, we had some of the most corrupt, violent and mean people in power who rarely hesitated to use war and ethnic cleansing to achieve their political goals. Their justification: the stories of Israel and the Old Testament.

Is it not time for us to sing the Lord’s song in a new way? Is it not time for us to find our own song; the song that God would want us to sing as 21st century Christians. What could that song sound like?

Perhaps we need to begin by acknowledging that violence is the most destructive, degrading human activity ever perpetrated. Why do our young men and women come back from war emotionally damaged? Why did I find in my doctorate, as I interviewed WWII and Vietnam veteran’s that these men were still deeply conflicted by their experiences. Especially our WWII veterans who in their mature years, 65 years after the event, shed tears of grief as they spoke of the pain of the violence they experienced and participated in. This is not a moral judgment just a practical reality. It was often kill or be killed and yet…even the most vile of enemies were still mourned by these men for having died at their hands.

I watched a Japanese veteran visit the Pearl Harbor memorial on TV the other day and how respectfully he came forward to express his grief and sorrow for his part in that war. Old men haunted by long forgotten battles. What are we doing to our young men and women in these pre emptive wars which are waged very clearly motivated by the notion that God is on our side?

It is with a sense of helplessness that we watch the Israelis pound Gaza as though enough killing will bring some instant solution. One would have thought that after 51 years of war-ing these two sides would have realized that killing for peace is a lost and hopeless endeavor. What about the innocents killed on both sides? Perhaps a mistaken theology stuck in the Joshua and Old Testament history introduced a process for which the Middle East is still paying the price. As though God would ever command ethnic cleansing.

This past Christmas I slipped into the sanctuary one morning and wrote down on the doves that decorated the Christmas tree at the hospitality table, the names of my friends who died in our wars. I remember what one of my interviewees told me when I was doing my doctorate when he said that he never stops thinking of the war he fought in. I knew exactly what he was talking about. There is never peace in your mind again as you think of the dead and the mutilated and the mindlessness of the violence because no matter how much you destroy; how much you kill; somewhere everyone has to stop at some time and make peace.

Could we be called in this time to sing songs of peace in this shattered world of ours? I think its one of the most enduring songs God calls us to partake in. Sing songs of peace by rethinking your understanding of violence. Refuse to resort to violence because people who argue for it will always tell you this last battle, this last war, will be swift and just and will bring us solutions. And wars never turn out to be swift or entirely just. It does, however, bring great destruction and ongoing pain for those who survive it.

What is our song going to be in 2009? Does your song still work or have you given up entirely on singing the song of life?

Faith Church has been, for 50 years, a place of sanctuary and worship. Here we have gathered to decide what it is that we are called to do in God’s name. We have been right and wrong with many issues but we have continued to sing the Lord’s song as best we could and with as much integrity as we could muster.

But it may be time to rethink our song and adapt it where necessary and to bring in new melodies, metaphorically speaking, while letting others go.

I want to invite you find your own song in this place. I want to invite you to prayerfully consider what it is that Gad is calling you to be in this church and in the world that you find yourself in.

John Lennon sang the song, “Give Peace a Chance…”. I was listening to it this week. What a song. What an indictment that a pop star sings such a song and most of the Christian world is often caught sifting through their Scriptures trying to motivate war when it comes to us.

Perhaps, if our churches cannot produce the inspiration for God’s new song we must turn to our poets and artists and learn from them.

Here is one song that has always inspired me:

Imagine
John Lennon

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

The theological notion that there is a place called heaven and hell has through the ages, unleashed a paranoid clash of religions with each claiming to have the sole map to get there. To establish this dogma hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people have perished in the wars to establish dominance and many more have been shattered spiritually and emotionally.

In the name of nationalism and in the name of country, millions have perished through the ages. If this song is utopian then so was Jesus and so is God. And what is wrong with reaching for a dream we may know is beyond our reach rather than settling for a failed philosophy of violence as our nation state structures demand?

I for one, intend to work on a new song that will make others more and more inclusive of my world. I believe that God calls us here at faith to work on a song that includes all of God’s people, no matter who they are or where they have been on life’s journey.

“You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one”

Amen.

PRAYER

A new song. O God, how you must crave a new song from us, the new Joshua generation. A song of inclusive love and compassion, of empathy and hope, of peace and sharing.

We live in such an angry world, with so many angry stories. But we are always learning new songs, O God. We wish for our song to be one that moves us from anger and violence to peace and hope. We dream of a world in which we could live as one. A world where the many are not used to create wealth for the few. Where there is healthcare for all—decent housing for all—employment and security for all. We wish to help build a world where the hungry and the starving will have enough to satisfy their needs, and where the victims of violence and war will find us binding their wounds and helping heal their broken lands.

We dream of our own young men and women in uniform returned to their families and their place in our society and that those injured in these wars will be cared for as though they are the most precious charges we have ever received collectively as a people.

Our new song would include a song for peace in Israel and Palestine, in the Congo, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and you know the list, O God.

Hear our song of hope and our music of caring and lyrics of justice. Inspire us to live this song as we take hands with millions of others across the globe who have always been singing this song amidst the sounds of anger and greed and violence. Help us give peace a chance, O Gracious One, so our hearts be healed and our lives be filled with meaning.

We give thanks for this church and the people who gather here every Sunday, and who distribute food to the hungry, and who speak for the voiceless. May we sing your song well this week and every week. Amen.