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"How Long, O Lord?"
Introduction: Today my pocket calendar is marked: "Veterans Day (USA) Remembrance Day (Canada and France)." When I was growing up it was called Armistice Day, commemorating the anniversary of the moment the guns fell silent on the Western Front in World War I. November 11, 1918 was the day that the armistice was signed on "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" between the Allies and Germany. This marked the cessation of the hostilities on the Western Front even though the fighting continued along the Eastern Front until it all officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. The United States was late in entering the Great War, as it was known. Our participation was not characterized as a pre-emptive strike but a necessary and, by some standards, a just war. When the decision was made, hundreds and thousands of Doughboys marched off to battle to the jaunty sounds of "Over There, Over There, Send the Word, Send the Word, Over There; that the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, Over There." It began as a carefree venture, a lark characterized by the musical ditty, "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile."
But the agony and terror of the trenches and mustard gas was not a Sunday School picnic kind of smiling affair. For many who started out with such high spirits, their end was captured in John McCrae’s most famous somber words of World War I: "In Flanders field the poppies blow For years thereafter on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" two minutes of silence were set aside around the world as a remembrance of the roughly eight million who died in the Great War. Sometime in 1939, these two memorial minutes were shifted in the United Stated to the Sunday nearest the 11th, in order not to interfere with wartime production if it came during the week, although many still honored the exact time on the 11th. On June 1, 1954 the name was changed to Veterans Day as "a tribute . . . to [the sacrifice of] all soldiers who have fought or who are fighting for the U. S. today." Later attempts to place it always on a Monday was turned back by veterans who felt celebrating it actually on the 11th better emphasized its importance.* On that original Armistice Day, or at least shortly thereafter, my Dad was traveling north in France on his way to Chaplaincy School in Belgium. He had been a company supply sergeant with an all-Black unit of the U. S. Corp of Engineers building railroad bridges in France. The direction of his life changed that day in 1918 when the armistice was signed. He never became a chaplain but had 40 more years to live and serve in ministry. It was not long enough, however, to know that the bride he was yet to meet would die exactly 80 years to the minute on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1998. It is difficult for many of us now in the 21st century to make any direct personal connection with those events that happened nearly a century ago. Even more difficult is to find the context in which to reflect on them in such a way as to find a word of meaning for us in our turbulent and disturbing time, a time when we are wracked with fear, anxiety and uncertainty brought on by the wars of our day. Many times in the past when I have been at such a loss, I have found meaning in the regular rhythm of the lectionary -- those regularly suggested passages for every Sunday in the Christian year. The passage I read this morning comes from last week’s lectionary lessons, that I have carried forward, may just be what we may need to hear today. The word of meaning may come to us this morning through a quaint and almost obscure little book over in the tail end of the Old Testament. I discovered on one of my trips to Cuba that every congregation in the Presbyterian Church there spent one whole year in the study of this book -- three chapters and 56 verses. It bears the name of the person we assume is the author -- Habakkuk. We are not really sure exactly who he was, where he was from, or in what time he lived. He played no significant part in the history of his time, merely made a contribution of voice and comfort to a few contemporaries close enough to hear or read what he said. He seemed to represent an inconspicuous group of Judeans as he dialogued with the Almighty. It was if they were almost too weary to cry out, but he did on their behalf. "How Long, O Lord will we have to endure all this stuff?" He wailed against the "evildoers". His plaintiff cry was a personal testament to a soul confronting God in the face of overwhelming difficulties. The difficulties stemmed from the fact that an imminent pre-emptive strike was about to befall them through invasion from outside conducted by the Babylonians known as a "fierce and restless people," amply fortified with weapons of mass destruction, willing to plunder and take captives. Their cause was just because they believed they were a foreign power raised up by God to bring violence and oppression upon unfaithful Judah. Above all: "THEIR OWN POWER WAS THEIR GOD!" But Habakkuk, in his prophetic sensitivity, was concerned not only with the violence posed by these foreign invaders; he equally lamented the domestic injustices levied by the leaders of Judah on its own people. These leaders clothed themselves in self-righteous rhetoric all the while heaping up outrageous wealth from that which was not theirs. They built towns on the bloodshed of the people, while constructing their own homes of privilege high on the hills above the fray below, out of harms way. They made idols in their own image -- makers of lies and deceit -- idols that became useless and could not speak. Habakkuk wailed against the "evildoers." But who were they -- the threat from without or the threat from within? Both seemed equally certain of the rightness of their cause. "How long, O Lord, will we suffer at the hands of those who are certain of the rightness of their cause?" "THEIR OWN POWER WAS THEIR GOD!" There are other prophets who were filled with the same lament. In January 1933, after years of governmental and economic chaos, Hitler was named chancellor in Germany. By playing on the people’s fears of communism and Bolshevism he persuaded the Parliament to allow him to rule by edict [a.k.a. -- an Executive Order of the day]. He consolidated power, abolished all political rights and democratic processes; detained persons in prison without a trial; searched private dwellings without a warrant; seized property; censored publications; tapped phones; forbade meetings and ultimately resorted to torture and genocide as the final solution. He set up his own "People’s Court;" initiated a systemic terrorizing of the Jews; and created the Reich National State Church to bless his ideals and justify all he was doing in the name of God’s will for Germany. Most Germans took the union of Christianity, nationalism, and militarism for granted, and patriotic sentiments were equated with Christian truth. However, some in the German Evangelical Church [Barth, Bonhoeffer, Niemoeller, et al] opposed the captivity of the church to National Socialism. The line between Church and State was not only blurred but was obliterated in their judgment. They came together at great cost to themselves, some with their lives, and wrote what is known as the Barmen Declaration, which is now part of our Book of Confessions. In that Declaration they boldly rejected as false doctrine the notion that:
They firmly believed "The church’s commission, upon which its freedom is founded, consists in delivering the message of free grace of God to all people in Christ’s stead…as head of the Church." They couched their opposition to encroachment of National Socialism in terms of "the sin of idolatry" in keeping with Scripture and Reformed Theology.** Jack Rogers in his book, "Presbyterian Creeds" defines idols as "… any humanly created thing to which people give their ultimate allegiance. Idolatry is giving our total commitment to some thing in creation rather than to the Creator alone." He goes on to say, "When humans attempt to fill their deepest desires for meaning in anything other than allegiance to God the Creator [worldly possessions, family status, racial identity, national pride] they commit idolatry. "When humans beings put their trust in the work of human hands rather than the Creator God, they end up, as the Nazis did, by destroying humanity."
"THEIR OWN POWER WAS THEIR GOD!" What do Habakkuk and the Barmen Declaration have to say to us today? First of all, I want it clearly understood: I believe it is right and proper for us to muster all due respect and honor this Veterans Day for the sacrifice of all soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen who have followed orders, lived and died in harm’s way be it at Yorktown, Gettysburg, Verdun, Normandy, Iwo Jima, the Yalu River, the Mekong Delta, Bagdad and all others before, between and beyond. That being said, the Word today from Habakkuk and the Barmen Declaration is about the heart and soul of a nation that put them there. We are over four years into the aftermath of a pre-emptive military strike that was launched into a land that was once Babylon along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. We went in with all the certainty of the rightness and clarity of our cause . . . Classic Good vs. Evil! Good Guys vs. Bad Guys! White hats vs. Black hats! We were caught in the awful damning dilemma between the risks of not doing anything vs. plunging headlong into war in hopes that potential worse case scenarios do not develop. It is not my prerogative in this time and place to make personal determinations between the alternatives presented by that dilemma or make judgments about the results. I do not know enough to sort all the information, mis-information, and dis-information that some have alleged as being lies and deceit that surrounded such a decision. Yet I feel so powerless and so frightened. What can one do? The questions that Habakkuk and Barmen raise are far more significant to me than resolving that damning dilemma or passing judgment on it. They are the larger theological questions posed that create the context in which war decisions are made. Raising these theological questions is the prerogative of Christians. It is with a sense of dread and growing sadness that I dare have Habakkuk and Barmen confront us with these questions on this Veterans Day, but dare I must: How clear is our understanding of the potential threat of the sin of idolatry in our own time and place? Has our national behavior given indication that we may be plunging down that slippery slide toward the sin of idolatry? Have the lines between Church and State begun to blur so that as a community of faith we are surrendering our ability to speak a prophetic yes/but word to the powers that be? Are subtle glimpses of the trappings of State Religion beginning to appear in embryonic form undergirding the policies and directions we are taking as a nation? More specifically Habakkuk and Barmen confront us with:
Habakkuk and Barmen clearly suggest that when OUR OWN POWER BECOMES OUR GOD, the heart and soul of our nation has crossed over into the sin of idolatry! Habakkuk reminds us that the threat may not be just the foreign threat from without, but the domestic one from within as well. John Knox, the great Scots Reformer, in a time when the Church and State were much more closely aligned than in our day, reminds us "that the best servants of the State are those whose loyalty is not to the State but to God." The Declaration of Barmen reminds us that, "no human being or institution is divinely ordained to have ultimate authority in our lives. No ruler or party may be followed uncritically. Only Jesus is the Lord of the church, and of all life." O Lord, how long must I cry for help? We are filled with anxiety and fear. We know not what to expect. Raising these questions may have raised more anxiety and fear in us than if we had ignored them in the first place. But they stare us in the face to the point we can no longer ignore them. We no doubt differ greatly over how these questions must be addressed and answers sought. It is not enough to raise these questions without some word of comfort even as we continue to struggle with them. Habakkuk, asked the question: O Lord, how long must I cry for help? Habakkuk suggests it may not be as far off as one might think: 2:3b But the time is coming quickly, At the end of his writing he gave a dismal picture which held an answer to that question as a word of comfort and admonition to us: 3:17. Even though the fig trees have no fruit, 2:4 And this is the message: ‘Those who are
HOW LONG, O LORD? GOD HAVE MERCY ON OUR COLLECTIVE HEART AND SOUL! ____________________ Preached at Second Presbyterian Church, Lexington,
Kentucky, November 11, 2007 |
William G. McAtee