May 13, 2007
(Sixth Sunday of Easter)

Of Kaisers and Christians

by The Rev. Bruce Hall, Deacon

Acts 16:9-15  •  Psalm 67  •  Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5  •  John 14:23-29 or John 5:1-9
(From The Lectionary Page)

At first, no one knew what was in the box my mother left behind. On its own, high on a shelf in her closet, it was unremarkable, save for it’s faded cardboard and yellowed tape holding the cover in place. Taking it down, written upon the lid we saw, in my mother’s careful print, two words— “Pop’s Sermons.” Opening it, we found what are probably hundreds of my grandfather’s sermons stretching from before the First World War until his death in the midst of a much colder one. It was the week after Mother’s Day that mom died and as the family gathered at home we told the stories and shared the jokes that recalled her life and the unexpected ways she had come to shape our own. My aunt spoke of the grandparents we never met only briefly. Thorough all this, the box said nothing.

I never knew my grandfather—he died before I was born—but I learned things about him, what he did for a living and a few of his adventures, but little or no detail. My mother’s family lived in Rockford, Ill where he was both a practicing attorney, and like his father before him, an ordained Presbyterian minister. He was a soldier in Cuba fighting the Spanish—a VFW fob on his watch was a reminder—and for a while, a judge and later a Republican nominee for Congress. Oh, he loved to fish. That was it. When it came to family history, mother was not much of a talker. But the box, that faded cardboard box, well…its chatting up a storm these days.

Some months ago I began to read through some of my grandfather’s sermons. There are sermons for Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, Communion, and sending boys off to French trenches. Through the brittle typed pages of his words I’ve begun to learn something deeper about my grandfather, how he thought, and I am reminded that the challenge to Christian teaching posed by the practice of war is nothing new to my family and likely not to yours either. I would like to share some of his words with you (and I do mean only some, he was, after all, a traditional Presbyterian and believed in generous sermons). These worlds struck me because you might just as well say them today for all our experience as a people since his time, a time knee deep in warfare where bands brightly played at the dockside at which my other grandfather went off to help “end all wars.” It was a time like today where there was public concern for the nation’s security and influence and people like you and me considered our nation’s place in the world and how we might make our way through it not just a Americans but as Christians.

My grandfather wrote,

“Time and again this nation of ours has been in danger of losing its equilibrium in much talk that has mean little.

We have the case of the League of Nations. I am not discussing the League of Nations, but the way it has been discussed, individuals, and newspapers, and magazines, have aligned themselves upon one side or the other—but in very few instances have they sided in on the one ground of whether it was right or wrong.

Now I don’t know anything about the League of Nations. I am like most of the people who are arguing about it. But I know this: The only question that can be raised is whether the thing is right or wrong, a duty or not a duty. And this nation, let me say it, has got to come to the point where it can examine great issues on that ground, and get away from all the miserable partisan politics that are mixed up in them.

If a thing is right we are under a solemn obligation to do it. If it is wrong, we are as firmly bound to oppose it, and it makes no difference whether our own party is in power or not.

There is a leading newspaper, a great newspaper, that carries at the top of its editorial page, this “America, right or wrong.” And this is a disgrace, and a shame, and a sin.

It is our business to see America RIGHT, and no other way—and whenever we are willing to permit a wrong to be done by this nation, it is time we went out of business and turned the country over to the Kaiser.

Now that is exactly the place we must come to on national questions. Is it right or is it wrong. If America is Right, she will have it in her power to lead the world in ways of righteousness. If America, as a nation, will make that her platform absolutely, she will do more to prevent war than all the Leagues of Nations that could be invented. But, if America compromises herself as a nation, and goes wrong, and permits wrong to be done in her name, America will fall and will go down to a fate worse than that of Germany”

On reading these words I stopped and wondered what would he have said today? Are we doing Right in our participation in this present war?

As Christians we are called to believe and live differently than the world. We, my brothers and sisters are called to love our neighbors even those who oppress us, even those with bombs. This is a hard thing and impossible to accomplish under our own power. It is possible by the grace given by the Holy Spirit to work in us something so unbelievable and seemingly irrational. In our vows at Baptism we affirm this different way, to live according to God’s teaching and to keep his word.

Instead of this, the world asks us to be “realists” and forget our vows. In the arena of international relations we are often asked to allow our nation’s economic or security interests to be the sole consideration of our nation’s conduct abroad, and increasingly, at home. Many things are being done in yours and my name for the stated purpose of protecting our interest and security and not all of these seem Right to me. I find as a Christian living in a democratic system, I cannot accept my nation’s interests as an ethical foundation for my votes or as legitimate justifications for the decisions of my government. “America right or wrong,” “American First,” whatever the slogan of the moment, is not the Christian’s slogan.  Rather, it is the slogan of evil and malice.

In this season, the season of a risen and triumphant Lord, we look to a day when “nations will walk by the light” of God and through God, the healing of all peoples will be accomplished. But it is not Right to wait for some distant utopia. WE are the vehicles of this light, WE are the agents of God's transforming power. Each of us by virtue of our baptism is called to minister to a suffering world today. We, like Paul in Macedonia, are called to proclaim the good news at home and beyond our boarders and to be agents of compassion in a world more acquainted with force, bribery, and fraud. We can, as citizens of this republic, express the fundamental truth that every person is God’s child and that national interest cannot be a blank check for unilateralism abroad or the erosion of our civil liberties at home. It just won’t do. In fact, I think my grandfather was on the right track, that our nation’s interest is to be found in promoting righteous living through acknowledging our common humanity and seeking social and economic justice for all peoples and not merely the prosperity of a few.

Each of us has a duty as a citizen and a Christian to see America Right not just dominant or powerful. It will be tough to do this right now, but it is important that we do so, and do so quickly and keep the would-be-Kaisers out of business.