Roger Scott Powers sends us a sermon which he says "was inspired, in part, by my experience at the National Colloquium on Peacemaking in a Time of Terror, Violence, and War, held at Stony Point Center, September 27-29, 2004."  It offers a helpful Biblical perspective on the "war on terror."

The Rev. Roger Scott Powers is pastor of Light Street Presbyterian Church, and associate pastor of First & Franklin St. Presbyterian Church, both in Baltimore, Maryland.

[10-23-04]

Common Security

A sermon delivered by the Rev. Roger Scott Powers
at the First and Franklin Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore,
on Sunday, October 10, 2004.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

It was the beginning of the sixth century B.C.E. Jerusalem had been captured by the Babylonians. A new king had been installed in Jerusalem. The Temple and palace had been looted. And thousands of Israelites had been taken prisoner and deported to Babylon, including King Jeconiah and members of the royal family, servants, military officers, soldiers, and skilled craftsmen. This was the beginning of what is known as the Babylonian Captivity or Exile.
(To orient you geographically, today the ruins of Babylon are located within the suburbs of modern Baghdad -- in Iraq.)

The Israelites living in exile in Babylon were in a strange land with a foreign culture. They must have been anxious and frightened. They had been taken there against their will. They were being forced to live with the enemy. Their captors were everywhere. As you might imagine, the Israelites were counting the days until their return to Jerusalem. Their prophets and seers spoke positively, giving the captives reason to hope that their life in exile would be short-lived and that they would be able to return home soon.

It was two to three years into the period of exile, when the prophet Jeremiah sent this letter from Jerusalem to the exiles in Babylon. Its message: they were not coming home soon. They would be living in Babylon for the foreseeable future and so it was there that they must build their lives. They needed to prepare for the long haul. "Build houses and live in them;" God says through Jeremiah, "plant gardens and eat what they produce." Get married and have children. Multiply there, and do not decrease. They would be there for generations. Indeed, the Babylonian Exile would last almost 60 years.

The exiles had to go on with their lives. But Jeremiah was saying more than that. They were not simply to live their lives as best as they could in isolation from the Babylonians, walled off from the society around them. On the contrary, they were to seek the welfare of the city and pray to God on its behalf, for in its welfare they would find their welfare. The Hebrew word being translated here as welfare is shalom, which means peace and prosperity, health and wholeness. The exiles were to seek and pray for the shalom of Babylon, their enemy's city, for only as Babylon thrived would they thrive too. It was a radical idea then, and it is just as radical an idea today, 2,600 years later. Our well-being depends on the well-being of our enemy. It is the foundation of common security.

Since September 11, we have been living in a kind of exile. The world isn't the same. In some ways, it feels like we're living in a strange and foreign land. We don't feel quite as safe as we once did. We're constantly reminded of the threat of the next terrorist attack. "It's not a question of if," we are told, "it's a question of when." Signs on the highway exhort us to "report any suspicious activity." There's a heightened sense of security in the land. We pass through metal detectors more often. Our bags are searched more frequently. Access to government buildings is more restricted. Security cameras watch us far more than we realize. And then there's the war. Our nation has been at war now for almost three years -- first in Afghanistan and now in Iraq. It is, indeed, a strange and different world we live in.

But like the Israelites living in exile in Babylon, we need to go on with our lives. We have work to do, lessons to learn, games to play, children to nurture, families to visit, friends to enjoy. To curtail any of the activities we would normally engage in out of fear of terrorism, is to give terrorists power over our lives. By contrast, to go on with our lives with courage and hope is an act of defiance to terrorism. It says: "we will not be terrorized by your murderous acts. We will not be paralyzed by fear. We will go on living and loving in spite of your hatred."

As much as we would like to see the struggle against terrorism come to a quick and decisive end, it is likely to be a protracted conflict. It could very well go on for many years in various forms. The so-called "War on Terrorism" is being likened to the Cold War, which went on for more than 40 years. All the more reason not to put our lives on hold.

But remember, there was more to Jeremiah's message than God's telling the exiles to go on with their lives. They were also to seek the welfare of the city -- their enemy's city, no less -- for in its welfare, God said, they would find their welfare. Their well-being depended on the well-being of their enemy.

I wonder if the same could be said of us? Does our welfare depend on the welfare of our enemies, of terrorists in this case? Our response to terrorism since September 11 has been to declare war on it -- to destroy terrorist cells and the infrastructure that supports them by any means necessary. What we are not addressing are the conditions that breed terrorism: injustice, poverty, and oppression. I can't help but think that as long as the United States seeks its own welfare at the expense of others it will continue to be a target of terrorism. We may eventually succeed in doing away with Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants in Al-Qaeda, but we are fooling ourselves if we think that will bring an end to terrorism. Other terrorists will simply take their place.

It's the dynamic of the Spiral of Violence: the structural violence of injustice and oppression leads to the violence of revolt and rebellion leads to the retaliatory violence of repression, which then only compounds the structural violence of injustice and oppression and leads to further revolt followed by yet more repression.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it: "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. . . . Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. . . . Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive our hate: only love can do that."

It seems to me that the only way to rid the world of terrorism is to address its root causes. That means seeking the welfare of other nations, not just our own.

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman agrees. A retired officer in the U.S. Air Force, Bowman flew over 100 combat missions in Vietnam and directed the "Star Wars" programs under Presidents Ford and Carter. According to Bowman: "Only one thing has ever ended a terrorist campaign -- denying the terrorist organization the support of the larger community it represents. And the only way to do that is to listen to and alleviate the legitimate grievances of the people."

Uri Avnery, the founder of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, makes the same point: "One can kill a million mosquitoes, and millions more will take their place," he says. "In order to get rid of them, one has to dry the swamp that breeds them."

Addressing the conditions that breed terrorism is not something we hear much about these days -- from the media or from our nation's leaders. We hear a lot about fighting terrorists overseas so we don't have to face them here at home. We don't hear much about overcoming the underlying conditions in the world that give rise to terrorism in the first place. And if we do, the idea is quickly dismissed as being too expensive. Well, war is expensive too, in money and in lives. It seems we're always willing to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to wage war. But when it comes to doing justice, funding economic development, engaging in diplomacy, building international organizations, protecting human rights, we as a nation show relatively little interest or resolve.

I believe the church has a role to play in changing the terms of the public debate. We need to change the focus of our public discussion on terrorism. Instead of asking how we can hunt down and kill terrorists more effectively, we need to be asking how we can address conditions in the world that give rise to terrorism in the first place.

I wonder where we'd be today if instead of responding to the terrorist attacks on September 11 by launching a "War on Terrorism" we had embarked on a Marshall Plan for the Middle East? Imagine what we could have done with the $120 billion we've spent on the war so far! I wonder where we'd be today, if 15 years ago, after the Soviet Army pulled out of Afghanistan, the United States had tried to help that war-torn country rebuild itself instead of abandoning it to civil war. I wonder if we'd be any better off today in our struggle against terrorism? I wonder?

Jeremiah calls us to seek the welfare of our enemies and pray to God on their behalf, for in their welfare we will find our welfare. It's one world. We're all in this together. Our well-being depends on the well-being of our enemies. May God grant us the wisdom and the courage to heed Jeremiah's call. Amen.