The Rev. John Shuck offered these reflections
during a service of prayer at
First Presbyterian Church, Billings, Montana, on September 12,
2001.
We share it here as one helpful effort to deal
with the grief and angers and concerns that were forced upon us in
those days.
Posted here on 9-26-01.
This is a day of mourning for the victims of the
unspeakable violence yesterday in New York City and at our nation's
capitol. We stand with those who have lost loved ones with deep sorrow.
Our sorrow will never reach the depths as that which has been
experienced by those who have lost fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers,
wives, husbands, life partners, children, loved ones.
The act of terror and violence against innocent people
is inexcusable. There is no reason under heaven for an act so cowardly
and so despicable as violence against innocent men, women, and children.
Violence at this magnitude is beyond horror. It is not justified now,
nor ever. The scars will remain with us for as long as any of us here
will live as well as with the lives of our children and our children's
children.
In response to this we feel justifiable rage. The
Psalmist echoes our feelings even as we may not dare to speak the words
aloud: "O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who
pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your
little ones and dash them against the rock! (Psalm 137:8-9)
Our anger and sorrow is deep and will grow deeper
still as we hear more about the victims and as we absorb the anger and
the anguish of the nation. It will be tempting--so tempting--for us to
seek vengeance quickly, something, anything, to soothe the rage.
It is at this point at which we need God. It is at
this point at which we need to express our rage and anger toward God. We
direct it toward God not because God caused it, but because God receives
it. God became one with us on the cross in Jesus Christ for our anger
and for our rage and for the injustice of the suffering. We must give
our rage to Christ, for only Christ is large enough to receive it and to
melt it.
The enemy is not the Muslim people or the Arab people.
The enemy is violence itself. Violence bred by injustice and
uncontrollable rage which has turned to hatred. The answer will not be
more violence bred by more rage and more hatred and more injustice. This
will only lead to the deaths and to the suffering of more innocent
people and it will not bring peace to our world.
Yet, we must bring the perpetrators to justice. This
is not an attack on the American people. It was an attack on the very
fragile spirit of human life and morality. Violence is the evil. Justice
will only come as the world itself puts the perpetrators of violence on
trial. Virtually every nation has condemned this act of terror,
including the Palestinian people. Muslims, Christians, Jews all have
condemned this evil.
Now it is time for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, to
seek peace. We must together seek peace with justice. We must work
together for justice. We must work for a justice that will put these
doers of violence on trial so the world may speak with one voice against
violence and any who enacts violence. It is not the way to solve
conflicts.
We must also work for a justice that is not blind to
the cries of suffering and oppressed people. We may have the opportunity
now to ask ourselves: "Why are so many of the Arab people so angry
at America?" Asking that question in no way justifies or excuses
the unspeakable acts of evil and terror that have been committed. But if
we seek justice with peace for all people on this fragile globe we must
truly seek the answers with openness and a desire for truth. It will
take a miracle for this to happen. It will take a miracle of God for us
to work for a true and lasting peace with all of our neighbors.
We must pray for that miracle. Else I fear for the
survival of the human species. I do not think that I overstate that
concern. Our technology and our weapons of destruction and our
vulnerability to misuse them is so great that we human beings could make
for our own destruction unless we learn the difficult, the courageous,
the humble, the Christ-like way of peace.
To love our enemies does not mean that we do not do
everything in our power to end violence and to bring the doers of
violence to justice, and sometimes that requires force. Force blessed
and enacted by the agreement of nations united for peace. To love our
enemy means that we recognize that we become the enemy we despise when
we let that hatred and rage consume us. We are to love our enemy for
ourselves as much as the enemy.
I read passages from the Hebrew Psalter, the Muslim
Qu'ran, and the Christian Gospel to demonstrate that these three great
and peaceful religions are just that--great and peaceful. The people who
faithfully pray and practice their beliefs around the world all want the
same thing we do--to live in peace with neighbor, to seek happiness, to
enjoy life, to live freely. We must not let those few who insist on
violence to destroy that hope of peace and freedom that God has planted
within our souls.
In these critical days and weeks to come, the leaders
of our nation and of the world need our prayers to work a miracle. May
we pray for that miracle each day. As followers of Jesus we can do no
less.
