The following are remarks I made on Sunday, September 16, 2001, at a gathering in the plaza of the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.
I speak in the name of God, the
Creator of all, the Redeemer of all, the Sanctifier of all.
W
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hen the nation was clamoring
for revenge and retaliation for civilian American lives tragically slaughtered
by the enemy, and every avenue to avert war had been exhausted, the President
of the United States signed the Declaration of War. Then he put his head down on the cabinet
table and wept.
The President was Woodrow Wilson. The year was 1917. And the day was Good Friday.
America entered a war that had begun with a
terrorist act: an organized assassination.
It was the cruelest and ghastliest of all wars this planet had ever
known. You can read the Books of
Remembrance in British churches and see page after page of names of young men
who were slaughtered in the trenches of France.
Literally a generation of the young was wiped out in the horror that
ensued.
I don’t know why the President wept on that Good
Friday afternoon. Did he weep for
himself? Did he weep for America? Maybe it was because he knew, as he told a
veteran news correspondent and editor, “Once lead this people into war, and
they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance….” Or was it because he sensed the deep irony
that on that very day when the Christian world was remembering the death of
Jesus, he was signing the death warrant for Christ to die all over again in
young doughboys who would lie beneath crosses in places like Flanders Field?
We meet today at the monument of the turning point
of another great war. We meet in a town
where an incredible number of young lives were wiped out in an invasion that
ultimately would mean liberation from a regime of unprecedented horror and
evil. America entered that war only
when, on a quiet sunny morning, enemy bombs had made mincemeat of The United
States fleet. President Roosevelt was
outraged. The country was shocked. December 7, 1941, is still a day that lives
in infamy.
Today we are faced with another momentous
occasion. This time, another sneak
attack. This time, an act of obscene
hatred and violence carried out again against unarmed citizens. But this time, a complicated enemy hard to
detect, difficult to pin down, capable of cloning its own violence hundreds of
times. And an enemy convinced in
righteous indignation that it has God on its side; that its acts of terror and
destruction are not only justified but also holy; that its program of
retaliation is compelling enough for its warriors gladly to yield their lives
to fiery deaths, so right they are.
I talk today about history because human history is
exactly what the Judeo-Christian tradition understands to be the sphere of
God’s activity. And if we are going to
speak about God, we have to look at
history, God’s lesson book.
What have we learned? One lesson that we have learned is that
violence breeds more violence, and terror begets more terror. We cannot play into that! If, in the best judgment of our leaders, this
nation must engage in military action, no doubt the country will support
them—no doubt at all. But do not be
deluded into believing that that violence will not come at great cost! Far more than the lives we will lose in any
one military action, the cost will spiral into an ever-broadening wildfire of
hatred and revenge. Through our cries
for retaliation and revenge, in so many throats this week, we need to hear and
heed the words of Ghandi. He said, “If
we live by the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the whole
world will be both blind and toothless.”
Pour out instead your prayers for peace and healing as you have never
done before. Envision a world wrapped in
its Mother’s arms. If this dreadful
attack is a wake up call, let it rouse us to double our efforts for peace: peace in our hearts, peace in our homes,
peace in our nation, peace for our planet.
What have we learned? We have learned that religious intolerance
and hatred, no matter of what stripe, are tools of evil. Hear me carefully. I speak in the name of the Prince of
Peace. If we, individually and as a
nation, turn against one another in disrespect and outright hatred, we are
replicating the same bigotry and self-righteousness of the terrorists
themselves. There is no difference
between Islamic fanaticism and Jewish fanaticism and Christian fanaticism
except the labels. All are life denying and peace shattering. God calls all people of this world into unity
with God and one another. Let there be
no place in this society, under attack in part because of our openness and
acceptance, for finger pointing and blame laying and scapegoating. Reach out in support to Arab Americans. Join with Muslims as with all others in the
family of religions and assure them of your good will. Live with courage the words of the hymn, “Who
loves the Father as his child is surely kin to me.”
What have we learned? We have learned that God shows up at the
least likely of times and in the worst stenches imaginable. Julia Ward Howe wrote that we have seen God
in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps.
Well, this week we have seen the face of God: in exhausted firefighters, in strangers
reaching out to hold the grieving, in physicians and nurses and technicians
aiding the wounded, in hands digging down into the rubble to clear a path for
life where there is life. “Where charity
and love dwell, God is truly there.” In
the Persian Gulf War, when some Iraqi soldiers finally came out of their
bunkers expecting to be killed by Americans, they found themselves instead
washed and fed and treated humanely.
That is the spirit of Christ. That
is the face of God.
What we have yet to learn is that Jesus was not
joking when he said, “Love your enemies.”
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who
persecute you, pray for those who abuse you.”
That is the lesson that the world needs to hear, and that is the way to
the healing that we so deeply seek.
Whatever the reason, President Wilson was right to
weep, just as he was right to sign the Declaration of War. Sometimes we have to do what we most
fear. But, in the end, if we are as
open, as humble, as loving as we can be, then, in the long march of history the
world will become as God created it to be:
free, and whole.
