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August 23, 2009

“Ending The Spiral” Ephesians 6:10-20 Rev. Phil Blackwell

      So, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC calls Bill O’Reilly of Fox News “a racist clown.” O’Reilly fights back by claiming that Olbermann’s employer, General Electric, is sending radio frequency modules to a company in Singapore that end up in improvised explosive modules used to kill our troops in Iraq. He cannot confirm that to be true, but “we are just reporting what we believe to be true,” he said. Opinion always is easier and cheaper than gathering the facts. Olbermann responds by saying, “If . . . I had gotten as much wrong as Bill O’Reilly got wrong on this one, I’d be fired in fifteen minutes.”

       And so goes the combat, and as it does, so go up the ratings for both of them; 16% for Olbermann and 12% for O’Reilly. There is money in contentiousness. There is entertainment in feuding. Cable news is to news what professional wrestling is to wrestling.

      Incidentally, maybe you watched last night on live pay-per-view television the WWE presentation of the “Summer Slam.” WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment. At least there is truth in advertising. They are not calling it “sport,” but “entertainment.” So, performers with the stage names of Randy Orton, Shawn Michaels, and Chris Jericho went up against the likes of Triple H, CM Punk, and Rey Mysterio. I think we can guess who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. These last three sound sinister; do not trust anyone with the name of “Punk.” While you have among the wholesome ones Shawn Michaels nicknamed “The King of Kings.” We in the church have heard that one before, haven’t we -- “The King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” So, Shawn must be a good guy.

      When we trivialize evil and externalize it completely, putting all the evil over there and all of the good over here, we get into trouble. It might be okay in the sham of the professional wrestling ring or in the calculated incivility of cable television, but not in real life, not in our real lives. 

      The apostle Paul pleads with us, “Put on the whole armor of God.” Stand up to the evil in the world and in ourselves by equipping ourselves with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the combat boots of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

      We sang that in the third verse of our opening hymn:
      Stand up, Stand up, for Jesus, stand in his strength alone;
      The arm of flesh will fail you, ye dare not trust your own.
      Put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer,
      Where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.

      Yes, there is evil to combat in the world, but guns, rockets, fighter jets, and tanks ultimately will not help us. The evil is falsehood; our weapon is truth. The evil is injustice; our weapon is righteousness, doing what is right. The evil is conflict; our weapon is peace. The evil is mocking disbelief; our weapon is faith. The evil is condemnation; our weapon is salvation. The evil is rhetoric to confuse; our weapon is the word of God to make plain.

      So, last week a man in Phoenix shows up outside of a presidential town hall meeting with a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and, I think, a handgun strapped to his waist. Why was he armed? Apparently, he was not seeking entrance to the meeting hall. He displayed no overt threat to the President, though in this time of chilling incivility in our country we cannot be nonchalant in protecting a President who received more death threats between the election and the inauguration than any other President in United States history. 

      No, he said that he made this conspicuous display of arms because he had the right to do it. In Arizona you can carry guns on your body for everyone to see. Now, is it too much to say that to have the right to do something does not make it the right thing to do? “Packing heat” to a presidential town hall meeting is like wrapping yourself in a Confederate flag and going off to the NAACP convention, or wearing an “I Love Hitler” t-shirt to the Holocaust Museum up in Skokie. It is an evil meant to intimidate. It also is a way to get on television nationwide (especially well-covered on cable news). No, says Paul, in a world of conflict bring peace that ends the spiral.

      By contrast, here is a book of five short stories by Wendell Berry set in his fictional Kentucky village of Port William. The first is entitled, “Pray Without Ceasing.” A neighbor hands Andy Catlett, the narrator, an old newspaper he had found in an antique desk his wife had bought at an auction. The headline read, “Ben Feltner, friend of all, shot dead in Port William.” Ben Feltner was Andy great grandfather on his mother’s side. Andy had known as much as the headline said, but he did not know the whole story. So, Wendell Berry goes on to tell us how it all happened.

      Thad Coulter is a good neighbor, but through some bad decisions he has made, and even worse ones made by his son, Abner, he loses the farm to the bank. He laments, “I worked for it, and I come to own it. Now them will own it that never worked for it.”  And he spends two days propped up against a post in the barn, drinking and talking to himself about betrayal by his son, ruin for himself, and the cold-heartedness of the bankers.

      Thad Coulter then totters over to Ben Feltner’s farm to ask him for help. Ben had assisted him before, but this time Ben listens patiently and then says, “Thad, I’ll tell you what. I don’t believe I can talk with you anymore this morning. Go home, now, and get sober and come back. And then we’ll see.”

      Thad leaves the house but lingers outside for a long time until his daughter comes in the wagon to pick him up. Ben goes to town for his regular Saturday errands, and there in the middle of the street is Thad Coulter with a pistol.  “Look out!” someone shouts. “Hold on, Thad,” Ben says, and Thad fires one shot right to the middle of his best friend’s forehead. Jack Beechum, a family friend, has to hold Mat tightly so that he will not kill the murderer on the spot. Mat is the grown son of Ben; he had been at the blacksmith’s and witnessed the shooting.

       Thad runs off, first exhilarated by what he has done, and then appalled. He turns himself into the sheriff. In the meantime, The Feltner family brings Ben’s body home and lays it out in the parlor. The neighbor women arrive with food and folk theology, “When your time comes you must go, by the hand of man or the stroke of God. . . So we must always be ready. Pray without ceasing.”

      Then the men arrive at the front porch, not with food, but with a rope.  Mat, the son, meets them there. They let the doctor speak on their behalf. “We know it was a thing done out of meanness. We don’t think we can stand for it, or that we ought to, or that we ought to wait on somebody else’s opinion about it. We think it is our business, and we propose to make it our business. It’s only up to you to say the word, and we’ll ride down there tonight and put justice beyond question.” 

      Mat stands silently for a long time before the lynch mob, and then with quiet resolve says, “No, gentlemen. I appreciate it. We all do. But I ask you not to do it. If you want to, come and be with us. We have food, and you all are welcome.” “No” to retribution; “yes” to sharing a meal. 

       “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may stand against the wiles of the devil.” The courage to stand up and end the spiral of violence with the armor of peace. That is from a short story by Wendell Berry.

      Another example, this time a real life testimony to the power of truth. It is a bit hazy in my mind because it goes back over forty years to a group of seminarians meeting with a Dutch Roman Catholic priest.  It was just after Vatican II, the extraordinary moment in the life of the Catholic Church when it made so many changes to make it relevant to the 20th Century world . . . the Mass in the vernacular, placing the celebrant for Holy Communion behind the altar instead of in front of it, modern liturgical music, a new openness to ecumenical relations. We Protestants benefited greatly from Vatican II.

      Our guest priest had been one of the major forces in getting these changes through the Council, but his story was more one of how to handle personal vilification than to how to implement institutional change.  He said that his proposals at first were greeted with great hostility.  Change is difficult, especially for those who are favored by the current system.  Many of the other priests verbally attacked him.  He was unfaithful, he was a betrayer, he was a troublemaker.  I do not know, maybe they even called him a “Protestant.”

      But all of us knew that he had prevailed in the end.  How did he do it?  “Well,” he said, “I did not defend myself.  I did not fight back.”  And all of us seminarians, most likely, were thinking of Jesus not responding to Pilate’s accusations before the crucifixion.  “When they could not drag me down to their level of personal slander, they had to turn to my ideas.  And they discovered that all of my ideas were good ones.  The ideas revealed the truth about the Church and how it could witness to that truth in the world.  So, eventually all of my proposals were adopted.”

      The courage to stand up and end the of spiral false attacks with the armor of truth.

      One more example, that of doing the right thing.  It happened last basketball season when DeKalb High School invited an inner city team from Milwaukee to come down and play.  The captain of the Milwaukee team had just lost his mother to cancer that day after a five-year battle.  He needed to be with his friends, so he traveled with the team but sat in the stands to watch.  But when the game was about to begin he realized he really wanted to be down on the court with the team.  His coach was happy to include him.  The only problem was that his coach had not placed him on the roster submitted to the officials before the game, which constituted a technical foul.  So, the DeKalb team was awarded two free throws. 

      The DeKalb coaches and players knew what the Milwaukee player had just experienced.  They pleaded with the officials to forget the technicality.  They did not want to take the free throws.  But rules are rules, even sometimes when they ought not to be.  So, the DeKalb coach said to his captain, “You know what to do, right?”  The kid nodded, and the first free throw went about three feet and bounced across the floor.  The second free throw again went about three feet.  And the hometown crowd in DeKalb stood and cheered.

      The coach said, “Kids need to know there are a lot of opportunities out there, and if you are doing the right thing, people are going to notice.”  The courage to stand up and end the spiral of “win-at-any-cost” with the armor of righteousness.

      The armor of God does not have to have “God” written all over it.  We simply must live courageous lives in which peace ends the spiral violence, truth ends the spiral of falsehood, and right ends the spiral of wrong.  We Christians believe that Jesus Christ did that once for all.  Already violence, falsehood, and wrong have lost.  It is just that the world does not know it yet.  They must see it in us in order to get the message. 

       It takes courage to stand against evil in this world, especially since we are complicit in so much of it.  It would be easy for us to give up, yet we sing:

      Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore;
      Let the search for thy salvation be our glory evermore.
      Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving thee whom we adore,
      Serving thee whom we adore.  Amen.

Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
August 23, 3009