Comments at the Greater Austin Area Stone-Campbell Unity Breakfast

C. Kutz-Marks

Greater Austin Area Stone-Campbell Unity Breakfast

Dec. 6, 2008

Almost exactly 5 years ago now, as my then 19 yr. old son David and I were traveling through the United Kingdom, we arrived late one evening in Glasgow, Scotland – and were fortunate to find an available Bed and Breakfast there- in this special place where I anticipated experiencing the finest highlight of our trip.

Though I was still battling the fever and weakness that accompanied the lung infection I was being treated for, my excitement was growing because …I knew that we were getting close to where both Thomas and Alexander Campbell had been educated...two of the men who were at the forefront of the development of our common tradition.

Early the next morning while David was still sleeping I slipped out of our room, got a hasty breakfast and walked, what turned out to be a very short distance, to the University of Glasgow. As I approached the old regal buildings I could imagine Thomas and Alexander coming across the Irish Sea from their home in a County Court, Ireland to this incredible university atmosphere in order to get their education. There I took dozens and dozens of photographs of the major buildings of the University, looking at the architecture and the fine cut of the enormous windows, the soaring spires, the stable foundation stones. In those moments I was reveling, seeing with my own eyes what I envisioned Thomas and Alexander would have seen nearly 200 years ago, drinking in the place where a fine theological education opened their minds, changed their thinking, their lives… and later my life and yours as well.

If I’d returned to the bed and breakfast right then, like I had a mind to do, this story would have had a very different ending.

Instead, as the University was just beginning the unlocking its doors for the morning, I decided to stay a little longer, look a bit deeper, and found a disturbing brochure at the admissions desk that told me that these is glorious building I had been admiring and loving, imagining to be so significant in our history, turned out to be buildings that neither Thomas nor Alexander Campbell ever even saw when they attended the university there in the early 1800's. The building I was in was not even constructed until 1878! It turns out that the buildings of the time they attended the university had been built on lowlands of the city down near the river. The land there was marshy and bad for their health. When disease and unsanitary conditions progressively worsened, the University trustees decided to abandon the lowland property for a school higher up on the Hill. I was crushed to learn that all that still existed from that original school that the Campbells had attended was about an 80ft. span of one tottering brick wall… which I would hunt down to my great disappointment later that day. The site was abandoned, overgrown, a blight.

A few minutes later when the library opened I went looking for some of the memorabilia from the Campbells. The librarian did not know a thing about anyone named Alexander Campbell. Thomas Campbell, she knew about Thomas Campbell. But when she started sharing some of her information it was clear that she was not talking about our Thomas Campbell, co-founder of the first powerful movement towards Christian unity on American soil. She was talking about Thomas Campbell the great Scottish poet of whom a statue still stands on the central square of Glasgow!

It didn’t get any better. Nobody I spoke with on that day in Glasgow had any idea about the identities of Thomas and Alexander Campbell. As the religious history of Scotland and all the Britain would unfold, from the Campbells' day to our own, many have been so riveted to their narrow little brand of Christian faith, that the whole notion of an ecumenical Christian faith such as the Campbells promoted, an open Christian faith, a broadly accepting Christian faith… could find no purchase in Europe.

The reason I share this experience with you this morning is because my disillusionment in Glasgow is mirrored in a similar disillusionment that our Disciples of Christ branch of the forbearers in faith here in America experienced in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

You see, these Disciples of Christ scholars had read the scriptures carefully, in the Book of Acts and the Epistles of the New Testament, and expected that in those days in the early Christian church Christians had been unified, loving and caring, well-organized, and more or less of one mind about the nature of the faith that they professed. ⁱ

They found in the scriptures a picture of True Christian Community. ⁱⁱ And they were committed to restoring that in their own churches on the American frontier. Restoring the glorious harmony the earliest Christian church, the Restoration Principle, became a prime element of the message.ⁱⁱⁱ

Now, if they had just walked away from further study, if they had closed their books and their minds at this point, there would have been considerably less pain and less struggle in the spiritual life of Disciples of Christ.

At this point in our story, a poster on a campus ministries office wall in the 1970’s comes to mind. It shows a picture of an old fashioned wringer washing machine and a rag doll beside it that has been pressed nearly flat. It quotes Jesus’ words from John 8:31, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Well this poster said, “The truth will make you free, but first it’ll put you through the wringer.”

And our Disciples forbearers, especially our lead scholars- in the late 1800’s went through a theological wringer, alright. They discovered as they opened their ears and eyes to the discoveries of higher biblical criticism,^iva careful and scholarly study of the texts, highly influenced by Enlightenment notions –as it was being propounded in the universities of Europe and quite a bit later in the universities of America, using various new techniques of study that would come to be known as Literary Criticism, Redaction Criticism, Textual Criticism, Tradition Criticism, Form Criticism, Canonical Criticism…. what they discovered was that the unity and simplicity and harmony of life that they had believed existed in the early Christian church, most likely really never did exist at all.

In the same way that the University I had expected to be the Campbells' university didn't exist anymore, our Disciples forbearers reluctantly came to the conclusion that one of the great pillars of the early movement in the early 1800's, wasn't there either.

What these new biblical study tools uncovered was that instead, the early church was a patchwork of beliefs, styles of organization, and perspectives. When these intellectual leaders resisted the tendency to turn back a previous way of seeing the Bible, when they continued to embrace this higher biblical criticism they inevitably had to give up Restorationism as one of our key Disciples of Christ identity bases. This was a fateful decision, a decision that to this very day affects the way that Disciples think, the way that Christian Education is done in Disciples churches, and maybe most clearly, in what it is that Disciples of Christ seminarians studying for the ministry learn in our seminaries.

The real issue becomes how we're going to interpret the Bible. Unlike the early Stone/Campbell movement, most 21^st century Disciples of Christ members cannot see the Bible as a simple blueprint for being church any more. In fact, early Stone/Campbell movements insistence that the Bible is straight-forward, understandable by any who will put their minds and spirits to the understanding of it, is also another casualty of the fateful decision to embrace Biblical criticism. Biblical study is vastly more complicated now, and like other complicated fields, professionals have arisen in it. Today it seems that only professional Biblical scholars alone can come close to a thorough understanding of the Bible.

That notwithstanding, we still remind our membership that it is, indeed, their responsibility as church members to “work out your own salvation in fear and trembling”^v even though in lifetime of study they’ll never deeply understand the Bible and the history of our faith as they would wish. And as Jesus in the Gospel of John teaches, “the Truth will set you free” contemporary Disciples of Christ will in essence add the poster’s message, “but first it will put you through the wringer.”

In Bible studies in our congregations, Disciples of Christ ministers commonly experience that their sharing of some important insights from their seminary education with a jaw-drop response from study members, who then say often with some anger in the voice, “if you knew this all this time since your seminary days, why have you not told us this earlier?”

And the truest answer in most circumstances is that the pastor has been weighing what the church member or the whole church can bear, because what the higher criticism is in essence, is the possibility of blowing someone’s faith out the water, or the possibility of miracle healing of an ailing faithfulness, depending on the readiness of the hearer.

As a denomination, we are only just now beginning to our heads around the very real challenges. We are good at teaching the basics of the faith and the Bible. There is a solid foundation built in one who is brought up and active in a Disciples congregation. We know how to teach Bible stories in ways that can be remembered. Let’s call this first , naïve stage the pre-critical stage of spiritual development.

And over the last half-century we’ve gotten much better at posing faith challenging questions in high school & college age ministries, that draw out from within them the tension they might have felt but not dealt with when, as just one example, they hear of the two stories of God’s creating the earth in Genesis 1 & 2 when in church, but get a thoroughly scientific explanation of creation through evolution over a vastly different time scale, without need of God, when at school. We Disciples are getting somewhat better at raising up members who can both understand and also express to others a more sophisticated relationship of science and religion, natural law and miracle. Some of our people are now reading deeply profound theological works on their own that are quite challenging, in order to faithfully “work out their salvation…”on an intellectual level.

But we only rarely get beyond this stage, I am sorry to say. Our finest teachers and models of the Christian faith become such because they make one further quantum jump in their spiritual development. These models of Disciples faith, not only experience their naïve faith; not only had that faith challenged by the world, by science, by personal experience, by encounters with others of different faith, and made it through to a new synthesis; but have entered into the a state that the Philosopher Paul Ricouer called, “a second naivete,” a new way of relating through the Bible, through Christian worship and service, through personal and sometimes mystical encounters with the Spirit of God, what I can only call True Freedom.

This third phase is no longer captive to Biblical literalism, nor is it captive to the questioning spirit that I confess, is so strong in the minds and spirits of many Disciples of Christ members. Those in this 3^rd stage have, to use the metaphor of Barton Stone, fallen head over heels in love with God. They become so enthralled with the actual reality of their relationship with God, that there is no gravity left from those earlier stages.

And if Disciples of Christ have all too often been broken on the rock of scientism in a noble search for integrity, for Truth, we have also been given these Free Ones, even in the 21^st century, to challenge us to get up and to be about the healing work of God’s Spirit, never more needed than today.

i Thomas Campbell wrote in The Declaration and Address:

“all such things, by simply returning to the original standard of

christianity--the profession and practice of the primitive church,

as expressly exhibited upon the sacred page of New Testament

scripture, is the only possible way, that we can perceive, to get rid

of those evils. And we humbly think that a uniform agreement in

that for the preservation of charity would be infinitely preferable to

our contentions and divisions: nay, that such a uniformity is the

very thing that the Lord requires, if the New Testament be a

perfect model--a sufficient formula for the worship discipline and

government of the christian church. Let us do, as we are there

expressly told they did, say as they said: that is, profess and prac-

tise as therein expressly enjoined by precept and precedent, in

every possible instance, after their approved example; and in so

doing we shall realize, and exhibit, all that unity and uniformity,

that the primitive church possessed, or that the law of Christ re-

quires.”

ii As Mark Toulouse notes in Joined in Discipleship: the Maturing of an American Religious Movement, 1992, Chalice Press, p. 68, “Disciples of the nineteenth century believed that all local gatherings of Christians in the first and second centuries were perfectly unified in all essential matters of faith and organization. This presupposition was central to the clearly Disciples commitment to the restorationism.”

And then on p. 69 “The context provided by higher criticism challenged all these earlier affirmations. Beginning with their renewed theo­logical understanding of the church as an organization which, try as it may, can never escape its historical relativity. Disciples have concluded that the church has never seen a golden age when it was pure and without blemish. Though inspired and driven by a sincere commitment to divine purposes in history, the church can never completely escape either its historical existence (and, therefore, its relative and finite existence in history) or its humanity (and, therefore, its sinfulness).

Historical research over the last century has collaborated what the increased theological sensitivity of Disciples has concluded about the nature of the church. Disciples, and other mainline Protestants, now know that the early church only gradually developed in its self-understanding. Jewish, Greek, and Roman elements all combined to affect its development as an institution, both in its structure and in its thought. History has revealed very clearly the fact of diversity in the early church. There never was one ancient church, but instead, an assortment of early churches. The practices, church government, and, yes, even the faith of these early congregations were quite diverse depending on geographical location and cultural influences. For example, the congregation in Antioch differed considerably from the congregation in Jerusalem. Even as these two fellow­ships undoubtedly shared a common love for Christ, they defined the nature of the Christian life, for the individual and for the church, quite differently (refer to Acts 15, for example). In other words, there really never existed some singular unified early church Disciples could restore in the modern period.”

iii Ibid. Toulouse’s work is not only central in the focus of this sermon, but of each of the following two in this sermon series. His evaluation of the major principles of the Disciples mindset is widely regarded as accurate, in my experience.

iv Fields of Literary Criticism, Redaction Criticism, Textual Criticism, Tradition Criticism, Form Criticism, Canonical Criticism all having bearing on these developments. See for example the summary treatments found in “Modern Biblical Interpretation” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, 1993, Oxford Univ. Press.

v Phil. 2:12 “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

The Gospel Accordig to Mary

University Christian Church – Austin C. Kutz-Marks

The Gospel According to Mary

Advent 3, b, Dec. 14, 2008

Luke 1:46-55

Last week we looked at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark as it pointed out the ministry of John the Baptist and how John’s ministry held the seeds of Jesus’ ministry that would soon follow. Today we look at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke to how the ministry of Mary, Jesus’ mother, bears the seeds of Jesus’ ministry as well

As we turn to the content of this passage, known as the Magnificat, this great song of praise to God, if we did not know that it came from the mouth of Mary, meek and mild, we might have expected it from the lips of some kind of political revolutionary! For it proclaims that God is in the process of turning the world's order as they knew it upside down; a reversal of fortunes, in favor of God's preferred way.

Even as we begin talking about Mary, I imagine that there are those of you out there this morning who are already thinking virgin birth, angels visiting…. And are busily trying to

>separate the wheat from the chaff;

>the true historical story from the embellishment;

>Mary the historical woman from the image of Mary that the church has built of her up over the years.

And that is an important critical function to exercise at some times, especially when making theological judgments and determining what is factually true. But I encourage you this morning, for just a few minutes, let us instead, bracket those questions and try to simply enter into the story. Let us see what the story will teach us if we take it simply at face value. Instead of questioning her, let’s see if she would question us.

The first thing that we might would note, is the shape and tenor of God’s inbreaking that Mary prophesies:

Ø God’s mercy is for those who “fear God,” that is, are respectfully obedient to God. She says, “ God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; has filled the hungry with good things.” This sounds hauntingly familiar to Israel’s earlier prophets on the one hand and on the hand very similar to what Jesus teaches later in the Gospel of Luke when he says,

Ø "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.” (Lk. 6:20-21)

As a Jewish girl growing up in those heady days in Palestine, she would have been deeply enmeshed in the history of her people so that she would be making connections with her own situation and her forbearers in faith.

For example, remember that in this same revelation from the angel Gabriel in which she was told that she, even though as a virgin who could not normally possibly be pregnant with God’s child, she was pregnant, remember that the angel had also told her that her childless infertile older cousin, Elizabeth, was also 6 months into her own impossibly miraculous pregnancy. Perhaps it was the shock & awe of these mighty deeds of God that brought to Mary recollection the words of another heroine of Israel’s faith, Hannah, who was also barren until her old age when God blessed her with a son destined for a major role in Israel’s history, the prophet Samuel.

In her own rapturous joy at what God had done in giving her Samuel, as she dedicates the boy to the service of the Lord, Hannah uses words that are most reminiscent of what Mary would sing hundreds of years later. Hannah prayed,[i]

2:1 …. "My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory.

2 "There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.

3 Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

4 The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength.

5 Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn….

7 The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts.

8 He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor”

Do you hear the similarities with Mary’s Magnificat? There is this excitement that God is in the process of doing a new thing, bringing a reversal of fortunes. [ii]

As we study our faith story deeply we find this continuity, this thread of connection that weaves its way all through the Bible, this sense that the past’s trajectory is advanced through God’s working in the present generation as they, as we, are ready to be faithful to the call of the Holy Spirit.

And did you also notice that what Mary sings out months before Jesus is born, turns out to be an accurate prediction of what Jesus teaches and demonstrates to those who followed him? Consider the story of the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and is told by Jesus that to inherit eternal life he should:

“22…Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

23 But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.

24 Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!

25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

26 Those who heard it said, "Then who can be saved?"

27 He replied, "What is impossible for mortals is possible for God." (Lk. 18:22-27)

There they are again, both (1) God’s reversal of fortunes on the one hand and the pointed truth that (2) “what is impossible for mortals is possible for God” on the other.

Did you ever wonder what your life would have been like if your mother had had a vision like Mary did of what it is you should become? It seems that we humans have a tendency to resist our parents’ plans for us when we get to those rebellious teenage years, but perhaps, just perhaps, one such as Jesus might have perceived in his mother's strong intuition and in her recounting of her revelations, His own vocational calling, as one that is high, demanding, dangerous, and quite right for Him.

Follow me here, as we delve into the imagination a little. What if it was indeed Mary’s perception of the work of the Spirit, that both inculcated in Jesus that earliest sense of his call to mission and as He grew in faith and if it was her continued belief in him that finally cut him free of the constraints that tie the rest of us humans to lives less lofty.

If this were the case, if it was Mary's conviction of who Jesus would become, that provided the booster stage that rocketed Jesus’ life out of the gravitational pull of normal human living, does that in any way undermine the heroic character of the decisions and actions that Jesus on his own would later take? I think not. I think a mother with such vision, providing such encouragement, just might be another one of the essential ingredients that was needed in order to launch the course of Jesus as the Christ the Messiah.

*

If we look back to the Gospel of Mark we find the mention of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is made only one time. But here in the Gospel of Luke, Mary appears 13 times by name and many other times by pronouns. She is clearly a much more major factor.

In fact, many have said, that Mary in our passage this morning becomes the model of a faithful response to the activity of the Holy Spirit. In spite of the fact that her life would be turned upside down - and probably not for the better- because of her readiness to follow in the way that God wanted her to, she went boldly forward.

I can hear her question us…. Could we do the same? Would we have, do we have, the gumption to put our lives on the line and follow where we hear the Spirit of the Lord is calling us to go?

*

Finally, one notices in the demeanor of Mary in this passage; the blessed, peaceful character that flows from one who has given herself deeply and completely to the guidance of the Spirit of God.

This afternoon and evening as we watch the story of Amahl and the Night Visitors develop we will enjoy the music and the movement and in our spirits we will be moved with a fresh appreciation of what it means to give deeply of oneself to the often unclear future that God offers each of us.

Again, I can hear Mary challenge us. Is it possible for a play, an opera, or perhaps a few verses in an early chapter of Luke’s Gospel to challenge us to look deeply into our own lives and see if we can find in them that same hopefulness, that same conviction, that same deep down joy that the Gospel According to Mary sings out? Can rehearsing the bedrock stories of faith, lead our souls, too, “to magnifiy the Lord, and our spirits to rejoice in God our savior.”

I pray so, and I believe so, my friends.

Have a Mary, that is M-A-R-Y Christmas.

Amen.

---

[i] 1 Sam. 2:1-10

[ii] Hannah says, “The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust.” Mary says, “ He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (Lk1:52-53)

University Christian Church C. Kutz-Marks

Thanksgiving Odyssey
November 23, 2008
Deut. 8:7-18

Let me confess at the outset my ambivalence as we enter this season. My loving wife, bless her, will confirm this confession is necessary, as will my parents who still recall the Christmas that I essentially refused to participate in all the family celebrations. I can become a capital G grouch when it comes to Thanksgiving and Christmas… not because I don’t like traditions, I do, really, but because the WAY we celebrate so often seems so contradictory to the theme.

So often we trivialize the reason for the season and find ways to ignore what my gut screams we should acknowledge…no, we should confess. That’s the right word, “confess,” because at once it implies our complicity… and our need for God. It seems to me that our ideals get so far separated from the realities of the celebrations and the traditions… that the traditions mock the ideals.

The best example of course, is that there is probably little more antithetical to love and compassion at the heart of the Gospel story of the birth of Jesus Christ, than the rapacious consumerism of a modern American Christmas celebrations. They clearly stand in opposition, yet we hold the two side by side and rarely admit the terrible tension…. Between what is and what should be. But this is just the most egregious example, Thanksgiving will do nicely to make my point.

After all, it was their honoring of God that drove those intrepid Pilgrim souls in the first place. It was July 21, 1620, a bittersweet day for some of the residents of Leyden, Holland. They were gathered on a windswept dock to hear parting words from their pastor, John Robinson. English Separatists who had fled England’s persecution of their faith during the realm of Elizabeth I, they were anxious to emigrate to a new land across the vast ocean, a place known already as New England, where they could practice their faith in purity and freedom. Preaching a little more than a century after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, Robinson had already seen evidence of stagnation among the disciples of Luther and Calvin—of what could go wrong when Christianity succumbed to cultural twists of the Gospel message-- and he wanted his flock to avoid that at all costs in their new home across the sea. He wanted them to focus on only one thing: the Word of God and the will of God, and what would come forth from those wellsprings to meet the new needs they would surely have.

To that end, Pastor John Robinson admonished the Pilgrim’s as they prepared to sail: "Brethren, we are now quickly to part from one another, and only the God of heaven knows whether I will see your face again. I charge you before God and His blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. I am verily persuaded that the Lord has more truth yet to break forth from His holy Word.”

So 46 brave and determined folks left Holland on the ship "Speedwell", joining up in England with the ship, "Mayflower" and many more folks. On August 5 the 2 ships left England, only to have ship trouble and having to leave behind l8 people and forge ahead on only the Mayflower with 102 folks aboard. 41 of these were called "Saints" ‑ sailing because of religious reasons, among others. But did you know there were 18 servants on board, belonging to the Saints? Only a small step away from slaves. Such AMBIGUITY… such a mixture of high ideals, and poor meeting of them would come to characterize the Pilgrims’ experience.

But especially for those who were deeply religious, who hoped to escape religious persecution in Europe and to purely practice their religion, every step of the way their expectations were confounded by a stern reality that seemed to teach them… things will not be simply, easy, or nice. Life will be filled with AMBIGUITY. The life you attain – and the spiritual maturity you reach…with the help of God – is the life you are willing to forge in the furnaces of commitment despite this AMBIGUITY.

So it would unfold that their sixty-day voyage landed them in Provincetown Harbor on November 11, 1620. Cold, wet and near starvation, these weary travelers stumbled into an abandoned Indian settlement and found corn that had been clearly set aside for spring planting. It wasn’t their corn and they knew that by taking they might cause someone else to starve next year if they had nothing to plant. But these pious Pilgrims determined that their survival own outweighed their concern for the property of others...or anyone's future crops. They stole ten bushels of the Native's seed corn. AMBIGUITY.

But they did not find the area suitable for settling – or maybe they were just too ashamed to face those they’d robbed- so they got back on the Mayflower and sailed on to Plymouth.

Does it dim our respect for the Pilgrims to hear that their faith and discernment was so tested? Does it ruin our appreciation of the life that they were able to carve out of this trying new land? I hope not. May the fuller reality of their struggles give us a richer admiration for the imperfect, but deeply committed folk that they were. It is only fair to ask, too, who are we, with our pantries full and food options without limit-- to judge them in their time of need.

Peter Gomes, who has served as Pastor of Memorial Church on Harvard’s campus for 34 years, reflects in his book, The Good Life: "That first winter in New England was a terrible one for the Mayflower pilgrims, who were hardly prepared for the ferocity of the weather and the hard work of establishing a new colony. More than half their number died that winter in what they called ‘the starving time,’ where a ration of five kernels of corn was apportioned to each adult for the day’s meal."

It was the next year, when a successful harvest was in, that they set aside a day for Thanksgiving. It’s important to remember:
that just a few months before they were facing starvation, digging graves in the rocky soil for their children, wives, husbands;
that as they sat down to eat a Thanksgiving feast together.
Their hearts were still broken from the grief and trauma. One might have expected their leaders would call for a service of mourning than a service of Thanksgiving…AMBIGUITY… but there is a message here for us if we will search it out.

Gomes, who grew up in Plymouth, says that a local custom there is that on Thanksgiving Day, in the middle of the bountiful tables, five kernels of corn are placed on a red maple leaf at each place setting to remind people, who now enjoy a good bounty, of the "starving time" of long ago (p. 151).

Thankgiving….the Thanksgiving story that has been passed down to us starts almost a year later, then. Hope was renewed by a bountiful harvest of corn. Squanto, the Pawtuxet Indian, helped the colonists to prepare the fields and plant corn. He also became a negotiator between tribes-people and the Pilgrims, helping to arrange the treaty that allowed the Pilgrims and Indians to live in peace and to celebrate the meal which we commemorate on Thursday... The First Thanksgiving.

The famous feast was shared by about 50 colonists and 90 Wampanoag Indians. In the only surviving firsthand account of the meal, Edward Winslow describes it this way:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

The first official Thanksgiving- declared so by government- was declared by the Governor of the Mass Bay Colony in 1637. It is sad to say, but the AMBIGUOUS truth is that Gov. Bradford proclaimed the holiday to commemorate the massacre of 700 Indian men, women and children during their annual harvest celebration. According to Prof. Newell, himself a Penobscot Indian and recently the chair of the anthropology dept of the University of Connecticut, the Governor of Massachusetts ordained Thanksgiving Day for the next 100 years- a day for thanking God for victory in this battle with “the savages.” AMBIGUITY.

President George Washington issued the first National proclamation for a day of thanks on November 26, 1787. In the same year, the Protestant Episcopal Church announced that the church would celebrate a day of thanks giving on the first Thursday of November unless there was another day appointed by the civil authorities. Neither the church nor the state declared a day of Thanksgiving for years after that one time.

Not until the most dismal days of the Civil War.

President Lincoln, responding to pressure from Sara Josepha Hale, declared a day of national Thanksgiving. It seems that Ms. Hale's magazine was one of the most widely circulated women's magazines of the late 19th century. Ms. Hale had been publicly promoting a national day of thanksgiving for nearly 40 years! In the midst of the devastating Civil War she pushed harder for a nationally declared celebration of, and this is her word, “opulence.” "Fasting,” she warned in her magazine, "only accented the terrible condition of the country and the deeds of men...while feasting, on the other hand, exalted God and the culinary prowess of women." Hmmm.

Each year for the next 75 years, the President of the U.S. formally proclaimed that Thanksgiving Day would be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. In 1939, Pres. Roosevelt changed it to one week earlier. Why? He wanted to help businesses during the depression by lengthening the Christmas shopping season by one week. AMBIGUITY…

Seems to me it has been lengthened a lot more than that. As one astute commentator put it, we have already entered the mushed Seasons of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas that he dubbed, “HallowThanksMas.”

In 1942 Congress ruled that Thanksgiving would be celebrated annually on the fourth Thursday of November and declared it a legal federal holiday...

So here we are.... preparing for the fourth Thursday of November, 2008. 388 years of European American history between those Massachusetts Bay pilgrims and us.

Thanksgiving is a doorway through which we pass into the festive glow of the holiday season, and don’t get me wrong, this is good. Thanksgiving has come to be a time of homecoming, a time of festivity and sharing. It is also a time of opulence and over indulgence. From football to turkey.... this is the kick-off to that time of year.... when our calendars can fill and our bellies can fill up at a rate surpassed only by the rate at which our pockets empty out....[i]

Here is my central point, friends, our celebrations can either give voice to the ideals by which we are trying to live our lives.... or they can be dismal contradictions to those values. We choose, each year how we celebrate- and what we affirm.

Holidays can be full of joy and fulfillment and at the same time show conscious awareness of the realities, which confront our world. There is a festive way to give thanks and still be mindful of the strife in the Middle East, the struggles of native peoples, the homelessness in our city streets.... of wars….economic and military. We can create a Thanksgiving which is not only warm and memorable, but one which is also sensitive to the whole of our human family and more caring of our earth.

But it will always be wrapped in AMBIGUITY… that frustrating mixture of ideal and reality that we are destined to navigate. My prayer for us, is that with the same kind of faith, the same kind of trust in God that the Pilgrims evidenced in even being able to celebrate that first Thanksgiving, that their spirit might come alive in us, too, and we join with them, and St. Paul and the Saints of the ages in words of Philippians Chapter 4,
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice….
6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen

[i] Some of this material and this particular phrase comes from a sermon by colleague Rev. Elaine Pesuha delivered November 24, 2002.

University Christian Church - Austin

with C. Kutz-Marks, preaching

Coming in Glory?
1 Thess. 4:13-18
Nov. 9, 2008

Our scripture passage for this morning is considered by many scholars to be the very earliest writing that would later become a part of our Bible. From the very beginning Christians were encouraging one another, saying,

16 For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.

In our weekly recited communion liturgy, we say “We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming in glory.”

And as our closing hymn this morning we will sing, “with an earthy faith, we sing a song of heaven; all life fulfilled, all loved, all wrong forgiven. Christ is our sign of hope, for Christ is Risen.”[ii]

For, you see, Jesus’ resurrection and the disciples’ encounters with this Risen Christ confirmed their faith in their own resurrection, but at the same, threw a wrench in their understanding of how it would transpire.

It seems that the earliest Christians had absorbed from their Pharisee predecessors a belief in what we would call the “general resurrection.” That is, the belief that at the end of time the Lord would suddenly intervene, break into history and raise back to life those who had died.

• 
  The confusion for these early Christians is that while they expected the resurrection to happen all at once for every one, what they experienced was that only Jesus was resurrected on Easter, not everyone. So they quickly came to understand that Jesus Christ was the pioneer of the resurrection experience and that there would be another general resurrection at the end of time.
  
  But, interestingly, it is my bet that most Christians today do not hold to the early Christian belief in the resurrection, per se. What most Christians today believe is that at the time of death, the spirit or soul leaves each person and their bodies are no longer a part of the plan. This is really an understanding that many of us Christians picked up, not from the Bible, but from Greek philosophy. You see, in conventional biblical resurrection thinking, at the end of time the Lord raises the body up again and animates it with the spirit again, so that we are no longer talking an afterlife that is so spiritual, a disembodied soul, an ethereal new life, we are talking some enhanced version of flesh and blood.
  
  
  
  “Preacher, this is all just speculation,” I imagine some of you thinking. “What difference does it make, anyway?”
  
  
  
  I would like to draw your attention to the fact that exactly how we understand this life to come does make a huge practical difference. How we understand the afterlife and Jesus’ Second Coming has implications even for our politics and foreign policy.
  
  
  
  For example, I hope you had the opportunity to read Eileen Flynn's article in Monday's Austin American-Statesman, entitled Israel Rally Reveals Complexities Among Christians, Jews[iii]. On the surface it is the story of two friends, a liberal Jew and a conservative Baptist, who traveled down to San Antonio for a “Night to Honor Israel” event staged by John Hagee, pastor of the Cornerstone Church and well known tele-evangelist. The article briefly mentions the phenomenon of Christian Zionism that is at the core of the Hagee event that evening. I have attached some very important articles about this phenomenon to this sermon file on our church website. Please take a few minutes to read those articles for better background on this movement.[iv]
  
  
  
  Christian Zionism grows out of a particular theological system called premillennial dispensationalism, which originated in early 19th-century England.[v] The preaching and writings of a renegade Irish clergyman, John Nelson Darby, and a Scottish evangelist, Edward Irving, emphasized the literal and future fulfillment of such teachings as the Rapture, the rise of the Antichrist, the Battle of Armageddon, and the central role that a revived state of Israel would play during the end days. Darby and Irving argued that portions of the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah and Revelation predict when Jesus will return and how the final battle of history will take place.
  
  
  Darby brought these doctrines to the U.S. during eight missionary journeys. They captured the hearts and minds of those who attended Bible and prophecy conferences in the years just after our Civil War. Darby’s teachings were then featured in the sermons of some of the great preachers of the 1880-1920 period: the evangelists Dwight L. Moody and Billy Sunday; and Cyrus Scofield. Scofield then applied Darby’s view of the Second Coming of Jesus to his version of the Bible and provided an outline of premillennial dispensationalist notations on the text. That Scofield Bible published in 1909 gave dispensationalist teachings much of their prominence and popularity. The Scofield Bible became the Bible version used by most evangelical and fundamentalist Christians for the next 60 years.[vi]
  
  
  How does it become political? For one thing, Christian Zionists insist that all of historic Palestine -- including all the land west of the Jordan which was occupied by Israel after the 1967 war -- must be under the control of the Jewish people, as one of the necessary stages prior to the second coming of Jesus. Among their other basis tenets:
  
  
  • God’s covenant with Israel is eternal, exclusive and will not be abrogated.
  • The Bible speaks of two distinct and parallel covenants, one between God and Israel, one between God and the church. The church is a "mere parenthesis" in God’s plan and as such it will be removed from history during an event called the Rapture and they use this morning’s 1 Thess. 4(:13-17; 5:1-11) passage and the following chapter as their scriptural basis. At that point, Israel, the nation, will be restored as the primary instrument of God on earth.
  • Further, Christian Zionists say that the Genesis passage, "I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you" (Genesis 12:3) should be interpreted literally -- which leads to Christians providing maximum political, economic, moral and spiritual support for the modern state of Israel and for all the Jewish people regardless of the claims of others – such as the Palestinians- for justice.
  • Apocalyptic texts like the Book of Daniel, Zechariah 9-12, Ezekiel 37-8, I Thessalonians 4-5 and the Book of Revelation refer to literal and future events, and become the basis of legions of books like Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth scenarios that sold over 35 million copies and was translated into 54 languages, and such as the so called biblical basis of Tim LaHayes and Jerry Jenkins’ 16 book Left Behind[vii] series that has sold over 65 million copies[viii].
  These Christian Zionists rejoice at the establishment of the state of Israel, and expect:
  
  
  >the rebuilding of the Third Temple in Jerusalem on the site of the Temple destroyed in 70 C.E.; >the rise of the Antichrist and the buildup of armies poised to attack Israel as signs leading to the final end of times battle and
  >Jesus’ return for his thousand-year reign. This Christian Zionist movement looks for
  > the escalating power of satanic forces aligned with the antichrist that will do battle with Israel and its allies as the end draws near.
  >Judgment will befall nations and individuals according to how they "bless Israel."
  
  
  These active Christian Zionists probably number only about 15% of the evangelical Christians in the U.S., but if you follow the news and watch what’s happening you’ll see that they have an inordinate effect on American Middle East foreign policy for their numbers, just as they have an extraordinarily strong presence on Christian radio and television broadcasting. [ix]And some of their thinking is now even infiltrating mainline congregations.
  
  
  While studying in Jerusalem in Oct. of 2004, I had the pleasure of meeting and then worshipping with a small group of dedicated Palestinian Christians at their center named Sabeel[x] in Jerusalem who have faced first the corrosive effects of premillennial dispensationalism. Sabeel was founded by Dr. Naim Ateek, a saintly, highly revered figure to many in that part of the world, who was at that time working on a book on the history and nature of Christian Zionism. The final paragraph of the introduction to that book[xi] reads:
  
  
  "God is not the God of Armageddon but the God of Golgotha. This is the God who continues to call us to a loving service of our fellow human beings. Ultimately, it is only by the grace of God and the toil of dedicated people throughout the world that we can address not only the heretical teachings of Christian Zionism but all the evils and myths that are preventing us from a just peace in Israel-Palestine where Palestinians and Israelis can live as neighbors in peace and security and share the land under God. We call on all people of faith to pray and work for the achievement of this goal. "
  
  
  Though last Monday’s Statesman article described Christian Zionism as an interesting religious perspective, I quite frankly, agree with Dr. Ateek and find it a frightening and threatening perspective because it has already influenced American participation in Middle East in powerful but mostly unhelpful ways. Underlying elements of this perspective that upset me are:
  -- a blanket, uncritical support for anything that buttresses the self-interests of the State of Israel;
  -- it’s determination that all Arabs and Muslims are God's enemies and that they will be at the final battle of Armageddon siding with the adversaries of Israel and thus the Christian Zionists consistently portray Arabs and Muslims in the most negative light [xii];
  -- This perspective is hampering any movement towards a two state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians because its proponents are adamant that all of the land that was described in Bible times as belonging to the Israelites because it was God's gift must be kept sacrosanct,
  - Oh, and by the way, according to the scripture passages they rely on, in addition to holding on to all of Palestine, they have deemed it necessary for the Jews to also be in control of all the territory that is present day Jordan, all of present day Syria, and half of Iraq all the way to the Euphrates River.[xiii]
  - Further, beyond that claim, they are convinced that that there must also be a war waged against Iran, before Jesus Christ can return again.[xiv]
  Scary stuff! And all this proceeds from a premillennial dispensationalist reading of the Bible. It does matter what we believe about the 2nd coming of Christ & resurrection.
  
  
  
  [i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles%27_Creed
  
  [ii] Chalice Hymnal #703, “When All Is Ended”
  [iii] http://www.statesman.com/search/content/life/stories/faith/11/03/1103zionists.html
  
  [iv] Challenging Christian Zionism http://www.christianzionism.org/
  
  Dr. Naim Ateek intro to Christian Zionism book http://www.sabeel.org/etemplate.php?id=25
  Christian Zionism Distorts Faith And Imperils Peace http://www.warc.ch/update/up134/01.html
  Churches speaking out on “Left Behind” theology http://www.christianzionism.org/churchesN.asp
  
  How Should Christians Relate to the State of Israel? (by Rich Nathan)
  http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/01/how-should-christians-relate-t.html
  
  Donald Wagner presents an hour long lecture on contemporary Christian Zionism and its effects at:
  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4515761169636548436
  
  [v] This section of the sermon is largely lifted from the most insightful article, “The Evangelical-Jewish Alliance” by Donald Wagner June 28, 2003 issue of The Christian Century magazine, found at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2717
  
  [vi] For an example of this thinking and timelines, see http://religiononline.org/Documents/Bible_Prophecy/Antichrist_part1.htm##2-BRIEF%20OUTLINE%20FROM%20ISRAEL
  
  [vii] http://www.leftbehind.com/
  
  [viii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind_(series)
  
  [ix] “Christian Zionism has significant support within Protestant fundamentalism, including much of the Southern Baptist Convention and the charismatic, Pentecostal and independent churches. The movement can also be found in the evangelical wings of the mainline Protestant churches (Presbyterian, United Methodist and Lutheran) and to a lesser degree in Roman Catholicism. Its reach is broad, since premillennial dispensationalist themes are advanced through Christian television, radio and publishing. The National Religious Broadcasters organization, which controls almost 90 percent of religious radio and television in the U.S., is dominated by a Christian Zionist orientation” From “The Evangelical-Jewish Alliance” by Donald Wagner June 28, 2003 issue of The Christian Century magazine, found at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2717
  
  [xi] http://www.sabeel.org/etemplate.php?id=25
  
  [xii] See articles at this website for background http://www.jewsonfirst.org/
  
  [xiii] http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/01/how-should-christians-relate-t.html
  
  [xiv]From Donald Wagner’s video present at an Oct. 21, 2006 Conference hosted by Sabeel http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4515761169636548436

C. Kutz-Marks, preaching

The Morality of Armed Conflict
Luke 6:27-35
Oct. 26, 2008
Forum Sunday on the same theme

This afternoon at 2 p.m. right here in this Sanctuary where we worship - will be another important gathering. Oh, many of the people will be similar, in that we hope all of you will join in the fellowship lunch downstairs and then make your way back to the Sanctuary. But there will be more people joining us: Jews, Muslims, and Christians from a variety of backgrounds. We expect a broad spectrum of beliefs to think together, to reason together about when- if ever- a person of faith can morally justify violence upon another child of God. It should be a fascinating discussion as we have a distinguished panel of scholars to lead our thinking about the matter.

But before we join together with a diversity of folks this afternoon, it seems proper that this morning we take a careful look at what our particular tradition, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has said and taught about this matter, as a prologue for our forum later today. Now, you might rightly chuckle, since we are the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), intent on making sure that each Christian makes her or his own determination about such matters, you would be correct in saying that almost every conceivable position has been espoused.

You might further rightly assume that throughout the nearly 200 years of our development, Disciples have often mirrored the values of other Christians in North America, with a wide spectrum of belief about violence and war. That is true, as well. But as you shall hear, the leadership of our movement, has consistently taken one position on the matter at hand.

I.

Now, I’d like to draw your attention to 3 periods in our Christian development to ascertain the major influences on our thinking about armed violence generally, and its extreme, war. The first, as Disciples, is a return to scripture. We have for two hundred years as Disciples, we have called ourselves, a people of the Book. We said, Where the scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent… Our people of have said, “No Creed but Christ, no book but the Bible.” Our people have said, “Christ’s New Testament teachings are the first and best guide for living, and for RESTORING churches to theessential faith seen in New Testament Christianity.” So let us look together at the New Testament witness.

We have already begun our review with what Jesus taught us about violence in our scripture lesson this morning :
Jesus was responding to Lev. 24, in how violence is to be dealt with when it said: Lev. 24:19 Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return:
fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered.


So in Luke, Jesus says, "But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt….
35 …. love your enemies…

Jesus taught a radical renunciation of revenge, so that Jesus was known to the early church as the Prince of Peace. They found in the Hebrew scriptures ancient prophecies that the early Christians said pointed to Jesus, foretelling that as messiah He would usher in a reign of peace that would bless all the world, such as the Is. 2:4 passage: “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Let me quickly grant that there are passages in the book of Revelation and other rare places in the New Testament that envision an apocalyptic struggle between the forces of evil resisting the inbreaking of God’s victorious forces of good. There is some expectation of violence ahead, but time and again the earliest Christians, not only refrained from violence in any form, but from war in particular. With Jesus’ words echoing in their ears at the time of his arrest in the Garden, "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

In response to Jesus’ teaching, those who followed Jesus for the first 150 years were indisputably pacificists, and then overwhelming still pacifists for the next 150 years until the reign of Contantine. These early Christian simply would not fight in war. The early church to which our Disciples forbearers pointed us for guidance, would not allow their sons to join anyone’s army. They would not even fight for their own liberation from Roman oppression.

To those who would challenge these early Christians that they were being naïve or impractical, that people have to stand up for themselves and defend themselves or the world will trample them in its path, Christians would quote their paradoxical Jesus in Matt. 10 “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

II.

With this background, perhaps we should not be surprised how our forvbearers, the early Disciples stood on the issue. They believed that a simple, straightforward reading of Scripture should guide the Christian, and the New Testament teachings against the use of violence, even in self-defense, are clear.

Though the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has never been lumped as a whole in the Peace Church tradition of the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, and their like, one wonders why. [i] For, if I ask to you to name the one most important speaker and teacher in the founding of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), who would you name?

Barton Stone, declared “Nothing appears so repugnant to the kingdom of heaven as war;” In the July 1835 Christian Messenger, Stone [approvingly] published portions of a letter from a minister who refused a commission as a chaplain for the Maine militia because, in his view, "war was at variance with the Gospel that calls us to love our enemies and pray for them."[ii]

Alexander Campbell is unequivocal in concurring with Barton Stone here. In the year 1848, which Texans will recall as the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, Campbell delivered his famous ADDRESS ON WAR at Wheeling, Virginia, 1848.

89 years later as the U.S. was on the brink of WWII the Hon. Joseph B. Shannon of Missouri had Campbell’s address entered into the U.S. Congressional record with these words, “Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to extend my remarks and to include an Address on War made in 1848 by that great Christian and scholar Alexander Campbell. It is the most eloquent discourse I have ever read on that subject. His arguments against war are as tenable today as they were when advanced by him in 1848.”It is interesting to note that here as WWII was about to begin, 69% of Disciples ministers were pacifists.[iii]


But what does Campbell say? His carefully worded address would take something over two hours to read aloud, so I invite you to find his address in its entirety by linking to this sermon’s file at our congregation’s website.[iv]

But let me say , Campbell confesses that as important and central as this issue of violence and war is, he wished he’d spoken to the issue decades earlier, or at least before the beginning of the Mexican-American War so that his ideas might have saved “some lives that since have been thrown away in the desert.” That us, friends.

Campbell reminds his audience that for the first 3 centuries the Church of Jesus Christ would not allow anyone to bear arms, then he goes on to summarize:
“(5) The precepts of Christianity positively inhibit war - by showing that "wars and fightings come from men's lusts" and evil passions, and by commanding Christians to "follow peace with all men," and
(6) The beatitudes of Christ are not pronounced on patriots, heroes, and conquerors but on peacemakers, on whom is conferred the highest rank and title in the universe: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God." “

How would nations then deal with aggression by another?

Perhaps here Alexander Campbell was far ahead of his time, and our time, too. He said, “Why not have a bylaw-established umpire? Could not a united national court be made as feasible and as practicable as a United States court? Why not, as often proposed, and as eloquently, ably, and humanely argued, by the advocates of peace, have a congress of nations and a high court of nations for adjudicating and terminating all international misunderstandings and complaints, redressing and remedying all wrongs and grievances?” He envisions a United Nations and World Court with teeth enough to maintain the peace.

III.

But let us make one more stop in the history of Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), stopping this historical train at our own time. What are Disciples now saying about violence, about war and peace?

15 months ago about a dozen of us from UCC participated in the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Ft. Worth with many thousands of Disciples from all over the U.S. and Canada. This is the biennial gathering of the Disciples and it is an opportunity for the delegates there to speak a word from the assembled church to the churches back home. In 2007 the General Assembly voted[v]:

1.) A resolution that any and all use of torture is totally unacceptable—that it is contrary to the Word of God[vi]

2.) A resolution that “after due reflection and a respectful discussion, [the General Assembly would] go on record as conscientiously opposing the war in Iraq as an action inconsistent with the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and a violation of the traditional standards of just war,”[vii]

But that also said, “we lift up the men and women of the armed forces who are stationed there for their courage and sacrifice and hold them and their families in our prayers”

3.) “ BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) affirms the God-given right of conscience and offers moral support to men and women who volunteered for military service but who, on the grounds of Christian conviction, refuse deployment to Iraq, realizing that this action may subject them to military discipline,
4.) And finally, that same Resolution directed the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Rev. Sharon Watkins, to write a pastoral letter to the churches, which she did only 3 moths ago, and which can also find on our website.[viii]

And I tell you, you can almost hear her tears as she lists in the letter:
- the pains suffered by families of Americans killed in the war;
- the pain of the Iraqi people.
- the pain of those among us who view peace not only as a point on a distant horizon, but who insist that non-violent interaction is a way of life to be lived right now. who believe… God’s commandments to love our enemy actually apply in our own time, [whose] pain is multiplied as their faithful insistence on waging peace causes their love of country and patriotism to be questioned.
- There is the pain…of those who absolutely believe it was and is right to have entered Iraq …. who believe at the core of their faith that we must defend liberty and justice in all places….[who also suffer the] pain of being labeled warmongers or lovers of hatred.

Rev. Watkins’ letter then calls us to work together for the common good in Christian love, to talk civilly and honestly with one another, as we will together here this afternoon.

So, here is what our tradition has taught. But that is not a prescription, or a proscription, but just a prologue. For as a Disciple, you are now charged to discern afresh your own position; to make your own rationale and communicate it; and to stand boldly as you understand the call of Christ in your life.

May God give us all the strength and the wisdom for such a task. Amen.


[i] “A.T. DeGroot says that "this background enables us to understand why, with the exception of Walter Scott, most of the best known early Disciple leaders were pacifists".[2] Most notably, our founders, Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone were both pacifists.” DeGroot, A.T. Disciple Thought: A History. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University, 1965, p. 168. Found at http://dpfweb.org/discipleshistory.html
[ii] Williams, D. Newell. Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000, p. 234-236.
[iii] Kirby Page, a Disciples minister who published The Sword or the Cross in 1921, he sent a questionnaire on the topics of war and peace to 100,000 Protestant ministers in 1935. Of the 935 Disciples who answered, 69% were pacifist in belief- the highest percentage among the ten largest denominations.[16]
[iv] http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/acampbell/ac2.html
[v] http://www.disciples.org/Portals/0/PDF/ga/pastassemblies/2007/resolutions/0728.pdf
[vi] http://www.disciples.org/Portals/0/PDF/ga/pastassemblies/2007/resolutions/0721.pdf
[vii] http://www.disciples.org/Portals/0/PDF/ga/pastassemblies/2007/resolutions/0728.pdf
[viii] http://www.disciples.org/OfficeoftheGeneralMinisterandPresident/NewsandUpdates/PastoralLetterabouttheWarinIraqfromGMP/tabid/350/Default.aspx