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“And
God said to
Abraham take your son, Isaac, …whom you love and go to the land
of Moriah and
offer him as a sacrifice. So Abraham rose early in the morning and took
his son
Isaac. [And when he had built the altar he laid his son upon it]. [But
then]
the angel of the Lord called to him and said do the child no
harm” (Gen. 22). We
got up early
that morning, had breakfast and prayed together. We then started the
journey
across town. I hugged my father, got out of the car and walked across
the
street. As I entered that gray granite building I took one last look
back—I
shall never forget that look in my father’s eyes. It was a
strange gaze of
patriotic pride, personal fear and moral uncertainty. Perhaps it was
the look
Abraham had when he laid Isaac upon that altar in the wilderness.
Surely it
must be the look that family patriarchs must have had for generations
when
offering their sons for military service. For you see, it was l968, the
height
of the Vietnam War, and I was entering the induction center of my
hometown. My
father was a
World War II veteran, serving as an infantryman and clerk in Germany,
France and
Luxembourg. He was a very patriotic man, he believed that serving ones
country
was an obligation that every young man should fulfill and experience.
He once
said, “With the exception of war, the military is good for every
young man. It
teaches discipline, responsibility and cooperation.” As
I reflect
back upon that morning in l968, I now know the pride he felt was that
his son
was “doing his duty” as a man and as a citizen, just as he
himself had done and
others before him. But the fear was equally there. For he, like his
father
before him, had just released his child to the most vicious whim of
corporate
human evil—war. Was his child being offered as a noble sacrifice
for democracy
or as cannon fodder for political folly? I
never quite
understood my father’s war, although he, his brothers and friends
told their
stories many times. Oh, the stories they told. But it was not until I
saw the
movie Saving Private Ryan that
I had a graphic sense of how his war was so different from my guerrilla
war.
His battlefield was different from mine: the mass carnage of beachheads
and
battle fronts; the chaotic infernos of exploding ammunition depots;
herds of
great monsters of steel and thunder rumbling over the earth, raining
from the
skies and swarming the oceans. Yes,
his was the
last great noble war. It is the war about which romantic movies and TV
shows
were made. It was the war that was talked about, that inspired glorious
books
and childhood play and popular toys. It made Americans proud and its
veterans
were heroes. As these veterans left Europe, North Africa and the South
Pacific,
they knew they had done what had been expected and now coming home
would mean
appreciation and respect. This optimism is reflected in these lines of
a poem
my father wrote on his stormy December voyage across the stormy
Atlantic from
Europe to Boston. It’s called “Called Coming Home”
(in Vicissitudes of Man, by Belgium
Nathan Baxter, l970). Listen, winds
of degradation! Open wide, O
Massachusetts! But
the war of
my generation was different. My father and most Americans never
understood my
war—except that to many it felt like America’s first
defeat. It was a war that
always seemed to lack romantic notions and to generate deeper and
deeper
conflicts within our society, including churches and government. Too
often the
moral uncertainty caused fathers and their sons too little to share.
Even
Hollywood waited until the eighties and nineties to release major
movies based
upon the Vietnam War. And the movies such as Deer
Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon were based upon dark
existential themes. Even the popular TV show, M.A.S.H. was changed from
being
about Vietnam to the Korean Conflict. And
its young
men who returned in, whether in body or in body bags, where often
received as
sacraments of a nation’s shame and confusion rather than heroes.
As soldiers,
Vietnam veterans were visible and vulnerable symbols of America’s
larger war
with authority; a war being acted out in our homes, in our streets and
on our
college campuses—wars of race and gender equity; wars within our
corporate
souls for moral grounding and patriotic identity. Yes, we have had a
mixed
history in knowing what to do with our decisions to offer this Isaac as
a
sacrifice. But
what of the
future? What can we—people of faith, people of peace—expect
will be demanded of
us in the future? What do experiences such as Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda or
Bosnia
suggest about our military involvement in the future? Today, as we look
to the
future, we live under the shadow of unimaginably destructive nuclear
weapons
and the daunting potential for them to be in the hands of dictators and
renegade politicos. But there are other vigils of peace, vigils
critical to our
age, that we must keep. There is the volatile nature of regional ethnic
and
religious conflicts, resulting in a proliferation of mass murder of
civilians
and unbridled genocides. The rise of nationalism, fundamentalism and
well
financed terrorism are today factors more immanent in our future than
the
aggression of great nations and great armies. Today,
what is
needed even more than sophisticated weaponry are the diplomatic skills
and art
of peacemaking and peacekeeping. I believe that the world is
increasingly
seeing the virtues of peace and those leaders and citizens committed to
peace
as not just abstracts of diplomacy but as people with godly graces. As
Jesus
taught: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the
children of
God.” I
also believe
America and her institutions, including the church, have the greatest
responsibility to lead in the reshaping of an imploding world. General
John M.
Shalikashvili, (popularly known as “General Shali”), past
chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, shared these profound words in presentation on
Peacemaking and
Peace-Keeping, at George Washington University (May 4, l995): “Now,
I must tell
you, that some [military leaders and others] would prefer that we put a
sign
outside the Pentagon that says, ‘We only do the big ones.’
We understand terms
like ‘overwhelming force’ and like ‘decisive
victory.’ … The fact is that we
cannot lead, we cannot remain that most influential nation if we turn a
blind
eye to tragedies where millions are at risk or if we try to ignore the
Bosnias
and the Haitis. Nor do I believe I believe the American people would
ever allow
this to happen, for I do not believe that our nation is morally capable
of
watching tragedies of the scale of a Somalia or Rwanda and remaining a
silent
bystander. Surely there are some things that are so morally
reprehensible or so
inhumane that we as Americans, when we see them, must act. But the
difficulty
lies in distinguishing between helping … and on the other hand
getting caught
in someone else’s hatreds, prejudices and intrigues.” General
Shali
goes on to say that there are “three strange bedfellows”
who must work together
in the future: the media, humanitarian organizations (of which the
church is
one) and the U.S. military. The media is responsible for helping with
the
vigilance; humanitarian organizations (social, governmental and
religious) must
provide the expertise of dealing with human tragedies; and the military
for
providing the logistic support for quick response, communication and
“strategic
lift. He concludes by saying, “These three strange bedfellows can
be a very
good combination.” We
do not know
when the spirit of patriotism or moral outrage will again call upon
parents to
offer the sacrifice their sons, and today their daughters, but we know
the call
will come. For the truth is that until the Kingdom of God surely has
come there
will be, as Jesus taught in Matthew 24, “false messiahs”
inspiring old
vengeance and nationalistic aspirations; and there will be the
“wars and rumors
of wars” (the latter being Jesus term for Cold War). Therefore,
as people of
faith and citizens we must commit ourselves as never before to the work
of
peace. We must find ways to teach peace in our homes, our Sunday
schools, our
public school and colleges. We must do this so that our sons and
daughters (and
we ourselves) will understand and value the things that make for peace.
Only
our active commitment to values of peace and peacemaking will insure
that our
sons and daughters will never be offered on altars of our own making,
whether
made of religious fervor, political ambition or patriotic naivete. As
Christians
our churches must build partnerships with other organizations of
goodwill and
humanitarian mission to lessen, if not preclude, military intervention.
Most
major denominations have church structures and ecclesiastical influence
in some
of the most troubled regions of our world. Perhaps our greatest
opportunities,
in this regard, lie in building relationships with the re-emerging
churches in
Asia and Eastern Europe, many of which are orthodox and ethnic. But we
must
also coalesce to hold our political and military leaders to a measure
of
sobriety when contemplating or managing military intervention. In
the end we
must also hear the voice of the “Angel of Peace,” who, when
the point has been
made, will say, “Stay your hand, do the child no harm.” But
we must also
remember this truth, that to offer the child for any patriotic or even
compassionate cause is still, inescapably, to do it harm, to change the
child
forever. Isaac was delivered from the altar of sacrifice in the
wilderness.
Yet, even though he demonstrated his father’s deepest loyalty by
his obedience,
he was undoubtedly a changed child and something of him died and was
buried on
that wilderness altar, never to return to the homeland again. So
when the
sacrifice of war is over we must always understand our obligation is to
help
what remains of our Isaac to find his peace; to rebuild his life again
with
whatever is left of his body, his will and his dreams. Like Abraham we
must
make the journey with him, in order that he may find home again. We
must also
learn to honor and respect the parts of Isaac’s sacrifice, which
will never
return home again. Finally, all of us—you and I, and Abraham and Isaac—all of us together, must pray and work for that day when neither for religion or for politics or for patriotism, Isaac will never ever need “to rise early in the morning” and offer his child on the altars of a far land. Amen. |