May 30, 2005

Memorial

The inevitability of war as an alternative in the human scheme of things is a brutal sign of our failure. It is not only a failure in our human relations, but a failure, as well, in our individual vocations of human being and an insult to God. It is especially a sign of the failure of us churchers to assume the true ministry to which we are called.

We set aside a national holiday to remember the millions of us — let alone the millions of our enemies — who have died in our wars. We build monuments to war and rarely, if ever, to what might have been even a tenuous time of peace in between. We even define peace as the absence of war and never war as the absence of peace. That we do so even furthers the tragic irony of thus enslaving our lives that we might be free. And yet, we must, for we can certainly do no less.

We can surely do more. We churchers can return to the Way by ceasing our incestuous wrangling over and among ourselves and by realigning all that energy with the passion of Jesus for justice and peace. We can unilaterally relinquish our political privilege and exemption so to disentangle ourselves from the not-so-subtly seductive stroking of our so-called faith-based initiatives. We can assume the rightful sacrifice of bringing a devastating prophetic indictment against a culture whose very nature is to make war.

Then perhaps we can turn the hearts of our leaders and ourselves to find new ways to rechannel our wealth from guns and selfishness to grace and selflessness for the benefit of all rather than the beneficence of a few. What a Memorial Day would that be.

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