Tag: Gaza

Martin Luther King Jr. and God’s Good News

Jesus came proclaiming the good news of God’s reign. He said to the crowds who came out to hear him, “Repent and have faith for the reign of God is near.” Many received this good news as good news. The reign of God was seen as a reign of love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, healing and new life.

But not all heard the good news as good news. King Herod felt threatened and sought to have Jesus killed. Governor Pilate oversaw his crucifixion.

Prophets proclaim God’s good news, for God is always about our good. But often, God’s good news is experienced as bad news to its recipients. The prophet, Jeremiah, had prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and captivity in Babylon. It was a word of judgment, but it was also the word God’s people needed. They did not hear it as good news, but it was. Israel needed to sit down awhile in a place distant from their homeland. They needed to do some self-examination. They needed to acknowledge their idolatry and injustice, so that they would come back to the God who created and called them and experience again God’s mercy and plans for them. (After 70 years in Babylon another prophet proclaimed the good news of freedom to go back home to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.)

Martin Luther King Jr., as a pastor and a prophet, proclaimed the good news of liberation, but not all received his message as good news. The White establishment, the crafters of Jim Crow laws and terror lynchings, received King’s message as bad news. They heard it as the destruction of their system and way of life, and they fought against it with violence and brutality.

God is about our freedom, and King proclaimed liberation. What the White establishment did not realize was that with the freedom King proclaimed, they would also have opportunity to be free—free from hatred and the struggle to hold another people down. They could be freed from all the time and attention and struggle to maintain an evil system that robbed them of their true humanity.

Where we are in our relationship to the God of love determines how we hear the good news of liberation—whether we hear it as good news or bad news. Martin Luther King proclaimed the good news of liberation. Response to that good news revealed where people stood in relation to freedom and humanity and love.

Lately, I have been thinking of King and his coming out against the Vietnam War. I have wondered, if he lived today, what he would say about the war in Gaza and our nation’s actions in response to it. He would certainly speak against war and genocide and its support.

There were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement who pressed King not to come out against the Vietnam War, but rather to remain focused on the issues of the Civil Rights Movement. King had a strong relationship with President Johnson who was pushing through civil rights legislation. King had an open door to the White House. He could call President Johnson and the president would come to the phone.

But at the same time that Johnson was addressing civil rights, he was also ratcheting up the war in Vietnam. The concern of many Civil Rights leaders was that, if King came out against the Vietnam War, he would lose the open door he had with the president. There were also those who saw the peace oriented nature of the protests as a tactic, not realizing that for King the issue of peace and peacemaking went much deeper.

When King came out against the Vietnam War, he made clear how essential peacemaking was to our humanity :

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. How much longer must we play at deadly war games before we heed the plaintive pleas of the unnumbered dead and maimed of past wars? Why can’t we at long last grow up, and take off our blindfolds, chart new courses, put our hands to the rudder and set sail for the distant destination, the port city of peace (The Atlantic)?

King spoke to people dedicated to war as a solution. He called them (and us) to repent and become peacemakers. It was not a word that President Johnson and many lawmakers and others (then and now) wanted to hear, but it was and is a word of truth we need to hear.

The words and actions of peacemakers are bad news to those committed to war as a solution and to those who profit from war. They are good news to our true humanity made in the image of God.

Filed under: Justice, Liberation, Peace, Racism, WarTagged with: , ,

War and the Limits of Morality

”When the statesmen and lawyers
And preachers of duty disappear
There are no more robberies either
And the world is at peace” – Chuang Tzu (or Zhuangzi, 4th century BC)1

Chuang Tzu, in the above quote, views moral principles as supports for all kinds of wickedness and a barrier to peace.

President Biden is a moral man and speaks the language of morality and principles, a morality that provides lofty rhetoric for the support (in money and weapons) of the genocidal war in Gaza. But, of course, war of all kinds has been given principled and moral support. We do all manner of evil in the name of the good or of God.

President Harry Truman, after the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rationalized the use of nuclear weapons for gaining and maintaining peace: He promised “recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.” And he gave thanks to God that the Germans failed in their attempt to produce the atom bomb. He said “We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans…did not get the atomic bomb at all.” (There are nine nations today that have nuclear warheads and, of course, we are no closer to peace.)

With our moral justifications, we are able to reason that war makes and maintains peace, blind to the reality we continue to live.

Like Chuang Tzu, St. Paul saw the limits of principles to live by. For him, the most that moral law could do is to be a disciplinarian until we come to be in Christ. It puts some constraints on us but does not keep us from evil.

For Paul, our morals and principles to live by lead to self-righteousness and the judging and condemnation of others. Moral reasoning brought about the death of Jesus. Paul’s morality, before he came to be in Christ, brought about the persecution of the followers of the Way.

As the alternative to moral principles, Chuang Tzu calls us to be open to the Tao (the Way), Paul calls us to be open to the Logos (the Word). Paul writes, ““The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (Romans 10:8).” As with Jesus’ “reign of God,” the needed word and direction is not far away; it is near. But to receive it, we must become open by the self-emptying of our lives. Jesus tells us we must relinquish ourselves in order to find our true selves and receive true discernment and direction.

Paul tells us that the children of God are led not by a set of principles or laws but by the Spirit. The Spirit opens us to the living and active word and to the way we are to walk in. With the Spirit there is discernment and the next steps that Love gives us to take.

Nations will continue to go to war and support war and justify their actions in moral terms and with principled rationales. In the midst of this, God calls forth witnesses who will live and speak from the word that is near.

In this present evil age, their witness points to a future with hope, a future not of our own making, a future that does not arise from our ideologies, moralities, and principles, but rather comes as a gift of God. This witness springs from those who empty themselves and are open to the Word and Way that is near.

The prophet Isaiah speaks such a word of hope from a place of relinquishment and openness. Placing God’s future before us, he then calls us to walk in the light of that future:

God 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.
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!

Isaiah 2:1-5
  1. Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, p.68 ↩︎
Filed under: Peace, Spirit, War, WitnessTagged with: ,

Israel, Palestine and What Makes for Peace

“As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Luke 19:41-42

Jesus still weeps over Jerusalem and Palestine and the cities and nations of the world, weeps over our nation’s capital and our nation. If we only knew the things that make for peace, but they are hidden from us by our pridefulness and arrogance.

Join Jesus in weeping over Jerusalem and Palestine. That is a starting point for those of us distant from the horror, but who learn daily of the carnage and loss of life. Weep over the acts of terrorism in the slaughter of Israelis, men, women, and children. Weep over the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians, men, women, and children, and for the many children being traumatized, going hungry, exposed, and living in fear.

Then weep for ourselves and our warring ways, for our support for war as a solution. Weep for the wars fought in the name of God and for wars fought in the name of no God; for wars pitting one religion against another and for wars to end religion; for wars fought in the name of ideologies, fought in the name of democracy, or an autocratic ruler, or capitalism, or communism, or any of the many isms.

Weep for the poor and suffering and the violence added to their lives. Stand with those who suffer. Stand against oppression and brutality in whatever name it is exercised, whatever religion or ideology. Join Jesus in weeping over the world and then take up your own cross and walk in the way of peace. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Justice, mercy, and humility are the ways of peace.

“There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

These words of Pastor King are a statement of reality. Peace cannot be achieved without justice and justice cannot be achieved without peace.

Israel, in the end, will not know peace without doing justice, making right what is wrong in their relationship with Palestinians. War is not the answer. Justice is. “There can be no peace without justice.”

And the United States will not have helped Israel by continuing to arm it and refusing to call for a ceasefire and taking steps toward peace.

”Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Jesus

This remains true. Violence begets violence.

And Palestinians will not achieve justice by violent actions, but rather injustice will be added to injustice. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States points to a way: peaceful, sustained, active resistance. “There can be no justice without peace.”

“Let us then pursue what makes for peace.”

St. Paul

Doing justice makes for peace. Love that takes up the cross (that enters into the suffering of others rather than adding to it) makes for peace.

In our commitment to dominate others, in our commitment to our own security over others, the United States, along with Israel and the other nations of the world will keep going to war. Throughout most of our history, the United States has been at war somewhere in the world. And we have spent trillions of dollars on armament, monies that could be used for peace and for the uplift of those in need and therefore for justice.

We remain blind to what makes for peace.

So, Jesus weeps over us: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Filed under: Grief, Justice, Poverty, WarTagged with: , , , ,