Grounded In Hope

The following sermon was preached at the worship service of Sojourners Community on Sunday, February 24, 1991, the day after the ground war began in the first Gulf War.

Our Old Testament reading this morning is the story of God's covenant with Abraham and Sarah. The Bible tells us that Abraham was from the town of Ur. Ur, we now know, is in modern-day Iraq. In fact, [before the first Gulf war] Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney told us that Saddam Hussein had Mig-21 combat aircraft parked next to the large pyramid at Ur, on the assumption that the United States has respect for ancient civilization and would not bomb that area.

A few weeks ago, our lectionary carried the story of Jonah, whom God commanded to go to the city of Ninevah and preach repentance. We know, of course, that Jonah was disappointed when the city did in fact repent; he had secretly hoped for its destruction. Ninevah, too, is in Iraq.

Biblical historians believe that the Garden of Eden was located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Also modern-day Iraq.

The region now encompassing the nation of Iraq was known as an ancient "cradle of civilization." Here the wheel was invented, and an alphabet created.

The "Hanging Gardens of Babylon," within the borders of present-day Iraq, were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. In the months before the first Gulf war an effort had been undertaken to reconstruct the gardens, but progress was stopped by the war.

In 597 B.C.E. the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem and took what was considered the "cream" of Jewish society -- the artisans and prominent citizens -- leaving the poorest Jews behind. It is interesting to note that our friend Jeremiah, whom some of us have come to know well through our recent study of Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination, stayed behind with those who, at least materially, suffered more than those who were deported to Babylon.

But it was not an easy time for those who were part of what became known as the Babylonian captivity, or Babylonian exile. They were a people uprooted from land and culture, forced to live under an occupying force and a secular king, King Nebuchadnezzar. It was a time of grief and loneliness.

In 2,588 years of history, not a lot has changed. We try not to reinvent the wheel, but it seems to be the human condition to continually reinvent war.

At least part of the problem in today's Middle East is rooted in interpretations of our scripture from Genesis this morning -- this promise from God to Abraham: "This whole land ... where you now sojourn, shall I give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you" (Genesis 17:8).

Israelis today use this promise to justify their occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, as proof of their claim to the land where the Palestinians have lived for generations. But what they have forgotten, as Palestinian priest Elias Chacour points out, is that there are two lines of descendants from Abraham -- the Jews, who descended from Isaac; and the Palestinians, who are, in Chacour's words, the "children of Ishmael."

And Paul, in today's epistle, takes things a step further: "God's promise flows out of faith, so that it might rest upon grace, and be guaranteed to all Abraham's descendants, not just those who hold by the law but also those who have the faith of Abraham, the father of all. As it is written, 'I have made you a father of many nations'" -- not just one or two, but many -- "Yes, Abraham is father of us all in the sight of God" (Romans 4:16-17).

On Ash Wednesday evening, 1991, I watched the CBS 7 o'clock news. It began that night with Dan Rather warning parents that the pictures to come might be too graphic for their children. It was the night of the bombing of the Amariya shelter in Baghdad. What followed were images of bodies laid out in rows, and men wailing for their dead wives and children.

Just after seeing the news, I turned to our first Lenten reading. "Ashes are the residue of the burning of something that once was living," it began. My image that night of what was once living was a child, maybe 5 or 6 years old, her charred body being carried out on a stretcher.

That night a siren wailed for about 20 minutes over Washington, DC, during our Ash Wednesday prayer service. It was distracting at first, and then unnerving. It was the same type of siren that we have heard sounding throughout Baghdad every night on the news reports -- the same type of siren the women and children had gone into that Baghdad shelter to escape; the children couldn't sleep at night for the frightening noise.

The next day The Washington Post reported hundreds of phone calls to police stations around the city concerning the malfunctioning civil defense siren. Fears ran high that Washington was under a terrorist attack.

We heard immediately the official line on the bombing of hundreds of Iraqi civilians in the shelter. From Brig. Gen. Richard Neal, the military briefer in Saudi Arabia, came this response: "From a military point of view, nothing went wrong. The target was struck as designated. From a personal point of view" -- here I expected a note of sorrow or remorse -- "I'm outraged that civilians may have been placed in harm's way -- and I blame the Iraqi government and leaders for that."

Marlin Fitzwater, official White House spokesperson, said: "We don't know why there were civilians in that shelter, but we do know that Saddam Hussein does not share our belief in the sanctity of human life."

It was a hell of a way to start Lent -- literally.

In the following 10 days we saw more pictures of the rubble that once was Baghdad; the sewage flowing in the streets; the babies in incubators who will likely die for lack of electricity. We watched 150 burning oil wells belching toxic smoke over the region.

We heard U.S. soldiers -- who allegedly had the high moral ground on the sanctity of life -- speak. One said after an attack on Iraqi soldiers, "They didn't fight back. It was a turkey shoot." A pilot pointed out that when U.S. planes shine their high-tech night vision lights on Iraqi soldiers on the ground, they "scatter like cockroaches."

We saw landmines and razor wire and trenches full of oil. We heard rumors of mass executions in Kuwait.

Here in this country we saw the crowds of flag wavers, the hordes of yellow ribbons, the endless strains of "God Bless America" -- from Bush's visit to the home of the Patriot missile to Quayle's boringly bellicose speech at a military base.

Last Sunday night a guest on The 700 Club spoke about what a great opportunity this war is creating for evangelism in the Middle East. The time is ripe to convert the Islamic world, he asserted, since after we have won the war, "there will be a new openness to Americans like never before."

And the religion page of The Washington Post gave us a picture of the official Desert Storm Bible: "Troops in the Persian Gulf have been sent these desert camouflage-covered Bibles to help meet their spiritual needs."

We also watched Saddam Hussein try to find a way to withdraw from Kuwait and save face. But then George Bush Sr. urged us all, "Stop what you are doing and say a prayer" for our soldiers in the Gulf. "May God bless each and every one of them -- and may God bless America." The ground war had begun.

In our Lenten readings that week was the following quote from Flannery O'Connor: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd."

The truth shall also make you lonely. It shall make you cry -- and cry out, "Why?"

This is our cross -- the one Jesus commands us today to take up. Whatever our personal crosses may be, this one we share -- to live in a nation so blinded, so arrogant, so violent.

ABC anchor Peter Jennings commented at one point, "It seems that President Bush is determined to humiliate Saddam Hussein." Correspondent Britt Hume immediately responded, "Absolutely. Bush is writing the rules of the new world order."

The date for the launching of the ground war, we were told, was set weeks ago. And clearly no Soviet meddling was going to derail it. But in truth it was set months ago -- when hundreds of thousands of U.S. forces were deployed to Saudi Arabia. And, indeed, years ago -- when new missiles and aircraft and tanks began rolling off the assembly lines, propelled by the apparent human necessity to create destruction in ever more sophisticated ways.

We have entered a conflagration whose devastation -- especially for Iraq and Kuwait -- we cannot even imagine.

Ours is the torment of Jeremiah: "My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!? For I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Disaster follows hard on disaster, the whole land is laid to waste" (Jeremiah 4:19-20).

Ours is the loneliness of a people in exile:

By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How could we sing the lord's song in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:1-4).

How can we sing the praises of God in a land permeated with "God Bless America"?

Walter Brueggemann says that, "Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion." And, he reminds us, our grief is part of that hope, the signal that all is not well, the "ultimate criticism" of the way things are, which moves us to compassion.

"The one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt," says Brueggemann, "is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief."

And so we are encouraged to continue to feel the grief, even as we hang on to hope. The epistle tells us, "In hope [Abraham] believed against hope," and he and Sarah -- in their barrenness and old age -- became the parents of nations, "fully convinced that the power of God is sufficient to carry out the promises of God" (Romans 4:18, 21).

We all fight against powerlessness as we try to hope. But this is part of the plan, the way of the cross. In our gospel passage today, Jesus rebuked Peter for his insistence that Jesus should not give himself over to the suffering and powerlessness to come. Peter's perspective was the way of the world, not the way of God, and Jesus was direct in his response: "Get behind me, Satan!" (Mark 8:33).

In these days of war, when it is easy to feel hopeless, we need concrete promises. And so, even as we wail the lament of Jeremiah, we cling to the promise of Micah -- that the swords will be beaten into plowshares, the spears into pruning hooks, the bombs into ... vessels for growing food? It has happened. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Missionary friends just back in 1991 from five years in Laos have brought home pictures of seedlings growing in the casings of bombs that were dropped in the last U.S. war, the one that ravaged Southeast Asia. Other pictures show bomb casings transformed into prosthetic limbs for children, to replace legs blown off by land mines.

Such poignancy speaks to the indomitable nature of the human spirit. And the presence of God in history. Lest we forget.

The great sin that the prophets exposed was idolatry. It is easy for us to see it all around us as America worships at the altar of near-infallible technology, as the nation proclaims itself the undisputed leader of the world by virtue of its destructive capabilities.

But there is another idolatry, one closer to home. If you and I despair; if we become overwhelmed by the grief so that we, like most of the nation, are numb -- we too have conceded power to the weapons. And so we claim, in these darkest of days, that our God is the God of history. And -- grounded in hope -- we seek peace and pursue it. Relentlessly.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.