SERMONS

Sermon preached by Father Tom Callard
All Saints Episcopal Church, Highland Park                                           Proper 7 year A

I've not come to bring peace, but a sword. Perhaps these words of Jesus from today's Gospel conjure up for us an image that doesn't quite fit with what we were taught in Sunday school? I still remember my brief Sunday school experience from the Church of the Good Shepherd in Allegan, Michigan where I grew up. I remember in the classroom there was a picture of Jesus welcoming children into his loving arms. And this was not just any Jesus -- it was the late 1970's Jesus-  with long, flowing hair and eyes blue like the sky over Los Angeles, and a bright smile and good looks like of an Abercrombie and Fitch model. 

Of course we must nurture our children with positive attitudes and good role models. And that includes teaching them about a friendly, loving God they can understand, and a personal savor in Jesus Christ – even if he does look like a swimsuit model. But at some point we adults need to understand that there is a difference between the Jesus of our childhood Sunday Schools and Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, who comes, at times, carrying a sword- not to bring peace, but division.

When I was younger a friend of mine had one of those cardboard standingfigures of Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, you know one of those cutouts you see in the movie theater lobby. I don’t know where he got it, but it was almost life-sized, perhaps just a shade smaller. It was a pretty cool thing for kids of 12 and 13, unfortunately we were in our 20’s, but he was still very proud of it.

This flat figure from the movie makes me think a little of how many people see Jesus, as a simple, flat non-dimensional figure from the Gospels. Just like they took Luke Skywalker and it looks like they traced around him and cut him out of the movie for this promotional poster, I get the feeling that sometimes Jesus’ likeness has been simply traced and cut out of the Gospel. All the parts of the Gospel that are difficult or challenging have been cut away. For example Jesus’ saying: I’ve come not to bring peace, but a sword, has been removed from the understanding of many Christians.

All those other political or social or radical preachings of Jesus have also been cut away: you know, that it’s harder for a rich person to get into heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of the needle, that the rich ruler must sell all his possessions and give them to the poor and then he can get into heaven, that it’s the meek and poor will inherit the earth, that divorce is an absolute no-no, that we should love our neighbor, give to the poor, offer not just our coat but inner cloak and turn the other cheek. All these have been cut out of the story of Jesus, leaving us with this simple flat two dimensional cardboard figure.

I admit, it’s more convenient that way, not having to deal with the social ramifications of the Gospel. You’re left with a great emphasis on oneself and one’s own personal piety, with teachings about getting into heaven, with the comfort of Christ not the challenge or discomfort of the Gospel

My parents were attending a nice, safe Episcopal Church on Cape Cod where they said that for five or six years they never heard anything except the comfort Gospel, the Gospel according to Jesus who comes to give us comfort and love and forgive us our sins. But what about that sword?  It was just cut away.

Personally, I feel better knowing that Jesus has a sword, that he is a complex guy whose life revolved around a little more than giving us comfort and teaching personal piety, that he has substance and weight. If I’m going to dedicate my life to someone I want to see myself. I want them complicated, torn at times by inner demons, confronted at times by pain, by doubt, by frustration, moved at times to tears by the injustice of the world. I like knowing that J.C. is not the simple pretty-boy of my Sunday School but that he’s got some inner life that perhaps none of us knew about that only occasionally we get glimpses into when he takes out that sword

I feel sad when I see how Jesus’ image and likeness have been cut away from what he said and did in the Gospel and he is now presented as a swordless, safer, simpler crusader for the American Way.

Just last week I was listening to the FM Christian channel on my way to the gym, and they were previewing a Christian talk show for later in the afternoon, and the host said how it’s a shame that on 9/11 5,000 or so Americans died and that since then so many have died at the hands of terrorists, and he went on to say, and this is what bothered me, that how do we think we can negotiate with these people. And I thought to myself, what’s he suggesting, this Christian commentator on this Christian station? That we just kill them all, that we just blow them off the face of the earth? What has Jesus come to for him?

Stripped of the social Gospel and removed of his sword, of his depth, of his complexity, Jesus is nothing. He means nothing at all, he has lost his weight. And the followers of the cut out Jesus are able to believe and do anything without ever thinking, well maybe Jesus wouldn’t like this, wouldn’t approve of what we’re doing. Maybe Jesus wouldn’t rush to war. Maybe Jesus wouldn’t approve of fighting and killing our enemies and their children. Maybe Jesus wouldn’t approve of torture in the name of fighting terrorists.

Torture, in particular, is offensive because Jesus himself was tortured by his enemies, he was stripped naked and beaten and mocked. Pictures of Abu Ghraib show that our own soldiers similarly stripped naked and mocked and scourged prisoners.

My wife Sagrario and I had an immigration lawyer in Boston whose ethnicity was Arabic and who was working with some detainees held by our government. And he told us the sad truth - that the majority of those detained are innocent of doing anything wrong and that some were in fact held illegally and tortured, and that there were few recourses to help them.

A recent human rights report says that the death of detainees at the hands of U.S. soldiers continues around the world. That there are secret CIA prisons, torture stations, scattered across the globe. That thousands of persons have been subjected to what is called "extraordinary rendition," essentially kidnapped and sent to countries that use torture as a means of interrogation. That aggressive, painful force-feeding has been instituted at Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are so desperate that many would prefer to commit suicide. And the department of defense has admitted to the Red Cross that "70-90 percent" of the Abu Ghraib prisoners were entirely innocent. And similar if somewhat lower figures have been estimated for other U.S. detention centers, including Guantanamo. The torture continues.

And who is doing this? Often Christians, followers of Jesus, are either responsible directly or are allowing these things to happen. And we wonder, where is the Gospel of Christ? where is love your enemy? Where is what Jesus said: for if you do these to the least of these, you do it to me? But alas, Jesus has become a simple, cut out figure, removed from the social gospel, made simple and easy to digest.

Torture does something to Christ, something basic, to the Christ within us and the Christ within other human beings. It dehumanizes people. It breaks our understanding of the dignity of every human being.

The United Nations has designated June 26, this Thursday, as international day in support of victims of torture. Our Episcopal Church, which takes an official stand on few things, has taken a stand against U.S. sponsored torture. General Convention 2006 agreed to a resolution which "acknowledged and confessed that our government's participation in the war in Iraq has resulted in illegal confinement without representation or formal charges and torture.”

And the church is participating in a campaign called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT). This campaign seeks to end U.S.. sponsored torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners. In additional to the Episcopal Church, other faiths endorsing the campaign are the Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, mainline Protestants, Unitarians, Orthodox Christians, Jewish leaders, Muslim leaders, Buddhists, Quakers, Sikhs. Who’s not endorsing this? The president of the United States who continues to maintain that the U.S. does not torture.

When I was living in Honduras, the hill down from where I lived had a police barracks that everyone affectionately called the “Casa Mata,” the Kill House. In the early 1980’s when the U.S. government was fighting a war against the Contras in Nicaragua, the U.S. pumped all sorts of money into the Honduran government and military. This money turned the Honduran military into a little dictatorship, and one of the results was that enemies of the state were often killed or tortured there at the “Casa Mata.” More than 25 years later the country still bears scars from torture, it’s in their blood and that won’t be erased for decades to come.

What we are doing in in our war against terror won't be erased for decades or centuries to come.

We as Christians, as people dedicated to Christ and his principles, his teaching, the standard he set for absolute love, need to be absolutely clear that torture is a moral issue, not a convenient way to get the job done, to get information from the enemy, to finish the war, to make our country safe. It is absolutely wrong and goes against everything Jesus taught.

Let’s remember, just because Jesus came with a sword doesn’t mean he used it against his enemies, doesn’t mean he used it to further his kingdom, doesn’t mean he used it in a way that degraded or dehumanized others. His soul was pure, his conscience free, his goodness intact, for at the end of the day Jesus never treated a fellow human being as anything less than a child of God. We should ask the same of all people everywhere, especially Christians, followers of Christ.

For everyone interested I’ve prepared on the back table a statement, along with information about the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. I encourage you to join me in signing the statement and declared our support of the Justice of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and our faithful belief that torture is wrong.

Join us in Ministry: All Saints is asking people of faith to support this campaign to end U.S. sponsored torture

• The National Religious Campaign to End Torture. Sign the petition here.