War, What Is It Good For?

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

August 15, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Prelude

Greeting and Announcements

 

Mission Statement: We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

 

Call to worship

Give thanks to God!
We thank God for joy, for laughter,
for abundant blessings of every kind.
Give thanks to God
at all times and for everything!
We thank God, when we can and as we can,
for struggles, for solitude, for fears.
Give thanks to God
at all times and for everything
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We thank God that, in Christ,
our joys as well as our pain,
our losses as well as our laughter,
are in God's heart and hands.

 

Hymn 139: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

 

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,

  the King of creation!

O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy

  health and salvation!

    All ye who hear,

Now to His temple draw near;

Sing now in glad adoration!

2

Praise to the Lord, who o’er all

  things so wondrously reigneth,

Who, as on wings of an eagle,

  uplifteth, sustaineth.

    Hast thou not seen

How thy desires all have been

Granted in what He ordaineth?

3

Praise to the Lord, who hath fearfully,

  wondrously, made thee!

Health hath vouchsafed and, when

  heedlessly falling, hath stayed thee.

    What need or grief

Ever hath failed of relief?

Wings of His mercy did shade thee.

4

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper

  thy work and defend thee,

Who from the heavens the streams of

  His mercy doth send thee.

    Ponder anew

What the Almighty can do,

Who with His love doth befriend thee.

5

Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that

  is in me adore Him!

All that hath life and breath, come

  now with praises before Him!

    Let the Amen

Sound from His people again;

Gladly for aye we adore Him.

 

Prayer of Confession

You must shake your head in wonder at our ways,
Keeper of the Covenant.
How can we say we want wisdom,
when we foolishly squander the knowledge we have of your ways?
How can we claim to follow you,
when we walk the slippery roads of the world
not caring where they lead us?
How can we desire your great and steadfast love,
when the simple seductions of our society are in full view every day?

How can you have mercy on such unwise and unfaithful people,
Perfect Wisdom?
Yet, that is exactly what you do:
and our greed turns to gratitude,
our pettiness to praise,
our tantrums to thanksgiving,
as hope and joy become our blessing
through the One we call our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

Assurance

In Christ, God sent redemption for all.
In Christ, God feeds our hungry souls.
In Christ, God gives the cup of salvation
to thirsty people.
We give thanks to God for everything:
forgiveness, hope, new life. Amen.

 

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

3 There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

 

Matthew 26: 47-52

⁴⁷ While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people. ⁴⁸ Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him.” ⁴⁹ Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

⁵⁰ Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”^[d]

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. ⁵¹ With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

⁵² “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

 

A Message

“War, What Is It Good For?”

 

This week's topic about war was specifically Sean's suggestion, so you can thank Sean for this entire sermon. We were talking about this at dinner one night, so this was where this idea came from, because Sean elected not to use the cardboard box. I guess being married to me comes with privileges of being able to bypass such things. Anyway, he told me, "I would really love to hear a sermon about war. What should Christians think about war?" I said, you know, "Wow, a really great sermon could come from that." I said, "You know what though? I have to make the title, War, what is it good for?" And then Sean said, "That was my idea!" So then we high-fived over it, and thus you have a sermon this morning. I just couldn't resist. Thank you for indulging me in my sense of humor. War, what is it good for?

 

The reality is that even though you can make light of it, at least a little bit, this is a tough topic for us, war and warfare. The United States still has troops deployed in various places in the Middle East. As we sit as a country, we're in an uncertain place. That's always true. We never know when something might happen, something very unexpected. It seems like, especially in the last few years, we're in a place where we could be potentially pulled into another foreign conflict, and a lot of us have anxieties about that, that we have to find a way to make peace with. It's really a frightening reality because foreign relations are constantly changing. There's so little we know about some of the dynamics going on in the rest of the world.

 

It's part of what causes war in the first place, the fact that we don't always understand each other very well, especially when our cultures are so diverse. We jump to fear, and then fear so often leads to violence, and then to warfare. Especially when we have real threats out there in the world, like in the way of groups like ISIS, we really never know what's going to happen. We don't know when we might be pulled into conflict against our will, because another country attacked us. These things happen. It's something we have to live with.

 

Historically, the United States has spent a huge proportion of its existence involved in war. The United States has averaged a war every twenty years since the country was established. Many of us, right here in this room, have had some portion of our own formative years shaped by either a war, or by an event that pulled our country into a war. Some of us are of a generation that might still be able to remember the attack on Pearl Harbor that pulled us into World War II. If you're closer to my parents' age, your younger years might have been shaped by the War in Vietnam. If you're a little older than me, your generation might have been shaped by the Cold War, or by the War on the Persian Gulf. And if you’re closer to my age, then your childhood might have really been shaken by the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Surely, if you're older than me, that day definitely changed things for you, no matter what.

 

It's really impossible to talk about this conversation in just a straight-up, academic, theoretical way. There's a lot of theories and a lot of ideas that go into warfare, but wars aren't fought by ideas, and theories, and principles. Wars are fought by people.

 

This reality is very close to home if you serve in the military, if you know anyone who serves in the military, or if you love anyone who is a veteran or has given up to their life in service to the military. We lift up all of those people who are so brave to do that.

 

We hold a lot of different feelings about war, and we hold them in this balancing act. As United Methodists, our stance on war is a little complicated. We have no reservations at all in saying just how strongly we support our troops, and how grateful we are to all of those who have served our country in the military. We hold that idea in balance by saying that supporting our troops doesn't require a person to support any particular war, or the idea of warfare in general. You can have both of those ideas at the same time, but it's a delicate balancing act.

 

We officially teach as United Methodists that war is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus and his nonviolent practices. We as United Methodists stand behind people who conscientiously object to all wars, who would never be willing to serve in the military and who would object to any war that their own country might be involved in, because they’re pacifists. But we also stand behind those people who believe war is not preferable, but it can be necessary sometimes, and that it would be better to have war then it would be to have unchecked tyranny, oppression, and cruelty exist in the world. War is sometimes justified.

 

Our scripture touches on both ideas, too. It strikes a similar balance. Our Old Testament reading from Ecclesiastes teaches us that there's this rhythm in this world of good things and bad things, and that all of those things are part of God's plan, even those things that we perceive in a negative way. There is a time for birth, but there is also a time for death. There is a time for peace, but there is also a natural time for war. There is a time for building, but there is also a time for destruction. We can believe that, but if we believe that just on its own, it excludes the teachings of Jesus, so we have to be careful to weave that in there.

 

Jesus taught us to be exclusively nonviolent, and Jesus lived his life that way. He refused to fight even out of self-defense, or to defend another person. The story that I picked for our Gospel reading is one that I hold pretty close to my heart when I think about things like this. On the day that Jesus was arrested, one of his disciples attempted to defend him from the people who intended to take his life, by taking out his sword and attacking one of the people arresting him with that sword, and Jesus chastised him for it. He said, "If you live by fighting, you will die by fighting." These are words that we have to take very seriously.

 

United Methodists tend to sit closer to the side of pacifism, but in the event that we do see a war happen, we also have a whole bunch of follow-up resolutions. When war becomes unavoidable, we have a lot of ideas about things that no country should ever resort to doing or using under any circumstances. You can find all of these spelled out in two places: our United Methodist Book of Discipline, which is our official rule book, and then our United Methodist Book of Resolutions, which is a whole book filled with these kinds of social policies, and “What do United Methodists believe about X?" Those are two big, thick books, and we have them both here in the church.

 

United Methodists are officially against preemptive attacks on other countries. We are against violence toward civilians during times of war. We are against cluster bombs. We're against land mines. We're against nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. We are against torture. We are against terrorism. We are against war crimes and genocide. We are against crimes against humanity, and we are against the selling of arms to other countries for the purpose of helping them in war.

 

So naturally, as you listened to that list, you're going to notice that those are all things that we have seen happen in the world in recent years. That is the reason why United Methodists decided to vote on those issues and take up an official stance on them. The Book of Discipline and the Book of Resolutions are both living documents that change very frequently, and we should expect in future generations in the event of other wars, more things will be added to that list of things that United Methodists do not approve of. We've seen things happen, very negative things as a result of them.

 

That certainly gives us a ton of food for thought when we think about how we should think about war. The general concept, and whether or not we should support our country’s involvement in any particular war.

 

Yet, that's all it is. At the end of the day, it's thoughts, ideas, and theories. But like I told you before, we can't possibly keep this conversation strictly theoretical. War isn't about theory. I told you, war is about people. It's people that go to fight, and it's people that have to live with the consequences of warfare for the rest of their lives.

 

There's really no limit to the number of stories that convey this truth. Some of us probably, right here in this room, have stories from our own lives about how war affects people. I found one that was really inspiring that I wanted to share with you. This is a story about a man from Japan, who passed away about twenty years ago. His name was Nobuo Fujita.

 

Fujita fought for Japan in their armed forces during World War II. In 1942, Fujita flew planes that dropped devastating fire bombs over the United States' West Coast, hitting Oregon particularly hard. The goal in dropping these bombs on the West Coast of the United States was to cause enough damage to the country's West Coast  to put pressure on America to take our military action away from Japan and away from the Pacific, and to turn our attention back toward defending our own country. That was the goal, and even though that goal failed—the United States remained in combat, it remained on the Asian front and the Pacific front, and ultimately, the side that the United States was on won the war—still, Fujita goes down in history as the only foreign threat to ever successfully bomb the continental United States. That's the only time it's ever happened. It was in 1942.

 

The Japanese military rejoiced in these bombings. Even though the main goal they had for them had failed, they still saw it as a successful attack on the enemy.

 

But Fujita didn't feel that way. Fujita was haunted by these bombings. For a long time in his life, he felt a very deep sense of shame for attacking innocent people. He had to carry that with him long after the war ended. He wasn't proud of his military service, he didn't even want to bring it up. He lived a very quiet, kind of reclusive life, and he didn't like to share his war stories with other people.

 

The town in the United States that suffered the most damage was this really small town in Oregon called Brookings. It was a little town whose economy was based mostly on logging and farming. They were surrounded by trees and forests, so these fire bombs that hit, hit them and their economy pretty hard. They did recover though, and twenty years after this attack, in 1962, the Town of Brookings extended a formal invitation to Fujita to come and visit them. Their local churches and businesses raised the money to pay for Fujita's plane tickets, so that he could come and join them in Oregon.

 

Fujita was still living with a very deep sense of shame for his role in the war. He was convinced that the people of Brookings invited him to come join them so they could gang up together and kill him. Fujita went through with this visit, but he brought with him a 400-year-old Samurai sword that was a family heirloom. His intention was to bring this sword with him, go visit the town of Brookings, and if the people demanded it, to complete the Japanese military ritual of dying by falling on your own sword, rather than being killed by your attacker.

 

But that wasn't what happened at all when Fujita visited Oregon, and he was shocked by what happened afterwards. The people of Brookings had absolutely no ill will toward Fujita. They had totally forgiven what had happened in the past. Actually, the reason why they invited him was because they wanted him to be part of a town party. He was absolutely floored.

 

Fujita was so touched by the love that was extended to him by people that used to be his enemies, by people that he attacked, that he handed over that Samurai sword as a gift to the town. After that, they hung it up in their library as a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

 

This was a life-changing moment for Fujita. He had lived with so much shame before this visit, but afterwards that shame about his role in the war was transformed into this new sense of purpose. Afterwards, he started devoting his life to peace-building.

 

So he began that peace-building mission by donating a thousand dollars to the Brookings Library, the same place that now hangs up his sword, for the purpose of purchasing children's books about Japan, so that they could have a whole section in their library so that children could grow up learning about Japan, so that our two cultures could understand each other better and there would not be war between America and Japan in the future.

 

He invited several people from Brookings to come and visit him in Japan, and they took him up on that invitation. He visited the United States several more times in his life so that he could go back and plant trees in all of the places that he bombed before.

 

When Fujita passed away in 1997, the town council in Brookings named him an honorary citizen and an "Ambassador of Goodwill." He died with honor, and he died with incredible peace.[1]

 

War might be a temporary, current reality in our world. But there is something in the future that is so much better. Our very good human spirits already know this. We haven't let go of it. All of the warfare, all of the fighting, all the bombings, and shootings, none of that can shake this really good piece of our human spirit because God put it there, so nothing can put it out. This human spirit knows that we're not called to make war. We're called to be peace makers. This is what Jesus instructed us to do. Even though wars may happen in this temporary sense, in the long run, it is God's will for human beings to create peace, and reconciliation, and love. And God's will is always done.

 

Thanks be to God.

 

Amen.

 

---

[1] Kristof, Nicholas. “Nobuo Fujita, 85, Is Dead; Only Foe to Bomb America.” The New York Times [New York], 3 October 1997.

 

Hymn 474: Precious Lord, Take My Hand

 

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I'm tired, I'm weak, I'm worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When my way grows drear precious Lord linger near
When my light is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When the darkness appears and the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I'm tired, I'm weak, I'm worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

 

Time of Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

 

Eternal God, we thank you today for your goodness. You have given us beautiful days. You bless us richly with goodness daily. We thank you and praise you.

We live in a time of considerable confusion. We ask today for your wisdom as Solomon asked for wisdom.

We are often fearful as was Solomon. We live in a time of peril, war, and world unrest. Different and competing interests strive for our attention and loyalty. Help us, O God, to pray for wise and discerning spirits.

• Give us wisdom to know good from evil.
• Give us wisdom to assess the clamoring voices and concerns with which we are daily bombarded.
• Give us wisdom so that we might learn to be accepting of all the diverse people you have created.
• Give us wisdom to be peacemakers and mediators of understanding where there is conflict.
• Give us wisdom when we are in conflict to make it possible both for us and for those with whom we differ to save face and win and move forward hand in hand.
• Give us wisdom not to violate any of your creatures by discriminating against them.
• Give us wisdom to discern what is of ultimate value for our souls and to make wise choices.

O God, give us wisdom.
O God, give us discernment.
O God, give us the will to be faithful.
O God, give us the power to love. Amen.

 

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

 

Offering, doxology, and prayer of dedication

 

Hymn 132: All My Hope is Firmly Grounded

 

All my hope is firmly grounded
In the great and living Lord;
Who, whenever I most need him,
Never fails to keep his word.
Him I must
Wholly trust,
God the ever good and just.

Tell me, who can trust our nature,
Human, weak, and insecure:
Which of all the airy castles
Can the hurricane endure?
Built on sand,
Nought can stand,
By our earthly wisdom planned.

But in every time and season,
Out of love's abundant store,
God sustains his whole creation,
Found of life for evermore.
We who share
Earth and air
Count on his unfailing care.

Thank, O thank, our great Creator,
Through his only Son this day;
He alone, the Heavenly Potter,
Made us out of earth and clay.
Quick to heed,
Strong in deed,
He shall all his people feed.

 

Benediction

 

Go forth into the world trusting with your hearts
the wisdom God bestows upon all who seek to follow God’s will.
When called to lead, do so with humility and confidence in God.
Be in this world a sign of Jesus’ presence.
Share compassion with all whom you encounter.
Live wisely in God’s name,
and glorify God in all you do.

And may the grace, mercy and wisdom of God
be our support, guidance and strength
from this day forward and for ever more. Amen.

 

Postlude