9/12/02: The Next Act?
9/12/02: The Next Act?Cannon Chapel
Jon P. Gunnemann
Scripture: Isaiah 59:1-15
I chose the Isaiah reading for today when I was asked to reflect on the year that has passed since “9/11.” It seemed to me to capture the urgency of the present moment, with remarkable if frightening parallels to our time. But I have found it impossible to preach on or from this text. Prophetic texts are for a certain time, and moving from them to current events is tricky business. The prophet was addressing an unfolding drama in Israel, speaking of God’s anger at Israel’s bloody intent, its injustice, its deceit before principles of law, its trampling on truth in the public square. But our drama today is not Israel’s, is it? I could not suggest such a thing! So the text has instead “performed” for me as something like a Greek chorus, invoking themes from the past, posing questions about the powers that shape the stage on which we play, about our actions and our ends, and, as Christians, our understanding of God’s ends. The phrases I kept hearing repeated by the chorus included: “rush to shed innocent blood,” “the way of peace they do not know,” “we wait for light and Lo! there is darkness,” “we grope like the blind along a wall,” “truth stumbles in the public square”—I invite you to let the themes you heard in the text “play” in the background of what I can only grope to say.
For human action, of persons and of nations, is like a drama, a drama in which the stage is both set and yet moving, with characters whose roles have been given but are not completely formed. The script sets out possibilities for the characters, some better, some worse, and the characters must choose among the possibilities and in doing so shape their own character. And they do this not simply with abstract possibilities but in the play of possibilities that arise from acting out the script in the company of other actors, also set to ends but yet discovering how to realize those ends. Human history, of persons and of nations, is a drama of interaction in which we try to understand the common end intended by the Author of our being. We are not puppets on that stage, but active participants. We act out our characters and in so doing realize in better and worse ways what the Author of our being has intended as our common end.
So at one day past the anniversary of 9/11, one day past the recounting by many choruses of what happened one year ago in the previous Act of our drama (and we must not forget that there were preceding Acts in our drama), we try to understand the stage now in front of, and the characters now before us, and where we are in a script that is never clearly written down, a script which indeed is many scripts as part of a larger script. It is impossible, of course, to describe the Act of the past year. Too large a stage, too many actors, too few lights illuminating too many dark places on the set. But we can for a moment focus on one part of the stage brightly illuminated a year ago:
A year ago we were trying to sort out the tragedy, the horrific evil, trying to sort out the frightening turn in the script and the strange new actors suddenly on the stage; trying to figure out what the Author intended, whether indeed, there was an Author? As actors we were challenged to determine again who we were, and what our roles now were. It was an overwhelming challenge. But there were hopeful beginnings.
For several months after 9/11, The New York Times published a special daily section called “A Nation Challenged,” reporting on the aftermath of the attack, piecing together what had happened as more became known, about the planes, the hijackers, Al-Qaeda (a new name for many, now suddenly a household word), and offering biographies of the victims as they became known. Those who read it were being instructed, learning more about the world, seeing maps and names of places new to us, learning more about Islam and more about Arabs. The President warned us against lumping all Muslims together as fanatics; churches and synagogues reached out; lectures and panels on Islam and Judaism and Christianity were given. There were acts of courage and kindness—Christians sitting around a mosque in order to protect it from attack. At least some in the nation were attempting to understand why this had happened, what it was we really had to fear, and to determine their individual and our national collective roles, past, present, and future: how now to respond with this array of actors and this changed setting, how to realize the common end our Author had appointed for us in these circumstances.
And a year ago, an extraordinary portion of the people of the entire world mourned with us, with outpourings of sympathy and prayers. A website posted hundreds of remarkable pictures of people young and old placing flowers and lighting candles at American embassies and historical monuments—in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Moscow, Japan, Korea, South America—the list is almost endless. There were protests in some Muslim countries, of course, from Egypt to Indonesia, denying responsibility from within the world of Islam. But the leaders of the majority of Muslim and Arab nations expressed shock and sorrow at what had happened. It is unlikely that at any time since the end of WW II had so much of the world expressed and felt solidarity with the U.S., with promises of support in our efforts to heal our wounds and to help us in ending the terror, to work with us in realizing our common human end.
How now to describe the setting of the Act that has just opened? The curtain has gone up, the chorus has changed costume. The chorus—media, friends, colleagues—tells us that the people who in the previous Act had lit candles for us in mutual grief are now deeply angry at us, angry on the streets of Europe and Asia and in the halls of government. The chorus tells us that Arab nations which in modern memory have been divided, some standing with us, some against, are now united against us, and united with a character whom they had despised because we have named him our chief enemy and the enemy of humankind. How did we move from solidarity with so many characters and having so many possibilities to standing alone on the stage with an enemy not there in the previous act?
What has transpired in this past Act to so transform the stage?
Again, this stage is too large, the characters too many, the script distressingly multiple and complex. But some portions of the new set seem disturbingly clear: that since the beginning of the last Act we as a nation have begun to shape our own role in a particular way, in response to others and especially to our interpretation of others, and in so doing we have changed the possibilities of the script, we have altered the roles of other characters, we have swept some characters out of view, into the wings. We have shaped our roles in lines that include the following ends and delineations of character and our understanding of the script:
The challenge we faced was very quickly called a “war against terrorism,” and as the task of eliminating bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, ill-defined enemies for a war. Now the script says that the enemy is Saddam Hussein, a clearly defined enemy, but casting someone in a major role on center stage who was not on the stage at all at the beginning of the previous Act.
The Administrative branch of our government has decided that its role includes the power to declare war, a role given by the script of our Constitution—and that’s how complicated our script is—to Congress.
We are already deploying troops and mobilizing materiel in positions to attack a nation that has not attacked us, adopting a role and shaping our character in violation of the script of international law and our own traditions—the script has so many parts!!
Our government holds prisoners under conditions forbidden by our Constitution; and the Justice Department has twice defied the orders of federal judges who ruled the actions unconstitutional, saying effectively that the role of the Federal courts in our nation’s drama is minor, a walk-on part.
And it is difficult on today’s stage to see where some of the earlier actors are: the people of Palestine and Israel, those living in the villages and mountains of Afghanistan, the roles representing Pakistan and India, the millions of people who lit the candles and laid the flowers.
To stand alone on the stage with only choruses reminding us of the presence of other actors, and of other parts of the script, is a frightening thing. In tragic drama, standing alone on the stage with the chorus as sole witness is often the point where the lead character realizes his or her hubris, the pride that led to the catastrophic climax of the play. Are we standing at that point?
A half century ago, Reinhold Niebuhr reminded us of the tragic role of pride in the dramas of history. Power tempts us to rely on our own resources. Power blinds us to the larger picture, blinds us to the roles of other peoples, blinds us to alternative possibilities for acting out the drama. Power tempts us to believe that we are the sole authors of our script. And in the case of America, Reinhold Niebuhr said, the power of pride is compounded by deep national mythologies, another part of the script that defined our roles in our drama even before the act of 9/11. That mythology includes the belief in America’s uniqueness, its special role in God’s providence, its innocence, its privileged place on the stage of human history. And that myth while sometime motivating us to acts of compassion and aid to others has as often ironically and tragically blinded us to our own faults. And, blinded to our own faults, we believe that we already know the whole script; that we can indeed write the script; and if the other actors think the play different from our understanding of it, we will act courageously on behalf of them, blinded as they surely must be. We will stride onto center stage, seizing our role as the only remaining superpower, slaying the beast that we clearly know threatens us all. We will play the hero because part of the scripting we have done in the last act is to think of the world in terms of victims and heroes.
How can we as Christians act at such a time, the stage set as it is, at least some of the roles so clearly defined. What is our role?
We must, first of all, go onto the stage. We cannot be spectators and cannot stand in the wings. We must act. But what lines shall we speak? Do we have clear lines that speak truth? Is our role clear?
We cannot better than anyone else proclaim truth about the whole, but we can confidently and rightly define a part of our role and say lines consistent with that portion of the Script that has been given to us as Christians, listening also to the prophetic chorus reminding us of early parts of the human drama:
1) Most basic to defining our role as Christians is to protest every use of the word “God” that implies a privileged place for America either in the current conflicts or the whole of history. The Christian God of our Script is the God of all peoples and of the whole of Creation, loving each equally, calling each nation equally to righteous, and judging each nation equally. To make any suggestion whatsoever that America is uniquely blessed by God, either in this particular set of conflicts or in the grand scheme of things is idolatry, the first of sins. Quite concretely on a not-so-small matter: this means in the current circumstances that however meaningful “God bless America” was on 9/11, it needs now to be struck from Christian lips—or at least from mine. I must remain silent when others sing this song, and if I am on stage when it is sung, I must respectfully insist that we also say, “God bless every inhabitant of the Earth, the descendents of Abraham, Isaac, Jesus, Mohammed—indeed, of ‘Lucy’ in Africa.”
2) Then, a clear line in our Script: We can say boldly that Jesus’ command to love the neighbor and the enemy means that whatever political actions we take or support—whether in negotiation, the use of coercion of any kind, or the use of military force—our goal must be reconciliation. What does that mean? Surely not putting our arms around bin Laden should he suddenly stride onto the stage weapons in hand. But it does mean recognizing that any political leader or terrorist is part of a set of historical and social relationships of which we are a part—our scripts have intertwined and our current roles were shaped by those encounters. Reconciliation means active work in repairing and reconstructing those relationships so that they are just even if we are at the moment set hostilely against each other. To enter into armed combat with any other intention violates what we know of the Script we have read so far.
(3) We can also speak this line: If we are to love the neighbor and the enemy, then we are enjoined to understand those with whom we are in conflict, and bring out onto the stage those who have been pushed off, for how are we to love them if we do not know them? How can we love them if they are not on the stage, if we give them no space to act out their roles and to discover their place in the drama?
(4) Fourth, the Christian can rightly speak the line that the counterpart to loving and understanding the enemy is repentance because the imaginative entering into the world of another helps us to understand our own limitations and our possible complicity in the history of the current violence. In the case of the Middle East this would mean at least looking hard at the extent to which our addiction to oil to feed our rapaciously hungry economy is one of the chief causes of our presence there, dictating whom we cast as our friends and enemies. It would require us to ask why only 20 years ago we supported Saddam Hussein militarily in the war against Iran, even while knowing he was using poison gas. It would require us ask why we claim to be supporting freedom and democracy while we shore up authoritarian and despotic governments in Saudia Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. It would require us to ask why we are the largest purveyor of arms in the world.
(5) A fifth line the Christian can rightly speak: If the drama calls for war, this must always be interpreted as catastrophe, the breaking down of justice, the final manifestation of already existing patterns of injustice and resentment, the collapse of the drama, of the set and the stage. War is not a solution but a witness to the failure of the many actors to read the script with care, to respond to the roles of others in genuine engagement about its meaning, to look for new possibilities through understanding the interpretations of others. War does not do good, nor create justice; it does not create a “good ending.” It turns off the lights, forcing all to grope on the stage in darkness. At best it can stop a worse evil (which must be evil indeed); and in doing so it will create great suffering and havoc. If good emerges, if the stage is repaired and the drama can go on, it will be because the intentions of love and reconciliation are there.
(6) A sixth line that the Christian can rightly speak is that, measured by human standards, good is always powerless in the face of real evil—the Cross is the ever present symbol in our sanctuary to remind us of that. And so to try to eradicate evil for our own survival means undoing good. As H. Richard Niebuhr said, “The wisdom of survival is not the wisdom of a world of life but of a world of death.” This means that there is nothing as dangerous to our real security than aiming merely at survival and in so doing undermining the principles that define our understanding of what we think is good and right, however imperfect that may be. It is the equivalent of losing our soul.
What does the next Act hold for us?
Each of us must discover the individual roles set for us, trying to read our Christian Script and the larger script as carefully as possible with whatever remaining light is cast on our part of the stage. Each role is only partially written out, with more than one possibility for fuller development. Each will be played on different parts of the stage, and not all of us will agree on our roles in relation to others. But however the Act unfolds, we will develop our roles, our characters, our actions, only through interaction with myriad others, Christian and non-Christian, struggling to articulate their own place in the drama. May we speak the lines we come to see that we must speak with both humility and courage, remembering always that the common end set for us by the Author of the drama is yet to be fully articulated, yet to be fully enacted, and always transcends our own individual and national purposes. There may be no more important role to play than to bear witness to this last point: That the common human end of the Author of all being can never be identified with any person or nation. If we bear witness to this alone, we at least illuminate some darkened portion of the stage.