Pentecost 22

As soldiers, pilots and sailors went off to war in the first and second world war, and in all the conflicts since then, the presence of chaplains was of great value and support, and I know it continues to be so today.  In Queensland we have a significantly higher number of serving men and women in the armed forces and consequently a good number of chaplains including Anglicans, who serve with them, either as active personnel or who are on the Australian Defence Forces reserves list. 

Last week I spoke about peace making, peace keeping and peace restoring; this week, on Remembrance Sunday I want to explore the text from Luke about resurrection (Luke 20:27-40). The Sadducees seek to trap Jesus on the issue as they did not believe in resurrection, unlike the Pharisees, and the debate and tricky questions seeking to undermine, disprove and make Jesus look foolish, continue today. We know, faith comes from God, not from provable or unprovable facts and evidence.

This last week, I led a retreat on Peace-Making as Resurrection People, and I spoke about peace in last Sunday’s sermon.  In the last month, I’ve been rewatching the BBC series, Foyle’s War set in the second world war on England’s south coast, in Hastings. It explores themes of honesty and integrity, grief and loss, the huge damage done in physical injury and also in mental injury, in the choices we each make about how to behave, how to resist the temptation to profit and keep safe while letting others carry the burden.  The official Secrets Act was put to good use and bad.  The opportunities for corruption existed – as they always do – whether in peace time or war.  But our capacity to remain honest, faithful and focussed on God’s side, whether in war of peace, means the choices we make can become clearer, even if they are not any easier. 

Two years ago, I put a motion to the Queensland Synod about being active peace-makers.  It was as if I had poked an ants’ nest. I was surprised and pleased at the passion of the debate, even though I disagreed with much of it.  It showed me the idea of peace is real, and carries the commitment and dreams of those who fight as well as those who choose other paths of service.

But I wonder about our capacity to take sides to the detriment of those whose stories are different.  In Israel at the moment, some are refusing to accept their conscription papers because of conscientious objections as they see the war in Gaza as immoral; and, there are Talmudic students refusing to serve, even though the law has recently been changed by the government to increase conscription numbers.  The law now requires these scholars to serve in the army as conscripts like the rest of the population have done since modern Israel was established.  Many in this religious community are also refusing to serve; the argument being prayerful study of the holy scriptures is as much a strategy of defence as bearing arms. Those who have had their family members killed or traumatised by the violence are angry and resentful at this resistance and refusal from both groups.

In a way, the Sadducees tried to put a similar argument to Jesus, demanding he pick a side to support.  Whichever way he chose, Jesus was always going to lose, in their minds.  You and I have the same conundrum.  Whichever side we choose, whatever the rights and wrongs of each argument about violence, death, peace and resurrection, there will be loss, ours, for others and for God.  The larger hopes and dreams God has for each of us is taken way before God’s potential in us is realised. Our sacred story cannot be told when violence ends lives.  Jesus calls us to see a bigger picture. There is the apparent enemy in front challenging us to pick a side, and the love of God who tells us a different story with a different outcome.

Dietrich Bonhoffeur went through these choices and arguments and found himself in a plot to kill Hitler.  He argued he could not stand by and watch Hitler kill 6 million Jews and others and do nothing.  His complicity in seeking to murder Hitler was a hard decision to make, and he knew he was at God’s mercy in God’s judgement of his choices.  He trusted God knew his heart and his reasons and his own inner battle to find a way through beyond the choice he made.  As a consequence, he was killed by the Nazis when the plot failed: an outcome he accepted and he died without fear.

We choose to fight evil, and wickedness, frequently with violence as this is all that is left to us it seems.  Last week, in Luke’s Gospel we heard Jesus speaking of the ways we can behave subversively, as the powerless and poor.  We are not without capacity and choice.  We can challenge the powers of oppression, colonialism and privilege.  Jesus was no stranger to the use of military power to crush rebellion by the Romans. He was not naïve, nor meek or mild. He and his family knew violence and its impact.   God knows why we make such choices and why we continue to do so.  Jesus was invited to speak of resurrection in order to trap him and to give his persecutors cause to arrest him.  As Jesus spoke to those around him, he reassured them and us, we cannot die anymore as children of God, being children of the resurrection. (Luke 20:36) Jesus reminded us the dead are raised.

After wars without number, seeing the returning of wounded, traumatised defence forces men and women, count the dead, check evidence for war crimes, as we have been in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza and Israel, and around the world, we realise we cannot pick our fights without prayer and faith.  We turn to God and we must pick God, to help us across this difficult, seemingly unresolvable conundrum, as we walk together always in peace.  The courage we demand of those who go to war on our behalf, breaks my heart.  My dad was still having nightmares nearly 70 years after he stopped flying bombers in the second WW. 

I give thanks for God’s peace in the face of our broken world fractured by human suffering and violence; I give thanks for God’s gift of faith and grace.  I give thanks to God for a different way through if we have the courage to choose it and forgiving us when we stumble and fall.  I give thanks to God for the lives of the countless men and women who have stood up, faced fear, and died on the frontline, and those who died waiting for loved ones to return, not giving up in the face of doubt, terror and hardship, for all who keep going to the end irrespective of their choice and go to the cross without giving up and keeping faith.  I give thanks we can live as resurrection people. 

The Lord be with you.