Hilton Head Island, SC – August 18, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 2:1-5; II Chronicles 35-20-27
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – But he sent envoys to him, saying, “What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you this day, but against the house with which I am at war, and God has commanded me to make haste. Cease opposing God, who is with me, lest he destroy you.” – II Chronicles 35:21 (RSV)
Two of the most influential American theologians and ethicists in the mid-20th century were brothers, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr. Reinhold taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and his younger brother Richard taught at Yale Divinity School.
In 1932 Japan invaded Manchuria. The devastation was swift and horrific. There was much talk about the United States going in to assist the hapless and helpless Manchurians against the nation of the Rising Sun.
Shortly after the invasion, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote an article for The Christian Century magazine. It was called “The Grace of Doing Nothing,” and it urged our government to resist the impulse to take up arms against the aggressors. Instead, he said we should look at our own sins and trust that God was working through the history of the Far East, as murky as it was at the time. In response, his brother Reinhold Niebuhr wrote an opposing essay called “Must We Do Nothing?” He argued that the lack of moral purity should not prevent Christians from resisting aggression, even if the circumstances were less than crystal clear.
As long as nations, clans, and ethnic groups have existed, wars and conflicts between such entities have also existed. That is especially true in the last several hundred years. Wars have dotted the global landscape from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, and from the Spitzbergen Islands in the far Northern Hemisphere to the Falkland Islands in the far Southern Hemisphere. And whether wars erupt essentially from territorial disputes, economic ideologies, tests of spheres of influence, ethnic, cultural, or religious differences, or several or all of these factors, they have erupted with surprising frequency.
The Bible does not speak with one united voice about war. Often it suggests that God Himself demanded wars, as when the Israelites attacked the Canaanites and took their cities captive in the conquest of the so-called Promised Land. (The Israelites thought it was promised to them by God, while the Canaanites thought it was theirs by ethnic ownership over many centuries.) Some of the prophets declared that the destruction of the kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE and the kingdom of Judah in 587 BCE was the result of the sinfulness of the people of Israel and Judah in those awful times. Other biblical writers considered these invasions to be nothing short of unmitigated theological and national disasters, and they vented great globs of green spleen on the Assyrians and Babylonians who destroyed the two kingdoms. Curiously, nothing was said directly in the New Testament about the Roman destruction of Judea in 68-72 CE. However, the Old Testament had been completed by then, and the New Testament was being composed just before, during, and just after that time. Probably the writers were hesitant to write anything about a lost war whose ultimate results had not yet played themselves out. Better to be silent than to say something which might turn out to be greatly incorrect, they may have reasoned.
Josiah was reckoned by everyone in the Hebrew scriptures who wrote anything about him to have been one of the greatest kings among the Jews throughout their entire history. During his reign some workers in the temple in Jerusalem discovered an old scroll while they were tearing down a wall and building a new wall. The scroll turned out to be the Book of Deuteronomy, about which no one apparently had known of its existence until the temple was being repaired. It was Josiah who decreed that the new (but really old) laws which were found in Deuteronomy must be put into practice. For these reforms Josiah was hailed as a great monarch in his own time and also ever after.
Nevertheless, Josiah later made a very foolhardy decision, which resulted in his premature death. To understand the circumstances of this colossal blunder, we must understand one of the periodic Middle Eastern tectonic political shifts which was occurring at the time Josiah was king of Judah. Up until then, the Assyrians (not the Syrians but the Assyrians) had been one of the three dominant Middle Eastern powers, the other two being Egypt and Babylon. (Babylon equated to Iraq on today’s map, more or less, although its border then ran from present-day Baghdad south to Basra. Assyria was northwest Iraq, including what is now Kurdistan, plus northeast Syria. (If you can’t visualize what I’m saying in the map of your mind, don’t worry.)
Anyway, Babylon, or really Neo-Babylonia, was the rising star in Middle Eastern politics. Arrayed against it were Egypt and Assyria, who were allies opposed to its ascendancy. Pharaoh Neco of Egypt led his army through Judah on their way to Carchemish, the new capital of Assyria, which on today’s map is just south of the border with Turkey in northern Syria. There the Egyptians and Assyrians planned to fight the Babylonians in a great battle which would determine the future Number-One-Leader of the Middle East for the next several decades.
Unfortunately, Josiah got the notion that God wanted him to stop the Egyptians, and he led an army of Jews to fight Neco at a place in Israel called Megiddo. Har-Megiddo, Mount Megiddo in Hebrew, turned out to be Armageddon in the Greek Bible, the New Testament. Armageddon is purportedly where the last battle on earth shall be fought and the good guys will go to heaven and the bad guys will go to hell. There’s much more to it than that, but we’re not going into it, because we’re going to concentrate on poor old little Josiah trying to take on great big Pharoah Neco at Megiddo. The upshot, as you heard in II Chronicles 35, is that Neco warned Josiah to get out of his way, and that this was not Josiah’s fight. God was on his side, said Neco, not Josiah’s. “What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you this day, but against the house with which I am at war; and God has commanded me to make haste. Cease opposing God, who is with me, lest he destroy you” (II Chron. 35:21).
Imagine the chutzpah of a pagan Egyptian claiming to speak on behalf of the God of Israel! Who the devil is Neco to be saying this, said Josiah to himself. So Josiah and his army attacked the Egyptians - - - and the Jews and their king were slaughtered. The fact that this episode made it into the Bible suggests that the writer of II Chronicles agreed with Neco, and not with Josiah. Don’t get involved in wars that don’t concern you. If you do, it can be disastrous.
The United States of America, the Neo-Babylonia of the 21st century, has recently inserted itself into two wars which did not really concern us: Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq lasted almost ten years, and Afghanistan has now lasted twelve years, longer than any other war in which our nation has ever fought, and we’re still not out. And now, like the Egyptian Pharaoh Neco, who was defeated at Carchemish in 605 BCE, along with the Assyrians, the USA is considering whether or how we should get involved in the civil war which had been afflicting Syria for the past 2+ years. Is there no end to the American zeal for warfare? Our last four Presidents have all presided over wars: George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf, Bill Clinton in the only all-air war waged thus far in history (in the Balkans), George W. Bush, who started both the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan, and Barack Obama, who said the Iraq war was a bad idea and managed with help from many others to end it, and said that the war in Afghanistan is good but who is doing everything he can to get us out of it by late next year anyway, if not sooner.
Nonetheless, none of those countries or areas is now peaceful, nor are they likely to be for the foreseeable future. Sadly, we are much better at making wars than we are at creating peace. According to the Third Gospel (and it is found in Luke alone), Jesus wept over Jerusalem just a few days before he died on the cross. He said, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes” (Luke 19:42). Politically and militarily, it has ever been so much easier for nations to wage war than to wage peace.
In European capitals and in Washington, D.C., government leaders have been fretting over what might be done or should be done to ease the suffering of millions of innocent people in Syria. The Syrian government, led by the brutal Alawite, Bashar al-Assad, son of the even more brutal Hafez al-Assad, is fighting a coalition of Sunni Syrians and outside Sunni Al-Qaeda warriors who are trying to wrest control of the country from the Assad regime. The Alawites are a small minority of Syrians. They are an offshoot from the Shiite Muslims. For thirteen centuries Sunnis, who are 85% of the world’s Muslims, and Shiites, who are 10-15%, have not gotten along very well. The split goes back to the late 7th century, over who properly should have followed Muhammad as leaders of Islam after the Prophet died. It is an important ongoing controversy which Christians can scarcely remember and which Muslims can never forget.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that a war in Syria would be exceedingly costly in blood and treasure. Further, he warned, it would be exceedingly difficult to execute successfully. Why do we often ignore the advice of our military leaders?
The crucial thing for Americans to understand is the war in Syria is mainly a religious civil war. It directly involves almost no one outside Syria. Assad is being supported by the Iranian Shiite government and to some extent by the Iraqi now-Shiite government and also by the Russian government, whose motives are opaque at best, and which are based on Soviet policies from fifty years ago. If this sounds confusing to you, it should, because it is confusing; it is very confusing. The daily carnage is terrible, and no one can be happy about that. But realistically, what can any outsiders do about it? As it was with Josiah 2600 years ago, we do not have a dog in this hunt, as they say in these colloquial parts. It is very hard to imagine that God wants bloodshed to cease by means of the administration of foreign nations creating more bloodshed.
Up to the present, almost no one in any western nation has seriously proposed sending troops to Syria, with the exception of the senior US Senator from South Carolina and his chum, the senior Senator and former presidential candidate from Arizona. But lots of government officials in several countries have urged weapons to be sent to the Syrian rebels. Our President has quietly done that. In addition to supplying arms to the rebels, 300 Marines have been sent to advise the rebels. If that sounds like early Viet Nam or Afghanistan or Iraq all over again, that’s because it is very much like early Viet Nam or Afghanistan or Iraq all over again. As George Santayana so sagaciously observed, “Those who do not know history are bound to repeat it.”
One of the main drawbacks of a policy of rebel support is that there is no guarantee the weapons will get to the rebels, or, having gotten there, will remain in rebel hands. Some of the arms given to the rebels have already ended up in the stockpiles of the Assad forces.
Wars everywhere are messy at best, but in the Middle East, they are always particularly dicey. Even with the best of intentions, plans can backfire badly, and the reverse of what was intended may come to pass. There is no question that the civil war in Syria is a bloody horror, but there is almost no ethical decision anyone can take which is guaranteed to improve things. It is one of those instances where events must play themselves out to their own tragic conclusion. And at this point, no one can convincingly predict what that will be.
Try to put yourself into the mind of a Syrian Shiite or Alawite. For centuries you and your forebears have felt oppressed by Sunnis. Now you see people from what you mistakenly assume are western Christian nations sending aid to your Sunni or secular enemies in your own homeland. You further note than when the West recently got involved in the Middle East at all, nearly always it was on the side of Sunnis or secularists. What do you suppose this hypothetical Syrian will conclude about western intervention? Will it help change his mind, and he pleads for outside assistance, or will it further inflame his hatred for things western and American?
Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this conflict? Can any guys willing to kill other guys ever be considered completely good? Is there something about war which, no matter what causes it or who fights in it or what its results are, that it is always, by its very nature, ethically dark, and certain to be a conundrum?
You are wondering to yourself, “Why is he preaching a sermon like this? What can he do about it? What can we do about it?” Why would I preach a sermon like this? Why would I preach a sermon like this? Why would I preach a sermon like this? If I were sitting where you’re sitting, I’d certainly be asking myself those questions.
Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you why. Ultimately this is my rationale for all such sermons. You may not agree with it, but this is what it is, nonetheless.
We are citizens of a democracy. All citizens of democracies are ethically and morally responsible for what their governments do, even when they strongly oppose government decisions. Our primary responsibility is illustrated every two years or more often in a little booth with a little techno-screen which lists names and asks questions, and we press the screen in the proper places to show which candidates we select and which answers to which questions we support. If we don’t like voting, or we morally disapprove of voting, we should feel obligated to move to Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia or Kazakhstan or Kyrgystan or China, or, sadly, now again Russia, where voting truly doesn’t matter. Then we will see the true value of democracy.
God doesn’t directly determine the course of history. Indirectly yes, but directly --- no. He never has, and He never will. Acting with what we trust is divine influence, we determine it. And in democracies, ordinary citizens determine their own history most visibly and powerfully on election day. We never have absolutely clear moral options; ever. But we always do have options. Not to exercise those choices is to fail both God and our fellow citizens. Just because we never have perfect choices doesn’t mean we are excused from choosing.
Pharoah Neco told King Josiah to butt out, that the battle in which he was about to be engaged was not Josiah’s. Josiah ignored his warning, and paid with his life, and Judah plummeted farther down the ash heap of Middle Eastern history. America: Caveat Syria!