"To Stand Against Evil"

Reading adapted from “Eternal Vigilance” by Rev. Kendyl Gibbons

What does it mean to be safe? We all want to feel safe; we want to be able to relax, to not have to be in a state of high alert all the time. We want our children to be safe; we want things that are important and meaningful to us, the things we treasure, to be safe. We don’t want to have to worry about what’s going to happen next; we don’t like being threatened. We hope for fair rules that everyone obeys so that we can all relax and enjoy our lives, without anyone taking unfair advantage of anyone else.

At the same time, there are other kinds of safety that we want. We want to be able to say what we think, and to think differently from others. We want to be able to have conversations about important matters, and share ideas, even when some of those ideas challenge the way that the world has always been.

It is entirely possible to create a social order that offers a great deal of safety from lawlessness, but none of the other kinds of safety, which are safety from the law. We are living, I fear, in an era when many other people are more concerned about the first kind of safety, and impatient with the second kind, thinking that the basic liberties of a reasonable society are secure for them, and need no attentive protection. Nothing, in my estimation, could be further from the truth.

Reading from Rev. Josiah Bartlett

In times of doubt, this church stands for faith; in moments of despair, for hope; amid confusion and hot feelings, for straight thinking and higher loyalties; and when the worth of persons is forgotten, here they are everything. You need the fellowship of this church in these times.

Reflections

Regardless of your political orientation, it’s been a difficult week for our nation, and for the world. As American, British and Australian troops have descended upon Iraq, the world watches and struggles in disagreement about the wisdom of this action. In our own community, the simple pleasure of spring finally arriving is complicated with additional emotions -- dismay, disappointment, anger, grief, as well as relief and approval among some. It became clear as this week drew to a close that the sermon topic I had planned would not have been what this congregation needed to hear today and so, although some of my original thoughts remain, I felt that my interest in Oppenheimer and Bonhoeffer would be better put off until another day.

My own feelings about this week are very strong, although the diplomatic dimension of ministry means that we ministers aren’t always as outspoken at work as we would be on our own time. Beyond my belief that war in general is a profound failure of human civilization and a betrayal of those qualities that we hold most dear, I believe that this particular war is illegal, reckless, and terribly short-sighted in its approach. I have been heartsick over the inevitable loss of life, both Iraqi and Allied, the tremendous expense which could be spent on so many other things, and the ill will that we have spread throughout the world in such a short time. It grieves me deeply to feel ashamed of my country and its actions.

However, although we Unitarian Universalists celebrate the freedom of the pulpit, that does not mean that this pulpit is simply a forum for the minister’s personal agenda, nor is the ministry of First Unitarian only about cultivating opinions that agree with my own. My work is not about trying to make you into copies of myself.

In a time of struggle, we tend to yearn for the comfort of a place where everyone is in agreement with us. Especially because we as religious liberals are so often in the minority in our culture, we crave a place to let our hair down and know that we are with like-minded people. We want to be consoled with the message that the stance we have chosen is the right one, and we want to be refreshed in spirit by the support of a community that affirms our position. It is in these days that the diversity of our movement and our congregation becomes most challenging. While Unitarian Universalists generally identify as religious liberals, we cannot claim that we are all political liberals, or that we will all come to the same conclusion on practically any issue. As much as we may wish for unanimity, it is one of the basic qualities of our movement that we cannot enforce conformity of opinion.

I think back to my last year of seminary at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley when I was working in the front office, and a new student, finishing up her stressful first week at the school came in, slumped against the wall in front of my desk, and asked, “Do we have anything in common here?” I knew that she had just had a class with our most outrageous student -- and that, being Berkeley, is saying something. Grace’s new classmate was way out there -- flamboyant, radical in every sense of the word, not always appropriate, and not nearly as rational as many of us had assumed all Unitarian Universalists to be. It was a challenge for all of us, but I kept in mind the words of Ferenc Dávid, the Transylvanian minister credited with establishing the Unitarian movement, “we need not think alike to love alike.”

The diversity of humanity is a marvelous thing, especially considering the overwhelming amount of genetic programming we have in common. While so much of creation is wired rather rigidly to respond to situations in an instinctive and predictable way, human beings are remarkable in our ability to improvise upon a theme that we are given, and the result is an amazing variety of perspectives and ways of being in the world. Among these is the diversity of the ways in which we make sense of our world, and the ways in which we rally as a tribe to participate in it.

I confess that I am still very much in the middle of learning the names and faces of our members and friends here at First Unitarian, but I have gotten to know people here well enough to know that we do not arrive at our political positions thoughtlessly. Those who disagree with one another about this war are not the simplistic caricatures we might make them, neither militaristic bullies, nor knee-jerk hippie idealists -- I believe that none of our people have reached their conclusions carelessly. People I love in this congregation carry a variety of views on war in general and on this war in particular, and I believe that they have struggled to apply their values with as much integrity as I strive for. Some of our members and their family or friends are now serving the military in Iraq, and others here believe that the attacks are necessary to remove a dangerous leader from power. In the same way that my fervent belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person leads me to protest this war, I know that it is out of concern for the same human worth and dignity that moves other Unitarian Universalists to believe this attack a necessary action.

My initial motivation to explore the moral struggles of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to respond to the Nazi threat came out of the recognition that these responses to evil don’t come easily -- they bring our deepest loyalties into conflict, and often require that we compromise some of the values we hold most dear.

Before World War II, Oppenheimer had been a passionate union organizer in Berkeley and surrounded himself with friends who were members of the Communist party and deeply sympathetic to the Soviet Union. He had been a staunch non-interventionist all throughout Hitler’s rise to power, but a series of events caused him to reconsider his resistance to America’s involvement in the war. In 1937, a favorite aunt escaped from Germany and came to live nearby. In 1939, German scientists successfully achieved nuclear fission in the laboratory, threatening to give them access to potentially enormous amounts of power. In 1940, when France fell to the Nazis, Oppenheimer acknowledged the very real danger of fascism overpowering Europe entirely. A year later, he accepted the position of project leader to mobilize American scientists to produce the atomic bomb before German scientists were able. In August 1945, the fruits of his and other scientists’ labors were dropped upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese, and ushering the world into a new era of warfare.

In the same manner, German minister and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a committed pacifist until circumstances convinced him to reconsider his position. Initially believing that Christians must be willing to give their lives rather than take another life, the increasing urgency of the German situation also led him through a struggle with his deepest values. The growing conflict between his loyalties was clear when Visser’t Hooft, the General Secretary for The World Council of Churches, asked him, “What do you pray for in these days?” and Bonhoeffer answered, “If you want to know the truth, I pray for the defeat of my nation.” As it became clear that the suffering of the German people, especially civilians, would only increase under Hitler’s rule, Bonhoeffer joined the resistance movement from within the Abwehr, Hitler’s military intelligence agency. Initially this clandestine work did not compromise his pacifism, but gave him the wherewithal to travel abroad and communicate secretly with Allied leaders in the larger plot against Hitler. Eventually, however, he was so deeply involved in the resistance that, when the decision was made to try to assassinate Hitler, he was not allowed to stand aside and claim pacifism. In July 1944, a bomb was planted in Hitler’s briefcase, but it exploded while he was out of the room, and the conspirators were quickly rounded up and imprisoned. Although plans were made to smuggle Bonhoeffer out of the country, he refused to leave when it became known that his brother Klaus was also in prison. Bonhoeffer was hanged in the Flossenbürg prison on April 9, 1945, ironically not long before Hitler’s government crumbled entirely.

Both Robert Oppenheimer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were intelligent and thoughtful individuals, who struggled with their own views and values to shape an appropriate response to Nazi Germany, one choosing his response from the outside and the other from within. Neither reached his conclusion lightly, and both decisions are second-guessed by those who remember them. We wonder today whether the enormous destruction and horrible death of so many Japanese was truly necessary, and many theologians point to Bonhoeffer’s part in Hitler’s assassination plot as a moral failure. Our later criticism of their eventual decisions does not negate the sincerity of their struggles to reach a decision, but it certainly reminds us that standing against evil is not a simple or straightforward matter.

Morality and ethics are almost never a matter of black-and-white, goodness against evil. Each of us carries our own toolbox of perspectives, values, assumptions and hopes, collected throughout our lives, that helps us to discern what is good, and what is evil. In times like these, we especially find that our multiple loyalties may come into conflict with one another. What loyalties do you carry that are most important to you? Who or what are you loyal to?

(responses from congregation: family, country, environment, truth, liberty, work, etc.)

In our opening reading, my colleague Kendyl Gibbons asks what values we are willing to trade away so that we may live in safety. As surely as Oppenheimer and Bonhoeffer had to compromise their ideals, we are also challenged to ponder the concessions that may be necessary to live relatively free from danger. I encourage you to think through and understand deeply your concerns and loyalties, that the stances we each choose might be more an intentional act than a fearful reflex, that they might be spoken and lived out of the depth our experience and wisdom.

It is a challenge to step into this pulpit and not try to persuade people to think exactly as I do, because I suffer from the same frustrations as the rest of you when others disagree with my most passionate opinions. However, I honestly wouldn’t want to be a member or the minister in a church that lacked the rich diversity of Unitarian Universalism. I don’t want to be part of a movement in which one belief has choked out all others, as algae smothers all other life in a stagnant pond. But neither do I want to be a part of a movement in which “diversity” is nothing more than a sentimentalized “live-and-let-live” in which we politely withhold our passionate views, and never challenge one another’s assumptions. The highest expression of freedom of thought in our movement is not merely tolerance, but real engagement with one another in respect and affection.

Our church is not a fishbowl in which we come to escape the world’s diversity, as tempting as that may be for us some days. Rather, this church is a training ground, in which we learn in safety to address disagreement respectfully and creatively, each side challenged to deepen their understanding of their own position, and one another’s. Because voices on the global stage are currently trying to drown one another out, or eradicate dissent entirely, the world badly needs a place where we can each plumb the depths of our beliefs and fears and hopes, and share our struggles, even with people who don’t share our conclusions. I believe that First Unitarian can be that place. And it is only in our willingness to engage one another without rancor or ridicule that this is possible -- no one else can do it for us.

In this time of struggle, as we examine our various loyalties and weigh them against one another that we might form wise opinions and compassionate responses, may our loyalty to this congregation of seekers and to the freedoms which make it possible also be a source of comfort and inspiration. Truly, at this time, at least as much as in any other, we need one another. May this be a place of struggle and hope where we all may find strength and reassurance.

Amen.