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The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled, "Mars or the Master." We stand today on the brink of war. We stand also on that Sunday given over to emphasizing the sanctity of life. It seems then to me altogether appropriate that we should this day think about war and the sanctity of life.

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Permit me to pose the question by way of illustration. A week or so ago I was watching on television and I saw a group and this group was very anxious that we should become more aggressively and militantly involved in Iraq. And as they're rallying song, they used that well-known anthem of the church, the battle hymn of the Republic. And I watched them as they sang, "As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free."

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And it suddenly struck me that this was a profound misuse of this song. What these people should have been singing was, "As he died to make men holy, let us kill to make men free." I will acknowledge that that ruins the song, but that's the truth of the matter. Jesus died to make men holy. He did not kill to accomplish his goal.

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Let us not make the mistake of believing that all self-sacrifice is like that of Jesus. Jesus sacrificed himself rather than resorting to violence. He says to the disciples, "I could have called twelve legions of angels with machine guns, if you will, to protect me." But he did not.

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Christ allowed himself to be killed rather than to quit kill. And so the question becomes, how are we, as the disciples of Christ, to respond to such a thing as war? Now, historians are agreed that in the first three centuries of the history of the church, all Christians were pacifists. The memory of the words of Christ was still quite green and new in their minds.

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They could not forget his words like, "When war is imminent, send out an embassy and seek peace." They could not forget what he said over Jerusalem, "Oh, Jerusalem, would that even today you knew the things that make for peace." They could not forget his call to them, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." And they could not disremember the words addressed to Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane after he had wounded a servant of the high priest,

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when Jesus said, "Put up your sword," and it's in the imperative, "Put it away!" Those who take the sword will perish by the sword. But after 300 years, the emperor, Constantine, decided to become a Christian. And when he became a Christian, he absorbed the Christian church into the Roman Empire,

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with the result that the church stopped being the conscience of the empire and became its tool instead. Instead of being separate from the state so that it could say to the state what the state needed to hear, it became that which blessed everything that the state sought to undertake. But even then, when this was the case, it was understood that Christians would not participate in any war that was not a just war.

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Now, the concept of a just war comes to us from the writings of St. Augustine. It is an extensive discussion which we do not have time for this morning. Suffice it to say that there were certain requirements for a war, according to Augustine, which made it just. And if those requirements were present at a time of conflict, then a Christian could participate.

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If these requirements were not present, then the Christian could not take part. Let's take just a moment to compare a few of the requirements of St. Augustine with the situation we face today. One of his rules was that if you were going to enter a war, it had to be a war in which that which was gained was worth more than the suffering required to gain it.

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As we contemplate the use of nuclear, of germ and gas weapons, can we honestly answer that question in the affirmative? Augustine said that for a war to be a just war, there could be no selfishness in it. Can we go to war over a question of oil? Augustine said that a just war was a war in which the peace that would follow the war would be a sure and certain peace.

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Can we say that about the situation we now confront in the Middle East? Augustine said that a just war was a war in which the instruments of battle were taken up as an act of love and not of hatred. What is the dominant mood now? A mood of love? No, it's a mood of hatred. Augustine said that for a war to be a just war, the civilian population had to be protected so that they would not be harmed.

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You know, in the First World War, 15% of the casualties were civilians. In the Second World War, 45% of the casualties were civilians. In the Korean War, 70% of the casualties were civilians. In the Vietnam War, 80% of the casualties were civilians.

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And if we get into the kind of war which is now posited for the Middle East, in which incredible weapons will be used, weapons as yet unveiled to the world, can we say with certainty that civilians will be protected? Augustine also said that under no circumstances could a Christian enter into a war in which he or she was fighting against other Christians. Now, it is true that Iraq is a Muslim nation, but 3% of its citizens are Christians.

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My friends, the truth of the matter is that the war which now looms before us, indeed any war that we might confront today with the possibilities for nuclear destruction, for germicidal death, for being gassed into oblivion, confronts not only us but millions. In a day like this, I would argue there is no longer such a thing as a just war.

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You might have been able to have a just war when you were fighting with bows and arrows. Can you have a just war when you're fighting with intercontinental ballistic missiles? Now, the Bible tells us that there will always be wars and rumors of wars, and that is because of our sinful nature and of the aggressive hostility which so often grows up within us.

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But is it really necessary that those things be settled on the battlefield? War is a social institution, and because it is a social institution, it can be changed by society. We've changed social institutions before. Cannibalism used to be practiced throughout the globe.

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In Europe as well as remote places of Africa and the South Seas, it's gone as a social institution. Slavery used to be common throughout the world. It has been eliminated as a social institution. The subjugation of women was present in every nation on the face of the earth, and slowly but surely it is being transformed as a social institution.

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Society can, if it will, think of ways to avoid wars and still settle the questions that wars present. And ought we not to be about the doing of that? As we contemplate war, which is a sin against God and a sin against humanity, which is an attack upon the giver of life and the sanctity of life,

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when we bow down before Mars, the ancient god of war, instead of kneeling at the feet of Jesus, who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." When we do this, isn't it time that we thought about how war itself might be eliminated and problem solved in other ways? Let me offer to you several lines of thought for your own exploration.

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There can be no peace without justice. Now, you know, interestingly enough, the church has always been better at charity than it has been at promoting justice. We have always been more inclined to take care of the suffering of the world than to oppose and criticize those who cause this suffering. The Bible tells us that we are to be about the task of spreading justice.

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Jesus says, "I have come to proclaim justice to all the nations." Jesus says, "Woe to them that neglect justice." We are to be then, as Christians, in the constant pursuit of justice. And this is not to be simply a matter of intention, simply a philosophy which is ours.

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We are to demonstrate this ourselves. For example, I don't think there are any Americans who live in the luxurious way in which most of our citizens live when compared with the rest of the world, and who consciously think at the same time that they're living that way, that by living that way, they're starving other people to death. I don't think Americans intend to do that.

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But the fact of the matter is that our wasteful consumption, our greed, our using as one-fifth of the world's population, four-fifths of the world's natural resources, causes hideous suffering for others. Take a little nation like Honduras. Honduras' principal export is bananas, and we buy almost all of their bananas.

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And the average wage of a banana picker in a Honduran field is 25 cents a day. They were starving to death for that wage, and so the workers decided to go on strike. At the time when they went on strike, some 400,000 pounds of bananas were already cut and were on the docks and the piers at the shipping points of Honduran ports. What did we in America do?

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We refused to pick up those bananas. We had those pieces of fruit rot until they were only fit to be pushed into the sea. We wouldn't pay any more so that the workers could have any more. And eventually, because they had so little and no organization and no help, the workers gave in.

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And we can still go and buy bananas for 25 cents a pound, which is less than we pay for a pound of apples that's picked in Mercer, Pennsylvania. My friends, as long as anybody is starving, they're going to be insecure. And when people are insecure, they're going to be seeking security. And when they go out seeking security, they're going to make other people insecure.

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They're going to threaten them. And that is how wars begin. Or consider, if you will, this truth. There can be no peace without reconciliation. After working for justice, after educating our children for justice, after influencing our politicians so that they will do things which are just,

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not only within the country but within the world, after practicing restraint in our own way of life so that we ourselves are just, after contributing to those who are in need to help them in the midst of the injustice that they suffer in the world, after we have done all these things, we must go on to the step of reconciliation. Paul says we are to be reconcilers.

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Now, what is a reconciler? Well, Jesus says a reconciler is one who loves his enemies, is one who blesses those who curse him, as one who does good to those who seek to persecute him. And what does this mean? Well, it means three things.

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It means, first of all, that we develop and maintain a capacity to forgive. Now, forgive does not mean to take something which is evil and pretend that it's good. To forgive means to confront something that is evil but to refuse to allow that evil to cut off all communication between you and the one perpetrating the evil. Again, being a reconciler means that we understand that an enemy's evil does not reveal all that he or she is.

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We all realize that we are, in terms of good and evil, schizophrenic personalities. This is what Paul was referring to when he said, "The good that I would, I do not, and the evil that I would not, this I do." There is bad in the best of us. There is good in the worst of us. And when we look at our enemies, if we are reconcilers, we will seek always the things that are good, not the things that are evil.

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And the third mark of a reconciler is that his goal is not the defeat or the humiliation of his enemy, but rather to win the cooperation of his enemy. It is aimed at promoting goodwill. Surely we have lived long enough to know that hate produces nothing in the world but more hate. And we need to come to understand what Lincoln said so simply but so accurately.

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"The best way to make your enemy no longer your enemy is to transform him into your friend." What would happen if we as a nation began to teach our children and labored to learn ourselves how to be reconcilers, how to forgive, how to look for the best, how to seek cooperation rather than humiliation? A short time ago, the Roman Catholic bishops of America sent a pastoral letter to their churches concerning peace.

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And among many other good things in that letter, they said that if we took just one-tenth of one percent of our military budget, we would have $300 million a year to use to teach people how to wage peace and not war. Peace requires the art of reconciliation. A third thought. There can be no peace without global security.

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Now we understand as Christians that we belong first of all to Christ and then to the family of Christ. Our first allegiance is to God's people, to God's kingdom. But this does not mean that we do not love our country. What it means is that in loving our country, we see our land in planetary terms.

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You know, all wars that are fought today are in a sense civil wars because the world is tied so tightly together by communication and transportation advances that when a war starts in one place, its impact is felt all over the globe. And so I suggest to you that we need some kind of security force,

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such as individual nations have within their own countries, to patrol the world and to stop wars before they get started. Oh, I know some people will say immediately, "That's impossible." My response to that is that if we honestly and aggressively confront humankind with the truth

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that we will either do this or we will vanish from the face of the earth, having destroyed one another, then enough urgency might be produced to lead people to commit themselves to the development of this kind of force. When President Bush spoke about a new order and went about seeking to get all the nations of the earth

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to join together against the insanity of a few, I was hoping that what he was beginning here was the first step toward a global security force. Admittedly, this will be very tough. And admittedly, it will have to begin with the church

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because the church is the only institution on the face of the earth which is represented in every nation on the face of the earth. But I keep thinking to myself, when I read magazine articles about young German adults

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who ask their parents and their grandparents where they were when Hitler was conquering people after people and seeking to perpetrate the final solution, the Holocaust, against the Jews. When I think about those German kids asking those questions,

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I wonder if there might not come a time, 15 years from now, when some of our youngsters will be watching a TV documentary one night on the Gulf War that was fought way back in 1991. And they'll say to us, "What did your church do to try to stop this?"

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Maybe they'll be leafing through the family album of pictures and there'll be a picture of Aunt Jane and Uncle Jim, both of whom died in the Gulf War. And our kids, who never got a chance to really know them, might turn to us and say, "Was it really necessary that they die

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to keep the cost of gasoline at a dollar and a half a gallon?" And when they go to Washington to see the Gulf War Memorial, which will be located across the mall from the Vietnam Memorial, I wonder if they might not say to us,

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"Was it really necessary for so many to die to keep a feudal monarch on his throne and with his riches?" If those questions are ever asked of us, what are we going to say? Will we be able to testify in any way, shape, or form that we have sought to promote and encourage a security force within the world to stop war before it gets started?

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And one last thought. There can be no peace without walking the way of the cross. What is the way of the cross? The way of the cross is when love meets evil and keeps on loving. Jesus rejected the sword and accepted the cross,

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and he calls us as his disciples to do the same. Now this is a very, very somber thought, because we're talking now about nothing less than martyrdom. We're talking about nothing less than turning our backs on Mars forever

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and opening ourselves utterly to the Master. But I was sitting alone the other evening, and I had a thought which I meditated upon for a while, and which I invite you to take home to think about.

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Suppose that when the National Socialist Party was coming to power in Germany, when the Nazis under Hitler were taking control, suppose that Hitler--and no man, you know, has power within himself. He only has the power which is his because of the people who follow him.

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Suppose that when Hitler sought to exercise his power, the Christians in Germany had said, "No, we will not be a part of what you want us to do." Hitler, being the evil and perverted creature that he is,

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would probably have begun to slay Christians. How long could he have kept that up? How long until every home in Germany would have lost some Christians? Every street had lost some.

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Every little hamlet, every village, every city, everybody knew people who had been murdered by their own government because they would not stand before God and be a part of an iniquitous war. Suppose that only a part of the Christians did this.

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Suppose, if you will, that Hitler killed 10 million Christians who said, "No, we will not be a part of the rape of Poland. We will not be a part of the annihilation of the Jewish people." I suggest to you that the power and the authority of Hitler

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would have been so awesomely undermined. The horror of what he was doing in murdering his own citizens would have been so sickening to the German people and to the rest of the world that he would have stopped before he started.

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Well, you say, "10 million Christians would have died." That's right. But in the Second World War, 47,700,000 people died. So which is more heartbreaking, 10 million or 48 million?

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And remember that those Christians who would have died for love's sake would have gone immediately into the presence of the Christ who said, "Go the second mile and love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." If only Christians had been willing to die loving

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more than they were willing to die killing, what a difference it might have made. My heart is very heavy today because I cannot see a way out of this thing

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except for the divine intervention of God, which is always possible. When we see what he is doing in the Soviet Union and in places like China, we must believe that. But I'm afraid that many Christians are going to be being called upon to kill,

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and they're going to kill. And they're going to claim that Christ is on their side as they kill. When all the while, it will be Mars who is grinding into red and bloody pulp the bodies and the blood of those who will perish in that wide,

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wide, hard, and unrelentless desert. My only hope is that someday Christians will make a choice. They will decide either that civilization is going to sink into its final coma and die, or they will instead understand that humanity under Christ

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can recognize the planetary peril which it confronts. And like a person who has swallowed some lethal poison, can shake it off, can throw aside the deadly stupor, can vomit it up and out,

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and stop. Stop excuses. Stop denials. And begin practicing an authentic discipleship. Oh, would God that the people of Christ would rise up

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and by justice, reconciliation, security, and the cross, cleanse the earth of its deadliest peril, of the foulest of all human deeds, war.

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[silence]